52 - Starting Over at 50: Embracing AI in Authorship with Connie Clark

In this episode of Brave New Bookshelf, hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite speak with author Connie Clark, who shares her inspiring journey of transitioning to full-time authorship at 50 by embracing AI technology. Connie discusses how she leverages various AI tools to streamline her writing process, create multimedia experiences, and build a sustainable author business. Her story highlights the potential of AI in transforming creative endeavors and offers valuable insights for aspiring authors looking to integrate technology into their workflows. Visit our website https://bravenewbookshelf.com to view the full episode notes, links and apps mentioned in the episode, and the full transcript.

Speaker: [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 an episode of the Brave New Bookshelf. I'm Steph Pajonas, the CTO of the Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their process. And yeah, I'm also Editor in Chief of the Future Fiction Press, where we're publishing lots of AI forward books. Lots going on there, lots of new books coming out.

We are also republishing all of Elizabeth Ann West's, Pride and Prejudice variations that she, wrote over the last, like eight years or so. And so that's exciting too, because I get to make covers for those books. And I love making covers. It's so much fun. And I love Pride and prejudice. So it's a dual joy for me, that's for sure. I'm [00:01:00] going to hand off to my lovely co-host Danica Favorite, because she is out and about and she's not at home, is she? 

Danica Favorite: No. No. So yes, you can all see the glorious, lovely hotel room at the Trade Winds in. St. Pete Beach, Florida. And if you know that hotel, you know that I am at the NINC conference.

It hasn't gotten underway yet. We'll do like the first dinner tonight, which is gonna be great. And very excited about that. So hopefully I'll come back with some learnings. I noticed they have quite a few sessions on AI this time, which is a pleasant surprise. Thank you to those at NINC who decided that putting some AI topics would be a good idea.

I really like knowing that more and more people and organizations are becoming forward thinking in AI. For those of you who don't know me and why I would be at NINC, I am an author who does qualify to be at NINC. I'm also the community manager at Publish Drive, and we are one of the [00:02:00] sponsors of NINC.

I'm here for doing NINC business and hopefully connecting with authors, talking to them about our products and services that we do at Publish Drive, which, we do everything from helping you create the best metadata, book descriptions and covers, all using AI to distributing your books to the largest network possible.

And then finally, once you've got some sales, if you've got some co-authors or something that you need to split royalties with, we have tools to do that too. As always, we're here for you if you have questions about that. And what's so great is partnering with Steph and the FFA, because of course, they can help you write the book and do all of the other stuff that, and marketing, we should talk. We have talked about that in a while that FFA does some cool marketing stuff as well.

So you really can, between me and Steph, we have all of the tools you need, for the complete [00:03:00] writing and publishing process, which I think is amazing and wonderful because, I was just talking to a man last night in the bar about this and how, um, yeah, that sounded a little bit, a little bit creapy, I was talking to a man in the bar last night.

But if you know, writers' conferences, that's what we do, right? We hang out in the bar and we talk about writing and just how. There are so many opportunities out there for authors and indie authors. But of course you still need to learn the craft and you still need to learn all of the pieces of being a good author.

But today we have a really great guest, Connie Clark. And when I put out the call for people to talk about ai, I really was interested in what she had to say because, she was talking about starting over again after 50. And obviously you guys know, Steph and I have talked a lot about this. I just turned 50.

Steph is right there around the corner about to do the same. 

Steph Pajonas: In January, I will be 50. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. [00:04:00] Woo-hoo, fifties rock. And, I'm working on a lot of things to help people, particularly women as they hit that 50 mark and what does life look like.

And so really wanted to hear from Connie about her take on how AI can help women over 50. There's this whole stereotype that us older women aren't good at computers and internet and all of this stuff, and we're like, no way. We can do it. We're amazing at it. And so I love that we have this great guest who can tell us more about what starting over looks like and how you can use these tools to help you and help give you that success. She was just telling us before we got on about a fun experiment she's doing. So I wanna dive into that. But then she also mentioned to me that she's got some fun audio, romance thing going on, and I wanna hear about that too.

Without further ado, we're gonna hand it over to Connie and Connie is going to tell us more about [00:05:00] herself and what she does. So Connie, please tell us about yourself. 

Connie Clark: Thank you, Steph and Danica. I'm Connie Clark, that's my pen name, and I've been around. I started publishing in 2011.

