From Chaos to Chapters: How AI is Revolutionizing Book Publishing | Dan Curran | 611

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Dan Curran. He's a serial entrepreneur based in St. Louis. He's had some amazing innovative contributions to marketing and publishing, and he is now the founder of Chapters.io. Which is a really creative and interesting new way to publish using voice transcription. And we'll get into all that soon. But he's written a book called Chaos Is a Ladder that's going to be published very soon. So welcome aboard today, Dan.

How are you? Amazing. Thank you for having me and nice seeing you. Yeah.

So you and I were chatting a little while ago and I was, became fascinated with the model at chapters.io. So why don't you maybe go backwards and give me, give the audience a sense of sort of where you come from, from the publishing side, and now what you're doing with this leveraging the technology and, and, uh, AI and all that. 'Cause it's pretty slick.

Absolutely. So last, uh, decade or so I've worked, uh, in the editorial content space, mostly in marketing and really geeky, what we call dense content technology companies, healthcare, biopharma, life science. And what, what that means is that we wrote white papers, blogs for really technical, you know, subject matter. Required a lot of editorial integrity and oversight, a lot of interviewing. And, um, it's— and I was always a wannabe book publisher. I always wanted to get in that space and just didn't see the opportunity where we could add value. And then when AI— you know, AI's been around for a while, but when ChatGPT launched November 30th of, uh, 2022, obviously our eyes perked up and said, wow, this is something. To the whole space of writing, I think we all have our own opinions about that, but we took a contrarian view and looked at AI as something that could ask questions, that could organize content, because plagiarism, attribution, those are just, you know, those are etched in stone with us. It has to— Yeah, of course. Original thought. And we took a look over the fence at book publishing. And when I say book publishing, obviously nonfiction for, yeah, the context where we're talking about thought leadership, memoirs, how-to book, what we call big idea book, like a Seth Godin type thing. And we thought, what if we could record, transcribe, and just train the large language model to organize it, the content? Is that authentic? Is that more authentic than a ghostwriter? And we thought, absolutely. It's just your raw thoughts. And just because someone someone doesn't have the fine motor skills to type or write doesn't mean they don't have some brilliance to share. So that's the—

well, stay there for a second cuz I, I, I love sort of the, the origin story in that when you're writing, I love how you called it dense white papers, but this, this highly technical, heavy, heavy stuff that's not meant to be read by the typical business person, leader, manager, like a business book would be. What you find in that space often is you've got people that have this deep, deep knowledge, but maybe, um, English isn't a primary language or, or they're, they're incredibly technical. They don't have the writing skills or whatever. So I, I love that that's where you got to the, to the root of this early on to say, wait a minute, I've done this type of work for years. And now you look at ChatGPT and say, well, you can either be threatened by it or figure out how to leverage it and utilize it. I think for the most part, a vast majority of folks writing nonfiction business books need some help, whether that's as a, a ghostwriter organizing their thoughts or, or, or structure. All those sort of things.

Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. And that there's one area you, you checked all the boxes on, on working with that target audience, you know, like a scientist or, you know, subject matter expert. Uh, the other thing is not always, but often, uh, they will ruminate too long. You know, they, they're just a perfectionist and I, we get it. So that, that trained, that's interesting you picked up on, 'cause you train muscles to like, okay, to kind of judo move them to say, okay, but we have a deadline. And let's get this, get this going. So yeah, so it's, it, it's all, you know, it's just trying to get thoughts from the brain, you know, onto the computer. And, um, and so that's, that's our, our focus is making that easier.

And then the publishing landscape today is really interesting slash broken slash opportunities, you know, sit there, right? So you've got everything from sort of your, the classic vanity press, they'll publish anything. The other end of the continuum are sort of the, the, the big, the big houses in New York. And then you've got the hybrid space, right? Which is some of it, the, the creativity and innovation is more on the business model than the technology side. So tell me about who's the perfect target for chapters.

So we started out and it remains the same as far as the perfect is that someone that has something to say that has generally a lifetime of wisdom or a unique perspective, but they've been hesitant because of what you just mentioned. You know, you know the vocabulary, I know it, but if you've built the biggest plumbing supply company in the world and you're an expert and you want to share your wisdom, you don't know hybrid or, you know, self-publishing. These things are just confusing as heck. And that's what we're trying to do. So to answer your question is that first-time author would be our target persona. That person that is wicked smart, has something to say, but the industry as a whole has been somewhat of a hot mess or a gatekeeper. And I'll say someone just asked me this last Friday. They go, well, there's too many books and there's, you know, this is going to be more bad content out there. I don't, I'm not putting them down for saying it, but I logically, I can see where they're coming from. But my argument to that is, who are you to decide? Is the democracy, you know, the market, what the market will tell. And by the way, most people, it's, what is it like 5,000 books or less or 200 books or less? So it's a loss leader. It's for their family, it's for their business. It's not necessarily for Amazon. So, exactly.

