Minter Dialogue with Lucy McCarraher

In this episode, I sit down with Lucy McCarraher, co-founder of Rethink Press and founder of the Business Book Awards. Lucy shares her journey from magazine publishing to becoming a TV journalist and scriptwriter, before diving into the world of business books. She discusses the innovative publishing model of Rethink Press, which allows authors to pay for publishing packages and receive higher royalties. Lucy also touches on the importance of storytelling in business books and the emotional journey of writing. Our conversation explores the role of AI in publishing and the significance of the Business Book Awards in recognising diverse voices in the industry.

Please send me your questions — as an audio file if you’d like — to nminterdial@gmail.com. Otherwise, below, you’ll find the show notes and, of course, you are invited to comment. If you liked the podcast, please take a moment to rate it here.

To connect with Lucy McCarraher and her activities:

• Check out Rethink Press’ site here
• Find/buy all Lucy’s books on Amazon, here
• Find/follow Lucy McCarraher on LinkedIn
• Check out BookMagic.ai
• Check out the Business Book Awards

Other mentions/sites:

• The other podcast guests interviewed on the Minter Dialogue: Daniel Priestley (Dent Global, KPI), Josh Shelov (Written Out Loud), Manfred Kets de Vries (INSEAD professor)

Further resources for the Minter Dialogue podcast:

Meanwhile, you can find my other interviews on the Minter Dialogue Show in this podcast tab, on Megaphone or via Apple Podcasts. If you like the show, please go over to rate this podcast via RateThisPodcast! And for the francophones reading this, if you want to get more podcasts, you can also find my radio show en français over at: MinterDial.fr, on Megaphone or in iTunes.
Music credit: The jingle at the beginning of the show is courtesy of my friend, Pierre Journel, author of the Guitar Channel. And, the new sign-off music is “A Convinced Man,” a song I co-wrote and recorded with Stephanie Singer back in the late 1980s (please excuse the quality of the sound!).

Transcription courtesy of Flowsend.ai, an AI full-service for podcasters

Minter Dial: Lucy McCarraher. I love that we are able to talk. It’s a great topic, the idea of writing business books. You yourself are the author of 13, I think, books, and you’ve been working with Rethink Press. You founded the Business Book Awards, you work with just tonnes of authors, so it’s sort of like being upstream to all these authors and the amount of learning that you’ve done. So, in your own words, Lucy, how about who is you?

Lucy McCarraher: Who is me? My goodness, that’s a big question. Minter, it’s very nice. Thank you very much for inviting me onto your podcast. So, who am I? I’m somebody who is kind of obsessed by books, I suppose. Books has been books and writing has been part of everything I’ve done. I haven’t always been in the book world. I started off in magazine publishing and then I went over to, well, I was sort of connected, but I became a tv journalist and presenter in Australia, so you won’t have seen anything here. And I’ve also then been a scriptwriter for tv and video and a concept developer. And oddly enough, I have been a work life balance consultant. But the last 15 years, I have been very much in the world of business books. I started, I founded Rethinkpress in 2011 with my co-founder, Joe Gregory. He was running a publishing company, also catering for entrepreneur and expert authors, coaches, consultants, and I actually, he published a book of mine. Then we realised that we actually lived quite near each other in Norfolk. So, we met at a networking event and he told me that his business partner had just left. So, I thought, hmm, that sounds interesting. I just spent the last three years writing some novels. And much as I enjoyed that, they were not turning me into JK Rowling. So, I thought, well, you know, some work in publishing could be interesting. So, I joined Joe as his commissioning editor. He was working on the traditional business publishers business model at that point, which, as you of course know, is that the publisher invests in a book, pays for the production, the editing, the design, the COVID design, the distribution, the marketing, and then the only way they can essentially make their money back, get the return on their investment, is to sell books. And so, traditional publishers are looking for authors who sell books. Now, I could see that the authors that Joe was working with were not necessarily that interested in selling lots of books. They wanted to use their books to build their businesses, and that is not all about selling copies, that is very often about giving books away. I mean, obviously the authors have to buy the books to give away, but, you know, it’s not the same model. So, I suggested to Jo that we try an experiment of having a different imprint, which we called rethink press. It was our rethinking of the. Of the model where we asked the authors to pay for a publishing package which covered all the upfront costs of creating their book. And then we give them. We gave them a bigger royalty on actual trade sales of books, but then they could do what they wanted with their book and we weren’t under pressure to just sell, sell, sell, and nor were they. So, I said, shall we give it a try and see if there are enough authors to. Who would want to do that? So we gave it a try. For a while. We were just literally a two-person company. I mean, I did all the editing and the kind of working with the authors on the writing. Joe did design and typesetting and publishing was his background and also marketing is his background too. And it, you know, it took us some time to build up, but by about 18 months later we came into contact with the key person of influence programme, which I think you’ve probably heard of. I don’t know if anybody, everybody has, but it’s an entrepreneur accelerator programme run by Daniel Priestley. And one of the key elements of that programme is to make sure that entrepreneurs write the book that will be. That will make them a key person. So, that was a very. What happened was some of those alumni from KPI, as it’s generally known, came to us and asked them, asked us to publish their books, which was great, and we did and they liked us and they took us back into the programme and I was invited to become the published mentor of the key person of influence programme, which meant we had access to and were. I was mentoring hundreds of entrepreneurs going through this programme who then wrote their book and wanted to publish it. So, they, you know, a lot of them, of course, published with Rethink Press, which meant we grew very quickly after that. It was a. It was a marriage made in heaven, perhaps. And we, you know, we’ve been working very closely with Dent, the, the company that owns KPI, ever since. So, that was how Rethink Press started. And we also, unlike most other publishers, we also developed a coaching team. I mean, I was doing mentoring of the groups of KPI entrepreneurs, but we also developed a team of coaches and a particular method, a methodology of planning and writing books that would build authors businesses. And that’s what we are still doing today, but with a lot more of us. And we’ve published over a thousand authors in that time, over a thousand books and authors. And I think I probably mentored over 2000 authors to get their books positioned, planned and written. So, that’s a tour.

