15 - Leveraging AI for Author Accolades with Hannah Jacobson of Book Award Pro

In this episode of Brave New Bookshelf, hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite sit down with Hannah Jacobson, the founder of Book Award Pro, to explore how AI is transforming the pursuit of book awards and accolades for authors. Hannah shares insights into the innovative ways Book Award Pro uses AI to match books with suitable awards, simplifying a complex process and saving authors valuable time. The conversation delves into the importance of originality in submissions, the evolving landscape of AI in publishing, and how authors can harness technology to amplify their creative voices. Discover how AI-driven tools like ProWritingAid and Book Brush are enhancing the publishing process for authors worldwide. Visit our website https://bravenewbookshelf.com to view the full episode notes, links and apps mentioned in the episode, and the full transcript.

[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts, Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite, as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Hello everyone and welcome back to the Brave New Bookshelf. I'm Steph Pajonas. I am the CTO and COO of the Future Fiction Academy where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their process. We're doing that a lot lately. We've got some other really cool marketing classes and some craft classes coming up . So it's going to be a lot of fun. And I'm joined today with my lovely co host as always.

Hello, Danica. How are you?

**Danica Favorite:** I'm Danica Favorite, and I am the community manager at Publish Drive and we are very excited to be supporting AI and AI projects. We have recently come out with an AI metadata tool [00:01:00] where if you input your manuscript, it can give you some keywords, metadata, as well as a book description for your book. So really great to have that.

And we also still distribute books as well as help people with their royalty splitting and all those cool things. It's really fun, I think, to get to combine our passions for AI and writing and putting all that together 

I'm really excited today to have Hannah Jacobson joining us. Hannah is from Book Award Pro and I love what they're doing. It was so cool when Hannah was like, hey I've got some cool stuff to talk to you about with AI as well And I'm like, yay because I think as authors we definitely want to Want those awards and those accolades but also getting that additional visibility for our books.

So I'm really eager to hear what Hannah has to say about how she can help authors with that. So Hannah, I'm going to leave it to you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about yourself and Book Award Pro and [00:02:00] also how you're using AI.

**Hannah Jacobson:** Perfect. Thank you so much, Danica, and thank you so much, Steph, too, for having me here. And hello, everybody tuning in. My name is Hannah Jacobson, and I'm the founder of Book Award Pro and the Awards and Story Marketing Advisor to Alli, and that's the Alliance of Independent Authors. At Book Award Pro, we're really proud to operate the world's largest database of legitimate reviews and awards.

And at the time of this podcast that's more than 10, 000 accolades in our system and counting every day. And our AI platform will actually understand this universe of accolades, this universe of awards and reviews and match you to precisely the right reviews, the right awards for your book. 

**Danica Favorite:** That's awesome. I think that's really fantastic to have a tool that helps you find them because I don't know about you, Steph, but I feel like I'm always getting these unsolicited emails from companies saying, here, do our award program, do this, do that. [00:03:00] And I see a lot of author groups trying to sort out what's good, what's bad. And so I love that there is the service that helps you sort that out and decide what's really best for you. So I think it's amazing.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, I like this idea a lot because they're definitely authors who are really interested in, going after words and getting the reviews that they need . And they're just not sure. What's legitimate and what's not, right? Just like Danica said, I'm sure I get at least one spam message a week. Somebody telling me that I need to sign up for their service or do something like that. So it's great that there's like an actual legitimate place for them to go. And I like the fact that you're also partner with Alli because we love Alli. They're great. They're a super help, especially to independent authors and interestingly enough, I just spoke to their community, July 3rd, right?

July 3rd, I just spoke to their community with a couple other people on AI. So I know that they're open to it at the very least. So it's great to [00:04:00] see that you guys are all partnered up. 

**Hannah Jacobson:** Yeah, it's really exciting to see just within the book publishing space, how we're all kind of banding together and seeing that technology can be used for good. And it's really important to harness that. And Steph, actually both Steph and Danica, both of you touched on this. It can be really overwhelming to pursue awards and reviews. Not only is there just a lot of information out there, most authors don't know that you actually have to pursue a process. And then once you figure all of that out, how in the world do you figure out out of all these thousands of awards, thousands of reviews? What's legitimate?

What's tried and true? What's tested? Will they treat authors properly? And so we take that to heart at our work at Book Award Pro and make sure that everything that you see within our app is tested, it's legitimate, and we will always keep vetting all of our accolades. 