I was trad published at first. released a couple of books through trad publishing, got my rights back in 2020 after selling literally nothing, and decided, in 2020, I was going to really pursue being an author. So I started writing, doing some new author coaching stuff like that for a little while.

And, put out a few books, then went back to work as we all did, in I think it was 2023. Went back to my real job and decided after two years of doing that, that wasn't for me, after all. I wanted to go back to writing, but I needed a way to do it that was gonna be a little bit more effective than the way that I'd done it before. Because I take forever to get a book out, and I needed it to be faster and I needed my process to, to be a lot faster. And [00:06:00] so that's when I really discovered and embraced AI. And that wasn't until March of this year. It really is rather soon. Now, one of the things that I will say about us, in our generation, because it is our generation.

I'm 51. so I've been over 50 for over a year and a half, or two years now. Anyway, Is that we are in that generation where we started out, I don't know about you, but I had typing class in high school where I actually typed on an actual computer and I can type 80 to 90 words a minute, sometimes faster, depends on what we got going on.

And so I have no trouble with the typing. And then the computers, we learned computers from DOS-based programming in high school. And that all started from in grade school We didn't really have computers. So we have grown through, like in college is when I finally learned about doing DMs.

Okay. Like when my friend DMed me from across the computer lab and I was like, how did you do that? That was college. [00:07:00] So I think our generation, this is just this whole embracing AI thing is a lot more natural to us than people might think. Because we've gone through all of the different, fluxes of technology and learning. We got the TVs that are now this big and our monitors are now this thin and they used to be huge. So to me, this is just another part of that growing in all of the different things that we've just been in flux since we were kids and had to come home and, let our own selves in and get our own dinner.

Danica Favorite: I'm really glad you described it that way. Because I hadn't thought about, I literally have not thought about it until you just mentioned it, that we really did have to learn every single operating program, every single process of this whole industrial revolution. Like I, I grew up, okay, I grew up with party lines.

I don't know if any of you guys remember the party line. Like you would sit there and you'd be talking on the phone and somebody in the neighborhood [00:08:00] would pick up their phone and need to start talking and you never had any privacy. And now we've got cell phones and, t he computer lab, oh, it was like so special. You got to go to computer lab and you're right, we'd learn DOS, we would learn all of these things that were so new, and this is just one more new thing. And I admit I'm exhausted from having to learn all the new things, but yeah, AI just moves at that speed and we're used to it.

Steph Pajonas: I hear you. I also like grew up with...oh...well my mom, my mom has a master's in computer science, she got outta University of Michigan in Dearborn, Michigan. When I was younger, my mom would take me to go to her classes 'cause she didn't have a babysitter, and I would sit outside the room while she was having class and I would color on the punch cards for computers like, 'cause that was how she programmed computers was with punch cards. That is how, that's my generation. Gen X is done it all. We've gone through every kind of media as well from [00:09:00] 8 tracks to cassette tapes, MiniDisc and CD and mp3s. We've just done it all.

So I'm always excited when another Gen X person tells me, yeah, this was, AI was just like another step. It's just another step right in the process. I hear you. 

Connie Clark: That is exactly what I've been saying all along. I'm on Clubhouse, which is, I don't know if you guys are on Clubhouse or not.

I had mentioned it to Steph a few weeks ago, and Clubhouse is full of very successful authors. I was on Clubhouse five or six years ago when I was doing the whole thing before, and the conversation when I first came back, I consider this year, coming back to doing this full-time, was very different than it is now.

And so in the past six months, not even six months, we have shifted from a conversation about, oh, I would never use AI. That's cheating. You can't do that. I don't know what these people are thinking to, how are you using AI to get so efficient and how are they doing this? And today, [00:10:00] on this morning, we had a very energetic conversation about how to, how we're using AI and how you can actually use it to help you g o through the process much faster, especially if you're like me with a million ideas that you've mapped out years ago for different types and different genres and how you can put it into different pen names and how you can use AI to help you with your newsletters and help you, figure out w hat each genre is gonna want and all of the marketing things and all of the different things. There's just so much. And it's a tool. It's a tool. And being able to use it as a tool, my brain just, it has embraced it. So yeah, it, you are over 50 and you're using AI, the sky isn't falling in, it's not going crazy or anything like that.