Minter Dial: Well, first of all, not only do I know Dan, I had Daniel on my podcast and I was a part of KPI for a couple of years back in the days when I was still not so, I was not so stale, I think. But the notion of books, you said at the beginning, Lucy, you became attracted to this idea of books and im just wondering if thats in reaction to your work previously and your experience in the media place in the magazine business. Was that the need to go from magazine to book or what was it that made you love books?

Lucy McCarraher: I don’t know. To me, I mean I don’t think it was a reaction to it, I wouldn’t say. But perhaps I kind of always felt they were steps along the way. To me a book is a kind of perfect thing, a perfect artefact, a perfect container for a certain kind of story or a certain amount of information. A book takes you on a journey and it takes you into a different world. And although, you know, I love film and television and theatre and other, other forms that take you into other worlds, the book relies on you, the reader so much to do that, to create that world. And I think that’s what I particularly love about books and the fact that they are just such an iconic and both iconic and utilitarian format. I mean they are, you know, portable, completely without tech if necessary. Although of course, you know, I listen to audiobooks a lot and you know, ebooks are great as well, all of that. But the actual form, the actual format of a book, a published book, is iconic. And it just, it also just says experts in terms of non-fiction books. It says, you know, if you are the author of a book, you are an expert in your subject, you must be because you’ve written however many thousand words on it and you know, there it is, it’s, it’s sort of there representing you. But I don’t know, I grew up in a house full of books. I’ve always kind of read like, you know, avidly, all sorts of books, anything I’d rather, I’d rather read a serial packet than sit and do nothing. But books are, you know, books, books are just sort of what, what worked best for me.

Minter Dial: Well, that’s the curious thing, I suppose, going into the publishing business in a digitally infused era where not only are books sort of, I don’t know, what disdainfully looked at by most young people, so no one wants to read. It seems there’s digital versions of everything. So, it was a. A bold, daring kind of thing to want to go into publishing in a world that’s so changing. So, tell us about your arrival into rethink and how you wanted to make money out of this publishing business in a world where people aren’t reading as much and books don’t have the same cachet with the young as we do. As with us.

Lucy McCarraher: Well, you know, you say that, Minter, but actually, the book, you know, the publishing trade gets bigger and bigger exponentially every year. People are buying books. There are tonnes of children’s books. You know, millions of young adult books are being published. So, there must be. There must be some kids out there reading. I mean, the, you know, most, not all of them, but, you know, I do think people go on reading and yes, of course they’ve got, you know, many other distractions and, you know, they’ve got YouTube and TikTok and every other kind of video option, and they are shorter and easier. But I do. I do feel that people do read as well and that long form reading is, you know, it’s still popular.

Minter Dial: Well, I certainly hope so.

