Did Meta steal your book? This Author Media update investigates claims of content misuse, offering authors insights and steps to protect their work in the digital age.
Links:
- Novel Marketing Patreon
- How to Make Your Author Website Amazing
- First Email Challenge
- Patron Toolbox
- AI Thomas
- Jon’s Substack Link
Outline
Welcome to Author Update! I’m Thomas Umstattd Jr.
We are doing something a bit different today. This is a pilot episode of a new show we may continue.
The goal for Author Update is to give you news, advice, and answers about publishing, writing, and book promotion. We are recording this live so feel free to engage in the chat with your own take on the news stories. Ask questions and we will answer them.
The level of interaction is one of the metrics I’m using to determine if this is worth doing. And yes, paid super chats count extra. If we get enough super chats, this will become a show for sure.
Joining me today is Jonathan Shuerger. Jonathan is an author and an expert who works with authors.
The US government gave him top secret training on how to find bad guys for the United States Marines to kill. Now he uses that particular set of skills to help authors find readers to thrill with their books.
When people try to hire me to help with marketing or publishing, Jonathan is one of the people I recommend instead.
So with that, let’s get to the headlines.
(BREAKING) Piracy Database Used to Train Meta’s Generative AI
https://www.wired.com/story/new-documents-unredacted-meta-copyright-ai-lawsuit
A court just unredacted information in an ongoing legal battle between authors and Meta, showing that Meta used the pirate database LibGen to train its generative AI. Libgen was founded in 2008 in romantic emulation of the Soviet-era samizdat, where books and papers banned by the state were copied and disseminated illegally. In practice, Libgen is more a pirate site, where users can download millions of books, academic papers and textbooks illegally. Libgen had been hit with multiple lawsuits, domain seizures and nation-wide bans, but it appears Meta decided to use their library to train its new AI model.
If an author wants to see if their book is in Libgen’s library, The Atlantic has a tool where you can check. Follow this link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094
Sudowrite Releases New AI Writing Tool “Muse”
March 1st, 2025, Muse went live on Sudowrite’s platform. The tool can take a sentence, outline or prompt and write a scene at a literary level. It can also be used to just write creatively until you tell it to stop. On first look, it appears enormously useful to overcome writer’s block or overcome a sticky scene. There are several modes: Auto, Guided and Tone Shift. On the Auto setting, Sudowrite just writes on its own. On Guided, you can add qualifiers to its generative process. On Tone Shift, it will rewrite your words to fit a certain tone. (look up credits used per use)
Apple Releases new M4 Macbook Air
At $100 cheaper than last year and twice as much RAM, this is the obvious choice laptop for 90% of authors. Thomas you are working on a full 2025 laptop guide is that right?
Author Media CEO Releases New Tool for Reader Magnet Creation
Thomas “Tomahawk” Umstattd Jr. has released a new tool for his Patrons’ Toolbox on authormedia.com, the Reader Magnet Brainstormer. And today we have the CEO with us. Thomas, tell us about your new tool and how you think it will benefit authors.
ChatGPT Suggesting You As a Search Result?
Years of painstaking SEO has paid off for some editors as more and more potential clients are turning to ChatGPT as a search engine. Editors are seeing leads generated from ChatGPT suggestions to authors seeking editors in their genres. This is another example of how good SEO, speaking to machines in their language, can grow an author or editor’s following by ranking on ChatGPT’s search results.
Meta Forces Author to Stop Promoting Book
The Bottom Line reports: “Meta (the parent company of Facebook) argued that former employee and author Sarah Wynn-Williams has violated a non-disparagement contract she signed after getting fired from Facebook in 2017. Her recently published memoir, Careless People”
- The book is currently #2 on all of Amazon. Barbra Streisand Effect
Inaugural Write Your First Email Challenge Begins April 8
Thomas tell us about this…
At the Novel Marketing conference, I survey all of the attendees before they come. We use this survey to place attendees in writers groups with similar authors. One of the questions we ask is the size of their email lists. And the results are shocking. 33% of attendees had last year had zero subscribers on their email lists.
The Novel Marketing conference attracts a more advanced author than the typical writers conference. Many of the attendees have thousands of subscribers. And yet one third of the folks flying to Austin had not taken the very first step toward marketing their books.
They needed help and this was the inspiration behind the Send Your First Email Challenge. The goal is to get authors from zero subscribers to over a dozen subscribers in one week. And, more importantly, start the process of email list growth. The best time to start an email newsletter was ten years ago. The second best time is right now. And we will all be doing the challenge together, at the same time as a community. At the end of the week I will host a celebratory Q&A for everyone who completed the challenge.
