20 - Crafting Sustainable Author Careers with Jill Cooper of The Writing Wives

In this episode of Brave New Bookshelf, we sit down with Jill Cooper, co-founder of The Writing Wives, to explore the art of crafting sustainable author careers. Jill shares her expertise on leveraging AI tools to enhance creativity and productivity while maintaining joy in writing. She delves into strategies for building a strong backlist, aligning book covers with audience expectations, and finding longevity in the ever-evolving publishing industry. Whether you're an aspiring author or a seasoned writer looking to revitalize your career, this episode offers invaluable insights and practical advice. 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 your co-host, 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 business. We're having a fantastic time over at the Future Fiction Academy. We're teaching people how to use Raptor Write. Our new tool for writing, and people are hammering away at that.

We're here. They're doing so great. I'm really impressed with all of the words people are sending out there into the AI LLMs and getting back lots of good stuff. So, yay, yay, yay!

I'm joined with 

**Danica Favorite:** too.

**Steph Pajonas:** Yay! I'm joined by my wonderful [00:01:00] co host. As always, Danica Favorite.

How you doing today, Danica?

**Danica Favorite:** Thank you. Yeah, so I'm Danica Favorite. I am the Community Manager at PublishDrive. And PublishDrive is here to help all authors on all stages of their author journey. Whether that is distributing their books to the widest market possible or helping do their royalty splits with other co authors. And finally, of course, our exciting thing is using some AI tools to help optimize their publishing process, like their metadata, things like that. 

And one of the things I've sort of been hinting out at episodes, but it is finally completely live is. You can use all of PublishDrive's products at an entry level for free. Obviously, then there's paid plans for everything. But, try out all the different tools because you get to do it for free now, which is super exciting for me. Again, call it you know, same thing with FFA. We want you to be able to try things. And not have a huge cost to just go out there and experiment [00:02:00] because we believe that publishing is for everyone and as many barriers to entry as we can get rid of. We're here for that. 

So, today, I'm super excited to have our good friend Jill Cooper. Steph and Jill and I have been friends for a long time. I do also a lot of work with Jill. She is one of the wives at the Writing Wives. I'm the favorite wife, by the way. Ha ha ha! But with the Writing Wives, they have all kinds of great tools to help authors.

They also, like us, have a lot of paid programs, but they've also done some really cool free challenges and things like that. We're all here to help authors, and I love talking to Jill because not only is Jill an author, but she's an authorpreneur, and she's got all these great entrepreneurial ideas, all these author business y things that she does to help authors. 

Today we're going to talk to Jill about doing all the cool author stuff and I'm going to let Jill introduce herself and we get to hear a little more from Jill Cooper [00:03:00] today. 

**Jill Cooper:** Hello, it's so awesome to be here with you two since I have known both of you for I feel like forever. i'm Jill Cooper. I write young adult, sci fi, sweet romance, fantasy. I have a lot of stuff going on and a lot of different pen names. I'm also married to Mal Cooper as a lot of people know and we run The Writing Wives together, which teaches authors mostly things about branding, ads. How to have that one click presence on Amazon and we are pivoting a little bit to low cost, to as low as we can get it to help teach the fundamentals of how you be a successful author, how you can sustain it and not burn yourself out and not having to constantly be jumping from new release to new release.

And, you know, a lot of that comes from personal experiences, not wanting to slave away week after week, writing four books a month and stuff like that. 

**Danica Favorite:** Wait, you said that That idea of making your author [00:04:00] business sustainable. That's one of the things we haven't really talked about in this group. And so I'm excited that you're here talking about it today. And that's what The Writing Wives does for authors, because I think with all these great AI tools and everything that we talk about in the author community, sustainability is really, really key.

So what are some things that The Writing Wives does to help authors be sustainable?

**Jill Cooper:** Well, first we do, we're trying to teach that like the backlist is king, that as soon as you write a book and after that you have that like new release period, it's now in your backlist, right? So you basically want to build up your backlist. Yes, some people are like, well, I want to build my backlist up as quickly as possible, but you also want to do it sustainably so that you're building your backlist, but that your life doesn't suffer.

Like what if your, your kids need you? What if your car suddenly breaks and suddenly your deadline, your pre orders, one falls, then they all fall. Like, that's very stressful. So I want to teach, how to basically look at your, [00:05:00] your life. How many books can you actually write a year?

Not how many books can you write a year if everything went perfect. Because that's not going to happen, right? 

And then also using genre and trope on your Amazon product page, on your covers, like the keywords in your blurb for your genre, all things that make it easier to sell a book, either in a Facebook ad or when people are just like browsing through Amazon.

Someone will see it and just be like that. That book was written for me. and that's how we do those through like visual cues from the covers and then words, different types of words in the titles and the blurbs and the descriptions that will hopefully do most of the work for you, which is basically what we're talking about.

We want the work to be as easy as possible especially in our current climate in society where everyone's looking for something easy. Everyone's looking for some escapism with fiction. And that's basically, how we're, we're framing everything now.