Lucy McCarraher: Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, I mean, it kind of must be because these books are getting bought and they’re getting published and publishers are not going broke at the moment. You know, they’re having, they’re having. I mean, particularly since COVID and lockdown. I mean, we had a fantastic year in 2020 because everybody decided that the thing they would do in lockdown would be to write their book. So, we had lots of authors who wanted help writing and then wanted their books published, but that was a massive year for publishing. And then it’s probably trickled off a bit now, but still. And when you think about audiobooks, which lots of people listen to, they have to be written first. Most publishers do nothing, just produce audiobooks of a title. They will. I mean, some of them do. Some of them just specialists in particular formats, like, you know, ebooks or kindles or audiobooks. But most publishers will publish a print version of a book as well. And they sell.

Minter Dial: I had a funny experience with a former professor of mine from INSEAD, Manfred Koetz de Vries. He actually wrote and published seven books in 2020.

Lucy McCarraher: Wow. Wow.

Minter Dial: He was on steroids, as they said. But going back to this notion, I mean, as you also said, writing books more and more is really not necessarily about selling books. You know, you kind of hope that if you give it away, it is read. But the model seems to be a lot more around being just a valid notion of expert, a strong calling cardinal that makes you stand out as if you’re an entrepreneur or businessperson to write that book and have that book and be proud of the thing you have. So, for me, and as you write on your site, the interesting thing for me is less about the reader’s experience, almost. It’s the writer’s experience and what it gives to you to put black on white research, put your name to this thing, and the journey that that is is already, I think, in my case, anyway, that’s how I look at it. The reward to writing a book, absolutely.

Lucy McCarraher: No, I completely agree with you about that. And that’s one of the reasons that I really love mentoring people through the process, because it’s not just about what comes out the other end. It is the process and the journey of writing. And I think it is. It’s a very personal thing to do. Whether you’re actually writing, you know, fiction or nonfiction, you’re putting your yourself out there. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs who. I mean, and, you know, most entrepreneurs are not professional writers. They may be good at writing, but, you know, they. And they may write short form, they may write articles and blog posts, but writing a book is a whole other piece of work. Yes, indeed. And it’s. I think what happens is they come. They come in, or they come to us, really, as experts in their field, but they are, in terms of writing a book, they are novices. And so, they often, I think so many books don’t get written because people simply do not know where to start. They literally do not know how to start to write a book. And to be able to kind of offer that hand and say, it’s okay, look, come with me. I can take you through. I can show you how to do this. And then. Yes, absolutely. To sort of work with people on that process of getting their knowledge and their expertise and experience, their case studies, their client journey out onto the page in a really accessible format is just such a huge pleasure, and it is an emotional journey. And I say to everybody at the beginning, there will be times when you think, why am I doing this? Why am I writing? This book is terrible. Nobody’s going to read it. I’m writing rubbish. I have nothing to say of any interest to anybody. And. But I think that happens to everybody. I don’t know if. I mean, I’m assuming it can happen to you as well, Minter, but it certainly happens to me when I’m. When I’m writing any book. You know, you go through ups and downs. At some stages you think, oh, my God, I’m going to change the world here. And other times you think, you know, this is just the worst piece of garbage that I could be producing. But somewhere in the middle, somewhere between that, you just have to stay stable and think, I am getting to the end of this. And so, many people also, so many authors tell us that writing their book has improved their business. It’s improved how they do what they do. It’s made them more self-aware. It’s given them a different kind of confidence, because also, as you write, every, all those words that come out on the page, they also go into the archive in your mind and it gives you, you know, you’ve then got that knowledge. It also kind of clears a space. Once you’ve got what’s in your head, out of your head and onto the page, it clears a space for the next inspiration and for more, you know, more, more ideas to find. To find headroom with you. So, in all sorts of ways, it is just such a great piece of self-development to write your book.

Minter Dial: Yeah, of course, that said, we still need to make it good for the reader. And one of the things that I enjoy in the process, and not that I, I’ve written one fiction novel but not published, and then I did one biography, and the rest are business books. And I put at the start a little anecdote, which is I was told that non-fiction books are the lowest, least noble version of books, as opposed to fiction, which is purely from you. It’s out of your imagination. And I think that’s what they mean by that. But at the same time, I always say is if you don’t like and you don’t love the process, then don’t write, because there’s pretty big chance that you might sell one book to your mum, another book to your grandmom, and then give the rest away and accept that as part of the price going in and take the reward from the work that you’re doing. Of course, naturally, it’s a whole lot better if you do sell a tonne. And the other piece I’m going to say is that I enjoy thinking about the stories that I want to tell to colour the elements of nonfiction. Their stories, we can all say telling stories like that’s lying or fibbing, but providing, going back into my experience and then being a little bit intimate or vulnerable in those moments. Tremendously learning for yourself.

