25 - Harnessing AI for Author Success with Lorna K. Bailey

In this episode of Brave New Bookshelf, hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite are joined by Lorna K. Bailey, an expert executive virtual assistant for authors, to explore how AI can be harnessed for author success. Lorna shares her insights on creating efficient workflows and leveraging AI tools like ChatGPT to streamline administrative tasks, allowing authors to focus more on their creative endeavors. With practical advice on using Notion as a "second brain" and integrating AI into everyday processes, this episode is a must-listen for any author looking to enhance productivity and scale their business. 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 and welcome to an episode of Brave New Bookshelf. I'm one of your co hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO and COO of the Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their business. We're coming into the last couple of months of the year here and lots of people are getting those Christmas novellas written, , and getting ready to do some Black Friday deals and Cyber Monday stuff coming up, which I'm always excited about as a person who loves to grab software when it's on sale.

So. We're just cooking along here towards the end of the year and into 2025, can't even believe it. But of course, I'm joined by my lovely co host again, Danica Favorite. How are you doing today, [00:01:00] Danica? 

**Danica Favorite:** I am doing great. I'm Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at PublishDrive, where we work with authors to help them on every stage of their publishing journey. From getting that book formatted to getting the optimal metadata for your book and the optimal description to distributing your book to helping you with your ads and then a royalty splitting once that book is published and having various sales promotions in the different stores for your books.

So We've got all kinds of things for authors at all stages. And I love that. And I love that we're working with Future Fiction Academy, helping the authors get those books written. So, yeah, that's me. That's what I do. What I'm excited about. I am also excited about the Black Friday and software sales stuff.

And even though you're a Mac person and I'm a PC person, you let me know about those deals because I feel like later, like, months later, you're like, oh, yeah, I picked this up and I'm like.

Why don't you tell me so make sure you tell me, but speaking of telling and [00:02:00] deals and cool things happening. I think by the time this podcast launches, PublishDrive will have launched a new product that I can't talk about yet. But I think Steph knows what I'm talking about and we are all very, very excited.

So I can't wait to tell you about that. Steph and I are going to be meeting up here very soon at AuthorNation and going to be hanging out there, going to be hanging out with our people. I think, though, this one, will this episode go live during AuthorNation or after? 

**Steph Pajonas:** I feel like 

**Danica Favorite:** it's 

**Steph Pajonas:** right around there, maybe the week of or the week before, somewhere in there.

Yes, 

**Danica Favorite:** so if you're watching this before, or during this might be after we don't know, but still very excited because just so many cool things happening towards the end of the year. And I hope you're all excited too. 

So, speaking of exciting things, we have an exciting guest today. Her name is Lorna K. Bailey. That [00:03:00] K is very important. So, we will have links in the show notes and everything, but make sure if you're Googling her, looking for her, because you're just listening to this in your car, if you are interested in her and what she has to talk about, make sure you look up Lorna K. Bailey. That's a K dot, the K initial. 

Anyway I'm excited to have Lorna because Lorna is an author assistant. She's a virtual assistant. She does a lot of things for different authors and has a lot of author services. And I love hearing about how authors can get assistance in ways they haven't thought of.

And so, what's great about Lorna and what she does assisting authors, I think one of the things Steph and I talk about a lot. Is gosh, what are the things that you struggle with? What's hard for you in your writing journey? What don't you like to do? That is where someone like Lorna is really great and really capable.

And what's awesome about having someone like Lorna [00:04:00] is she too is using AI tools, to the extent that the author she's working with are good with that. So again, it's the same thing we always talk about. Pick what you like, use what you like. And if there's something that you're not comfortable doing with AI, you're not comfortable doing with yourself.

We've got someone like Lorna who can help you, which I think is super great. This is really the great thing about the writing world right now. It's a really choose your own adventure and you get to choose what you want to do, what you do and don't like. So I will hand this over to Lorna.

Lorna, tell us about yourself. Tell us what you do and any other interesting things that our listeners might appreciate hearing about you. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Thank you first off for having me on the show today. I'm really excited to talk to you both I love PublishDrive and what they do So I feel like i'm amidst royalty right now.

So Hanging out with you guys today. But yeah, so i've been an executive assistant since 2014. I've supported various [00:05:00] entrepreneurs in various capacities whether that was full time employee or part time contractor and I somehow landed in the self publishing world because my husband's an author and so I wanted to help him with his indie author journey back when it was the wild west of CreateSpace and you could throw a book on Amazon and no competition and it was just really great.