And I think we are actually embracing it more than the younger generation in a way, because we are so used to change and oh, it's a new tool. This is fun. How can I make it work for me? And I'm a doer. I'm [00:11:00] a doer, talker, so if you've ever done those, personality types or whatever, so I will talk, but I'm more of a doer.

I like to get it done. What do we gotta do next? Let's get it done. And so this has been a tool that has really helped me, get it done and, and work even more efficiently, which I really like. Yeah. So then I started using different tools 'cause I like to play around and let's see, so there's Eleven Labs and there are all these video creations. There's Invideo, there's VEO, there's. something that starts with an S. There's, a, there's this music video creation. There's the Sono. The Sono. That's the one. there's 

Steph Pajonas: Suno. 

Connie Clark: Now Suno 

Steph Pajonas: Suno. Suno. 

I love it.

The music creation. It's so much fun. So much fun. 

Connie Clark: Suno's the music creation. There's this Sono vid dashboard for video, so there's just Sono and there's the Suno and there's, it's like book funnel, Bookclicker, BookSirens, book. Oh my God, there's so many book things. [00:12:00] So it's the same thing.

And so I started using Ideogram or Midjourney or, Banana thing. That banana one that just started, I don't even know all of these different ones for creating graphics and, I started out trying to use Claude to make some of my graphics. I like to, I and I have made my own covers since, 2020 ish when I realized how much cover design was gonna cost me if I was trying to make covers for as many books as I had planned to create. And so I used Canva and Book Brush as my biggest tools on cover design and to make everything uniform. And I found Book Brush was a pretty good tool for keeping things uniform. But Canva was easier for removing backgrounds and manipulating images and things like that, so then I discovered Ideogram. And recently, now all the characters you can, keep your characters the same. In the last few months I had started creating this little [00:13:00] audio drama. And when you said that you were doing the Pride and Prejudice, I didn't know that is one of my absolute favorite.

Jane Austen is my girl. 

Steph Pajonas: I love Jane Austen fan fiction. And it is, Elizabeth's definitely domain. This is where she likes to write in, what she was writing before she, picked up AI and started running with all the AI. So I read the Jane Austen fan fiction, but I don't actually write them myself. Maybe someday, because I do love them. 

Connie Clark: So I have this whole Regency romance thing set up. And I had been writing in small town, and I couldn't finish the dang books in small town so that I could move over and do the regency romance that I really wanted to do. And so now with AI I'm doing that.

The preference of this audio drama that I've created, and now I've got the book coming out at the end of this month, September 30th, it will be released, which is called Not a Wicked Stepmother, and it is Cinderella's stepmother, and she's not wicked. She's tired, and Cinderella was the only one she could get to do anything, because the other two girls were [00:14:00] worthless.

And if you've been a mom of teenagers, you have had this fight, with, and Cinderella being the oldest, she was one of those who felt duty bound that she had to, go ahead and do what needed to be done. 

And so that's how I've approached this whole book. And so that's how I've approached the audio drama. So in the beginning of the audio drama, it's called The Chronicles of Lady Ashbourne. And you can find it on Clark Publishing House YouTube channel, which is my publishing house YouTube channel, which had zero followers when I started it, and it probably has 20, I don't know, it doesn't have many followers.

Nobody's discovering me. However, I do have over 3000 views, so I don't know what the difference is, but somebody's looking at it, they're just not following, which is fine. 'Cause it's a passion project of mine and it started out pretty bad. I will admit the first few chapters of the audio drama are pretty rough because I was figuring out how to do it and it was just a passion project. So I had Claude make the script of the chapters that I had written. [00:15:00] And, then I was like, can you change this and make it an audio drama script, like an old BBC, audio. so I uploaded into Eleven Labs, and then I chose different character voices in Eleven Labs, and I created some of them myself. Percy's voice is based on Bridgerton characters, is how I tried to describe it. So he sounds, he's very intense and very romantic. He's just with that upper British, accent.

So upper class, British accent. So it's very fun. more recently I discovered, oh, I can actually take that out, put it in Audacity, change the way that it sounds so that I can cut out all of the false starts 'cause Eleven Labs is famous for that. And so then I started doing that and then I realized that I could actually plug in sound effects.

So I started to do that, and then I started to realize that I could take some of the pictures 'cause I created specific pictures for each one of the scenes in the audio drama on YouTube. And I [00:16:00] could actually make them into videos. And so I could take just, their five second or eight second videos and it's just a process and you guys probably are well aware of all of what you can do with it, but I'm...