Lucy McCarraher: Yeah, no, I think that’s absolutely spot on as well. I mean, I always tell authors that they need to sprinkle stories and storytelling through the sort of straightforward information that they’re getting across to people, because it’s so important to have those different types of reading experience. As a reader, it’s easy to get bored and kind of, you know, you almost lose your way if it’s just solid, solid, solid data content. But the stories are what we’re programmed to remember. You know, when we hear a story, we immediately go into, we paint a picture of it. We have ideas of characters, we get a setting in our heads. So, even a 250-word case study told well, will be what the reader remembers. And I always tell authors to make sure that there are enough variety of case studies throughout their book that essentially tell a very simple story. Somebody has a problem, you solve it, and this is the outcome for them. And that as your ideal prospect or client is reading through your book, they will pick up at least two or three moments in the book where they go, oh, that’s me. I’m in that position. I am that person. I need this author to work with me. And that is how you build your business. But as you say, also your own story is really important because if you’re getting people to like, know and trust you, you need to tell them about yourself as well. Well, and exactly as you say. It’s not just your successes where you go, oh, I’m wonderful, I did this, I did that, I achieved this. It’s where you fell down, it’s where you learnt because of something negative that happened to you, where you made a mistake, and that is incredibly magnetising and engaging to your reader. And they also feel that when you tell them those stories, that they can see that you were where they are now. You were once there and you are now in a position to help them move along and gain what you’ve got. So, I think both kinds of stories are really important to put into a business book.

Minter Dial: William, so I’m going to give you a choice now to which question you’d rather answer, but work life balance, how does one do that as an entrepreneur? Or what have you learned from the thousands of books that you’ve and authors that you’ve mentored? Being on the other side, you’ve seen so much. What would be some of the more outrageous, unexpected learnings that you’ve had? And you could, of course, answer both from your experience.

Lucy McCarraher: That is a choice. No, I think, I think I’ll stick with the authors. I think that every time I mentor somebody through writing a book, I learn something different. And every person, every entrepreneur particularly, is a fascinating personality. So, I love reading what people write because I think the way people write is a really kind of a deep indication of their thought processes. And I love kind of understanding how different people’s minds work and how they can explain that to me or to somebody else who has a very different kind of mind. So, every, every book has that kind of insight and learning. I mean, I think I’ve learned all sorts of things. We’ve published so many books about so many different things. I mean, as I say, a lot of them are really niche. I mean, one book we published was about white goods in the hospitality industry. So, I learned a lot about washing machines. But it was a real. I mean, I’m not sort of laughing at this. It was a really interesting book. It was, you know, the history, the weigh washing machines, different, different dishwashers for, you know, large organisations work and how you can maximise their, you know, the way you use them. It’s. It was all fascinating. I was really gripped by that book. And so, I think learning about lots of the kind of subject matter, if you like, of lots of different small businesses, how people got going and what their stories are. Sometimes they just fell into doing something and sort of made the most of it. Other times they had an absolute passion for something and really had to fight to make it, turn it into a business. All those sorts of things continue to be absolutely fascinating.

Minter Dial: To what extent, Lucy, do you encourage, how do you encourage authors to be themselves to find that voice? I mean, the issue at some level, especially when you’re writing a first novel or a book, is that you are the product of your experiences and the things you’ve read.

Lucy McCarraher: Yeah.

Minter Dial: You know, what you liked? I like Nathaniel Hawthorne or, you know, Shakespeare, whatever. And what about you? And how do you get to. How do you help authors find their voice?