**Steph Pajonas:** Right, you're trying to get it to be almost as [00:06:00] hands off as you can, right? You set it up for success and you send it out there 

**Jill Cooper:** Yes, 

**Steph Pajonas:** that you've done enough so that it can sustain itself and like little tweaks here and there, right? 

**Jill Cooper:** Right. Yeah. Mal does a class and then it is sort of like that. Well, now what? Like we've given all this information, but now it's on the author's shoulders basically to like how to take that information and use it in their career. So we've started putting checklists and guides and workbooks behind everything that we have, whether it's a Facebook ad class or, you know, we're doing how to build super fans like Marvel and Star Wars.

Like, how do you do that at a smaller scale inside your business? So when people come into that, they'll get the workbook before the class starts. And, they'll have spots to fill in these things and to brainstorm and figure out like, well, how can I make that work for me? I don't want to do X, Y, Z, but I could do, I could do this.

And it's all about being flexible and increasing your IP and finding multiple revenue streams for things you've already written or produced. because [00:07:00] I think that is like one of the most important things. And obviously, everyone will think Oh, audio books. Yes, that's great. But what can we do beyond audio books, you know? and I have business friends that are now writing books and watching how they tackle it as coming from the business world is it's just a different mindset. And how someone just want, like, I just want to write a book and I just want to make money off of it. It's fascinating just to watch how they do it a little bit differently.

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, that's really cool. I'm actually like, okay, is this going to be the next writing life class?

**Jill Cooper:** no, I didn't want to make it. Yeah. You never know

**Danica Favorite:** It is. It is. But I do think it's, it's a good point that when you look at your writing as a business person, as opposed to, oh, I'm just, I'm a creative you can still be a creative, But putting that business mindset is so important because I tell people this all the time, the second I decide I'm going to write a book and put it up for sale, it's no longer just my baby.

It's a commercial product because that's what happens when you put a book up for sale. If I wanted to write a book [00:08:00] that I was never going to sell, okay, cool, I could do whatever I want. But once I want to sell it, then I have to make some decisions that sometimes are in the interest of making that sale as opposed to just being the creative and it's easier to do that when you have a business mindset.

**Jill Cooper:** A lot of creatives, like when you start calling a book, a product, they get that knee jerks. It's not a product. It's my book. It's my, my baby. But for people from the business world, like, You're all creating products and that's what you sell. You sell a product. So there is that separation of I'm a creator I, I love my books, but now I'm a marketer and I, now I have to think about like, how am I gonna market my product?

It doesn't mean that your creativity or artistic skill is any less. It almost makes it better. But you do need to think of it as a product of a way of that's representing of you and your business and everything you stand for. And I think once you start thinking of your books as content as your world as content, it makes it so much easier to sell it. 

**Steph Pajonas:** That shift is so hard for [00:09:00] authors , especially somebody who's very new to this and has just been immersed themselves into their book and their world for, for a long time. And then they finish and they come up for air. And they're like, Oh what's next? Oh, I have to market the book. I have to sell the book, right?

Now it becomes a product. And that shift, that mind shift is really tough for a lot of people. And then there's a lot of floundering that happens. Like I'll try this and I'll try that. And this is where I love the fact that you guys are focused on the checklists, on the optimization of your blurbs and your keywords and your covers and all that kind of stuff, because if you can just get that right, then, then you're set on the right path. And I don't think enough authors hear that. When they're first starting out and with their first book and whatnot.

So hopefully we can start getting to people earlier in their careers instead of later when they floundered all over the place for like five years and they're ready to give up. Cause I [00:10:00] see that a lot too, unfortunately. 

**Jill Cooper:** I do see that a lot too. And everybody knows that it's familiar with us that we're basically known for Facebook ads, and Facebook ad consulting. And the problem, why we did the pivot is I felt like I was running into a wall, is that all authors want to run Facebook ads no matter where they are in their career, even if they're brand new.

And these people are not ready for Facebook ads. And you try to talk about their blurbs, their covers, their Amazon product page and stuff like that. And they're like, well, I just want to run ads. And we need to take a step back. Sometimes we need to fix certain things that, that, you know, like, cause if you're paying good money. To run a Facebook ad. Don't spend money on a Facebook ad unless you believe in your product and it's a hundred percent ready for a cold audience. 

And a lot of things we'll hear so like my fans love my book and they love my cover. It's like, yeah, but how many fans do you have? If you want mass appeal across like mainstream appeal, then there's certain things we need to do. There are certain audience expectations that must be met. Your cover is not for you. It's for your audience. And if [00:11:00] they're expecting X, Y, Z. And you have ABC, then, they're not going to think that your book is for them, even if it actually is perfect. 

So there's lots of that, that we really want to teach. and you do hit the wall. Well, I already have that , it's like, well, we really need to dive into it and, like, say, your reader magnet, is it the best possible representation of your series?