An easy way to start fighting procrastination is to join the Send Your First Email Challenge. You can sign up for free at FirstEmailChallenge.com.
Spotify Calls for Short Fiction for Audio
Spotify wants stories from romance, mystery/thriller, and sci-fi/fantasy in the range of 10,000 to 20,000 for production in their audio catalog. Spotify will handle all production and distribution themselves, though authors are encouraged to promote through their own channels. Crossovers between the three categories are encouraged; no children’s or erotica accepted.
Assassin’s Creed: Shadows: More Freefalling than Freerunning?
Check sales numbers on March 20. Japan still furious over multiple violations of ancient Japanese culture, including the black samurai, the queer non-binary romantic interest, the lesbian relationship, the achievement that rewards desecration of Japanese shrines and graves, the female sumo wrestler and the plot point that Yasuke slept with and impregnated Oichi, the woman from whom all the divine emperors descended. Ubisoft claims it sold over a million copies on its first day, but Steam reports an average of 40k users at any one time, peaking at 70k. Japan held a parliamentary meeting to discuss the game and its likely impact on “over-tourism” where it has already struggled.
Snow White: Fairest of Them All or Poisoned Apple?
As the release of Disney’s latest project draws closer, theater works are posting pictures of theaters with no reservations to see it. The film has been plagued by negative reactions to the film trailer, the studio’s controversial decision to use CGI dwarves instead of actors, and activist activity by the film’s star, Rachel Zegler. Disney has been trying to do damage control for months now, and just recently, Rachel Zegler released a photo shoot of her doing homage to the original voice actress of the 1937 movie.
From Deadline:
“The film’s general audience is 3 stars. However, definite recommend is low at 39%. In fact, Warner Bros’ The Alto Knights has a higher definite recommend of 44%. Parents with Snow White are weathering the film at 2½ stars, though their definite recommend is higher at 52%.”
BookTok Named as a Factor in Why Publishers Are Ignoring Veteran Writers
According to PW, since the pandemic, the publishing world has shifted. Authors who have written 80 books are seeing wait times of months just for an answer on a proposal, if they ever get one. Romance is hardest hit, as the boom time of growth in the pandemic lockdowns are over, and authors who were writing 3-4 books a year can’t find a publisher to put them out as costs of printing go up. In fact, ReaderLink, who supplies Wal-Mart, announced they are no longer putting out mass market paperbacks, as the margins are too thin.
Booktok has also created a demand for hooky fiction appealing to younger audiences, and editors are under tremendous pressure to find just those books to go viral on the social platform. Even established authors are being ghosted on partial and even full manuscript submissions.
It is so hard even George RR Martin has given up…
George R.R. Martin Opens Pub
Milk of the Poppy is slated to open March 21 in Santa Fe, NM. It takes up 1200 square feet and can seat 55 people, as well as an outdoor garden patio that can take another 30. It is “Medieval Apothecary meets Craft Cocktail Bar” themed. Martin named the bar after a fictional painkiller in his yet-unfinished Song of Ice and Fire series.
https://www.nme.com/news/tv/george-r-r-martin-opening-medieval-bar-called-milk-of-the-poppy-3845149
Around the Web
- Joanna Penn (Writing as a tool for grief and dealing with change with Karen Wyatt)
- Novel Marketing (Cancel-Proof, with Christine Erickson)
- Mike’s Book Reviews (My Current Bookish Disillusionment/ Modern Fantasy Isn’t Cutting It)
AI Transcript
Introduction [00:00:00]
Thomas: Hello and welcome to Author Update. I’m Thomas Umstattd Jr. We are doing something a little bit different today. This is not the Novel Marketing podcast, although it is on the Novel Marketing podcast YouTube channel. Today we’re doing a pilot of a new kind of show, and based off of your feedback, it may or may not continue.
The goal of the Author Update is to give you news and advice and to answer your questions about publishing, writing, and book promotion. Yes, we’re recording this live, so hello to everybody in the chat. Feel free to say hi and comment on what we are talking about. This is a conversation between us, so we will discuss the news and you will discuss the news, and as we see questions, we will try to grab them and answer them. The level of interaction is one of the metrics that I’m going to use to determine if this show is worth doing. And yes, paid Super Chats count extra. If we get enough Super Chats, we’ll probably do this show for sure.