Lucy McCarraher: Well, I tell them to. I mean, we go through an exercise on positioning their book to their ideal clients. I think often when non-fiction writers particularly start their book, they have this idea that it must sell, even though they know that this is not necessarily the way it’s going to work. They must sell as many copies as possible. They must make it something that the one possible audience are going to be interested. And I have to remind them that actually it’s not for the. Not necessary. I mean, if it is, then great, that’s a bonus. But for most of them, they have a niche market and they need to stick to that market. And more than that, they are actually writing their book for a particular person within that market. And that person is their ideal prospect or client. And we work really hard on describing that person. So, obviously they go have a range of clients, but, you know, to narrow it down, to create an ideal client avatar. And then there is one person that throughout the process of writing their book, they are talking to as if they were in the room with them. And that’s how I hopefully get them to express their own, their real voice. I mean, because every time somebody reads a book, it is a one-to-one activity. It’s one reader. We don’t, you know, it’s not like films, all theatre, where we all sit in one place and experience the same thing. Every time somebody reads a book, it’s very much. It’s an interior thing for the reader and it’s, you know, you are just talking to that one person at a time. So, if you are talking to the right person for you, then you can talk to them, then you can find your voice. And it’s not always easy. And, you know, often they’ll write a couple of chapters before it starts to settle down for them and then they’ll sort of suddenly realise that, yeah, they’re talking in that that is them, that is how they want to express themselves.

Minter Dial: And to what extent do the audiobooks fashion that? I mean, I think I’ve done, of my seven books, I’ve done three or four of them in audiobooks. And when you reread what you wrote, which was written in a written style as opposed to an audio style, it does shape or it changes the way you might think about it. Do you encourage people with non-fiction books, your authors, to think about going to audiobooks? Because that’s a whole other gig, right? Especially if they do the author read.

Lucy McCarraher: Yeah, absolutely. I do. I do encourage everybody to do their audiobooks unless their market really is absolutely tiny and it’s not quite worth it. But I think for most people, it doesn’t restrict the number of people who are going to get the. Or read the published book, the printed book. It just expands your market because so many people listen to audiobooks these days. I mean, I certainly do. I listen to far more audiobooks than I actually read. I love having books, but I usually kind of. I don’t know what the word is. It’s not read an audiobook, but, you know, consume. Yeah, I don’t really like that word for books. But, yes, you know, take in an audio, a book in audio format, because you can multitask while you’re doing it to some. Well, to some extent. So, yes, I do encourage them to do that. But I complete. But it doesn’t happen at the same time. In our process, they’re going to have published their book first, and then they will be delivering, they will be narrating their audiobook, but we will always go through a kind of editing process of their, of their edited manuscript first so that it, at the very least, you don’t kind of find yourself saying in the illustration below and things like that. But it does. I mean, likewise, I’ve narrated some of my own audiobooks, too. And you do kind of suddenly think, oh, on earth did I put it like that?

Minter Dial: I mean, some people say, I have a friend, Josh Shallow, of, he talks about reading out loud.

Lucy McCarraher: Yeah.

Minter Dial: And there are others who write by just dictation.

Lucy McCarraher: Yes. Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, the other thing, another thing I’ve discovered is that there are definitely internal processes. Definitely. Me, I don’t know what I think until I can see it written on a page or a screen. I have to, it’s very internal, and I have to then kind of put it into words. And, you know, I have, I couldn’t dictate a book. I just wasn’t, wouldn’t, you know, I wouldn’t be clear enough in what I was doing. But then there are other people who are generally known as external processes, and they actually think by talking. I think by writing. They think by talking. And so, for them, it’s much easier to speak their book. And in book magic, our book writing app, we have the option to either write or, or speak and, or do both or, you know, mix it up. But, yeah, I think it’s really important because a lot of people are actually put off by the physical act of writing. And, you know, we, at rethink press, we have ghost writers and coaches, and it’s, you know, it’s often because people are dyslexic or have an issue with the writing side of things. It’s not easy for them to do, or English is not their first language or they’re just too busy to do it. So, I think, I don’t have any qualms about saying, as long as it’s your content. And we’re very careful about that. When we call them booksmiths, it’s all done through recorded and transcribed interviews. So, it’s very much the author’s content. But if you get a professional writer to turn it into good writing for you, that’s absolutely fine by me.

Minter Dial: Well, it’s long been debating with my sister around the use of AI, and we have speech writers, politicians, use speech writers, of course.

Lucy McCarraher: Yeah.

Minter Dial: There are many instances where we use another tool, in this case a human being who’s going to write my speech. And to what extent, therefore, might it be useful or possible to use AI to generate my speech? So, let’s talk about, before, I wanted to, I’ll finish off, we’ll finish off in the Business Book Awards. But talk about your initiative, Bookmagic AI, which you began earlier this year. And from what I hear about it, it’s to help authors, much like you do in human-to-human way, but it provides some kind of automation to help with your consultancy and your experience, to help authors and wannabe authors to get it done.

