ChatGPT Isn't Rejecting Your Book. It Can't Find It.

We've audited more than 50 authors in the last few weeks to see how findable they are to AI. 5 problems showed up over and over. Same 5, most of them more than 80% of the time. One of them showed up 100% of the time. I'm gonna give you all 5 and how to fix each one for yourself. If you're a nonfiction author who wants ChatGPT or other LLMs recommending your book instead of someone else's, this video is for you. Hi, I'm Julie, the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers and your host here at BookLaunchers.tv. Book Launchers' new mission is to help 100,000 books and their authors be discovered by 2030. And right now, the fastest growing way to get books discovered is somebody asking an AI for a recommendation, not browsing in a store, not scrolling on Amazon. So the question every nonfiction author should be asking is, why is my book not getting recommended by Claude or ChatGPT Or Grok? Here is the answer. Well, we've been auditing books, doing deep, deep audits, and after doing more than 50, almost none of them were failing because of the writing. It was infrastructure. AI is not rejecting you. AI can't assemble you. And well, that is the big problem. When an AI system decides who to recommend, it's really trying to do 3 things. It has to resolve you to be one person. And then it has to attach an idea to that person. And then it has to find somebody or somebodies other than you saying that you are good at that idea. That's it, 3 jobs. And what our audits found over and over is that authors are failing at this for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the book is. Now, sometimes it has to do with how the book is positioned, but we'll get to that. Now, before I go through the 5 things we saw over and over in the audit, I gotta tell you a little bit of a confession. We ran this audit for myself. And well, I got 6.2 out of 10. So I have some work to do too. I've written 4 books now, and I have been doing this book thing for a decade. And I have a YouTube channel with, I don't know, 86,000 subscribers. If you aren't one of them yet, please go ahead and subscribe so you can catch all the videos and we can hang out every Tuesday and Friday when new videos come out. But with all of that, and having a company that helps people write, publish, and promote nonfiction books, I was a 6.2. Couple things that showed up that reduced my score. There's 4 different spellings of my own name across my own properties. I have 2 Facebook presences, and there's 2 different Instagram accounts, which was really unusual. But the worst for me was that our hashtag #NoBoringBooks process, the thing I say constantly, it's in the subtitle of my book. Well, there's not a single page on the internet that actually explains what that means. So AI sees the phrase, but it can't explain the idea, which means it cites my book title instead of any sort of framework. which makes me lose points. That was a little bit of a humbling moment to realize. So my team and I, we've got it on our monthly plans to fix all that. But when I go through all these 5, I'm not standing above you going, these are all the things you're doing wrong. I'm in there fixing it too, because this whole thing of discoverability, it's new and we all have to work at it so that we are being found when somebody is searching. Now the goal is to get your score above 7 or even above 8. If you do, then people are organically finding you in a lot of ways in a lot of places. Right now, you're finding my books, but on specific searches. We want to show up for more than just a few searches. So what are these 5 common problems and how can you make sure that you don't have one of them? Well, the one problem that was pretty much universal and nobody scored more than 3 out of 10 on this one was on our 5th pillar, which is public discussion. We audited a guy who spent decades in law enforcement and negotiated with serial killers. There are true crime subreddits with millions of members debating this stuff every single day, and there wasn't a single mention of him. We audited a business coach whose exact question gets asked weekly by advisors, attorneys, and agents in forums, and again, her name never mentioned. Now, here's why this matters more than other things on the list, although you're gonna fix the other things first, but this matters a lot because independent mentions are the signal AI trusts the most because it's a signal you can fake it, but it's a lot harder to fake. Anything on your website, AI will give it lower weight because it knows you wrote it. You can't easily be cited in conversations that you are absent from. So for the record, this is the first thing I'm mentioning, but again, it's the last thing you'll fix. Focus on the first 4 pillars before you fix this, but because this was universal, I wanted to mention it. So one of the fixes is pick one place where your readers actually talk. 1, go answer questions once a week. Don't include links, no promo, just actual answers using your expertise, and