Joining me today is Jonathan Sugar.
Breaking News: Meta Used Piracy Database for AI Training [00:01:00]
Jonathan: The first news item we’re going to get to today is some breaking news I found this morning. Unredacted information in an ongoing legal battle between authors and Meta shows that Meta used Lib Gen to train its generative AI. Lib Gen was founded in 2008 as a romantic emulation of libraries. It’s more a pirate website where you can download millions of books, academic papers, and textbooks illegally. Lib Gen has been hit with multiple lawsuits, domain seizures, and nationwide bans, but it appears Meta decided to use their library to train its new AI model.
If you want to see if your book is in Lib Gen’s library, the Atlantic has a tool where you can check, and we’ll drop a link into the chat. Yes, I found my book in there.
Thomas: This is not the first AI model to use Lib Gen. The controversy here is a bit of a tornado in a teacup from my perspective. If they had just used a library that has digitized books, I’m sure some public library system would have been very happy to give them access.
The AI vectorized the database, so you can’t read the book through it like you could through Lib Gen. When the AI processes a book, it’s more like it has “dreamed” the book rather than memorized it.
There are many benefits from my perspective. If you’re using AI to help you generate an email or for some marketing use, if AI has read your book, it will give you a better email for you specifically. In fact, several of the Patron Toolbox tools I have include uploading your book to AI.
For instance, one toolbox tool will generate discussion questions based on your book. You upload your book or a chapter, and it will read it and generate questions to help you rapidly put together a book discussion guide. Most authors never create discussion guides for their books. They never make it easier for book clubs to discuss their books. Sometimes just a two or three-page PDF can make all the difference.
PSDA AI Writing Tool [00:05:00]
Jonathan: On March 1st, 2025, Muse went live on PSDA. The tool can take a sentence outline or prompt and write a scene at a literary level. It can also be used to overcome writer’s block or a sticky scene. I used it when I didn’t know where a character was going or what might happen.
There are a few modes. You have auto, guided, and tone shift. On the auto setting, PSDA Wright just writes on its own. On guided, you can add qualifiers like your main character’s name, appearance, or location. On tone shift, it’ll rewrite your words to fit a certain tone.
Thomas: I want to do a whole episode on Pseudo Wright’s new tools. I did an episode on Pseudo Wright a long time ago, and I really liked it back then.
People have cognitive dissonance when it comes to tools like Pseudo Wright. They believe it’s so easy that you can just push a button and make a book for yourself, which is a very ignorant position because that’s not at all how it works. They also think Pseudo Wright will put them out of business as a writer. It can’t be both. If it’s a tool that helps you make better writing, readers don’t really care how you made it.
Readers just want good stories, and if this is a tool that can help you create good stories, that’s where the value is. AI creates content, but you have to judge whether the content is usable, fixable, or garbage. That human judgment is ultimately your primary job as an author, and that’s unchanged. You either have good judgment or you don’t.
M4 MacBook Air for Authors [00:10:00]
Jonathan: The M4 MacBook Air is $100 cheaper than last year and has twice as much RAM.
Thomas: Every year I do a laptop guide for authors where I talk about the parts of a laptop that matter for authors, which is often very different from what tech reviewers focus on.
For authors, the primary thing that’s important is battery life. Can you write at a park? This becomes transformative. Earlier this week, I took my kids to the park when they needed to get out of the house. I was swamped with work, so I took my laptop and was able to work at the park. The birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and my children got along at least half the time. It was magical.
Being able to write in places outside your house where you’re not tethered to an outlet is important. With the M4 MacBook Air, you could write all day without being plugged in, then all the next day, and still write on the third day. If you were doing four-hour writing sessions, you could almost do a week’s worth of writing on one charge.
The second thing that matters to authors is RAM. Authors tend to have a lot of browser tabs open. More RAM is better. The only good thing from Apple Intelligence is that it forced Apple to make 16 gigabytes the default amount of RAM across their entire lineup.
So they doubled the RAM, increased the battery life, and dropped the default price by a thousand dollars. It’s really a no-brainer price if you’re thinking about getting a new laptop.
New Reader Magnet Creation Tool [00:14:00]
Jonathan: Our last news item is about our very own Author Media CEO releasing a new tool for reader magnet creation. Thomas Amstat Jr. has released a new tool for his patrons toolbox on AuthorMedia.com. Thomas, tell us about your new tool.