Danica Favorite: No, please talk about the process because, it's so funny. W e started talking about my first question of like how you're approaching AI, which, fantastic. And then like my next question was workflow. And I think the biggest question we get from our listeners is, how exactly do you do that? You're breaking it down so well, so please keep telling us about this, because I think this is exactly what the listeners want.

I'm sitting here going, Ooh, this is fascinating. I'm gonna re-listen to this, because it is so good. And I know you are like, I've only got 20 people on my YouTube, but I would encourage everyone to go and, now that they're getting this process breakdown, go subscribe to it because this is fantastic. W e're happy to hear it. 

Connie Clark: Thank you. I'm all about transparency, let me back up [00:17:00] another step. So the other thing that I had done, before I even started the audio drama, I started a Substack. I started my whole Not a Wicked Stepmother as a serial romance, and I was writing a chapter a day, is how I was dropping. And right now I'm dropping Cinderella's book and then Drizella's book is gonna come. And then, so I have all of the stepsisters, and I even have the queen in there. So I'm doing a book, it's a whole book series, but I'm releasing it on Substack. And then once that book is done, then I'm gonna release it on Amazon.

And so I wanted to do more, So then that's how the audio drama idea was born. And so now I take the chapter, whatever the chapter is, and then I put it in Claude and I say, Claude, let's make a script. So Claude makes the script, and then I take the script and I put it in Eleven Labs, and I have a folder in Eleven Labs with all of my character so it's consistent, so it's always gonna be Margot's name, Margot's voice is the same across the entire, whenever you hear [00:18:00] Margot, you'll know. Same with Percy, same with Dresella, same with, Florenda, who's the excitable one. same with Mrs. Hathaway, who's the housekeeper helper. And last week I got to make, the French maid.

So that was fun. She speaks with a very French accent. And it was very fun to make her. So that's all consistent right along. And then I take it out of Eleven Labs. And it's a little bit of work, because I have to delete, 'cause Eleven Labs will occasionally just say whatever.

And I always use, I have to use the most recent, I think it's the 4.1 or something, so that they are actually expressive. If I make a mistake and I use the 3.7, Percy doesn't sound sexy. He sounds really dry. It's not fun to listen to, so you have to use the right. Eleven Labs, which I pay for obviously, to do that.

And then I uploaded into Audacity. Lately I also have Mixcraft, because I'm a musician and so I had Mixcraft before for mixing down, and [00:19:00] different music, and I was like, oh, I don't know why I wasn't using this before. But you can use Audacity, which is free, and then you know, you can make everything sort of level in there so that it's a little bit easier to listen to.

You can also do that if you wanted to upload it as an audiobook, And then, from there, then I create the images. And the images. I also ask Claude, okay, based on the chapter that we've just, can you create prompts for Ideogram? And I like Ideogram.

I tried Midjourney. Midjourney kept giving me weird fingers. And it was too expensive. Ideogram for what I need to use it for, works perfectly for how I'm using it, but Midjourney, they wanted more money. The images were not the way I needed them to be, and that's just because I didn't start using Midjourney.

I think that other people have great success using it and they don't have any problem with it, but for me personally, I use Ideogram. Now with Ideogram has characters, and so you can create a character in which I've done, [00:20:00] and so now my characters are consistent across every one of the episodes as well.

So when you see Margot, it's Margot, you're like, oh, that's Margot, 'cause it looks, it's the same person with the same voice in every episode. And then I was experimenting with different videos, so to make the actual image, 'cause Ideogram doesn't do video, they just do images. So I take the image and then I was uploading it into Kling and I tried that for a little while.

Kling. It's good, but their audio sucks. Let's just be clear. It's awful. And, and they, while the images are decent, they're not gr... they're not. They're like, you can tell it's AI. You can really tell that it's just AI. I've created, a video in VEO, which is also Sono. Now they've changed it to Sono Vid

That looks so realistic that you think they're actual actors and you're like, wow. And it's a ten second video. The one that [00:21:00] I am thinking of that just blew me away was, Percy comes to find her in the wine cellar where she's accidentally got locked in during the storm and it pans up, which I told it to do, pans up and then he says something about, did you get yourself locked in the wine cellar?