So I've been in the industry for quite a while just supporting other people. I myself am not an author. I do have a couple books in mind that maybe someday when I get the time to write, as you guys know It's very time consuming writing a book, unless you use AI and so that really is my background is supporting my husband with his author journey and then supporting other authors as well. I also support entrepreneurs in the indie author industry Marianne Roach Smith who coaches a Authors on how to write memoir.

It has been a long time client of mine. I love supporting her and then I also supported Dave Chesson who's the creator of Publisher Rocket, [00:06:00] Kindlepreneur, Atticus. And so I've had the privilege of working with some really amazing people in the industry and I kind of like to explain my sweet spot being helping authors find that connection between creativity and productivity, right?

So, wanting to publish books, not wanting your productivity to hamper your creativity, but also being realistic of if you don't have systems and processes in place, then you're just making things much more difficult for yourself, and you're not able to produce books on time and as often as you'd like, right?

So, finding that sweet spot in the middle. I am a systems and processes geek, and I love building those out for authors. I have a course where I literally teach authors, here's how to create all of that in your business, step by step, hold your hand through the whole thing. If you don't want to hire someone, or if you're not in that budget area. I love helping authors do that. I love books. So, I'm on the other side. I'm a reader, avid reader. I love to consume. but I also love helping authors produce good books. So, 

**Danica Favorite:** [00:07:00] That's awesome. I'm already like, okay, sign me up for your course.

I need to learn my system, like, especially, as we've talked about the past few weeks with my computer crash and having to get this new computer, grateful that I had some systems in place for sure. And I did not lose anything. I did lose some writing in Raptor Write. But those were during the crash period and that was just because of how Raptor Write is set up and I was not saving as often as I should have.

But that said, I am all about finding those systems because like I said, I am grateful for the ones I had. I'm like, okay, give me more. Tell me more. So tell me about some of the author systems you set up. Obviously this is a selfish question, but I know when I talk to other authors, they're also like, oh my goodness, I need a system for that.

And I'm like, dude, I can't help you. So I can help you. I've got Lorna right here. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Yeah. So It's so different author to author, right? And that's what I love about systems is you make them work for you. So if [00:08:00] one system works for one author, but you see their system and you're like, I hate that. That looks awful. You do not have to do it that way. 

And they don't need to be complex. They don't need to be five softwares all comingled together. Really, it's what about works for you. So for instance, one of my favorite project management tools is Notion and I love Notion because it is so easy to use. And it also is really kind of like a wiki for your author business.

So you can have all sorts of things in there like your character profiles, helping you remember what color of eyes does this character have because readers will pick up on inconsistencies like that It's crazy. I love notion as well because it's really helps you have everything in one place, and I think that's the key here, right?

So if you use Google Docs and Google Sheets, that's okay. If that works for you, there's no shame in that whatsoever. Some authors who love to do world building in their books and have these crazy big fantasy [00:09:00] realms will use Google Sheets to keep track of the regions and the terrain and the different kingdoms and the lore behind the kingdoms and that's fantastic.

So if that works for you, there's no shame in that. Keep doing it and be consistent with it. That's always the key. 

So Google Docs, Google Sheets, love using those. The first step though is always using SOPs. So SOPs is the Standard of Procedure. So this is kind of a military term, which sounds icky to a lot of creatives.

Of this strict step by step, this is how you do this. But say, for instance, you create, like, a newsletter lead magnet. A lead magnet where it's a bonus scene that gets readers signed up for your email list. And you document exactly how to set that up for your next book in a Google Doc as an SOP.

That is going to save you so much time, because the next time you go to do it, you're not going to procrastinate. Ugh, I don't remember how I did that. That was four months ago. Or, oh my gosh, this [00:10:00] software is so complex, I can't, and you put it off. But if you document it, and you have it in an SOP, and you make it easily accessible, you are going to save yourself so much time, so much headaches, and it's amazing.

And so, training yourself to think in that way, that is really how a lot of successful authors operate. They don't fly by the seat of their pants. They have things documented. They have a team that's helping them. And that really is the key to scaling, is making things easier for yourself, so you can spend time writing your books, thinking about which character am I gonna kill off next, right?

And not like Oh, I have to mess with this email management software once again. 

**Steph Pajonas:** You're speaking my language. I love Notion. Danica will tell you that I've been trying to get her to use Notion a lot more and get everybody on the same page. At the Future Fiction Academy, we decided very early on to start using Notion for the business.

