Transcription
I'll be honest with you, I was skeptical. The idea of writing a book in a single day with AI felt like a shortcut that would produce something embarrassing. But I tried it anyway, and what happened surprised even me.
Now, before we go any further, I want to be really clear about something. This is not what most people think of when they hear AI wrote my book. You know what I'm talking about. Someone types a topic into ChatGPT, hits enter, lets it generate 200 pages on something that barely understand. I've read those books, you've read those books. They're technically accurate, but they read like an encyclopedia. No personality, no stories, no voice, just information. And readers can feel that. And it even shows up in the reviews every single time.
What I did was completely different. The goal was simple. I wanted a book that sounded like me, because if it doesn't sound like me, what's the point? So, let me show you my process step-by-step, and later in the video, I'll give you the master AI writing prompt that'll help you do the same. Let's go.
So, we're going to jump into the screen, and first of all, this is the book. I already put it up on pre-order. And this design, this cover design for the series, is also something that Claude helped me with. I'm calling it the Market Your Message Workshop Series, because I teach a monthly paid workshop, and I want to turn those monthly workshops into books that can be helpful for people. And so, the process that I went through, if we start first of all here, is brainstorming and finding a really good design that is going to be the theme for my entire workshop. And so, I won't take you through each of these, but basically, I ended up with this final design element that I decided to go with. And my whole series is going to to mirror the same thing. So, you can see here, here's a different version for different workshop. Here's another one. And so, those will be coming in the days ahead. So, that's the first part is I got the book cover and started with that.
Now, the next part of this process is to train AI on exactly what you want. It's ideal if you already have published a book or you have some writing and it can know the style and the structure that you have. If you don't, that's okay, too. But let me show you exactly what I did. So, I like to use Claude CoWork. And inside Claude CoWork, I'll show you this. I like to set up my projects according to roles that I play in my business. From email marketer to boot camp coach, YouTube video creator, and then we have this one here, author. And so, inside this author, when I created it, I wanted to have a conversation with it so that it could create the instructions according to the way I want my books written. And so, if we go down here, we'll start here and I'll show you the exact step-by-step I went through.
So, I uploaded one of my past books so it could understand the style, the structure, how I like to create these books. And I said, "I would like for you to analyze one of my latest books so you can create instructions on helping me write future books." First of all, I dictated this all out. So, if you see misspellings, it's just from the dictation. First, analyze the table of contents. Notice how I used 12 chapters plus introduction and next steps. This is intentional. My goal is typically to have about 30,000 words. That's roughly 2,500 words per chapter. Then I went through and I talked about the style of how I like to structure my chapters. I like to have three to five points. I want a practical exercise. I want to have some key takeaways. And then I said, "Feel free to ask me any questions necessary to get your analysis." And off it went. Went through the analysis. And then it created the book structure, the length, the chapter flow, and this is what it came up with. And if we go up here to the top, you can see now the Claude MD file, which is the memory of the workhorse for this section, this project, is in here. The folder is all about writing in Jonathan style and his proven structure. Start with a framework. Every book is built on a name. I like to do my books. Again, we're talking non-fiction books, transcripts first, then outline, then write in Jonathan's voice, check the word count target. It then has the big picture structure, uh 12 chapters plus introduction and conclusion. The name framework open up every single chapter with an interesting story. It could be a personal story, it could be a metaphor, an illustration, story of some. And so it's pulling from my transcript some of the things that I talked about about in the workshop. Then it creates three to five subheadings inside of the chapter, and then it has um practical exercise, bullet point three takeaways, and the next chapter tease. So, literally you give it the actual structure that you want. And the more detailed you can get with your structure, the better result you are going to get.
All right, let's get back into it. I even give it some structure around the introduction and conclusion. I'll provide all of this for you, by the way, if you want this structure that I have, uh look in the link in the description below. You can grab it. It'll also pull out all the common AI words and phrases that's are that are tells that people know this was AI written. We're going to remove all that from our book. And that's the way I like to do it. Got conclusion, and then the writing style.