You're trying to push, or is it just something that you just happen to have? And you haven't actually put the time to craft your what I call the best marketing tool you have is your reader magnet. And so I think it should have everything behind it, including a professional or quality cover and edit because that's .. it's so clutch, and I feel like we've been talking about reader magnets now for like eight years, and we're still like trying, we're still talking about it.

**Steph Pajonas:** That's hard for people to be like, Oh, I finished this book one in my series. It's awesome. And then people are just like, well, you should write a reader magnet now. They're like, what? 

**Jill Cooper:** And now I'm like, well, before you write that cool [00:12:00] series that you just told me that idea, right, go write the reader magnet first. Let's 

write that, 

you for people. That is I know, I know. 

**Steph Pajonas:** man.

**Jill Cooper:** Sure. Like, I write the book blurbs first, too. I write those before I write the book. It's so much easier to write it before you get, your head gets all tangled with all the plot ideas and all the POVs and like, my big, my big world.

I have to put it all in the blurb and, it's so much easier to do it first. Just, just like, you know. Get out 

**Danica Favorite:** yeah, 

it is, it is, and I tell authors this all the time, we're so close to our stories. That sometimes we don't know what those most important things are. And we think, oh, this is a book about X, and really it's not. It's about this. And so to be able to have that focus of what is the story really about, and a little product pitch here with PublishDrive's metadata tool.

Like you put your book in and the A. I. analyzes and comes back and says, this is what the book is about. Now [00:13:00] you might be like, No, that's not what my book's about. Okay. Well that means you didn't have that clearly written in the book. So then you have to decide, okay, is there something in my story I have to change because As I made the book about this beautiful journey, or is the book really about these tropes, and these are sellable tropes, so I'm gonna remarket my book with that.

But, going to like what you and Mal teach, too, I had a great series of covers done, and I was so excited about them, and I remember Mal said, oh, no, I don't think those are that great. I'm like, I paid a lot of money for these covers, and Mal was like, yeah, but this is what the cover tells me. And this is not what your book's about. And I was like, Oh crap, you're right. And I followed Mal's advice. I went through, I looked at the bestselling books in my genre. I, I went and looked at bestselling books with similar covers and she was right. The kind of cover I had was not for the genre I had written.

**Danica Favorite:** It stinks to have to put all that money, all that [00:14:00] work into something, but then to realize, Okay, but if this isn't what's going to sell in this genre, I would rather, again, do you want to sell books or do you just want to have your story out? That's a valid question. I want to sell books. So it's often best, and this is what I love about what you two teach, is start from the very beginning of getting trope, those concepts, already from day one. So that way you know you're going to be on target with the market when that book goes to market.

**Jill Cooper:** Yeah. And all those things are fundamental. If you nail genre and trope, that helps you write Facebook ad copy. It helps you write the blurb. It helps you write your landing page. And as you're talking about covers, I would say to authors, don't fall so in love with your cover or spend so much money on your cover that in two to three years, you aren't going to do it again because markets change. We looked at covers like in one of the genre and club classes with Mal's covers for her sci fi series. And she's like, oh, yeah, my covers are now pointing to tropes that aren't in the book. They're [00:15:00] all pointing to alien. And there are no aliens in my books at all. 

Even when you reach, that level of constant sales, you still have to look at your covers and see like, do I need to redo these covers to new market expectations? If you think about it, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, everyone knows these books exist, but they still change their covers every couple of years.

And there's a reason why they do it, which A, you want to sell more books to people that already own your books. Cause they want the new cover. And then also to pull in like new readers, just cause there's new readers, growing up and being born all the time. And we want to target those to them as they get interested in different genres and different series.

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, I think that's really important. And I even just was on a podcast yesterday where I was telling them some of the stuff that I want to do with the series that I have out right now. And I was like, but before I do any of that, I need new covers because I made these covers five years ago.

They're not to genre anymore. And [00:16:00] that's, that is the sacrifice you have to make sometimes if you want to sell more books, change. And if, if you're okay with where things are, that's okay. But be honest about that and be honest about what your goals are. And it's okay to have different goals. 

So one of the things that we've talked about in changing this, that I know, like for me, like I was saying about this cover series, I spent a ton of money on and that has to be redone. And so I'm excited, of course, because I can use some AI and some things like that to get those covers to make those improvements to the covers where I think in previous years, I would have just been like forget it. I don't have the option. Now I can have a little more options with that with AI tools. And so I'm wondering how you're looking at that. How are you approaching AI and publishing? 

**Jill Cooper:** A little differently, I like different depends where I am. I do love AI art. I'm not good at prompting it. So I pay other people to prompt it for me. Like, you know, like cover artists, So like [00:17:00] they're so amazing with their AI Art. We're changing how the lighting hits and it looks so realistic or fantastic if I'm looking at a fantasy thing. so I still I pay people to help me generate the kind of images I'm going for. I do use A I to write when I'm writing fiction. it's starting to happen more frequently that I'm writing at all. I spent like, I'm going to say five years completely burnt out. I got COVID and then writing a simple sentence like a dog walked across the street was so hard.