And she's oh. And I was like, oh my God. So it could be real people. Yeah, so that kind of blew me away. And so I know that's the direction that things are going. And it has distracted me in some ways 'cause I'm like, oh wow. So I get more invested in my audio drama than I have been in my books lately, just because I'm so excited about doing it.

But it's a whole production. And so then once you do that, I do everything in Canva. So then I bring everything into Canva and I have a template in Canva where I upload the pictures and the videos and the audio and everything together, to create the YouTube video that and then from Canva, once it's [00:22:00] all done as much, I uploaded into Substack.

See how I circled back to Substack. Now Substack, I did not know this when I first started uploading. I do it on the podcast thing that they have, the choices that you can do, and I do it as a podcast, The Lady Ashbourne Chronicles. Wouldn't you know I connected somehow, and now I know how I did it, but at the time I was like, huh, how did I do that?

That was very good of me. I connected my YouTube channel to my Substack. So when I upload the podcast, it said, do you wanna put this on YouTube as well? And would you like me to do the shorts? And I was like, yeah, sure. And that's where all the views have come from, all the shorts. And it it's just seems to know exactly what's gonna catch people's eye and their ears or whatever.

And it just does it for you. So I didn't even have to think about, I wonder which one's gonna be the best SEO for or, what's gonna give the best call to action for people to actually watch it? Or what's gonna catch your attention? It just put it [00:23:00] up there for me. And so that kind of blew me away.

And so now I have to go in though and double check that the descriptions actually went through, because there was a time when it pulled it, but it said, oh, we had an error. The error was that it didn't pull all of my descriptions. What's the description for this episode?

it writes the whole thing, including all the keywords and all the SEOs and everything. It just does it all for me, and all I have to do is just upload it. So yeah. 

Steph Pajonas: I love this, because you managed to figure out a workflow that worked well for you, and it does require some experimentation.

I've been there, I've tried to make a lot of video, and it didn't work out very well for me. It got very frustrating, so I actually set it aside. But there are plenty of people who've pushed past that frustration point that I couldn't get past and are making really cool things like this. When you're able to translate your story from just words on a page to also audio and video and everything becomes like a transmedia, [00:24:00] transmedia experiment and it, and then you are also reaching people who like those mediums better than reading. I have teenagers as well, and they definitely prefer video over reading. So if you could, if you could hit the people who are interested in that sort of medium instead of, where you started out, t he sky's the limit, right? This is where a lot of our gumption comes from as Gen Xers, like we, we've had to adapt many times in our lifetime. So like seeing this adaptation is really cool. I love the fact that you managed to use your substack to do the stories, and then do the audio, and then the video, and then come back around. Great ideas all around. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. I'm really loving too. Like I said, this description of your workflow, I think of out of all of our guests, you've given us the biggest, most detailed workflow description.

And this is one I'm personally gonna go back to, because I am doing stuff on Substack, and I do have [00:25:00] my substack and YouTube connected, and I just haven't done a lot with it. And what you just described there, I'm like, oh my gosh, that is so easy. I can do that. And that's our hope for our listeners as well is to have those moments, that they're listening and they think, oh my gosh, I can do that. Because YouTube for me is like this goal that's way out there. And I think you just gave me very simple tools that I didn't even think of. Which is so silly because I know, and now I'm like, oh yeah, this is actually closer than I think.

And that's always, what Steph and I are always saying is like, there's always a gem that we're like, oh, I didn't know that. This is so cool. I'm really glad that you shared that with us because, I think a lot of our listeners are gonna come back and take a lot of notes. yes, this is the Gen X superpower, right?

We have to adapt. I was joking with my mom about this. She's like, [00:26:00] she went to college and got that degree that you don't even use. And I'm like, yeah, I know, but. What I'm doing now wasn't even invented when I went to college.

Steph Pajonas: I got a degree in telecommunications. Who uses that anymore? We're amazed that people are even still using phone technology, right? This wasn't available. In fact, it was my senior year in college, so 1998 when I finally, I was just like, I need to do something different. I'll go take this HTML class. I don't know what that's all about, but I'll figure it out. And it turned out to be the thing that. changed everything for me. I learned how to build websites. I got a job building websites outta college. I was there for the.com boom and the bust.