And I'm really glad we did because they have really doubled down on their AI usage in Notion, which is great. [00:11:00] Like, they keep adding tools to it, and it just keeps getting more robust, and we keep finding new ways to add it to our process and our workflow. 

I also agree on the SOPs. I'm constantly writing those for our business as well. Like this is how you do this. This is how you do this. And then this way, we're able to hand it off to somebody else to do that, if we were not able to do it ourselves.

We're thriving, like growing business. And at some point, we're going to need a lot more help. And if we don't have those things in place, we're not able to expand quickly. It is super important. 

I also agree that you have to pick your poison, right? What is it going to be? Is it going to be Notion? Is it going to be Google Drive? All these kinds of things. 

You have to deal with lots of different kinds of people in your business, right? So, you have to be very flexible. So if this person does it like this, then you have to be able to help them out.

And then if the other person B does it like this, you have to be able to help them in that way. And that is a great quality to have because [00:12:00] goodness knows it's not easy to shift gears when you're working from one client to another. So I like that. I love that. 

**Danica Favorite:** And I totally forgot about that.

When Lorna started talking about Notion, I was like, Oh yeah, that's right. This is how Lorna and I started geeking out when I said, Oh yeah, we need to have her on the podcast because I knew as soon as Lorna was like, Oh, I use Notion. I'm like, Oh, Oh, my goodness. Steph is going to love her because yeah, we are Notion geeks.

I am still really learning it, trying to optimize my Notion usage. I'm a little bit of a slow learner, but I'm getting there. And Steph is amazing at helping me with that. And we've had a couple of other guests talk about Notion but I feel like we cannot get enough information on Notion because it's always changing.

There's always new ways to use it. And so I love hearing about how different people are using it. I will say, number 1, Steph and I do use a Notion for all of our podcast stuff, which is amazing because we each [00:13:00] have our part. And we put that in Notion and so we can quickly just send each other message.

Hey, my stuff is done in Notion. Okay, cool. Pick it up. Boom. We're good to go. And then we just share all of that back and forth. So it becomes less time consuming. All the files are in one place. We can all access it and it's great. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** The other beautiful thing about Notion is I have a Notion template for indie authors in my store on my site. So if you don't want to sit down and build Notion for yourself, it's like literally pre built.

And one of my favorite features about it is if you have an idea for a book, you can put it in there. Because my husband we literally sat down the other day and he wrote out on his whiteboard all his ideas for future books and he had like 20 ideas. And I was like capture these, put these somewhere put these in Notion. Don't lose them, right?

And so it just kind of helps free up your brain space right to just have somewhere proper to dump that information, put it in like a parking lot. Is what [00:14:00] my good friend Jen Lawrence describes it as. If you're on a meeting or you're on a walk or something, if you have a parking lot in your Notion where you can put your ideas and then refer back to sometime later that's always great too.

And that just helps you with the decision fatigue that we all face as humans every day. What t shirt am I gonna wear? What am I going to write about today? What am I going to work on? If you have something like Notion or ClickUp or Asana, or even just running to do lists in your phone, you're getting that out of your brain and you're able to use that mental energy for things that you really care about, like your writing and, connecting with your readers and having that capacity mentally and emotionally to do those things, right? It's just so helpful. 

**Steph Pajonas:** This is that whole second brain thing that everybody talks about, using Notion or Evernote or any one of these tools as a second brain. I definitely need this.

I've had COVID twice now. I have brain fog. I, it takes me some time to reach for [00:15:00] words when I'm trying to speak. Doing a podcast is not all that easy sometimes, I can tell you that much. But I need to empty those details from my brain and put them someplace where I can search for them and find them later because I just do not have the brain space for all of that information.

And as authors, we're inundated with information. You have to remember ISBNs and all of your blurbs and names of characters and if you're advertising on different platforms, you have to remember all of your advertising copy and all this stuff. And there's just no way that you can keep that all in your head at once, right? So this is why all of this is super important to be building this in places. And with procedures that you can then free up some of the space for the creative work that we want to do. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, exactly. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Even too with AI, so my personal take on AI is like, if I at this point don't feel comfortable using it to produce covers [00:16:00] or content, that's just my own personal stance on it.

I have authors though, author clients that use it for literally every single aspect of their process. And I have authors that want nothing to do with it, but I always encourage those authors that want nothing to do with it to be a little open minded to how they can use it in their day to day process.