So how does it, you know, when you said that somebody that's got, wisdom, when, when you and I talk, you talked about some of the ways that's documented that it gets fed into the system. So give, give me an example then, like how does it, how does it work?

So yeah, the most complicated part is really, you know, this, me talking about it here. It's very, very simple. We just start off with questions and we are recording, we have a, a beautiful interface and big fat buttons. They can, they can video, audio, and it starts off with questions you would assume we would ask. What do you wanna write about? Who's it for? What tone? And then from there, the AI will customize those questions. And really what we're doing is front-loading the traditional process. So you're getting to 5, 10, 20,000+ words really quick. So in our system, so an editor can start helping that person, you know, polish and sand the edges. So it's really a Q&A session over a couple of months is how it works. And That's generally most the content. The other content is if they have written blogs or they've been on podcasts like this, or white papers, we also throw that into, I'm holding up a cup right now, we're throwing it into this vessel. And all that vessel is doing is, is it doesn't know the outside world. It can't plagiarize it, but it's been trained to organize. And what I think is the most spectacular part of it is it's been trained to ask for gaps in the story. So if you're telling a story, you skimmed over a bad partnership you had or a bankruptcy see, back up. It'll say, hey, add some more color to that.

If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com/LTL and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. So if you're, if you're a, an author, an academic, a keynoter, a thought leader, et cetera, part of what you're feeding it is that person's personal stuff, whether it's blog, whether it's video, whether it's whatever they've got. You know, particularly today, everybody's stuff is far more documented outside of a book than inside of a book typically.

Yeah.

Right. They've done all that. So you're feeding it all that. So it's, so it's learning. So it sounds to me like the shorthand for this is really you've democratized and improved on the ghostwriting process.

I, I think so. I mean, I think if you're an A+ ghostwriter, you have nothing to, to worry about. But it, it is an odd relationship at time. You know, it's a forced dating and it's over many Periods of months, sometimes it takes a couple of years, and ours is weeks. You know, it's— and, and what I, what I love, what is special about us, I— it's not like there's not gonna be other people that are gonna train these models. What I really love about Chapters is we assign a bestselling editor to the process. So I call them kind of the adult in the room. So no matter how alpha you are as a writer, you probably are, the editor's gonna be, hey, Come back, let's get more vulnerable here. Let's be a little bit more transparent here. So, and then they'll find the bits.

You've not totally automated the system 'cause there have been these models out there of book in a box or whatever they are. And I'm not mentioning specific name where, oh, you could, you know, send us a recording every day for 5 minutes and we'll turn it into a book. Yeah, to your point earlier, you're gonna turn it into a crappy book 'cause there's not a lot of thought and effort And it's not that the world doesn't need more books, it needs more good books. Like, I don't, if I buy a book and I start to read it and I don't like it, I'm like, okay, there's, there's $25 down the drain. Who cares? I'm not going to give you 6 or 8 hours of my time if you're not engaging me.

Right.

Yeah.

It just wouldn't happen without the human in the loop. Just even hearing you talk about it, it just wouldn't even make sense that why, why not? You have like an NFL coach right there with years of knowledge. Would you not want that person to, you know, kind of kick the tires and tell you, you know, share their perspective on, make you both can take a different direction.

And, and to go back on what you, you, you said about the ghostwriting side, not, not to ding ghostwriters. I've got a lot of friends that are ghostwriters and there are, like any other field, really, really good ones, a lot of mediocre ones and a couple terrible ones. What I know from my work over the years is that when a ghostwriting relationship falls apart, and oftentimes they do, it's rarely because the client says, you know, and, and I hired Dan to be my ghostwriter and actually he's a really horrible writer. It, it's, it's really that. It'll be something like the schedule doesn't sync, right? You know, either the client ghost had to push things up and now the timing doesn't work. The personalities don't sync. You know, he reminds me of my 5th grade history teacher and he just annoys me. And even articula— the styles don't. Vibe, or the author is putting a burden on the, on the ghost. That's just silly. Well, you're not finding my voice. Well, you're not, you don't have a voice. I'm trying to—

yeah, you there.

So I love that the technology, you can just keep going at it and going at it until you kind of get it to a place.

Yeah, I, I think it's, quite frankly, hearing you say that, a few, more than a few of our editors are ghostwriters too, but they're, they'd like again, we're front-loading it. You have, you're not taking 2 months to get an outline. You're getting it all at once. Far from being perfect, but that the book, like you said earlier, it already exists. It's just in their head or it's disparate all over in blogs and so forth. So we're just gathering, we're gathering, organizing, and putting it in that vessel so the real magic can happen.

So do you see this as A, competition against certain publishing models and/or opening up the opportunities to— there's a whole other population of folks that never would have written before and we're making it faster, better, easier, cheaper, or is it both?