And then I translated all of that into more knowledge for moving on to be an author, because there was just so much you had to learn if you were gonna be self-published. You had to have a website, you had to have a newsletter, you had to do all these things, right? So I translated all of [00:27:00] that into a new business. But there's no way I would've done any of that if I hadn't just randomly took, taken a college course on building websites with HTML. Yeah, 

Danica Favorite: Exactly. We have some time left, so we'll get to my last question in a minute. but before we do that, one of the things we talked about before we came on, Connie, is you were telling us you were doing this experiment of q uitting your job and becoming an author full time was gonna look like. And I know that's something a lot of people wanna know. Okay, I'm gonna quit my job and just do AI and author stuff full time and... F or some people we're like, yes. and some people are like, this is not a get rich quick scheme. This really is a lot of work and a lot of learning. I really would like to hear about your journey in that process of what that's looked like and some of that learning curve and how that experiment is going for you.

Connie Clark: Yeah. So in December I had enough. I worked in corporate America. I [00:28:00] was a banker, finance in banking and finance and insurance, for the last 15 years. So that's my background. Small business is my background. And I just, I don't know. I was over it, over the politics in everything, especially in the workforce where i f I answer a question with a customer, and all of a sudden that client is so-and-so's client and you aren't supposed to talk to them, and I'm sorry, I thought we were all in this together. The client came to me, because they had an immediate question and you were on vacation. What do you want me to do?

So I just, I was thinking, okay. I really enjoy being an author. It has been my dream forever. Now I'm 50, and you know what? This is what I wanted to do, and I'm not getting any younger, let's face it.

Okay. My health, I get up in the morning and I have joints creaking and things are not the same. And so if I wanna do this that I've always wanted to [00:29:00] do, now is the time. What am I waiting for? So it did take a little bit of planning. I am very fortunate. I'm married to an electrician, who has a very t hriving, business going on. So that was the financial part of things. 'Cause I know a lot of people are worried how am I gonna do this, because I have to pay my bills, obviously. and that is a big concern. But I also did a little bit of planning before I left my corporate America job, so I have some money tucked away for those rainy days, 

As far as making this a viable option, I knew it's possible and I know it's possible. from talking to other authors and especially on Clubhouse. A lot of the authors on there are making five to six figures annually. And, a lot of 'em are making five figures a month, which is ridiculous, but they are doing it. And so I know it's possible.

So I did connect with someone else who I knew. She had made an experiment. She was going to see if she could make six figures [00:30:00] using AI pen names this year. And that really appealed to me, because that was something that I also was trying to do, but I was doing it less efficiently. Because my process, I was still trying to figure out what the process actually was and how I needed to put everything together.

And so I ended up connecting with her and she explained the process a little bit more for me. And so I was able to dial in my process even more. So I actually wrote three books last week, and this week I am editing and formatting those books to... I'm hoping to get them up by the end of the week, but I haven't put 'em up for pre-sale 'cause I just wanna, keep that.

But I published six books, maybe more, so far this year. I've lost track, because now I added another pen name, for Dark Romance, which I'd never written before, but I'm experimenting with and so I added another pending for that. And then I started releasing serial romances on Inkitt. Substack.

I didn't start monetizing Substack. I don't know if [00:31:00] I will, because I see it as a tool for, promoting the rest of my books, and getting everything up on KU. And then the other thing is the newsletters. So I have the newsletters going, and in Bookclicker, you can sell spots in your newsletter on Bookclicker.

So that's another author can be in your newsletter. I started a freebie Friday newsletter and, selling spots for 3 or $5, depending on how they wanted to be featured in the newsletter. So that's made me about $500, honestly.

Which I think is respectable. It's not gonna, do too much to towards paying the bills, but it does something 

Danica Favorite: Well. Yeah. 

Connie Clark: So those are all little parts. 

$500. 

Danica Favorite: I'm not saying no to $500. 

Connie Clark: It's trickling in. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah. 

Connie Clark: So there's that one. And then, the serials sell on Inkitt and Ream, which are two, serial types.

I tried to get on Radish, but Radish sent me an email and said that they were dissolving and good luck. I said, okay. but I have [00:32:00] subscribers who are actually paying on both of those other sites. And Ream is still fairly new, so I thought it's new and so am I, so I'll get on that bandwagon.