Thomas: I’m upgrading my course Author Email Academy, and one of the tools I built for that course is a reader magnet brainstorming tool. My policy is if I make a tool for a course, I include it in the Patron Toolbox for patrons at the $10 a month level and up.
With this tool, you describe your book, describe your reader, answer a few basic questions, and it will generate 36 ideas for a reader magnet. You get 12 super creative ideas that are kind of off the wall but really fun, 12 ideas based on the subject matter of your book, and 12 ideas for existing readers to get them excited for your next book to come out.
You can find that at AuthorMedia.com. Just go to the resources tab. The very first thing under resources is the Patron Toolbox. I’ve got over two dozen different tools that I’ve custom built, including AI Thomas, where you can pick my brain and an AI will answer you based on my 500+ episodes of podcasting for authors.
I’m not as pro-AI as you might think. I want to understand everything, which is why I’m doing so much with AI in this season. I want to understand AI because many people’s opinions are more founded on fiction written in the ’80s than the reality of the 2020s.
I see AI as being very dangerous, but the dangerous uses aren’t you using AI to write a better book or market your book better. It’s the creator of a mobile game using AI to keep you addicted, or a social network using AI to shift your view of politics or religion.
Chat GPT Helping Editors Get Clients [00:18:00]
Jonathan: Editors are seeing leads generated from Chat GPT suggestions to authors seeking editors in their genres. This is another example of how optimizing their language can grow their search results. Thomas, what do you think about that?
Thomas: This is a new ability that many leading AIs have. Grok seems best at this – the ability to search the web in real time and synthesize information. If you pay for it, there’s a function called Deep Search. When you turn that on, it will take a minute or two to answer you, but it will look up dozens of webpages to answer your question.
I was researching tariffs because I’d heard a rumor about the EU tariffing cast iron. Deep Search read all the news articles it could find, pulled the EU tariff law, found which provision applied to tariffs on cast iron, and got the background on tariffs the EU put on Chinese cast iron in 2018. It returned an answer that no, the EU has no intention of doing tariffs on cast iron.
This is an incredible research assistant. The AI loaded and read dozens of web pages to answer my question and cited its sources.
I think net AI is going to remove traffic from websites overall rather than add traffic. When I did a Google search for “Brandon Sanderson Crop Rotation Method,” Gemini had a one-page summary that only cited my article as a source. It got several things wrong and hallucinated based on my article. It was an inferior version of my article that was the number one result.
Send Your First Email Challenge [00:28:00]
Thomas: The first inaugural Send Your First Email Challenge is coming up in a couple weeks. We host the Novel Marketing conference every year, and I survey everyone who’s coming to place them into writer’s groups. The conference attracts a higher caliber author than your typical conference – many folks coming have thousands of people on their email lists.
But both years, about one-third of people coming had zero email subscribers. I realized this is a real problem – some folks are just stuck on getting their email newsletter set up.
I’ve created a brand new course called the Send Your First Email Challenge. It’s a one-week course, 30 minutes a day for five days. At the end of the five days, you’ll have built a landing page, set up an email newsletter, written your first email, gotten your first subscribers, and sent your email to your very first subscribers. The course is free. You can sign up at FirstEmailChallenge.com.
Spotify Seeking Short Fiction [00:29:00]
Jonathan: Spotify wants stories from romance, mystery thriller, and sci-fi fantasy authors in the range of 5,000 to 20,000 words. Spotify will handle all production and distribution themselves, though authors are encouraged to submit stories crossing over between those three genres. They’re not accepting children’s or erotica at this time.
Thomas: We consume a staggering amount of short fiction on Spotify every night around bedtime. I’ve been building a playlist I call the Tommy Storytime playlist. Every time I find good short fiction, I add it to this playlist. We have Dr. Seuss, Clifford the Red Dog, Curious George, and all of Aesop’s Fables loaded in there.
Because we have a Sonos in our bedroom with the kids, I’ll play these stories or the kids will ask me to play them after we put them to bed. I’ve been astounded at how little supply there is for these stories. We have hundreds of children’s books, yet I’m struggling to find dozens of stories to add to this playlist.
The Spotify ecosystem has three different sections governed by different royalty compensation systems. There’s the music section, which is where you want your book to be. Then there’s the audiobook section, which is where they’re trying to populate with this campaign. The third section is the podcast section, where they don’t give you any money but do give you access to their database.
Part of the reason Spotify has been friendly to authors is that by becoming a multimedia publisher that includes books, it allows them to pay musicians less – it moves them from one category of royalties to another. It’s a tricky legal maneuver where they’re using authors to pay fewer pennies per stream to musicians.