So not necessarily like the creation process, the writing process, the production process. But how could we use AI to help integrate things and shortcut things in your business side of things, like the admin side of things, and they're always like, Okay, I think I'm open to that and then I show them there's this tool. There's this tool like you mentioned Steph like using the AI feature in Notion. You can use that and you can go into Notion and say please write out for me an SOP for Duh duh duh duh duh, like formatting my book, and use that as a place to start.

So it's just fantastic what we can do nowadays and it helps take that heavy burden off authors of some of the admin side of things too.

**Danica Favorite:** [00:17:00] Yeah, I agree. And I love that you have a Notion template. I didn't realize that. And now this is what I geek out on because again, I'm terrible at creating these things for myself. I did purchase a Notion template from someone else. Actually I've purchased two now. But and so I've taken pieces of them.

So now I'm probably going to go buy yours. So make sure you send us the link to that because we're going to put that in the show notes as well. Part of that is because I think a lot of people have that confusion of, Where do I get started? How do I start doing that? And for me, it's just overwhelmed.

And, Steph talks about her with COVID brain. For me, I'm going into perimenopause. Perimenopause brain is a thing. It's terrible. 0 out of 10. Do not recommend. And yet. This is the struggle all women face. So, like, really thinking about how you can simplify that. And so the fact that there is a tool to just start that process and say, [00:18:00] okay, I don't know where to start with Notion.

So check out Lorna's template. But also check out other templates. I know that's what made it easy for me when I started is Steph. God bless her. Seriously. I love this woman for a lot of reasons, but one of them is originally she says, okay, you know what? I'm going to help you create a Notion template.

And so she's created this notion template for me that really did get me started. I used to be in Trello. I loved Trello. And I just feel like Notion does a lot more than Trello did, although I know Trello is getting some stuff as well, but I still like Notion better. 

For those of you who have looked at Notion, who've heard us talking about it a million times and are like, okay, I love you guys. But this is hard. Please take a look at templates. Like I said, Lorna has one that, which is fantastic. I'm gonna look at it because there's always something you can learn from someone else's template, someone else's process, even if it's just taking one little thing. Because out of the two notion templates I purchased, one of them has a [00:19:00] really great place to organize finances. The other one I don't like it. And the whole AI journey is take what you want and don't worry about the rest. I love being able to piecemeal these different Notion templates and figuring out eventually I'm going to have the 1 template to rule them all. But for now, for now, I love just playing with other things.

I like what you were saying about how you have your personal feelings on how you will and won't use AI, and all of your authors run the gamut. It really is about accepting where someone is in their journey and allowing people to have that freedom to create where they're comfortable.

And so that is a great segue into my 1st question about how are you approaching AI in publishing. You've given us a little bit of that already. But if there's any more, you want to elaborate on or just share how you've taken that AI in publishing and said, okay, this is how I'm going to approach it. And here's why. I think that's [00:20:00] a really useful conversation piece. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Well, so I have like my virtual assistant side business personal assistant side of my business and then I also have my courses and my notion templates and my other products that i'm building out on the site too to help authors. And so I love using Chat GPT as just a sounding board. I will go in there and I will be like, hey, I have this product. Here's a description of it. Could you give me some sales copy for the sales page ? And then I'll see what it does. 

I have really trained my ChatGPT to really know who I am, what I do personally, what my voice sounds like, and I've got it nailed down for the copy part, which I love because I hate writing sales copy. Not my jam. And so I wish I was a copywriter because that would make life a lot easier, especially for helping authors with blurbs and descriptions and all those fun things. But yeah, I love using Chat GPT as just like a sounding board. 

I personally have had a really rough year. I've [00:21:00] had a couple miscarriages. I broke my arm falling off my horse on Labor Day And it's just been a journey. And so i've used chat gpt so much to just help me figure out all the things I have to get done this week. I have this client's thing, this client's thing. I need to clean my house at some point. I have to cook dinner each night I have to go feed horses on this day at this time. Can you please just make a schedule for me? And every time without fail it has made the perfect weekly schedule for me and it's like my own personal robot. 