have a signature with your name and topic of expertise on it. That's the start of the fix. It costs $0, but it does take time, and it's the single most underdone thing in this industry. It's also something that's very hard to hire out. We've tested some of these companies that promise that you will get talked about in this way, and the delivery not what you'd hope. Now, what we do that helps with all this— well, in our done-for-you services, we do podcast pitching and article placement. We book authors on shows with guaranteed bookings, and we write pillar content that can be placed when someone asks for content on your subject. Now, it's not the same as public discussion, but showing up, getting your name known, having your topic be out there more and more in crawlable conversations— all of that starts to lay the foundation. But again, That's in one of the other pillars. That's not the public discussion pillar. All right, problem 2, your book does not have an entity layer. This showed up in about 45 out of the 50. Entity layer means the records out on the internet that claim you and your book actually exist separate from Amazon. The big one is Goodreads. All right, so here is what we kept finding. Well, we audited one author who had something like 219 Goodreads ratings, and they were high, Really great numbers, but they pointed at a page with no photo, no bio, and no website link. Here's an example of what that looks like. Now compare that to mine, which is not perfect by any means. We haven't put much attention into this lately, but we will. But it's built out, it's got content, it's got books, it's got my bio. We audited another whose Goodreads profile listed 3 books that were not even hers and displayed her as the author of a novel And we had another audit where she was releasing a 3rd edition of her book, but her Goodreads page still showed the description from the 1st edition, which came out in 1995. Those are not small things. That's your newest, strongest work being invisible at the exact moment somebody's deciding whether to trust you. So it's not just a one thing to fix, there's 7 things to fix. But the good thing is you do this once and it's done for a long, long time. So number 1, if you aren't already in it, join the Goodreads Author Program and claim your author profile. It's free. Most authors have a profile they haven't claimed, which means it's empty, with that empty gray profile on it. Add a real photo, the same photo you're using everywhere else. Post your bio, the same bio you're using on Amazon and on your website. Add your website link. This is the connective tissue. It's the link that tells the machine that Goodreads person and the website person are the same person as the author of these books. It helps tie it all together. 5, check your book list. Every book on that profile should be yours, and every book you've written should be on it. If your newest title is missing or the latest edition is missing, add it. If someone else's book is on there, use the librarian request to get it removed. 6, combine your duplicate editions— paperback, hardcover, Kindle, audio, any second edition— should all live under one work. Right now, your ratings are probably split across different records, which makes a strong book look like a weak one. So again, ask the Goodreads librarian to combine them. 7, check the description on the live page and make sure it matches your current edition and not the version you published 8 years ago. Then do the other half of the entity layer, which is claim your Amazon Author Central. Same photo, same bio. That might be 8 steps. That's okay. Go do it. Once it's done, you're good to go. Now, of course, if you want, we do all of this for you. Author profile setup is standard deliverable in our marketing work, and we write the bio, the book description, all those things that go everywhere. So the same words show up on every property instead of 6 slightly different versions, which hurts you. The 3rd problem: you're showing up as 3 different people. A stunning number of authors have this issue, including me. 2 domains, 4 name spellings, or different versions of your name for each social media profile. LinkedIn that sells a completely different identity than your book. 2 different Instagram accounts. All these things are problems for the LLMs because they can't tie you together and say with 100% certainty that you are the same person that is the expert in this that has written this book. Or we audited someone whose website title tag read James Hall's First Site. So make sure your title tags are up to date too. If you give AI 5 versions of you and it doesn't pick the best one, or it's going to pick whatever it thinks or none at all, you've got a problem. One entity gets cited, 2 half entries get skipped. So it's simple. Well, maybe not that simple, but go ahead, list every property you own— website, socials, Amazon, Goodreads— and then pick one spelling of your name, which is the one on your book cover, and make sure all the properties you own match. Same name, same