Like I could not do it and it was just frustrating and I hated it every second of it. So I just stopped. I'm like, I don't like it. I'm not going to do it anymore, but then there was always this thing where you get a story idea and you're like, well, I sure wish I could write and I would have some episodes where I would, I would cry.

Like, I just can't do it. I want to do it, but it's just not happening. And then when I started using a little bit of Claude Novel Crafter, it's like, Oh my God, like the joy is there. I train it on my [00:18:00] previous books, like my voice for young adult, let's say. And I can't tell the difference.

I sent it to Mal, and Mal was like, if you didn't tell me this was AI, I would have thought this was you because I cannot tell and I know like that's just going to keep getting better, right? Because we're still at the infancy stage of AI and what it can do. And it's just exciting. I have this crazy idea and normally I'd be like, well, it's going to take three months for me to write that crazy idea.

So I like can't even like, no, but now it's like, I'm just going to try to see where it could go. And then just have fun plotting out the different scenes or the different beats. And I know it's not instantaneous. It does take work, but it's fun and it feels collaborative.

And I'm just really, really just enjoying it. 

And then, there's the business side where I use a bunch of different tools to help me create workbooks off of Mal's videos and scripts. Like, I already have the scripts. So I just use mostly ChatGPT plus something called Beautiful dot AI, which will make [00:19:00] slides for you. It makes like a set of slides and it's, it is not enough and they are not that great, but the different layouts are awesome. So I can just pick and choose what I want and then just modify it. So rather than starting from a blank document or page, I have a skeletal structure and then I can just go in there and build it out to how I want it to look. Cause I have those ideas. I have trouble, when it's just blank, like help me.

**Steph Pajonas:** Me too. I'm right there with you. I'm going to have to get the link to that because slideshows are like my Achilles heel. I'm always just like, I don't know where to start. So if something gives me a skeleton, that sounds like a great idea.

**Jill Cooper:** It was great. We were building out this class, how to build superfans. And I was very specific. I knew exactly what I wanted. So I'm telling, like, I was building it out of Chat GPT saying, this is my audience. These are the things I want to hit. So it's building me basically like an outline. So I can go in and write a script for Mal's class. 

So then I took the script and I said, well, what slides would you recommend? For these and then it changed the document to these are the slides [00:20:00] and this is what it should go with. And then I was like, great. Now we have the slides. Okay, now let's take these slides. What would we make a workbook for the people that are watching this presentation so they can make notes and follow up and that's basically how I did it. That probably would have taken me a week, 5 to 7 days of hard work. And I was able to do it all in like, A couple hours a day? 

And it was just fun too. I didn't feel overwhelmed or frustrated, which I still get that way a lot since my bad COVID like two years ago, where I just, I shut down. Sometimes.

**Steph Pajonas:** I hear you. You know, my story also coming to AI from COVID brain fog, and I still have lapses where like I have a really bad week where I just can't even think. Can't. Can't form sentences. It's really hard doing a podcast sometimes when I can't form sentences. Like, coherent sentences, but I make it work. 

Anyway, yeah, so I definitely feel you. The AI is there to help us, and to level [00:21:00] us up, which is what I say a lot. But I'm I also really love it for all of these business things because at the Future Fiction Academy, we do a lot of Zoom classes with our students, right? And I take the transcripts when I'm done doing the editing and descript. I take the transcripts and I have a bunch of prompts that I run them through on GPT, usually 4 0, and I'm like, give me a blog post about this. Help me come up with keywords, like whatever I need to do, I have that source material from the transcript and it can give me whatever I want. I love that you're making workbooks, you're doing all this fun stuff.

it's all stuff that students want, but it is very hard to produce and come up with if you don't have some starting point like you do. So I like 

**Jill Cooper:** Yeah. Do use also Fathom for, Zoom calls because I found them like very, it's very handy. If you're, we're having strategy calls with authors, we're having like this kickoff for all, our memberships, when people come in I can just run the Fathom notes. I'm in there with Mal and the client.

I'm [00:22:00] highlighting like, okay, this is, this is a highlight and they'll just create like these little snippets. and then I create basically a to do list based on everything everyone is saying. And able to send this them, almost as like this full package of here's your recording. Here are the highlights. Here's the stuff that Mal says you need to do in the next 30 days. And just keep building that way.

I've also used it to help me create social media strategies and I made like a generic one for a person that has never used social media before for business at all. Like they have no idea, right? So I create a basic strategy and then I'm able to say, okay, what topics would a paranormal cozy author that's writing witch romance what kind of topics would they talk about? I'm able to basically, I'm breaking it down by genre. Now I have so many social media strategy documents on my computer and I'm just uploading them into the membership into our school community.