So even outside of publishing just in my own personal life it has saved me so much time and it just knows me too and it'll be like Hey, you need to take time to rest because don't forget you broke your arm, right? And I'm like, what the heck? This is so weird that it remembered that, because when I broke my arm, they do an x ray and they have all these like medical gobbledygook of like radial fracture this humorous blah blah blah blah blah I don't know what this means. I'm a common citizen. So I dumped that into ChatGPT and I was like explain [00:22:00] this break to me like i'm a normal everyday person and it explained it to me in a way I could understand it. So I loved that so much. It really is like the assistant to the assistant 

I had a client a while back who had a really complex process with software so we had Book Funnel, MailerLite, and there's a third software. I can't remember what it was at the time. And we had to integrate all of these softwares together in this process of getting the reader the bonus scene and she wanted it to be tagged in a certain way. So I took all that, dumped it into Chat GPT and I said I just need you to write out the process for me of what this is gonna look like step by step and it did it perfectly.

I did have to tweak a couple things, but it was just more so like preference for the author on how she wanted things done. And then I was able to go from there and tweak it a little bit and create an SOP that i've used since time and time again. I love using it in that aspect of just making my life easier. And again, going back to that mental fatigue of just helping me take out like [00:23:00] when am I going to clean my house? Okay, when am I going to get this done? What time of day? Can I do that and I use ChatGPT for that all the time 

**Steph Pajonas:** I love that you used it for the medical advice. Goodness knows I've asked it several questions. Please just explain this to me like I'm five. Just give it to me straight. I broke my leg in 2019, like, horribly wrong.

And I wish I had had this stuff back then because I have rods and screws and plates in my legs still. When they were explaining it to me and I was on morphine, I was like, I don't know what you're saying. I don't know anything about what's going on. It would have been really helpful to have all of that, but I like the extra life help that it gives it can really get you on the right track.

It knows you after a while, especially if you have the memory turned on in ChatGPT and whatnot. So I find it very helpful. I'm glad it's been helpful to you even outside of work. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Oh yeah, for sure. Did you know you can take a picture of what's in your fridge and [00:24:00] put it into ChatGPT and you can be like, here's what I have in my fridge, can you tell me what I can cook?

What can I make with it? That blew my mind. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Yes, I've seen that. It's really cool. It's a great feature. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** it's incredible. Yeah, I'm sure you guys have discussed this on previous shows with, you are having trouble writing your blurb. You can go in there and just say here's what my book is about, here's who my ideal reader is, here's what my ideal reader likes.

They like Star Wars, Cowboy Bebop Star Trek, things like that. Can you write a blurb for me and just get started with the process and just use it as a sounding board kind of to help you lay that out and find a direction to go with your blurb. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** You can say too, like, can you write it as like a sales copy?

And remember, this is going on my Amazon sales page. So I want this to, excite readers to read my book. And it's just incredible to use it in that aspect too. 

**Danica Favorite:** It is,, and I will say Publish Drive has an easier button for that. We have a tool where you upload your manuscript and it will [00:25:00] give you the blurb and the metadata based on what's selling on Amazon.

I don't know about you guys, but I hate writing blurbs. It's my least. I know there are people who love it. I hate it. Prior to AI, I paid people to do it for me. It was really hard and really expensive, and a lot of them don't even do that anymore because it was a lot of work for them too.

Again, anything you don't like about the process, please just give it to AI and they will take care of it for you. Or again, if it's something you're struggling with, how do I get AI to do it, or no, I want a human to do it. There's someone like Lorna who can. So I think that's really what's great is, I can never emphasize enough.

If you don't like doing it, just don't. Find a way to have it done for you because life is too short and there are too many books to write, in my opinion. Yes. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Well, and that's the indie author struggle, is it's the business owner struggle, right? You're doing all the things. That's what I constantly have to remind my clients of, is you're feeling overwhelmed because you're a business owner. You're not just an author. [00:26:00] At this point we own a business, that means we have to figure out the bookkeeping and sales and KPIs and all those boring things, right? That's the beauty though of being an indie author, is you get to outsource the stuff you hate doing. When you start to think that way, that really can change the game for a lot of authors. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, it really does and I think that is another great lead into our 2nd question about what does your workflow look like? And, we've talked a lot about SOPs and things like that and we've talked about how it's helped you. So I'd love to hear a little bit number one about what your personal workflow would look like. But also are there suggested workflows or ideas, every author is different, but what are some things that maybe authors can consider in their workflow and how you do your own personal workflow as well as how you're helping authors set up that workflow?

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Yeah, totally. So I am a morning person through and through. My own workflow will often look like on Sundays I try to sit down and plan out and look ahead at what do my clients have going on? 

