Lisa’s thoughts on AI

Hi everyone,

The use of AI is a pretty fraught topic – and I’m not here to judge anyone else for how they might choose to use it (or not). But I know it means a lot to some readers, authors, illustrators, and artists, so I wanted to make clear how I use it in my own work. You can then decide whether you want to support me by buying my books.

My overall personal stance on the use of AI in my publishing business is this: I don’t use AI for things that I monetise/make money from, and will always use human editors/designers for those things. I do use it to help me code, and to make aspects of my publishing business more efficient.

Writing

I’ve never – and will never – use AI to write my books. I haven’t used it to help me write scenes or plot points, or to write any part of my books, or even do spell checking (a lot of authors use it for this, through programs like Grammarly or Pro Writing Aid, but I find them annoying, so I don’t). Writing is the super fun part of being an author, and I’ve never really needed help with coming up with ideas or getting them down. I also personally prefer to pay an editor to undertake two rounds of edits on each of my books rather than getting AI to do it. Partly it’s because, since I can afford to, I’d prefer to support human editors, but it’s also because humans do a way better job!

Images

I have not, and will not use AI to generate cover designs or maps for my books or for merchandise that I sell – for the same reasons as I use human editors. I have and will use AI image generation to create book/character images to post in my private forums to discuss with my readers, and, occasionally, for advertising purposes (eg, Facebook ads).

Managing my publishing business

Guys, I hate writing blurbs. I hate trying to come up with snazzy taglines. AI has helped me with both things – in brainstorming blurb and tagline ideas with me and polishing the final product once I’ve drafted something. I will happily continue use it for this so that I can focus on what I do love. AI also helps me write the code I need to automate spreadsheets and dashboards that allow me to understand the profit and loss of my business. I also used it to help optimise my website to increase traffic and show up in search results. These things are all part of being an independent author, and if AI can help me be more efficient at that stuff, then it means I can focus on what I love, and what you hopefully love too.

Okay, that’s me. Thanks for taking the time to read,

Lisa