And then of course, getting on, on Amazon and then publishing both wide and, in KU, which, that's been pretty good. And then because of different connections, being in the Clubhouses and so forth, I was able to get onto some of these, in some of these groups where I was able to promote, or get my book in these huge promotion deals that are going on. I got into, a Zoebub and a Kinker Kindle and a few of those, which exploded my sales. They exploded my book sales. But the freebie ones, the regular reads, it's very modest so far. So then I realized it's probably gonna have to be.... M y dog is like right here now... 

Danica Favorite: it's okay. We're here for the dog and, those who are watching this on [00:33:00] YouTube, you can see the dog coming in and out. I have been watching your dogs coming in and out, and I am in love with your dogs. So for those of you listening, you might go check and watch out on YouTube if you're like me and love dogs. 

Steph Pajonas: I've heard a lot of great things about Bookclicker. This is a really great way to grow your list. For everybody out there who's listening, you can do things like BookFunnel promotions.

You can build your newsletter that way. You can get into sales promotions with BookFunnel and promote your books that way. There's just so many ways for you to build up your business. I love the fact that you were like, I'm done with corporate life. Let's move over and do this author stuff full time, and then you started growing your business from there.

So this is great. Love it. Love it. 

Danica Favorite: And I'm impressed too, and this is why I'm really glad we talked about this today, because so many people say, oh my gosh, they make this rash decision of, oh, I'm gonna quit my job. Or maybe they've lost their job.

And they're like, [00:34:00] okay, now I'm gonna use AI and make a gazillion dollars. And you came at it with a really solid plan of, this is how my bills are being covered. I've set aside money, I have support from a spouse.

All of these things like this isn't, again, we're talking about, six figure incomes and things like that, but this isn't a get rich quick thing. This is a build it up over time. And that's something that you've really been showing us, and I really appreciate that. This is the biggest takeaway, I think in terms of people who see this as a way to make money, particularly when you're seeing those ads on Facebook, oh, get rich doing Amazon. No, like those are scams and it's still a matter of, like you have shown us, like planning it and giving yourself that buffer and that time to actually build and grow a business as opposed to just throwing a book that you've written with AI out there and now you've got the money rolling in. [00:35:00] So thank you for sharing that. And the last question that I wanna ask is, and we've talked about a million AI tools.

Can you pick a favorite tool or, we can also do like favorite tools for certain tasks. So if you're like, okay, like images that, you've talked about some of this, favorite tools for some of the tasks. So what are your favorite AI tools? 

Connie Clark: So Claude and I are in a relationship I don't tell my husband about.

And Claude has been very good to me, but Chat's a close second and Chat was actually for a long time my primary go-to. But Claude has overtaken that probably 'cause I'm spending more money on Claude than I used to, because I like the projects and I like, being able to pull everything together and it really helps me create, Claude, however, it sucks at images right now. It's getting better, but a while ago I asked Claude to create an image, a graphic for, one of the [00:36:00] chapters. And it was supposed to be a woman crying, next to a window. It was squares with a little drop of rain coming down. It was literally, I think you saw it Steph 'cause you commented on the AI for authors.

Steph Pajonas: it looks like ASCII art, doesn't it? Claude makes the worst images and I. It is so horrible. It looks like a 4-year-old, used crayons to make an image. It's bad. 

Connie Clark: That's like some scribbling around and I was like, oh god. So when it comes to graphics, I've tried a few different, like I said, ideogram is definitely my jam when it comes to graphics.

One thing I will say about Gemini, it does do, you can do three free videos a day using VEO on Gemini. And that to me, the videos that, that can produce are freaking amazing. And then I use Notebook LM to pull all of my series together, so that I can ask questions.

I love the little, podcasts that it creates for [00:37:00] that. So I have different favorites, Eleven Labs, obviously my jam when it comes to anything talking. I will use that for, I'm working on two audio books in there right now. I just like all the different voices I can create, and so I just keep creating different voices.

Is there a tool that I may have missed? if there are other tools, I will probably be open to trying them out if I'm not using it right now, because that's my jam and I like. I, yeah, that, I guess that's what I'll end with because I don't wanna go too far.

Danica Favorite: Oh, you've given us so many great things. And again, like it's for us, it's always great to hear about the different tools and what people are using for what. And and I was just saying this to somebody, I think probably in the AI for Authors group, that everyone has a different favorite tool for a different purpose.

And you have to find the ones that work for you. I love hearing what works for you, because somebody who's struggling with something, they might get that little spark of inspiration and decide to try something new. So thank you for sharing that, because I know that this will [00:38:00] be, seriously, this is probably gonna be one of the most helpful episodes that our listeners have gotten to hear.