**Danica Favorite:** I love that. That's so important to authors. And so again, I'm just, it's so great to have someone in this space and I love being able to share that [00:05:00] with other authors because it's definitely something that will give a lot of authors peace of mind. 

So let's dig into the questions. Can you just share a little bit about how you're approaching AI and publishing? I'd love to hear what your thought process is, what your approach to it is, how you might be using it.

**Hannah Jacobson:** Absolutely, that's a fantastic question because I actually didn't start with a lot of technology when I started Book Award Pro. Everything I did was completely manual if you could call it technology, which I suppose technically it is. I had a fancy spreadsheet and a Word document, which is Not, not very highfalutin, but it has been really interesting to see our progression not only in building our company, but also understanding technology.

What can that mean? What can we do with technology? How can we create something that best serves authors? So just infused into our into our company DNA is do great for authors. do great using [00:06:00] technology. So anything we do to develop any kind of AI we take a really knowledgeable approach.

So we take industry knowledge and the learnings, the things we know about awards and reviews, and we find ways to automate things for authors. And in doing so, not only do you make a difficult process, much simpler, much more effective, it's actually less It's expensive.

It's more effective. You have, you get better results and you actually take the, the weight off of your shoulders of doing something maybe you didn't want to do to begin with. So our kind of stance with technology is automate the things that that computers can handle, that AI can handle and save author's time to be able to do what you do best.

Write your stories, connect with your audience in ways that AI can't do.

**Danica Favorite:** I think that's fantastic, and I love that theme of automating and doing the things that authors can't do to save them time, [00:07:00] so that they can focus on the things they love, because I think that's something that we've seen from a lot of guests is that idea of automation and saving time.

And I know at Publish Drive, that's our big thing is take the stuff off of people's plates that is harder or that takes a lot of brainpower that is maybe not the things they love, but get them into that space where they have more time to do what they love. And even I know like with Steph in Future Fiction Academy, it's that same thing is it isn't saying AI is replacing everything.

It's put AI to work doing the stuff that is maybe time consuming or tedious, or you don't necessarily want to be doing so that you do have that extra time for, Hey, this is what I love. This is where I want to spend my time.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, I often say that AI is there to level us up. It's there to make, take us and make us better. So it's works the same for applications, for other companies, We can take the things that we do, make them easier and level them up and make them [00:08:00] better. So it sounds like that's what you're doing as well. 

**Hannah Jacobson:** Beautifully said. Amplifies our voices in the ways that we can do best.

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, exactly. So tell us a little bit about your AI workflow. What does your workflow using AI look like? I'm curious to see, like, how that maybe helps you personally, and then also how Book Award Pro can do that for authors as well. So it's a two pronged question, but I think that they flow together nicely.

**Hannah Jacobson:** No, I love that. Absolutely. So, you know, just personally , we're all humans. We have way more to do than we have time for. So, I try to look for ways that When I'm trying to figure out how to infuse technology into my workflow, I'm not thinking what technology can I use? I'm thinking, how can I save time?

So for example finding ways to do social media posts. For example, being able to test out different social media schedulers has been really helpful. I really enjoy using Buffer just as a kind of [00:09:00] marketing technology tool. There's also different ways this is not specific to my workflow, but to an author workflow, being able to distribute like advanced reader copies to your, to your beta readers, getting feedback from your readers, automating some of your newsletter campaigns, like using ConvertKit or MailChimp.

There's all different kinds of tools you can use to save time in whatever capacity you're thinking. You don't want to spend more time in. So personally, I like to use Buffer for social media posts. A lot of my work, actually is AI tools that we've created, just on the back end of Book Award Pro. And being able to monitor and handle thousands of accolades. There's a lot of processes that we've put into place and tools that we've created behind the scenes to be able to manage that, to be able to operate within that. So that's not a specific tool or service in that regard, but it's been really interesting to see at least [00:10:00] from my perspective say that you had a database of even 5, 000 records.

What does it look like to maintain that 6, 000 records, 10, 000 records, 20, 000? There's a ton of information, a ton of data, and what it takes to be able to maintain that and monitor it regularly to make sure all of that information is up to date. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Are you taking the information that's brought into your database and running it through like a LLM, like Claude? Is it like looking at your stuff that it comes in and making some decisions or what is, what is AI doing in your process? 