I think it's both. I'm still digesting this industry. It's still, remember it kind of came from market, you know, now I've immersed myself, so I've met all the publishers, all the founders. And no one's dumb, they're all smart, but it is definitely at an inflection point. I think that it's great for, if not me, someone else to— it's a great disruptive, chaotic time. So I think, I think the big thing we all have to remember is most these books, less than 1% are making it at Barnes Noble. It's really either vanity, and nothing is wrong with that, you should leap. Or like, see, it's for your business, it's for sales, and then maybe it'll have organic and viral growth.

And part of the, the tension today, it elevated, is that the alignment between the author and the publisher, financially, time-wise, energy, effort, et cetera, except for very, very few, there's a rare moment in time where everybody's aligned. Right? Because you could be a, whatever, uh, uh, an attorney in Cleveland that wants to write a book that's never gonna be a national bestseller 'cause your objective is to be the best attorney in Cleveland. Right? So the publisher can only put so much effort into that, right? Because they're, they're looking at that going, okay, if that sells 1,000 copies, the attorney on the other hand goes, I don't care how many I sell. The objective is I'd like to pick up 5 new clients a year from this. This is a multimillion dollar value proposition for me over time. Those two, you can't square those two circles, right? Like that, they're never gonna be aligned.

Yeah. But they try. It, yeah.

They try.

They try. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So I mean, they try and then, you know, a lot of the hybrid publishers realize, okay, well if that's never gonna be high volume, then I'm in the services business and I gotta just, you know, make a lot of money on from the author as the client, whether they sell 50 books or 5,000, it is what it is. And you can't blame 'em for that. They gotta make a living, right? They can't take all the risk on that. So I think that the technology's always gonna be aligned, right? Like it doesn't have a motive or it doesn't have a—

right. Right. It does not have a motive. Like you said, I, there's a benefit from not knowing a lot about book publishing too. Yeah. And I, we can just go forward and, and, and try to just democratize it and make it easier for people to share their knowledge. So the more I talk to the traditional publishers and I try to back away sometimes 'cause I'll let them fight their fight and get their, you know, percentage of book sales and, and overinflate the author's optimism of what could happen. You know, that, that's, you know, I'll leave that.

Well, stay there a second because I think for most folks when they're writing a book, when they get into what I would call sort of the, the publishing industrial complex, there's a lot of folks there and I, I don't think they're being intentionally deceitful, couple here and there, you know, between the publishers and ghostwriting and then PR and, you know, all the supporting services and stuff where people walk out and go, wow, I'm going to be the next Hemingway, or this is really going to rock and roll or whatever. And then you talk to some of those folks 6 months, 9 months later, and they're kind of bummed out. Not sometimes financially, they took a big hit, like, well, that was $100 grand I could have spent elsewhere, but more about the deflation of the hopes. I had a message I wanted to get out and it sold 200. So I, I, I love the early on calibration of what is realistic.

Yeah. And I, I, I don't know hundreds of successful, I mean, before this, this business, hundreds of successful nonfiction business writers, but I know dozens and dozens and the ones that have done well, I mean, they work hard and it wasn't the publisher, it was them that really, really, they, if they were speakers, they started off speaking free and then they went to 5,000 and now they're 50,000. And I'm telling you, the control is with the author and it's elbow grease. But the, and you know, there are good publishers out there, you know, you just, I refer 'em all the time. You need to talk to 3 or 4 and then you'll find one that fits like a glove.

But even the big houses today when they're, when they're vetting an author, it used to be, you know, 80, 90% on their content, the power of the ideas, et cetera, and 10% on their distribution, their ability to sell a book. I would argue that's almost flipped today where you had a lot of mediocre stuff getting published because someone's got a zillion followers on LinkedIn, Twitter, Insta, whatever. And the publisher's doing the math going, oh, there's a conversion rate for every, you know, gazillion people I have on Insta, how many books get sold? So that person comes with a built-in sales system. And I'm saying, if you're that person, why do you need a quote partner that's taking 80, 85 cents on the dollar? That doesn't seem equitable to me.

Well, I imagine, I don't know the industry, the music industry, but I imagine it's identical. Like you can be a TikTok star and, and finagle, you know, figure out a way to put more money in your pocket. But those people are hustlers, you know, they, in a good way. I mean, they really go out and they believe they have something to say. Do I think there's another Simon Sinek or Seth Godin out there that's just purely just intimidated by this industry? 100%. And, but those people will, you know, that stuff will, cream will rise to the top. Yeah.

Well, it's been great. I appreciate sharing, sharing what you're doing. And I think it's really, really interesting. And I think it's something everybody should be taking a look at and, uh, watching out for is, is how we integrate the technology tools in today to change, uh, the publishing world that needs a little bit of changing. So thanks for your time.

Yeah. And I, I'd love to, anyone, I'd love to talk about this at 60,000 feet beyond just chapters, just the evolution of the space. So yeah, thank you so much.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.