I think it’s good that Spotify is challenging Audible’s market dominance (80-90% of audiobooks). If Spotify can put pressure on Audible, that will be good for indie authors. But remember, they don’t love you – they’re just dating you to stick it to their real girlfriend, which is the musicians.
Video Game Culture: Assassin’s Creed Controversy [00:35:00]
Jonathan: Assassin’s Creed Shadows is having problems. Japan is still furious over multiple violations of its ancient culture. There’s a black samurai, a female sumo wrestler, and a plot point where Yasuke the Black Samurai slept with and impregnated a woman from whom all the divine emperors descended.
Ubisoft claims it has sold over a million copies on its first day, but Steam has been reporting an average of 40,000 users at any one time, peaking at 70,000, which is really low because Valhalla had around 400,000 players. Japan actually held a parliamentary meeting to discuss the game and its likely impact on over-tourism, where Japan has already struggled with tourists desecrating shrines with graffiti and breaking things.
Thomas: Video games often get to where books are going to be in a few years. If you watch the video game space, it gives you a sense of where other forms of storytelling are headed.
Assassin’s Creed is one of the biggest franchises in video gaming, and they have been getting progressively more “woke” and in doing so, have been alienating more of their audience. They’re failing to break into the top 10 on Steam with a brand new AAA game.
Their story is offensive in many ways to Japanese people, religions, and culture. This Los Angeles/Paris worldview is being shoved somewhere where it doesn’t fit thematically. People have been wanting a ninja-themed Assassin’s Creed since the very first one.
Disney’s Snow White Problem [00:38:00]
Jonathan: As the release of Disney’s latest project draws closer, theaters are posting pictures of empty theaters with no reservations. This follows months of negative reactions to the film trailer and the studio’s controversial decision to use CGI dwarves instead of actors. Disney has been trying to do damage control for months. The lead actress recently released a photo shoot doing homage to the original voice actress of the 1937 movie.
Thomas: Part of me wonders if Snow White has gotten so much bad press for so long that they might still do well financially just because people want to watch the train wreck.
I’ve been pondering more deeply why Hollywood is failing to tell good stories right now. Snow White is just the latest in a long stream of bombs. Many of you probably haven’t been to the theater in a long time, and the last few times you went, you probably didn’t enjoy it. The percentage of Americans going to the theater regularly is dropping.
I have a theory about this. People with a Judeo-Christian worldview, specifically Jews who were very influential in Hollywood, have been pushed out or to lower positions of decision-making authority. The top tier now has the “woke” worldview, which leads to boring stories.
Judaism has this concept that your actions make you good or bad. That worldview lends itself well to screen storytelling because you can show good people taking good actions, bad people taking bad actions, and people crossing over as they change. The woke worldview bases morality on identity – if you are historically oppressed, you are inherently good, and if you are a historic oppressor, you are inherently bad, regardless of your actions.
I haven’t seen the new Snow White, but I did watch the scene they released where she cleans the dwarves’ room. In the original, she cleans their house as an act of kindness, and they’re so thankful they offer her a place to stay. In the new version, she chides them to clean up themselves. She’s already good and virtuous because of her identity, not her actions.
That isn’t as interesting because if she doesn’t go through transformation, if her actions don’t define her but her identity does, then she’s no different at the end than at the beginning. None of the stories are interesting.
Publishing News: BookTok and Publishing Delays [00:45:00]
Jonathan: BookTok has been named as a factor in the publishing industry being overwhelmed. Editors at the big 5 publishing houses are seeing wait times of months just for an answer on a proposal. Romance is hardest hit, with publishers having to turn down manuscripts that would have been accepted three years ago. Now that pandemic lockdowns are over, authors writing during that time are all trying to get their manuscripts out.
ReaderLink, who supplies Walmart, announced they’re no longer putting out mass market paperbacks as the margins are too thin. BookTok has also created demand for “hooky” fiction appealing to younger audiences, and editors are under tremendous pressure to find books that will go viral on the platform. Even established authors are being ghosted on partial and full manuscript submissions.
Thomas: I think people are blaming BookTok too much for these trends, as it only makes a handful of books pop in any given cycle. Part of what we’re seeing is publishing companies going “woke.” Many are looking for reasons to reject authors for identity reasons, but they can’t explicitly state that, so they give unfalsifiable reasons like “you don’t have the platform.”