It's so different from client [00:27:00] to client. One client will launch this week and then this client will have a really chill week, they're just writing. They're in their writing cave and I just keep things going behind the scenes, right? 

And so I will look at my workload on Sundays and plan out my week a little bit with that using ChatGPT. I love working in the mornings. That is my time when my brain is fresh and I'm the most productive. I'm the least likely to make mistakes. And so I will do a lot of really heavy administrative work, whether it's It's emails, designing graphics for a giveaway, just random things like that, creating workflows for authors if they're using a lead magnet for instance. Any project management, I love to do all that in the morning, get that out of the way.

And then meetings and outreach or things for my own side of the business with my courses and such, I do that in the afternoons because that will require a little more of a, relaxed state, so just thinking and trying to figure out how can I help [00:28:00] authors best? What about this product? What about that product? And that's a newer side of my business. 

So that's typically what my day to day looks like. And I love using ChatGPT as I mentioned before, like at the beginning of the week, just be like, here's everything I have on my plate this week. When should I do what? And I'll tell it I like to do this kind of work in the morning. So please make sure. I can do that in the mornings and schedule this for this time.

And then as far as my own personal use of AI, I really like to use it to help me generate new ideas on how to help authors. So i'll hang out in author facebook groups and i'll just see what are common problems a lot of authors are having right now.

For instance, a lot of them were feeling very overwhelmed. They wanted some kind of project management system, but when they would sit down to use Asana or Trello, or whatever, they would just, I, I can't do this, this is too much, right?

Which some people's brains don't work like that. So I think knowing yourself is really key. Having that self awareness of what time of the day do you work best. And really as much as you can, if you have a nine to five this is so hard, [00:29:00] but trying to schedule those key priority things in that time of day when you have the most energy and your brain is fresh. 

For some people that's at night. My husband loves to write at night. So he is a night owl through and through and I'm tucked in bed with my book. And I am going to sleep. But that's kind of my day to day process.

And it's hard to answer this question because my clients are all so different. I have some clients that are very much like I don't want you to use AI for anything. I'm like, okay, that's fine. I respect that. I'm not gonna push that and I will ask them, hey, do you mind though if I use ChatGPT for this? And most of the time they're like, absolutely, that's totally okay.

And none of it is really a part of their creation process. And I have other clients that we use AI for everything, like everything possible that we can. And it just really depends. So I have to be careful with my own brain space shifting gears from client to client. So that's why I love using ChatGPT for my schedule is it can help [00:30:00] me each day. Okay, here's what I've got on my plate. Let's do this. 

**Danica Favorite:** That is fantastic. I love that. And I love that idea. Honestly, I had never thought of putting what I'm going to do into Chat GPT and have them help me with figuring out because I also use a Sunday planning session. I had never thought of just sticking. Okay, here's what I have going on this week.

How can I optimize that schedule? I'm like, that's brilliant. I'm going to start doing that. Yeah, I'm just blown away by that, which is so silly because I know to use Chat GPT for everything, right?

And there's always something new to learn. So thank you for that. 

We've talked about notion. We've talked about Chat GPT and while we were talking before, you said, Oh, I've got really a favorite tool that not everyone knows about. I want to share about that. So tell us about that tool. And is that your favorite AI tool?

Or, what our final question is, is what is your favorite AI tool. So let's talk about that. Let's talk tools. Cause I know Steph and I love to geek out on that. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Yeah. [00:31:00] So I would say it's my favorite, but it's one that I'm like, why don't more authors use this? So if you have a Facebook group, this is one of my favorite hacks to get people on your email list as an author.

If you have a reader Facebook group, you can make it so people have to answer questions before they enter the group, right? And so one of those is, do you want to be added to my email list? And they can put their email in there. 

Well, that's great. But then you have to, every time you approve people in the group, open up your email software, copy the person's name, put it in, copy the person's email, put it in. It's just a whole ordeal.

And I know as an assistant, I hate doing that daily for my authors. I'm like, I want to be spending time doing things that are going to move the needle for you, right? So I found this software called Group Collector, and I'll send you guys the link to it. It is not free. I think the lowest tier price is like $30 a year, but you can set it up with AI, so it will automatically add those people to your email management system, and you can also put like [00:32:00] boundaries with it as well.

So, for instance, some authors write spicy books, and so they will ask, are you 18 and over before you enter this group? So if someone says no, you can make it so they are not added to your email list at all, and they are not admitted to the group. You can set up boundaries for it like that, where it's not just adding people to your email list nilly willy, it's like, you can put parameters around it, which is amazing.