**Hannah Jacobson:** Yeah, thank you, Steph, for clarifying. Actually, so within Book Award Pro, we create all of our AI and none of it's generative, which kind of right now the trendy topic in publishing is generative AI. But like you said, AI makes decisions. So I work with our team to be able to create that AI, to make effective decisions, to be able to [00:11:00] effectively choose this is the right award, this is the right review for this book at this time.

As far as other tools that I kind of use in my workflow let's see, I use Buffer for social media we actually use MailChimp for our newsletter, and just being able to even schedule Newsletters saves a lot of time. Other than that, there's a lot of kind of internal AI that we use. 

**Steph Pajonas:** There's a lot of machine learning that goes on in the background when it comes to AI, right? So even the generative AI stuff, which is the trendy stuff with the LLMs and, predicting the next word in a sequence, like all of that, it started out as machine learning. And we're using all of this AI and all of this technology to help make decisions. It's just, it is so much data, like you were saying, it's so much data. And even if you're just using machine learning to help understand that data, what it's doing, and how it can be beneficial [00:12:00] this is all a part of this new AI ecosystem that we're all, that we're all swimming in right now.

That's really cool. I'm really fascinated by the fact that that you're using AI to help make decisions on the background based on, a particular book or a particular accolade or award. Is it one of those things where you're looking at looking at like the genre of the book, the way that it's written, these sorts of things, and then saying, these possible awards might be better suited for this? Or is it more a granular look at things?

**Hannah Jacobson:** Steph, that's actually a really fascinating question because something I didn't realize coming into all of this of course, technology is created by humans. AI is monitored by humans. It has to start from creation and you continually monitor it. So our AI we actually developed in house and we're always learning from it.

So for example, every award and every review is [00:13:00] completely unique. It's completely different. Every book, on the face of the planet is completely unique and you even have different word count, page count, publication date, copyright date what's the theme of your story, what kind of genres are you covering, because it's normally a little bit more than one, you probably have some overlap, I mean taking all of that nuanced information and really understanding what is this award and review looking for and what would be a great fit for that book?

That's where our AI comes in. That's where our team takes a lot of care to figure out what would be the best fit for this book. Would this have a really great chance of winning this award of getting a really positive review? So piecing together that information and creating this detailed profile really that's run by humans or created by humans and put into our AI.

**Steph Pajonas:** I love this because I feel like this is a stumbling block for a lot of authors. You're faced with thousands of [00:14:00] things to look at and you can make some educated guesses about what you think might work. But when you're able to put all that data into into a place where AI can be looking at different things that you may not be thinking about.

This is where, again, AI is leveling you up and leveling up the business so that you can go out there and be your best author and spend that time writing the books, coming up with the great ideas instead of researching every award out there, right?

**Hannah Jacobson:** That's absolutely true. And as much as that applies to awards and reviews and all that teeny tiny data, like you don't need to know your word count off the top of your head. Our system already knows that. There are so many ways you can do that with other technologies too, just to save yourself time, headache, and really do what you do best.

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah. I love that. And I, I like number one, your focus on saving [00:15:00] time, because again, I think that is the most precious resource we as authors have. So it's always important for us to take a look at how can we be more efficient? How can we save that time? How can we scale our business? But the other thing I really liked that I wanted to go back to that you were saying is this idea of. Yes, you have this AI doing all the work, but it's also human monitored. I think there's this fear of on the part of a lot of authors and a lot of people out there that AI is just taking over. And the truth is, is that as good as the AI is, it still needs us to monitor it. It still needs that human touch. All it's doing is taking the heavy lifting off of the stuff we're doing. And so rather than spending a few hours in putting stuff into a spreadsheet, the AI is doing it for us. I don't know if this is how you do it, but for example, I just had some stuff I needed to enter into a spreadsheet for one of my coworkers, and I just took a picture of the document that [00:16:00] ordinarily I would have had to manually type in all by myself. And what I was able to do, I took a picture of the document, I threw it into AI, AI put it into a spreadsheet, and then of course I went through and manually validated to make sure that the AI didn't hallucinate, which yes, the AI did hallucinate on a couple of the entries, but I think what would have taken me a good three or four hours to do ended up taking me an hour. I like that because I'm wondering if that's again, maybe not you take a picture of it and it puts it in there, but I think it's that kind of same thing. I'm just wondering if it's that similar where the AI sticks it in the spreadsheet, but then you're going to go through and you're going to validate it and make sure that everything's up to date. That kind of thing.