It reminds me of Aesop’s fable of the wolf and the lamb. The wolf wants to eat the lamb and keeps making false accusations. The lamb calmly refutes each one, but finally the wolf just eats it anyway – it was never about the reasons. I feel like that’s what we’re often seeing in publishing. They don’t want to publish you for whatever reason, so they’ll come up with excuses, but there’s nothing you could do differently – they just don’t want you.
George R.R. Martin Opens a Pub [00:48:00]
Jonathan: Even George R.R. Martin is giving up on finishing his books. The man has a book to finish for a series that’s been running for 30 years, and instead, “Milk of the Poppy” is slated to open March 21st in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It takes up 1,200 square feet and can seat 55 people, plus an outdoor garden patio for another 30. The theme is “Medieval Apothecary Meets Craft Cocktail Bar.” Martin named the bar after a fictional painkiller in his yet unfinished Song of Ice and Fire series.
Thomas: He is not going to finish the book, Jonathan.
Q&A Session [00:49:00]
Question: Do you recommend sterile book websites or websites that move?
Thomas: I don’t recommend sterile websites, but what makes a website interesting is the content, not motion. Motion on a website makes it difficult for some people to read if they have vision impairments or if English isn’t their first language. There are ways of subtly adding motion, but motion isn’t what makes your website appealing, and a lack of motion won’t make it boring.
What makes your website interesting is having interesting content. Write interesting things, be helpful. I have a free course called “How to Make Your Author Website Amazing.” The first section covers how to build a website if you don’t have one, and the second section explains how to make it interesting for your readers.
Question: How do you put an entire book into an AI? Can you just drag the doc or do you have to copy and paste?
Thomas: You don’t copy and paste. Most AI tools have an upload feature where you can upload the Word doc of your book straight into the AI.
Question: After watching the website episode, I want to add Amazon affiliate links. Do I need to remove my universal links from all of my books to meet their terms of service?
Thomas: I don’t think so. Amazon has changed their terms of service regarding affiliate links and they’re not quite as uptight as they used to be. If you’re using the Amazon One affiliate universal link system, I believe you can put your affiliate links right into that. You can have affiliate links for multiple countries if you’re in multiple affiliate programs.
Question: Why would readers buy books from authors when AI can generate exactly what they want to read?
Thomas: AI can’t do that. For fiction, it’s obvious – the human making the judgment is still really important. It would be like playing Dungeons and Dragons without a game master.
The more interesting version is about nonfiction. This is a question nonfiction authors have struggled with for a long time because people increasingly look to other sources for answers. A good example is “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” The first versions contained everything between the covers, but starting about 20 years ago, they added a website element with communities for expectant mothers. I expect them to add an AI component soon for answering medical questions.
People will go to nonfiction less for specific reference questions, but they still need experts. As you craft nonfiction, you want to encourage discovery – help readers find what they didn’t know to ask about.
Question: How do you know if an idea is a screenwriting project versus a novel?
Thomas: Almost all movies can be told as novels, but not all novels can be told as screenplays because screenplays are more limited. You’re restricted to what can be seen – you can’t easily show internal thoughts or motivations, and techniques like unreliable narrators are tricky.
But really, it comes down to connections. To make it in screenplays, you need the right connections. The best way to get those as an author is to have already sold a million books. Hollywood isn’t a meritocratic system – if you’re not connected with the right people, there’s little hope regardless of how good your screenplay is.
You have to earn your seat at the table where meritocratic systems do exist. We still have a meritocratic system in indie publishing, and indie authors are now getting their books made into major motion pictures. If Steven Spielberg isn’t your cousin, I recommend selling a million copies first before trying to sell a movie.
Question: How do you think SEO will change to optimize for AI?
Thomas: I don’t think it will change SEO at all, because we’ve already been optimizing websites for computer algorithms and artificial intelligence – that’s what search engine optimization is. Silicon Valley has gone crazy with the word “AI” because it increases company valuations, so they’re rebranding things they were already doing.
If your website works for Google and ranks well there, it will do very well for GPT and Bing.
Conclusion [01:01:00]
Thomas: Thank you all for coming. This was an experiment. If you got an email inviting you to this live episode, just respond to that email and I will get it. You can tell me if you think this is worth doing or not.
Jonathan: You can find me on Substack at jonathansugar.substack.com.
Thomas: I’m Thomas Amstat Jr. Joined by Jonathan Sugar. Thank you for listening and live long and prosper.