Lucy McCarraher: Absolutely, yes. Well, I mean, over the, you know, the last ten years or so, we’ve, you know, we’ve refined this process of positioning and then planning, which is really another really important thing, is to make sure people plan their books in detail before they start writing, because that’s where people can go badly wrong. You know, you think, oh, I know what I’m talking about, I’ll just, you know, let it go and I’ll just get in the flow and it will all be fine. It very rarely is. So, we’ve developed a planning system that we used to use with actual index cards, and then we developed some separate software for book planning. And now we have the whole process in bookmagic AI, which is, as you say, the positioning, planning and writing app for entrepreneurs to write their books. But it’s. Now I’ve forgotten what your actual question was, Minter.

Minter Dial: Well, we’re on to the book magic. So, for example, to what extent is AI actually involved? Because we were just talking about the copywriting, or at least the authenticity of what you’re writing, writing with AI, forgetting the hallucinations and the factual inaccuracies and the fact that it’s not you using AI is not about showing you, it’s maybe showing your ability to use AI, but that’s about it.

Lucy McCarraher: Yeah. No, I mean, I just don’t think at this moment. I mean, you know, who knows? It may get better, but at the moment, AI is just not up to writing a decent book. And the whole point of writing a book when you’re an entrepreneur is to showcase your own work, your own expertise and knowledge, your own case studies and your work with clients. And AI can get a tonne of information from all over the Internet, and it can process it far faster than any human can, but it cannot get inside your head and therefore it cannot write your book for you. And I know that when you ask, I don’t know, chat GPT a question, and it comes out with this sudden, fast, apparently highly intelligent response. It seems quite intimidating to some people, I think, and it looks like it writes really well. You know, here is this great sophisticated sentence structure and information. But actually when you read it and you reread it, and I’ve, you know, read a lot of AI generated content now, it is pretty dreadful. It’s very superficial. It doesn’t, it doesn’t focus properly. It certainly doesn’t have, I’ve never found AI able to, no matter how much you prompt it, able to really work outside its own voice, if you like. I don’t think at the moment it can sound like a real person, I mean, anybody. And I expect you have to kind of read a fair amount of AI generated content. There are words it uses all the time, there are sentence structures that are very repetitive, and it’s just, it gets quite boring. And so, but also from a publishing point of view, I have to say, the problem is we don’t know what it’s trained on. We don’t know where it’s got the information. It claims not to be infringing copyright, but we don’t know that. And, you know, there are lots of lawsuits out there at the moment from authors who do believe that their books have been pillaged by AI. And it’s just, you know, you don’t know when you ask it a question and it kind of pours out some great looking copy whether that is actually somebody else’s work. So, at the moment, no decent publisher will publish AI generated content in a book. And authors have to say, I mean, they’re contractually obliged to disclose whether their content is AI generated. And certainly at rethink press, if they say that, or if we find it, which we do sometimes, I mean, you can’t always tell. And the problem is you can’t tell where it begins and ends either. So, but if we believe that an author has presented us with a manuscript that is not even substantially AI generated, but we ask them to be very clear about it and to rewrite it in their own words, because otherwise we’re all at risk of potentially infringing copyright.

Minter Dial: Right, I get that. I want to just circle back into Book Magic in a moment. But just on the point of AI, what is your opinion about, let’s say I’ve written a thousand word article and I punch it into one of these LLMs. And I say, could you just make sure there are no spelling mistakes?

Lucy McCarraher: I think that’s okay.

Minter Dial: I mean, but should we, should we, should we then say, I’ve used AI to verify, should that be qualified?

Lucy McCarraher: I mean, if you, I would suggest that you prompt the AI not to change the content, just to correct the grammar and spelling and then reread it again afterwards to make sure that it is still saying what you want it to say and it hasn’t introduced any other concepts. And I think for, you know, for short form publishing and for short form writing, like articles or blog posts, that is okay. But I think a lot of people can tell if you’ve done that. But I think, you know, basic editing, it does okay. And that’s not a major problem. I really ask our authors not to edit, pre edit their books with AI, because a book is a whole different thing. For a start, it’s huge. And, you know, it’s very difficult then to work out what AI has done that’s different and whether it has introduced stuff. But also there is nothing at the moment that can replace the insight of a human editor. So, when your human editor, your copy editor goes through, they’ll ask you questions, they’ll say, are you sure you meant this to go here? Or I think you’ve repeated this here. AI can say those things, but with no insight or relationship to what you’re actually trying to get across.