**Hannah Jacobson:** Danica, that's a really great point and similar, similar to what you're saying. It's not exactly the same from an AI perspective, but very, very similar. It's almost we've taken this, thinking, this school of thought of do great for authors, make it a really useful tool and make whatever match you're getting, make whatever [00:17:00] target, whatever submission you're getting the very best, the very most perfect fit for your book possible.

And you train the AI, you show the AI to make that decision. You show it exactly how to do that. And in an ideal world, it will continue to make those great decisions every single time. And something that I didn't understand in the very beginning is that, Of course, AI, you continually train it. Humans are always learning and that AI will learn from you.

It's not sentient. It's not taking over the world. You have to train it. You have to keep it maintained and up to date. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I was smiling at Steph's grin when you said, Oh, it's not sentient. I think there's that fear of it taking over, but you do you have to constantly. Retrain it and talk to it and say, yeah, you didn't get this right. Let's go back. Let's figure this out. This is what you're supposed to do and and there is that [00:18:00] human interaction and It's only as good as the people behind it and it sounds like the training that you guys are doing on this product really is something that, Book Award Pro is got that AI basis, but you're still in the background going, okay, here's what we're going to work on today. And making sure that it really is that best level of. What it can give to authors. So I really appreciate that about what you're doing. And I loved hearing about some of that training because again, I want listeners to really understand that it isn't just, you throw something into the AI and you get back the exact result you need.

It's going to take time and it's going to take training. And that's why We rely on people like you who've done that training to say, okay, this is one area. I don't have to go in and train an AI model because sure, if I wanted to, I could probably go into AI and say, Hey, find me some book awards. [00:19:00] But I know because you're more familiar with it, you can optimize that.

And that just saves me the time and effort.

**Hannah Jacobson:** Kind of similar to what you're saying, Danica, I actually Sometimes I refer to our software team as my translators, because I'm not, I'm not our software team. I'm not the technology person, but I did bring book publishing experience and book award and book review experience to our team. We're always learning from the industry and from my experiences too, and really building that, really working with our software team to make that the best AI is possible.

So you take the best of both worlds as an author. Do your best writing, create your stories, engage with your audience, and trust, trusted technology tools. People who are really trying to build great things. Know that they're putting a lot of heart and effort into those tools to be able to amplify your message, to amplify your work.

**Danica Favorite:** I love that. I really love that because to me, there's this [00:20:00] attitude sometimes of us versus them and the human versus the machine and the way you put it is really this idea of it's a partnership. It's a partnership between the human, the machine, the team that's training the machine, and like all of these pieces work together as partners to make everything the best it can be.

And I'm excited to hear that perspective and to hear how you're doing it in your company, because I think that that's something that we don't often get to see is that what's happening behind the scenes to make the A I work as good as it does. So thank you for sharing that. I think it's so important. 

**Hannah Jacobson:** Thank you. And I think actually I use this internally, but sometimes I'll share it with authors too. I often say Book Award Pro is technology driven and human given. So as much as AI powers, our services powers your submissions, your targets, the information you're getting about awards and [00:21:00] reviews, making sure that it's completely vetted and making sure that it's a great match for your book. It's very much human given. We pay attention to everything even our customer support, we help authors navigate their accounts even me personally, I'll go and monitor how well, how effectively is our AI choosing which awards, which reviews are a perfect match for your book. And that's been really, really fascinating just behind the scenes And of course, our authors love the end product, but that's been really cool to see kind of this, this partnership between books and knowledge and how technology can amplify those voices within books, the voices that you want to, to keep putting out and get recognition for.

**Steph Pajonas:** And how are your users liking the tool so far? Have you been doing some updates to the AI and seeing even a better matching coming from it?

**Hannah Jacobson:** Absolutely. Year over year, it gets better and better. We have actually, in the [00:22:00] very beginning, I was so proud. I, I worked with five author clients and it's felt a little bit maxed out and we've actually worked with thousands of authors around the world. Six continents. If you know anyone in Antarctica, I would love to meet them.

But we actually, our authors win thousands of awards and get thousands of positive reviews every single year. And that's results speak for themselves. It's really important that as much love and energy as we put into Book Award Pro, as fascinating as the AI is, it needs to ultimately serve authors.

It needs to do great work. So being able to measure those results and make sure that they're actually serving authors has been really, really exciting for us and exciting for our authors too.