Because a lot of times. I do hear, well, I'm on social media, but I have no idea what to post. I don't know what to do? Do I just share memes? Like, what, like cat [00:23:00] videos? What do I do? Right? And obviously that stuff is great, but it's not going to get you fans of your genre to notice you. So I'm just building everything out, like a document at a time. And Mal, I sent her the social media strategy. She's like, this is amazing. How long did this take you? Like, oh, so long. No, I told her right away. 

**Steph Pajonas:** So long. 

**Jill Cooper:** know you can just add some pictures to this document and then it would like be really snazzy.

So I did that too. I was like, fine, I'll make it snazzy.

**Danica Favorite:** But I love that. I love that your approach and this is why I was really excited to have you on here. It's like, okay, is there something that AI can help me with or where am I struggling? Okay, cool. Let me try AI for this. And it's cool because I see you using AI in so many little ways that make this huge difference.

And I think that is where every author can take a little piece and say, okay. I'm willing to do this, I'm not willing to do [00:24:00] that. We just had someone in the AI authors group say, I am not willing to use AI for this part of my process. And we're like, that's cool. Other people do and they find it successful and, but hey, like here's where you are using it and where you're successful.

And so it isn't about everyone saying, Okay. Do all AI for all things. If there's pieces you love, do it. Jill for you, you've got all these great ideas. So you don't need AI necessarily to say, tell me how to do this super fan thing. Cause you already had your super fans pretty well set in your head.

You just went to AI and said, Hey, this is my idea. Help me bring it to life. And I think that's really cool.

**Jill Cooper:** And I feel like the more I use AI in these like little ways, the more I find, I think, oh, I could use AI to help me with that. Like someone wants a calendar of social media posts. You know, for like, say six months. So I said, okay, 

**Steph Pajonas:** You're like, I can do that. Let's do that. 

**Jill Cooper:** We already have the list [00:25:00] of what you should be posting. Let's put a schedule, how often do you want to post? And she's like, twice a week. So, okay, we want to post twice a week. These are the topics. Can you just make a calendar? And then I said, don't assign a month to it because I have no idea when they're going to start doing it and leave it generic. And then we just did that. 

So I find the more I use it, the more I can find these little ways to do it. And just because the AI spits it out at me doesn't mean that's okay, that's the final thing. I'm going to read through it. I'm going to tweak it or change it. I had A I write my author note in my new story and I said, this is what I want to say in my note.

And then, I read it and I, I changed stuff at the end and I put my little my signature, my signature moves on it. And then so I do feel like all of the AI stuff is me. I feel like I'm just asking, like, how can AI serve me, our clients, our customers, our readers, to make things better and easier. 

We all want to make things easy in our lives all the time. That's why we go to the store, [00:26:00] there's a box of cake mix, you know, like, because we could make everything from scratch. Of course we could, but sometimes you just want to make a quick batch of brownies, and you don't want to have to do everything yourself and for me I feel like AI it's like the same thing I'm just looking to make life easy for me, and we're always doing that so why is it different with this?

Because I don't think it really is

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, I agree. I think that needs to be the new slogan. How can AI serve me? That's so perfect. I think that's really wonderful. Yeah, there you go. For those of you listening, Jill just did this really cute little model move. AI serving her was perfect. Our second question, which you've talked a little bit about already, like it's been nice because it's all flowed together is what does your AI workflow look like?

And you've talked a little bit about that already. So, I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add or share more that might be helpful to people listening. 

**Jill Cooper:** I feel like for business stuff, I use chat GPT a lot. And I will just basically stay there, I feel like, and I've gotten to [00:27:00] the point where I say, Oh, well, okay, once you're done, make it a doc, make it a PDF. Make sure you add the lines so people can write their answers on it. So it does all that for me. 

If I'm doing fiction, I used to use like, ChatGPT, Claude, but now that I'm got comfortable with NovelCrafter, which took a bit. I actually hired someone to set NovelCrafter up for me, because I just logged in there and I was like, no, this is too hard, too hard.

No, I'm going to hire someone and they're going to have them set my book up and then once I see it, I'll be like, Oh, okay. So that's basically what happened. I was like, Oh, okay. Well, that wasn't that hard. And it didn't cost me a lot of money, so I was just happy to have it. So now I do everything fiction and novel crafter.

I don't do my own images. I get people to send them to me, and then maybe I'll do something in Canva with it, like to expand it or add text, but I'm not really good with text either. So I usually will have to ask Mal, like, can you do some typography for me? And then about six weeks later, I'll get it. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

**Jill Cooper:** I do have Revoicer. ai. I'm going to [00:28:00] turn my new story into an audiobook to stick on YouTube. It's not really part of my workflow yet. That's something I will do after a project is over. I used to get every subscription I could to test out new things, but now I feel pretty good where I currently am.

But we'll see what happens. I'm sure I will add something eventually. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, that is definitely a challenge. You see all the tools. You want to learn all the tools. So all these subscriptions I did, it was funny, I did just let my Mid Journey subscription go and then I was kicking myself for it because everyone's like, Oh, but now you can do this in Mid Journey.