So I love using that. It's called Group Collector and you can do so many other things with it as well. You can have those emails all go into a spreadsheet. So if you want to see if people answer questions certain ways, you can have those segmented onto your spreadsheet in a certain way. 

And it's just an incredible tool. And so many authors have Facebook groups to connect with their readers. We need to be using AI for things like this, right? So you can spend that time. Commenting on posts and connecting with your readers and posting fun things, posting exciting updates and not worrying so much about the tech side of things like that.

So, Group Collector, it's [00:33:00] awesome, it's not free, but in my opinion, it's worth its weight in gold if that's something you do and that's a part of your strategy. That one's my favorite, I think, currently. For authors, at least. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, I've never seen anything like that. So that's cool.

I join lots of groups on Facebook and they, and if they ask me for my email address, I always think, man, it must be a pain to go through this and have to copy and paste everything over and get them into your funnel and everything. But I guess maybe they use the tool as well.

So that's really cool. That's a good tip. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, I love that because as someone who has managed multiple Facebook groups over the course of my career for various purposes, that has always been the annoying pain point. That is the first thing I offload onto somebody else. As soon as I have the opportunity to give that job to somebody else, I do.

Honestly, $30 a year to me is cheap versus $30 an hour because that takes hours to do. So Yay, that to me is a huge win. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** And well, especially for [00:34:00] PAs out there that might be listening to this, this will save you a lot of time. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, and what's nice about that, even though I talked about like the hourly payment trade off versus the annual payment, the thing is, is that, to me, that just makes VAs or anyone else doing it that you would hire to do it, it just frees up their time to do more things that are actually meaningful, because, let's be honest, this is just busy work.

This is just stuff that It helps, but it's just tedious, boring work where if you can offload that piece, then you can give more exciting and interesting pieces to people and keep them more engaged. And that is something that I love. That's a huge passion of mine in terms of thinking about what meaningful work looks like.

No one grows up wanting to copy names onto spreadsheets. And so, if we can keep them from having to do that, what can they do that would actually have some meaning to them? 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** I would rather spend time signing you up for book promotion sites and like planning that out and taking that off your plate. [00:35:00] And I think too, from an assistant perspective when AI really became big a couple years ago, a lot of assistants and authors were very nervous because it's like, oh my gosh, am I going to become obsolete?

Am I just going to use AI for every single thing? No there's some things an assistant does that are just irreplaceable, that really you still need that human aspect for it or that like forward thinking aspect. And so I always encourage assistants to not be afraid of using AI either, as long as your client's comfortable with it.

Because that's going to make you learn new skills that are super valuable. And that helps you be able to charge more per hour and to increase your quality of life, and to learn skills like project management, like running ads. There's so many different things out there assistants do. And so to not be afraid of it, but to really harness it to make your life easier.

And so that's a whole other conversation for another day, but I always encourage any PAs out there listening to this or [00:36:00] VAs, it's wonderful and it helps you to level up to help your clients grow their business and scale their business and learn new skills and things.

**Danica Favorite:** So glad you said that and brought up that point, because I hadn't thought of that, that, if as a VA, you can learn better skills and more skills that makes you more valuable. And so, rather than taking away earning power, that actually increases your earning power. How fantastic is that to give someone that capacity because Steph and I and a lot of the authors in the AI community talk a lot about how, the jobs are not going to be taken by AI, it's gonna be taken by the ones who know how to harness the AI and use the AI. And here is another example where there's this fear, oh no, it's gonna take our job.

Or actually it's going to make you do your job better and more efficiently and make you as a human more valuable. And I'm excited about that. Now I'm really excited about the whole VA business. I always have thought they were valuable, but now I'm like, [00:37:00] whew, you guys are about to really explode in how successful you can be.

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Yeah, absolutely. And I think as a VA, just having that mindset of how can I add another tool to my tool belt? So learning how to use a formatting software like Atticus, that is invaluable because all of a sudden now your client does not have to spend that hour, whatever, how long it takes them formatting your book.

That's one more thing you can take off your client's plate so they can spend more time writing more books, making more money. We all win in the end, right?

It doesn't need to be a thing that's so feared or like I said, I think it's something I would love more assistants to harness and to really use as a tool in their tool belt. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, I think that's the quote of the day. We all win in the end. 