**Danica Favorite:** I'm excited about that. I'm very excited to hear that. So the next question is, what is your favorite AI tool? I know you've mentioned a few that you really appreciate. And I know when we were talking a little bit beforehand, you're like I'm not really sure I need to [00:23:00] think about that.

So have you been able to give some thought to it? What your favorite AI tool is? And it is okay to have multiple. I think we all have our little preferences and things like that. And sometimes it is hard to pick just one. So if you have more than one, that's okay too.

**Hannah Jacobson:** Especially in I think when we're talking about book publishing, especially, and when it comes to awards and reviews, we see a lot of we see a lot of judges and reviewers give private feedback to authors. Which is a cool thing. So if you submit your book for an award or a review, it's It's not uncommon that you'll get some kind of feedback back. So for example, editing is really, really huge. So making sure that your book is professionally edited and even just having an initial layer of editing can make your book go so much further in an award or review. And also book cover design. is hugely important. As much as we don't want to judge a book by its cover, as much as you can, giving it a [00:24:00] professional edge will really help it stand out to, to readers.

So I've got two kind of preferred or, favorite technology tools that are authors. Use very much and have reported really excellent results from and infuse into their workflow. ProWritingAid is really great for putting your book into a into a story getting your initial edits done. You know, you can still of course hire a professional editor. But just making sure that your language is as polished as possible before you send it off to a professional will save you a lot of time and money, and will also get you some more award winning results and also for book cover design, we've had authors use Book Brush. Book brush is a way to have, if you don't, if you've got a really limited budget, being able to figure out what's a nice cover design that I can use from a template that looks very fresh and unique to my book, that will give it an award winning edge, that will make a reviewer connect with it more.

So those are two tools [00:25:00] that I recommend and absolutely,

**Steph Pajonas:** I love ProWritingAid. I gave you a thumbs up there when you were talking and probably made you laugh. But I love ProWritingAid because, you know what, they've used AI, like them and Grammarly, especially, have used AI for years and years. And I'm not even just talking like generative AI.

I'm talking like their backend has been learning from people's grammar, their spelling, the way that they're constructing sentences. It understands style, it understands, repetitive words and phrases and, just, there's so much there, right?

And that is all AI, that's all machine learning on the backend. And then ProWritingAid just recently added in some generative AI tools for rephrasing or if you're struggling with the way that you've said something. I write awkward sentences all the time.

ProWritingAid is always just that's awkward. You need to change that. Yes, I do. Let's go in. Let's rework it. Those sorts of things. But then I agree also with a Book Brush, Book Brush, Canva, [00:26:00] those tools are really helpful. They also use AI on the back end some of them will give you generative ideas, right?

I know Canva allows you to create images now, the use of a Stable Diffusion, I believe, on the back end for that sort of thing. But a lot of this is all still very machine learning. AI driven to give you some of the best results. And I agree these are the things that are really important for authors.

The cover, I hate to say it, but I do. I judge, I judge so many books by their covers. I get the daily Book Bub email and I always go through it and I look for a cover that like jumps out at me. That, it speaks to me in some way. We do, we totally judge the book by the cover at the very beginning and then if it grabs you, you pick it up and you're opening it up to the first chapter.

And if, it's grabs you right away, that is where you get your reader from. That is how you sell that book. And the same goes for awards, right? [00:27:00] Those judges are, they're looking at the total package. They're looking at your, your writing. Is it distinctive?

Does it have a voice? And all of these things can be honed with all these tools that we have at our fingertips and why not use them? I agree. I love your, answer. Because those are the things that I love too as a writer and I've been using for many, many years. And I'm even more excited now that they're embracing some of the generative AI on the back end.

It's leveling up their product. It's giving authors more choices to go forward, more graphics for book covers, more fonts, more, more stylistic choices to choose from when you're doing your edits. So there's a lot there. There's definitely a lot there for authors.

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, I agree. I think that it's cool because we don't necessarily think of these tools as being AI or having AI and until AI became the buzzword we didn't realize that we've been using it all [00:28:00] along. And so it's really neat to start seeing the embracing of that. And again, like I know AI isn't always the completely accurate term for what it's all doing and what these tools are, but it certainly fits under that umbrella. And gives us space for conversation to realize we don't have to be afraid. Like it's, it's there and it's okay.

**Hannah Jacobson:** Danica, that's really well said. A lot of the technologies that we use may not necessarily be AI, but there is a lot of AI Infused into them, supporting the processes that you're ultimately using. So for example, ProWritingAid or Book Brush, they're using AI in their systems, in their technology.