I'm like no, I'm not because I am also not very good at the image generation. So, it's important though, to really think about that. You hear about all the pretty shiny tools and really finding what works for you. I love that you found someone to set up NovelCrafter for you because I did give up on NovelCrafter.

I still pay for the stupid thing. I really need to like not but

**Jill Cooper:** you want a reference, let me know. I can send her over.

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, like but I just sit there I'm like I cannot figure this thing out. [00:29:00] It's too much work. That is what you have to do is figure out where is my time best spent? And is it me doing it? Is it me hiring someone to do it for me?

Even, with the images and the covers, I was saying, like, for me, the answer probably will be AI covers. But I can get those with someone helping design them at a fraction of the cost. I've seen a couple people talk about how they're making AI covers that don't seem too terribly expensive.

And I'm like, okay, I can afford that. I can't afford to redo the thousands of dollars I spent on some of these other covers. So, it's 

**Jill Cooper:** I'd say we have AI, like AI elements on our covers. For over a year, and I don't think anyone has noticed because it's just an element, right? Like, especially for sci fi, it's so much easier. We'd spend hours looking for a, like a stock background that we could use for a sci fi cover, where now we could just make custom stock images. We don't care if other people are using the same ones, uh. It doesn't make a difference.

It makes it easier and makes it more personal. Our sci fi artist for our [00:30:00] covers, it's totally like he's been using AI now for us and for himself and other clients, like just so much easier, just get a bridge.

Boom, done. Okay.

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, yeah, when we had Mal, Mal made the same point where just with sci fi covers, it's been so much easier with AI to get the images that you guys want. It doesn't have to be either or, you don't have to say just AI or no AI, it can be that blend. I think that's where the trend is going to go more towards.

It's not going to be just. Oh, everything's solely AI. It's going to be, okay, there's a blend. And in many cases you won't be able to tell.

**Jill Cooper:** Back in the day, we paid for custom photo shoots to get models. No one had seen before to get armor that looked like Mal's character's armor. And that is expensive. Let me tell you, this is much easier. And, and those artists are still getting the money. Cause they're putting the covers together for us. And it's just been a great working relationship. 

**Danica Favorite:** We've talked a lot about your process and things. I love that you're using AI for so many different things in so many different [00:31:00] ways.

**Jill Cooper:** It'll probably change next week too. Like I'll just add something new,

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, yeah. But I love that. And that's what I love talking to you. Because we're friends, so we do talk a lot. And it is always cool to hear, wait, Jill's doing that? Wait, what? And so I love that there's always something new that you're trying, that you're doing. It's always encouraging me to be like, Oh, I'm doing this. Ooh, I haven't heard of that. Ooh, I'm gonna try that. And like I said, the temptation is you don't want to try everything cause that's all you do. But, 

**Jill Cooper:** not all at once. Right.

**Danica Favorite:** Right! But it is fun. It's so much fun. And it does bring the joy back. Steph and I had an episode earlier this season where we were talking about how, for us, AI has brought so much of the joy back in our writing.

And I love that it did the same for you, in terms of like, Yay! I have this joy again, and it's not so stressful. 

**Jill Cooper:** Yeah, even if I decide not to publish them or not to publish right now, like I'm just having fun [00:32:00] and they can stay on my computer forever, like it, or for whenever I decide it's time to publish, I don't necessarily need to race to publish. I can just have a good time... 

**Danica Favorite:** Right. Exactly. I've heard in some of our conversations where you'll have this. Oh yeah. And I was working on this little thing. I'm like, okay, hurry up, finish it. I want it. And now, now we can get that from you. 

**Jill Cooper:** Right? Yes. 

I can finally release my grizzled bunny mech warrior sci fi series.

**Steph Pajonas:** Bunny Mech Warrior.

Excellent. I betcha, did that come from an inspiration from Monty Python? Perhaps? 

**Jill Cooper:** It didn't actually. It came inspiration from a video game I saw at PAX East last year, where it's this grizzled bunny with a carrot, you know, like he's, yeah, going off to fight aliens on some video game and I just thought he was so cute. Like I always do cats in space, what if I did a bunny? 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah. And I'm always pressuring her for more cats in space. 

**Jill Cooper:** I [00:33:00] know, I know. I never get invited to the pet space anthology and I feel like I should be. 

**Steph Pajonas:** You should totally be in Pets in Space. I'll put a little bug in Carol's ear for you there.

**Jill Cooper:** Invite me out. I would love to write a cat story specifically for the anthology.

**Danica Favorite:** I'm telling you, the cat's in space. That's where it's at. And, but see, this is what I love is that, The three of us can sit here and laugh and joke about all of our story ideas and I can low key high key pressure Jill about stories I want from her and we can laugh about it as opposed to like feeling the stress of, Oh, my God, I have to write this thing. And and now we can just laugh and be like, yeah, because it's

**Jill Cooper:** used to feel that stress, that like, every day, if I don't write 5, 000 words, and I have a kid in preschool, and I have to go pick them up, and then I gotta spend time with them, and I have to make dinner, and like, I only wrote 3, 000 words, and what am I gonna do, and I'm such a failure, and, just let go of all of that.