Now, ideally you want to feed it some of your writing if at all possible. Now, I wrote two books before AI even came around, a traditional published book and a self-published book. And so I used those where to find my writing style. Well, how do I like to write my sentences? How big are my paragraphs? What are the length of my sentences? What are common words that I use? Do I ask a lot of questions? What kind of words do I use? And so all of that has been diagnosed here. Now, if you say, "I haven't written a book, Jonathan." Well, have you written a blog post? Do you have some writing? Have you produced an article? If you can have some of your writing, it can help to know exactly your style.
Then it gets into crafting the pros, languages to avoid. Again, these are tails inside of AI. Additionally, however, moreover, in conclusion, on the other hand, this is because by doing X you can Y, whether you're X or Y, this is not only but also. Avoid M-dashes, which I just don't use in my writing, use a comma instead. Use parentheses. Um use transcripts as the primary source. All of the structure will help. Do's and don'ts. Again, you can grab all this in the description below.
The next part of this process, before we get into the structure of the book, is you want to feed it your transcripts. Now, if you don't have transcripts, what I have students, my writing students do, is once you create an outline for the book and you have three to five subpoints for each chapter that you want to cover, use a dictation software and dictate the your ideas and thoughts out. They can be ramblings, you can talk in circles, it does not matter. Just get out all the information you can in your head about that. Talk about your stories, give examples, all of that. And then we're now going to use that inside of this project so that it's not just pulling from AI's knowledge data base. It's pulling from your stories, your examples, your frameworks, your ideas, and it creates a book that cannot be copied. So, that's the really important part of this process.
So, what I do, just to back up here a second, is I use Claude CoWork because what CoWork does is it creates files on your actual computer. Each project is a folder. And inside each folder you can have sub fold and as you're creating things with Claude it's producing these inside of these folders on your actual desktop. So, you can see here this is a draft and that's kind of small, I'll click on it. This is chapter one. This is the draft, it's in a markdown file. And what I don't like is jumping back in between all of these documents. So, what I do is I actually install Obsidian. And Obsidian, use the free version for Obsidian. You download it on your computer, and then basically you point It'll ask you for a folder. You want to create a folder? You want to point to a folder? And what I do is I take my main folder, which I called Co-work OS, and I pointed Obsidian to that. And then now it's got all of my project. If I just minimize these, you can see these over on the left-hand side. Author Bootcamp Coach, Business Owner. So, when I click into it, I don't have to sit here and open up files. So, if I want to click on chapter one, I have it right here. I can even edit inside of here, which I will talk about later. I can edit my chapters in here as well. But, the part I want to show you is putting your transcripts in here. Now again, it's pretty easy. If you get your transcripts, you just go to the file. Like I have one here under Author. That's called the Get Paid to Teach Transcripts, and they're in here. I uploaded all kind of things. I uploaded my workbook. Now, this is actually me planning my workshop. And Claude can read all of these. So, I like to map it out, my workshop, having charts and graphs and things that I'm doing when I'm teaching. I gave it that. I gave it just the raw transcript from the recording, which is really easy to get these days. I've got uh the actual workbook. That was the student workbook that I gave it as well. So, it can see all of these things. So, it's it's creating the book from all of these. And these are really sitting inside of here in that folder. Okay.
So, now that it's in the folder, now we can go back to Claude, and we can tell it analyze all of the transcripts, and create what you think is a really good 12-chapter book outline based off of what I've already fed it. And so, now it's going through that process. This is some of the conversation, and then it comes up with a framework and chapter map. And that's what we see over here. So, I'll go back up here to the top. And you can see after reading the four bootcamp transcripts, the workshop planner, and the workbook, the bootcamp grounds the delivery chapter, and here we go. So, then it gets into the framework, the big picture. It says, "Hey, there's really five framework phases here." That'll be five parts of the book. And then it says, "Hey, here's the introduction. Here, according to your prompt, these are the how we'll cover these particular parts for your introduction." Here's part one. Here's chapter one, the thriving paid teacher. Here's the main point. Here's the opening story we're going to use. Here's the subheading type that I gave it, that come up with three to five subheads. And it said, "Here's the four subhead types. Here's what we think the exercise should be, and here's where we got it from." And then it just does that for chapter two, chapter three, chapter four. And as you're going through here, if we see something you don't like, you can tell it, "Don't do this story. Do this instead. Let's tweak this instead of that." But you're basically looking over this very detailed outline that it's got from your transcripts or from your dictation, and it's going to do a much better job when it comes to actually writing the book. So, you can see here it laid everything out. So, that is the next step is we have it analyze our transcripts and our dictation so it can create a really thoughtful, helpful, detailed book outline.