And you're, you're using AI every day. Even this is completely not book publishing, but senior citizen, like the fall detection. Technologies like that, that's AI base. They use AI every single day in ways that we [00:29:00] don't know. And it's not nefarious. It's. It's beautiful. It serves us in so many amazing ways.

So don't be afraid to harness it. I think there's an area I'm curious to learn more about and just see how it unfolds, but audio books, AI and audio book production, how can AI serve authors in a way that creates a high quality audio book that still, serves audio book professionals, but ultimately does really great things for the book world.

So I'm curious to see what that looks like, how that unfolds there are audiobook awards and reviews, and I'm curious to see how, how authors can continue to expand their works and see just what's out there for them.

**Danica Favorite:** That's awesome. And that's a really great point. In fact, I was just thinking about that when you said that I'm like, man, I need to go find us an audio book expert to have on the podcast, so hopefully stay tuned. And if any of you listening are an AI audio expert or know of someone, please reach out to me because we definitely would love to have you as a guest. 

But [00:30:00] that does bring up a question for me and I'm going to put some pauses in here, Steph, so you can edit them out, if Hannah would prefer not to answer this question. For the book awards and things, are there book awards that accept AI books or books with AI covers or AI text?

And is that something that Book Award Pro can sort out so that people who maybe have used some generative AI, whether that be in the writing or the cover or even the audio book, are there awards out there for those people? Is that something that you can help them find?

**Hannah Jacobson:** I love this question because within the last year, year and a half or so, you started to see in award guidelines, award restrictions, whether or not they accept, don't accept, accept to some degree, AI generated works. It's all across the board. Every, every award, every review is completely different. Book Award Pro does take that into account, and we also in our data, we reflect that in your account.

[00:31:00] If an award will or won't accept AI generated works that will be shown to you, but it's been so fascinating along the way. Awards... awards and reviews change. They learn from what the industry is doing. They learn from how authors are adopting AI and doing good things with them.

What judges and readers are not looking for is a completely plagiarized work. They're looking for a unique story. So generally speaking, what we're seeing with these accolades is that they're looking for a fresh story and whatever tools you use to use them, make sure that your story is unique.

Make sure that it sounds like you, it's your voice that you are just producing something Original, award worthy, positive review worthy. That's the gist of it, but it has been really fascinating to watch these accolades continue to watch the industry, see what we're all doing, see what the best practices are.

And yeah, so don't be afraid to use AI in [00:32:00] your writing, in your book cover design, there will always be accolades that support your work, no matter how you decide to create it.

**Steph Pajonas:** That's great, because I know plenty of people who use AI as a tool. They may be struggling with brain fog or disability or these sorts of things and, and, they're just using it as a tool. It's still their voice. It's still their story. They, they love their story and they're doing the best that they can to service that story, right? Knowing that there is a place for them still to go, with their story and hopefully, put it up for an award, get some accolades for it. That's really important to some people. To have that positive feedback, especially if they had to use tools in order to finally get their story out there.

And I feel it is the most important part. We want to be able to tell our stories and in any way that we can. So I'm, I love that answer. It's great to hear. I know that there have been many, there have been many who have, they [00:33:00] opened up to AI and then all they're like, Oh, I got too many, too many responses.

Now I got to close it off. So I'm sure that there's probably some churn in there back and forth, but it's good to hear that the reevaluation is happening constantly. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, I like that too. I was excited for your answer because I think that the idea of, it is something that's being constantly evaluated. It isn't just people are saying yes, no, boom, and we're done like really thinking about, okay, how are judges responding to these books? How are reviewers responding to these books?

And ultimately it boils down to something I think Steph and I have said a lot and we're both very passionate about is, is it a good story? And are you uniquely part of that story? Because even though you've got the assistance of an AI, ultimately, you're the human behind that story, and you've partnered with the AI [00:34:00] to create that story. So regardless of how that story is created, is it the best story you can tell and the best story it can be and whatever tools you need to make it. So there's still a place in the market for you, but ultimately the market's going to decide that and the market's constantly shifting and reevaluating. 

Your perspective as someone who sees a lot of this from reviewers and contests and authors across the whole spectrum and constantly monitoring how that's evolving is really something I'm very much appreciative of, because I think that is what authors need to hear as well.

So thank you for sharing that.