Minter Dial: But at the same time, I would imagine I just read a book where talks that says there’s an acronym, and actually nowhere in the book is the acronym explained. Oh, so as an editor, you’re a human editor. We make human mistakes. But I could imagine an AI, which is specific to editing a text says, make sure that the first time I mention any acronym it’s spelled out. You could imagine a number of rules that would just be, don’t allow for the human error kind of thing to happen in the editing.

Lucy McCarraher: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, I would sincerely hope that that would never happen in a book of hours. That is one of our rules for human editors. The first time an acronym is used, it must be spelled out. After that, it is the common sense, right. That is what happens. I mean, yeah, I mean, that could happen with a human. It could probably happen with AI as well. I mean, somewhere in the process, but, I mean, but actually seen a really interesting exercise recently where an author created a whole load of editing prompts for their manuscript for AI, and things like take this paragraph and shorten it by 50%, or tell me where I could change this, or lots of very detailed prompts. And I read through, and they asked the AI not to change the manual, but to put it in a table. So, this was the original copy. This was the AI copy. And their suggestions and they explained why, which was very interesting. But every time I read the AI revised content, it was worse. It was shorter. It might have been neater, but it didn’t have that kind of ebb and flow of, you know, kind of author voice, of balance and kind of, kind of rhetorical feel that you get from somebody’s voice, from somebody’s written voice. It was very interesting, and I advised them to absolutely not include the AI editing, but to just submit it as it was and let our editors work on it.

Minter Dial: Well, you know, in the world outside of editors and proper publishing, I encourage people to use AI just to see what it does, but never to rely on it. In other words, never imagine that it is the right thing. You need to always go back into it and make sure it is from you. So, let’s just finish on bookmagic.AI and just to tell us where and how AI actually is part of the process, because you’re very clear on not using AI.

Lucy McCarraher: I’m very clear on not using AI to write, but it is incredibly helpful in all sorts of other words, in all sorts of other ways. For instance, if you’re looking, I mean, one of the things we start with, as I’ve said, is the positioning bit. So, you tell the app, the app asks you to write or speak, you know, tell us about your business, tell us about your ideal clients, tell us about the model you use, what’s all sorts of detail, and then you can ask it, for example, what’s a great title and a subtitle for my book. And it’s fantastic. It comes up with brilliant ideas. I mean, they’re not perfect necessarily, but it will give you some really strong ideas to work with. So, it’s sort of that sort of thing all the way through. I mean, the writing part, what we call the editor, you’ve got the option to ask it questions so it knows who your client avatar, your reader avatar is. And there’s a button you can press that says, ask me any question. Ask my. Ask my reader any questions. So, you can ask the reader. Have I told you enough about this? Do you want to know more about this? Where is this got boring? Where have I put too much in them? So, you know, you can really talk to your, your AI reader if you like your avatar and get very good kind of feedback from it. I mean, you don’t necessarily want to want to use all of it, but it will give you some great ideas.

Minter Dial: It’s a good bouncing board.

Lucy McCarraher: Yeah, absolutely. And it, and it can, it does come up with, I mean, we have it give a summary of, you know, the kind of the, what you’ve put in at the beginning about your book, about what you’ve told it, about how you work and, you know, who the book’s for and all that sort of thing. And it comes up with beautiful little summaries. People say that they’ve had, you know, tears in their eyes as they’ve read the AI’s summary of what they can offer to their readers is very, can be very charming and it can also write you a proto introduction, which of course, then you do have to rewrite in your own words. But it can be a very helpful starting point.

Minter Dial: Absolutely. I had a friend working at IBM, Watson, and he was kind enough to download a couple of my books into Watson to tell me what sort of a writer I was. And it struck me that that would be a really interesting way to sort of feed the AI to learn my style, my voice. And I mean, I think that must be somewhere in the future as well.

Lucy McCarraher: I agree. I’m sure it will come. I just don’t think it’s there yet. And the other thing is, I think you would have to spend so much time creating prompts for the AI that you might as well write. It’ll be quicker. It’s quicker to write it yourself.

Minter Dial: Well, let’s finish, Lucy, on the Business Book Awards, you founded it. I don’t remember when you did, but I certainly have been the lucky recipient of a couple of awards and really very rewarding experience for me to be recognised for it. It’s great marketing piece for me, and to be recognised by everyone in the industry, which is a lovely thing. I can’t say it necessarily says, I’m going to sell 100,000 more books, books. However, it is something that makes as much as. I don’t need 100,000 people to buy my books. The fact of getting recognition is a beautiful thing. So, tell us about how and why you founded it and what’s this journey been like of doing the BBA?