Steph Pajonas: Yes. Excellent. 

I'm so excited to put all the notes on for this one, because I think people will be coming to read them and understand a little bit more about your process and what you've been doing. Especially like these audio dramas because, I know a few people who are interested in audio dramas.

I know somebody else is interested in making soap operas, which I think are fairly similar, so there's just so much opportunity here, and I don't want people to miss it. We definitely want to send people to you online so that they can come check out the work that you're doing. So please let us know about your websites and whatnot.

 Unlike you as an author, I was horrible at creating a websites. So my website is, I have, two, but you can go to constanceruthclark.com or constancerclark.com. And I used, BookBub. Actually, they do those websites, and I signed up for that as soon as I [00:39:00] saw how plug-and-play-happy it was, and it was cheap to me.

Connie Clark: It's only $4 or $5 a month. And so that's where my author websites are on BookBub. And, you can go to, if you wanna see the audio drama, the Substack is Connie Clark 2011. So that's when I was first published. So it's Connie Clark 2011 is the Substack, and it's Once Upon a Page is the serial. Which like I said, is all the different, regency romances, all that I have in there right now.

I did this other one, this other page on Substack, where it's different personalities reviewing my books. And so I have a librarian who clutches her pearls at every sex scene. I've got a professor who can't believe that romance is something that people read. I have, the Southern tea...she's drinking tea and she's down south with a thick southern accent, and she's excited about that. So I don't know, I just had a lot of fun with it. And so I started creating a [00:40:00] review team. So that's on Substack as well, I think it's called, Dear Reader, We Have Opinions. That's the name of that one.

And so I'm probably gonna review all my books on there 'cause I didn't wanna put anyone else through that kind of torture unless they wanted to be. Then my YouTube channel is Clark Publishing House. And you look up Clark Publishing House and then it's the Lady Ashbourne Chronicles. The others are all experiments and everything on there is AI.

Not everything. I think there's some early videos on there, but yeah. 

Steph Pajonas: Excellent. Excellent. I love the review team thing. I'm gonna go check that out. That's a great idea. 

Danica Favorite: Yeah, I think that's fun. I love that you're like, and they're all experiments and what a great attitude to have, especially as we're in this AI era, because I do think most of what we do, they're all experiments.

Steph Pajonas: Yeah, everything is an experiment nowadays. And that's good 'cause we're gonna be at a chance to succeed and fail. And then when you fail, you learn from that, and you go on to do more things that will hopefully succeed as well. So [00:41:00] I will go through and I'll find all of these websites. And get them all into the notes for everybody.

Everybody who's listening, you can drop by bravenewbookshelf.com and read the show notes. Click on all the links and find everything that we've been talking about here today. I'm gonna pass off to Danica for all of our share goodness. 

Danica Favorite: Thank you first of all. Thank you again, Connie.

This was really great. I really cannot stress enough how great this was in terms of just really actionable stuff that people can use and do. For those of you who are listening on this, make sure you go check us out on YouTube, and subscribe. Also seriously, go check out Connie's cute dogs if you're a dog person.

If you're not a dog person, I'm sorry. We're also on all of the different podcast channels, so make sure you listen and subscribe there. And if you're on Facebook and subscribe to our Facebook page and then of [00:42:00] course, make sure that you are liking and subscribing to Future Fiction Academy on their socials and their YouTube, which is fantastic and has a lot of good free lessons. Also Future Fiction Press has some socials, so check those out. And then finally check out the Publish Drive socials as well. So lots of places to like and subscribe. And I know Steph and I both have Substacks and things like that.

So seriously, lots of places to find us. Find us at all those places, because you never know when we're gonna drop some goodies. 

Steph Pajonas: That's true. And if you want to get the show notes straight to your email inbox too, you can come subscribe to our newsletter, and I send those out usually the day after the episode airs.

So come on by and subscribe to the newsletter as well. That's at bravenewbookshelf.com/subscribe. Okay, so that's it for us today. We're excited to keep moving through our fall and into winter here in the Northern hemisphere. 

We have lots of other wonderful people to talk to coming up as [00:43:00] well. So Connie, thank you so much for being here today and, from all of us here, we're gonna say goodbye now. All right. Bye everybody.

Danica Favorite: Bye

Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show notes.