**Hannah Jacobson:** Oh, thank you for asking Danica. And I think, it's interesting to see authors have learned how to use AI very differently. In the last several years, but especially the last couple of years, and now like you said, contests, reviewers are paying attention to the things that matter, the things that don't matter.

For example, a year ago, it [00:35:00] wasn't uncommon to see an award restriction that would say absolutely no use of AI in any part of the book process. What if you used ProWritingAid in the first round of, just writing your book? Should your book really be disqualified for that? And over time, you would see award restrictions change to say no generative AI, or if you use, the next edition was if you used generative AI in any portion of your writing, just, just simply disclose that.

And so it's been interesting to see this progression of authors are using AI very differently. These accolades are looking at things very differently and Danica, you're exactly right. It's this continual evaluation.

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, and I'm going to just add a little side note here, because I know in the AI for authors group that Steph and I are a part of, that Steph leads. We see a lot of questions of whether or not you should disclose your AI usage and people are afraid to disclose. And I think the best part about [00:36:00] having Hannah here and talking about the disclosure and all of that for me in terms of disclosure is that absolutely you need to disclose. 

Number one, Steph and I have always been very firm about the fact that you need to use honesty and integrity when it comes to your work. And so if you've used AI, make sure you're disclosing it and being honest about it. However. A lot of these disclosure things, like Hannah was saying, some of this isn't really even about evaluating it, but as we start to see, okay, wow, more and more authors are using AI and they're disclosing it and we're finding that the disclosure of AI usage is not leading to poor quality books and it's not leading to this flood of really bad stuff out there. What we're showing to reviewers, to people who run contests, to people in charge of these regulations is that yes, [00:37:00] AI can be used. It can be used ethically and it can be used in a positive way. 

But part of that is All of us who are using it need to be doing so and disclosing in an honest and ethical way, which again, this is something Steph and I talk a lot about and we're very firm on, but I really just had to take that opportunity to point that out because again, for us, it really is about making sure that we have as much integrity as possible. So thank you for giving me the space to say that.

**Hannah Jacobson:** I'm so glad. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I, I do, we have seen from authors that, you know what, when you do disclose that, even if you're feeling a little bit afraid about it, When you do get really great results, when you get award winning success, when you get that positive review, you know that everything was done truthfully.

And that feels extra good because you showed the world, I'm a human and I use technology to produce something excellent. [00:38:00] That's beautiful. Keep paving the way to the future. That's, that's where we're at. Keep doing great things.

**Danica Favorite:** Yes, I love that. And thank you. I think that's a perfect place for us to end the conversation today. I so appreciate having you here with us today. I know I learned a lot. I think that this was so valuable for our listeners and people who want to learn a little bit about AI and realize that, Hey, we're all in this together and we're all learning to be better together.

And you're a part of that conversation. And so I thank you for that. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Thank you for being here today. I'm hoping that you can tell the listeners how to find Book Award Pro so that they can come check you out as well.

**Hannah Jacobson:** Absolutely. And Danica and Steph, thank you so much for having me here. Every conversation we can have really, it pushes the industry forward and we can all do really great things using technology in the book space. Of course, we'd love to see you guys on the Book Award Pro platform and you can always find us at bookawardpro.

[00:39:00] com and feel free to join us on social media too. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and our handle is always bookawardpro. We always love to share our author's news, see what you're up to, share your award winning success, keep us in the loop. So thank you all so much. It's been a joy to be here today.

**Steph Pajonas:** Thank you for coming. We appreciate you giving us the time here today to talk about this because it's fun to see how AI is being used in pretty much every part of the book world and publishing, right? It was cool to have you here and to talk about this today. For all of our listeners if you want to come check out the blog post about this particular interview.

We always produce a blog post that goes with the interview that we do. It also includes any links or anything that we've talked about. So come check us out at bravenewbookshelf. com. Is there anything you want to say before we go, Danica?

**Danica Favorite:** No, I think that we've really covered everything. Like I said, super excited to have had this [00:40:00] conversation and It brought up a lot of things that I know Steph and I talk about a lot and are really passionate about and I just hope this is one more tool to help give authors the confidence they need to move forward in their writing career.

**Steph Pajonas:** Okay, great. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you in the next episode. Okay. Bye

**Danica Favorite:** right. Bye.

**Steph Pajonas:** Bye. 

Thanks for joining us on the Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at BraveNewBookshelf. com, sign up for our newsletter, and get all the show notes.