**Danica Favorite:** Yes.

**Steph Pajonas:** [00:34:00] Yeah, just let it go. We don't need that stress anymore.

**Jill Cooper:** No. And I learned that when I had, congestive heart failure. I was in the hospital for eight days. You gotta fix this, you gotta get off the stress train and putting so much pressure on yourself. You had to revamp all our lives just to, to deal with that and recover from that and not face a like, well, am I going to be dead in 10 years sort of future?

I didn't want that.

**Danica Favorite:** Oh, no, absolutely 

**Steph Pajonas:** of us want that.

**Danica Favorite:** And that's how we think about how do we make a sustainable writing career? And what can we do that's sustainable? And a lot of the stuff you described in your business and your business processes and the things that you're doing, which are great service to authors, that isn't sustainable without AI.

Like, you couldn't do all those workbooks and all of the cool things that you're doing with your different courses if you didn't have that assistant doing what you want.

**Jill Cooper:** Now I need to hire more people to make workbooks full time or something 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah. [00:35:00] 

**Jill Cooper:** Yeah. 

**Steph Pajonas:** And that's not necessarily sustainable either. So, this is where these tools come in handy because they're there to help lighten the load a little bit. You can still farm out plenty to other people like you do with your covers and the images and all that kind of stuff. It's just that we're able to give a little bit of extra value to some of our clients, our students, whatever it may be just by using these tools to help take the information that we already have and present it in different ways. 

**Jill Cooper:** Because it's always, it's up here. It's just getting it out sometimes is hard or not a priority, depending what the day looks like with everything else we have going on. So, I can do that and not at the end of it, not feel mentally exhausted. I can still go on and do other things and be around for my family or whatever it is that we're currently doing.

I can write and not feel mentally just done for the day when it's over. I can switch gears faster between fiction and business and any other full [00:36:00] time crochet business manager and like all these things that I have to balance that we're always doing. It just makes it a lot more sustainable and fun.

And so I just always want to do more. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Now, now I get to tease you more because you have all these different business ideas and all these businesses and your daughter who has all of her businesses for crochet stuff and all the different things. And I think pre AI, that to me is just absolutely exhausting and here you are just energized by all of it and it's exciting because the ideas in your head don't have to stay in your head. 

And in my opinion, part of the stress happens when you have all these things in your head and all the stuff you want to do and you don't have the bandwidth to do it. And with AI, you finally have that bandwidth, which I think is amazing. And it just makes me excited for all the things I know you have in the pipeline and all the things that you get to do.

**Jill Cooper:** It's [00:37:00] very exciting. And I do also think about like, well, is this project worth my time? Because, 47, how many more projects can I really do? Is this worth actually investing a lot of time and energy into? And that's a question I didn't ask before I had, I was hospitalized with heart failure. I just thought I had all the time in the world. So I feel like that really has framed how I think about things or how I tackle different responsibilities, whether I want to take it on or not. And, and, yeah, the AI just helps make some tasks easier and faster to accomplish.

And to me, AI is tech and it's not different than any other tech that I use, whether, I don't write out by hand. I don't use a typewriter anymore. I use the computer. I know some people like to write by hand. I'm not one of those people. I love to buy 

**Danica Favorite:** I am. 

**Jill Cooper:** not going to write it.

**Steph Pajonas:** so many notebooks that are just sitting there blank because I really do not like writing and I don't like my handwriting and I'm just like, why do I keep buying these? Because they're [00:38:00] pretty! 

**Jill Cooper:** My daughter has shelves of journals. 

I don't think she ever cracks them open because she's like, well, they're beautiful. What would I write in them? 

**Danica Favorite:** yeah, I have shelves. You can't see it in this view, but I do have shelves of journals and they are all written in. But what's cool for me now is with AI. I've been exploring this a little bit. I haven't fully done it is since I dictate my books when I'm writing one of the things, many projects on my list is I'm going to actually take these journals now because I can actually take a picture of the page and AI will translate that into text for me.

I have terrible handwriting, I have terrible handwriting and it can still be read by AI. It's amazing. My kids cannot read my handwriting, but AI can. 

**Jill Cooper:** That's awesome. I have seen like some of that new tech, you know, coming up and it's like, man, what else are they going to think of? Oh.

**Danica Favorite:** Exactly. So, I really think there's just something for everybody. So, with all these [00:39:00] tools, yeah we'll, we'll talk about the last question, and I know when we were chatting beforehand, you're like, I don't know if I can pick.

So, you don't have to pick, but can you tell us about your favorite AI tool? And if you've got like a favorite one for this or a favorite for that, you, you can say that. 

But we'd love to hear about your favorite tool. 