All right. Now, it's time to write the book. So, this is what I was able to do in literally probably an hour or two, maybe less. And I was able to create a draft of around 24,000, 25,000 words. It's not designed to be an 80,000-word novel. And that's not the kind of book I want to write. I want to write a book that's about 125 pages. It's got the meat and the goods without all the fluff. So, let's jump back in here. So, the next part of this process was to actually write the book. So, we'll go back up to the top here. And literally at this point, I'm like, "Hey, let's just write the introduction to get paid to teach according to our chapter map." So, then it starts the process, it lets you know what it's doing, and then it creates it. Now, you can click on and if it doesn't load over here, again, I can look at it right here inside of Draft. Here's introduction. And I can read it right here. I'm going to read some of this just just a few of the the the sentences here and you'll get a a feel for it. This really fits me and my writing style. I write very practical, short sentences, short paragraphs. And you can tell that it doesn't have the typical AI writing in here. Learning without action isn't growth, it's just a more comfortable kind of delay. We live in the most information-rich moment in human history. Anything you want to know is a search away. Yet, knowing more has never been the thing that changed a life. Information's everywhere, transformation is rare. So, let me ask you something and be honest with yourself when you answer. How long have you been getting ready to finally teach what you know and get paid for it? A year? 3 years? Longer? And then it goes into my story. I told myself I was preparing. Talked about that. Here's what I wish someone had told me. This is all coming from transcripts from when I taught the workshop. And if we bounce around here, you will find other examples. Here's one that I gave in my workshop. Late one night, I got hooked on the show about gold prospectors. You've probably flipped past one. A crew somewhere in Alaska burning through their savings on giant excavators tearing into the frozen earth season after season. The machines roar, the dirt flies, and the men keep glancing at the wash plant to see if any color comes through. So, this was an actual story that I taught in my workshop. And so, all of this content's coming from the transcripts.
So we come back here, we are just going to have it create a chapter, quickly read through it. We're not going to edit it yet, but we're looking through to make sure it sounds and looks good. And then the same thing, chapter write chapter one now. Now let's write chapter two. Hey, let's write chapter three. And if you see things that you don't like, you can just correct it. Say, "Hey, let's not use that as the opening story. I'm going to dictate out another story. Let's use this instead." And you do this back and forth pretty quickly, literally probably within an hour, I had all the way down here 12 chapter drafts and then a conclusion. And then at the end you can see we were roughly sitting around 24,000 words.
Now, this is really important. You don't just take what it produced and go publish it. I still like to spend a few days if not a couple of weeks getting in there and reading it. Anything that doesn't make sense gets pulled out. Anything that I don't like, I'm going to put in something different. But it's so much easier to work from a place of 25,000 words than trying to figure out how to structure it and write it from scratch can feel very difficult. And this is what produces a book that's not AI written. It doesn't look like AI. And I've published now over 12 books with the help of AI. And I've over a thousand or 1,200 reviews. I've yet to have a one review that says this book was written by AI. It's because of the intentionality that I like to take. And this is something I taught in my book The 90-Day Author. The formula is this, 20 60 20. The first 20% should be your vision, your frameworks, your stories, your experience, your examples. And your vision that gets put into it. And then the 60% which is the hardest part for a lot of people is just getting a draft. And that draft AI is a really good ghostwriter if you give it enough information through transcripts, through dictation. And then from there, the last 20% is me getting back into it and making sure it sounds like me. That's a proven formula that can allow you to publish faster and publish more books while staying true to your voice, your mission, and what it is that you do.
So again, if you want the kind of AI prompt that I like to use for writing that pulls out a lot of the tells, you can find that link in the description below. And also, what questions do you have about this? Happy to answer questions, just ask your questions down below. And then finally, if you're a writer or coach and you haven't hit that 100k a year, which is a milestone a good milestone for a lot of personal brands because you're full-time once you hit that mark, then I did an entire video that maps out the nine projects you need to install in your business. This is something I teach in my Insider program and I laid it all out in a complete video and you can watch it over here. It's called the Million Dollar Messenger Path. Just click on the video and I'll see you over in that video.