Lucy McCarraher: Oh, well, it’s been really interesting and exciting and it’s been a whole sort of other side of publishing, really. I mean, I founded it because I thought that there, I mean, there were business book awards, but they were very much at the sort of top end of financial tie. Yes, exactly. So, the FT or the New York Times Business Book Awards, they’re all about bestsellers and traditional publishers and, you know, and literally they’re about how many. How many copies are sold in bookshops, which. And there are so many business books published in so many different ways, you know, self-published, hybrid published, traditional published, independent published. And I thought they’re just not getting the recognition that they should be. So, I worked with a company called Thinkfest who are very experienced in event and award running, and we kind of put our heads above the parapet for the first time. That was in 2018, the first awards, and I really did not know whether the industry would come behind us or whether we just look extremely, extremely silly for putting out a request for entries and nobody would enter. I think we had nine categories in the first year and we just hoped we got five entries in every category so we could produce a shortlist and a winner. But actually, we actually got 150 entries the first year and it’s sort of more than double that now. So, yes, and all the publishing companies have been, you know, really kind of positive about it, too, so it’s great. And we’ve had some fantastic winners. I mean, one of the things that happened the first year was that all our winners were white men. And not that I’m saying anything against white men or their books, they were fantastic winners, but it didn’t quite seem. It seemed like our process had gone wrong somewhere.

Minter Dial: You’re very keen on, especially diversity, but also women.

Lucy McCarraher: Yes. Well, at that point, I was like, what is going on here? So, I did a lot of research. I realised we’d only had half as many entries from female authors as male. And so, I talked to a lot of women authors and I actually wrote a book called a book of one’s own about why more women should be writing their business books. And, I mean, I don’t think I’ve done this single handed, but I do think that the amount of women writing and publishing their books now has gone up. But women genuinely did feel that they lacked confidence in. More lacking confidence than men in putting out books. They felt they would. They lacked credibility and they would be criticised. And they also felt a lot of them felt that writing their book was selfish because it was something for them and took them away from either their work or their families, which is terrible. So, I’ve really kind of, of encouraged more women to write their books and, of course, you know, more diverse authors of all kinds, which is great, because the Business Book Awards really reflects that now. It’s reflected in the judging panel, it’s reflected in the entries, and hopefully in the winners.

Minter Dial: So, yeah, it’s been BBA 2024 is.

Lucy McCarraher: When it is September 19.

Minter Dial: So this is published just before that. So, it gives everyone an opportunity to cheque in on the winners of the, the new crop.

Lucy McCarraher: Absolutely. I mean, if nothing else, it will give you a great selection of business books to read over the next year.

Minter Dial: 100%. And I’ll be putting all that in the show notes. Of course, as I’m a judge, I know what’s a little bit, what’s going on. Excited. But mom’s the word, eh? All right, Lucy, how can people get in touch with you with regard to if they’re thinking about book, would you send them more to bookmagic.AI or what ways can they contact you, follow you, and understand?

Lucy McCarraher: Absolutely. Well, you can follow me on social media because I have one of those names that is unspellable, but there isn’t another one around. So, definitely find me there on LinkedIn or anywhere else. If you are thinking of writing your book and that’s the stage you’re at, please do give bookmagic.AI a try. You can do a whole lot of the positioning free before you actually sign up. So, I think that’s quite a good deal. You can see if that’s going to work for you, and if you’ve got a book that you’re looking to publish or that you want to work more one to one with a writing coach or a ghostwriter, contact us@rethinkpress.com and we would love to chat to you.

Minter Dial: This just to make sure people understand, this is what the hybrid model is.

Lucy McCarraher: That is the hybrid model of publishing.

Minter Dial: The kind of services that you pay for as an author to help you get the book out and at the end you get a higher margin.

Lucy McCarraher: That’s right.

Minter Dial: That’s the give and take.

Lucy McCarraher: Yes, exactly. It’s the sort of balance between traditional publishing in that we have a team, that we are professional publishers. We publish books of a really high quality inside and out. But it’s like self-publishing, more like self-publishing in that you pay for the uproar front costs as an author. We think it’s the perfect, happy medium. The Goldilocks of entrepreneur publishing.

Minter Dial: Well, I mean, the word Thinkfest, Rethink Press and rethink. We think this is a great idea. Lucy, thank you so much for coming on.

Lucy McCarraher: Thank you, Minter.