photo, same online description of what you do. And then kill or redirect any other domains. I know you might love it, but kill it. All right, what we do— well, the audit itself catches this because It's the kind of thing you don't always see from inside your business, and then you'll have the full report. And of course, if we're working with you on website pieces, we'll help you with all of this. All right, problem 4, your framework has no home. Again, this was one that I was guilty of. There might not be a named method at all, or if there is one and it lives in Amazon or in other people's podcast show notes and not on a page you control, that's unclaimed intellectual property and you need to fix it for the LLMs to really see you as the authority. One author's framework was explained better on the Amazon listing than on her own website. Another one's method exists in full on multiple podcast episode show notes, but not on her own site, so it's not properly attributed to her. And again, hashtag no boring books, a phrase with no page. A named method is the strongest ownership signal there is. It's the thing that lets a machine say that belongs to her. Now, fixing it: name the thing you already do if it doesn't already have a name. You have a method, you might just call it your process or how I do this. Give it a name, then build one page on your website, title it the name of the framework, and explain what it is. Name every step and put a story in about how it originated or where it came from. One page, machines will read it, and then you'll be attributed to it. Now, this is what our repositioning work is. We help you with naming or identifying and defining the framework and getting it onto a page you own instead of a page you rent. We produce the pillar content, and if you're working with us in full service, we put it on your website and pitch your content to be placed on other people's sites too. Problem 5, your proof can't be verified. This was 35 of 50, so common but not as common as the other ones, but it came in 3 kind of flavors, if you will. Number 1, I'll call it the logo wall. Forbes, Entrepreneur, ABC, NBC, all these beautiful logos, they're sitting on your homepage as images with no links. A machine sees pictures and it can't confirm a single thing. Also, the next one, the unverifiable badge, bestselling author with no list, no date, no source. Here's the part authors don't expect. A claim AI cannot trace does not sit there neutral. It weakens you. A system that can't verify a credential just drops it. If you've got a full page of them, That is just noise to the LLMs. Now, the final problem is the one flavor problem. 15 podcasts and nothing else. Podcasts are great, but if every piece of proof that you have is the same format, AI reads that as one kind of validation, not broad authority. We audited someone with 20 logos on his homepage and not one of them clickable. We audited someone whose as seen in wall turned out to be a single paid press release republished across 20 syndication Paid syndication reads as one source, not 20. How do you fix this? Go to your media page right now. Every logo needs to become a link to the actual article or website or episode. And if you can't find the link, take the logo down. Every claim needs a date and a source. And if you can't source it, cut it. A shorter, honest media page beats a long, verifiable one. Then add one format you don't have. If it's all podcasts, get one written byline. If it's all writing, get on a show. Of course, one of the big things we do is award submissions, editorial reviews, article submissions, podcast pitching, because all of those things produce a dated public third-party record with your name on it. And podcast pitching for the authors who have nothing yet, this can go a long way. Just make sure you mix it up with other formats. Now you can do every one of these things for yourself. That's why I gave you the actual steps instead of just telling you what to do. I told you how to do it. What is difficult to do yourself? Is see all the problems. I didn't even know some of the problems I had, and I've been doing this for a decade. So if you want that audit to know what your problems are, go to booklaunchers.com/auditmybook. We'll audit how discoverable your book actually is right now, score you across all 5 of the pillars, show you where your gaps are. You'll get a number like my 6.2 and a rank list of what to fix first. And if you look at that list and go, oh, I am not doing this by myself, Well, of course, we're here for help, and you can reach out and book a call. The good news is none of these issues require you to be a better writer or to even redo your book. None of them will take more than a weekend to fix either. Well, a few of them will, but the foundational ones won't. AI cites what it can verify. Verifiability is not a talent. It is a process that you can follow. You need one name, one framework that's named, and Written out on your website, one home and receipts somebody else wrote. Do that and you won't be invisible.