**Jill Cooper:** I guess I'm just really loving NovelCrafter right now because it's the newest, I admit. Everything else I've been using for like ChatGPT, like, oh, that's so 2023 or whatever, but I like NovelCrafter. I liked it all. I liked it. My codex is over there that I have a search and I can type in a keyword and it will show me the character.

I can automatically generate a summary for every chapter as I finish and I can toggle between different AI, whether I want to use something that's better for something steamy, let's say, or I'm just using like straight Claude, which is what I use 90 percent of the time. And I just like the way like structures and everything is together and I can do a chat off a scene or do a chat off a codex and it knows what I'm talking about. So that is currently my favorite. [00:40:00] But Again, that could change, 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah,

**Jill Cooper:** could change next week, 

**Danica Favorite:** I think that's valid because again, there's new stuff all the time and we're always learning and finding different tools and things like that. So, I think it's valid to say that could change because it will. 

**Jill Cooper:** right? It will. And that's, I feel like my most advice for publishing is it's going to change. It's going to change next, like next week, just as you figure out Facebook ads, it's going to change. You have to be ready to change and go with the flow. Also, the finance aspect of the business is also like that, where you have the highs and you have the lows, and the key is to find sustainability where you can try to have almost like a field with small pitches with the releases, but you don't want to sink to the bottom all the time. We want to help authors find that sustainability and longevity, because we all see the authors that made it big, and then 2 months later, a year later, like, you can't find them anymore.

Where did they [00:41:00] go? I'm going to guess a lot of them burn out. A lot of them just like, well, I made the money once and I wasn't sure how to do it again. And or they just got tired and they're just like, I just had to stop because it was just exhausting. So I want more authors to find ways to do it in a sustainable way for them, which isn't necessarily what's going to work for me or for someone else, but everyone has to find their own key to, to figure it out and stay in it and keep joy alive.

Cause for me, if, there's no joy, then there's no reason to do it.

**Steph Pajonas:** I agree with that a hundred percent.

We just did a podcast about finding the joy and we think that's really important. Like if you're not having a joyful experience doing this job, then I don't know why you're doing this job in the first place. You should probably do something else. which is why I reject this whole notion that you have to, like, You have to open a vein and bleed out for your craft, for your art, you need to suffer. And I, I reject that wholeheartedly. Crafting [00:42:00] and doing your art should be a joy.

It should Absolutely.

be a joy. Mm 

**Jill Cooper:** You'll suffer for your art thing is almost as old as art itself and it's hard to, hard to shake like art should be painful and it should, you should be broken. Like, I reject all of that.

**Danica Favorite:** I do, yeah, I reject it as well. Because it's all from a completely different time period. Where, back in the day, art wasn't accessible to the masses. All these books behind me, that would be a sign that I was an extremely wealthy woman. And now, anyone can have a whole bunch of books. It's so much more accessible to people that that idea of suffering, no, you don't have to suffer because anyone can have art anyone can create art and so do it all and be joyful and have that art out there for anyone to enjoy and authors should be able to make a living wage doing it. That is all part of rejecting all of those [00:43:00] past beliefs that we've had of art that no, I don't have to be this starving artist living in an attic that's barely heated.

And no, I don't have to do that anymore. Thank God. I don't like the cold.

**Steph Pajonas:** Me neither. All right. This seems like a good place to wrap up our conversation. I know that Jill has to get off to another live that's going on. So let's look, yeah, you almost forgot 

right? So tell us tell us how everybody who's listening can find you and the Writing Wives, your writing, and your business stuff as well.. 

**Jill Cooper:** You can find us at thewritingwives.com. Also on Facebook, if you type in the writing wives group, I think will probably come up. Most of my books are not available , but you can find me on Amazon under Jill Cooper and Chris J Pike is the name I write my sci-fi under. The other stuff, I don't know, you'll just have to guess.

**Steph Pajonas:** Well, good. I love a good guessing game, so [00:44:00] that's fine with me. 

**Jill Cooper:** Send me screenshots. Is this you? Is this you?

**Steph Pajonas:** I will find you eventually. 

**Jill Cooper:** Yeah. And I eventually cop to a couple of them.

Yeah. 

**Steph Pajonas:** I'm sure. Well, thank you so much for coming, Jill. It was awesome talking to you. We're so pleased. I love talking about all these topics. So it's great to talk about them with a friend. Right, Danica? It's

just so much fun to do this. 

**Jill Cooper:** it was so much fun. I've loved hanging out with you girls, you ladies. It was a 

for making it easy.

**Steph Pajonas:** Excellent. All right, all right. So everybody come by the Brave New Bookshelf website. So it's bravenewbookshelf. com. Read the blog post about this particular episode. Find the links of the things that we were talking about here and go off and be creative as well. All right? So everybody, we'll see you on the next episode.

Bye!

**Danica Favorite:** Bye.

Thanks for joining us on the Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube [00:45:00] and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at BraveNewBookshelf. com, sign up for our newsletter, and get all the show notes.