**Steph Pajonas:** We do. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Happy assistants.

Happy authors. Right? That's always the goal. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Right. And it seems the Chat GPT might be your go to place for for that sort of like AI chatbot [00:38:00] too as well. Are you using any of the GPTs? Have you found some cool ones to like help you with your processes? 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Not yet. That's one of my goals for, especially with my broken arm, to just really learn some more about AI myself, add more tools to my tool belt for my own repertoire.

I had to lessen my workload a little bit. My clients were so amazing about it. They were so understanding and incredible, but it's really given me some time to learn and make a list. 

Perplexity is one that I keep hearing people throw out there. That's one that I really want to learn more about. So leveling up my own skills of AI and getting more comfortable with it and learning how it can help authors more and more is something that I'm really going to focus on.

I think these next couple months, it's November, December so going into hibernation mode, perfect time to learn things like that. So yeah. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Yeah, I agree. It's a good time to be learning those kinds of things. And I think that if you're working a lot with Google and stuff like that. You might want to check out Gemini.

Gemini is a very helpful tool. It can [00:39:00] access Google Maps and your Google Drive. I find it very helpful. So I'm going to send that little tip towards you. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Yeah, no, absolutely. I'll take whatever I can get. 

**Danica Favorite:** Yeah, I think we need a Google Gemini episode to be really honest because the more I learn about it and the more I try it and use it and the more you talk about it Steph, the more I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is so powerful.

So anyone out there who's a Google Gemini expert and wants to be on the podcast. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Give us a call. 

I'm so glad that you shared all of these things with us because I think it's really important for not only authors and PAs, in general for this industry to understand the different ways that AI can like, grease the wheels a little bit.

Keep everybody moving in the right direction. Even if you don't want to use it for anything in your creative process, whether that's writing or creating images or those sorts of things if you can use it for these low level tasks, I think it's really important. 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Absolutely. Yeah. And it's just all about saving yourself time.

And I'm all about setting yourself up for success. That's a [00:40:00] phrase. I have to tell myself constantly. How can I set myself up for success and make life easier in the long run with whatever process that is. And so I would love for more authors to get into that mindset and attitude of like, what does it look like for me?

One, to be a successful author. And two, how can I begin setting myself up for success? And AI tools are an absolute essential part of that for the direction and pace this industry is going. 

And with PublishDrive, I love what you guys do, because again, it's taking out that decision of, Well, where am I going to put my books? Am I going to put them on Barnes Noble? Kobo? Where? Oh my gosh, I have to sit down and do this step by step by step, and you guys are the epitome of, We got you. It's a one time thing and you're good to go. So I absolutely love that. And what you guys bring to the industry is just invaluable in that aspect as well.

**Danica Favorite:** Awesome. Thank you. I love hearing that. I love hearing from people who use it and find that efficiency win, because I think it really is about just finding [00:41:00] that efficiency, finding whatever we can to have a tool to make work easier for all of us. So, thank you for that. And Yeah, I'm right there with you.

That's why I'm here. 

**Steph Pajonas:** That's why we're all here and we're all learning. Excellent. So we want to wrap up this conversation and make sure that all of our listeners can find you online . So can you give us the URLs and let us know how they can find you? 

**Lorna K. Bailey:** Yeah. So my main place I hang out is my website, www. lornakbailey. com. I have a systems checklist on there that I really highly recommend authors use if you are just feeling overwhelmed, not sure what you're missing in your author business. I've got a great checklist on there and that will get you on my newsletter. And I try to send out any tips, tricks, strategies that I find in that newsletter. That's my main place I hang out. So www. lornakbailey. com.

And yeah, I'm actually taking a break from social media. So, I really just email the best way to get ahold of me and if you [00:42:00] want to email me, I love chatting with authors. If you're struggling with something, email me lorna at lorna k bailey. com and I'd love to point you in the right direction.

Thanks so much you guys. This was fun. I'm glad we got to connect today and I love learning new things and it was awesome. 

**Steph Pajonas:** Thank you so much for coming. We're going to be sure to put together a blog post about this episode so that people can come and read it and get the lowdown on everything And we'll, of course, include all the URLs, as usual, over on bravenewbookshelf. com. 

Don't forget to come and check us out on Facebook, on our Facebook page and on YouTube where we have videos of the podcast as well. So come check us out there.

So from me and Danica, we'll see you guys next time. Thank you so much. Bye. 

**Danica Favorite:** 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 [00:43:00] notes.