How to Write a Nonfiction Book with AI Tools & Workflows

Full video transcript

What’s going on guys, Darby here with TheAIAuthor.com. I want to welcome you to this video — we’re going to be walking you through our Ad World presentation that we did last year, 2021, on how we’re helping people write 100-150 page lead-gen books, and sometimes in a week or less. Some people take a little bit more, naturally, but the seven-day framework is what we’ve developed and helped hundreds of students do inside our programs, our courses, our books, and our trainings — using artificial intelligence, and Jasper specifically. You’ll hear it referenced as Jarvis, but it’s been rebranded since the filming to Jasper. Using Jasper paired with a bunch of other leading tools in the industry, you can go from blank page to finished manuscript, to the point where it’s in an editor’s hands, in your advance readers’ hands, and even getting it to the point of publishing online — start using it for generating leads for your business, establishing yourself as an authority on a topic, and ultimately just getting some of that instant credibility that comes with being an author.

So enjoy the video. Inside of it you’ll see reference to some links for some of the resources we offer. You can access all of those at TheAIAuthor.com/resources — it’ll take you to, as of right now, our Circle community, where we’re building up both our free resource hub as well as our paid membership, which you can subscribe to at TheAIAuthor.com. Also subscribe here to our YouTube channel so you get notified whenever we have new videos, trainings, and interviews spotlighting our members. But other than that, enjoy this video — really take it as a proven process for how this can get done in such a short amount of time. Also understand that each day in itself can be a good amount of work, and if it’s your first time writing a book and using AI, it’s going to be intense but manageable if you follow the framework.

We’ve broken this process into a seven-day framework. Let’s kick things off with day one of the seven-day book challenge. Day one is all about preparation. When you’re kicking off this challenge, you’ve accepted the challenge to write and publish your book in one week. Inside of this context it’s going to be intense, but you’re going to get a lot done over the next seven days, so we want to prepare and lay a solid foundation — a repeatable framework you can build off of as you continue to refine and publish.

A few key things to highlight: you need to time block your week. If you don’t put it on your calendar, it’s not going to happen. Block off time for deep work — writing and researching — and also block off time to relax and recharge, since this is going to be an intense week. If you need help structuring this, check out the Pomodoro Technique. Next, find your accountability partner — don’t go into this alone. You want someone who knows what you’re up to and is committed to supporting your publishing journey; invite them to at least be an extra set of eyes for feedback midway through the week. Next is posting about your journey on social media — you’re holding yourself accountable to your network, it’s a great conversation starter, and you’ll start generating content for your book launch.

Here’s the most important part: what are you actually going to be doing with this book? We’ve broken it down into four core worksheets. Before starting any project, begin with the end in mind. It all starts with why — a great resource here is Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” video on YouTube. We developed a worksheet asking simple questions: why are you doing this, what are your readers going to get from your book, what value are you providing, how is this book going to change people’s lives?

The second worksheet is setting your goals — what’s the impact of the book, what’s the ultimate goal for your readers, what are your sales goals? It’s okay to have big goals; set them now so you can work backwards to achieve them. The third worksheet is your ideal customer avatar — write down exactly who your reader is, since you’re going to be talking to them throughout the book. You might have a few different avatars, and the hero’s journey outline recipe can help with this, especially when working with AI. A word of caution: if you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. When defining your avatar, look for basic info, their goals, sources of information, challenges and pain points, and objections they might have.

The last worksheet is finding your “spine” — the bridge between your goals and your outline. Ask yourself why you’re uniquely qualified: your list of qualifications, lessons from mentors, life experiences, and stories you can flesh out to teach people how you learned the information, and to make your process more interesting. Ask again who your book is for, what your reader is going to achieve, and how the book helps them get there — this becomes critical when you get to the outline.

Recapping day one’s action steps: time block your week, find your accountability partner, post about your journey on social media, and complete the four core worksheets — knowing your why, setting your goals, defining your customer avatar, and finding your spine. Do not start day two before finishing your worksheets and being time blocked and accountable.

Day two is about researching, outlining, and formatting — researching the market, determining the format of your book, and building the outline. Starting with research: there are free tools like the Amazon search bar and Google Keyword Planner, and paid tools like KDSpy, Phrase.io, Answer the Public, and Publisher Rocket that give deeper insight into what people are searching for daily, which you as the expert can answer and use to optimize your book to be SEO-friendly on search engines like Amazon and Google — leading to more customers and clients.

Pro tip: use Jarvis as a sounding board to expand your outline, but not for research — tools like Phrase.io are built for research; Jarvis is not a factual researcher. It’s great for creativity, not fact-checking. When outlining on day two, you’re taking your research — categories, keywords, competing books on the market — to see what’s out there, so you can build your own “blue ocean” while basing it on what’s already working. Grammarly Pro is great for ongoing spelling and sentence structure, and Copyscape is a good tool for checking plagiarism.

Into day three: take your outline from day two and all your research and push toward 5,000 words. Don’t get stuck editing your book on the go — get into flow and get the words out, because reaching 5,000 words by day three puts you well on your way to a 20,000-25,000 word book that can become a lead magnet you send to clients and use as the cornerstone of your marketing content. You’ll need editors in some form — some people use their accountability partner as a proofreader along with Grammarly Pro; others use a professional editor. A lot of the editing can be set up right at the beginning with proper planning. Types of editing to be aware of include developmental editing, content editing, copy editing, and proofreading. Don’t edit while you go, especially on your first book — get the book out of your head for the first draft, then go back and refine it.

If you’re struggling to get words out — especially if you already have content from courses, podcasts, live events, or presentations — tools like Otter.ai or the Descript Voice In Chrome extension let you talk out your content; you can use it alongside Jarvis, editing right there, essentially speaking your entire book before formatting and publishing it. This is a common approach among prolific nonfiction authors.

Day four isn’t much different — you’re writing, refining, staying organized and focused, pushing well past the 5,000-word mark with AI helping along the way. One challenge participant described the process as Jarvis being the block of marble while you’re the Michelangelo crafting your statue of David — you get the words out, then it’s your job as the author to insert your tone of voice, story, and expertise, since transcriptions or robots alone won’t cut it. Many students find themselves using AI less to write and more as an assistant — helping with creativity, roadblocks, unique angles, and brainstorming, since writing can get lonely. It can help rephrase sentences, correct word choice, and give creative insights and different angles. Progress over perfection is the goal.

Going into day five, you’re still writing and refining, starting to think about editing, but the focus remains on getting words out. The hardest part of the challenge is keeping focus on the right things at the right time. By day five, the outline should be filled out, with the introduction and conclusion done, or at least a big chunk of them. You should be leveraging AI every day, dictating whenever you get stuck, and not feeling the need to fill anything with fluff — if you can say it in a thousand words, say it in a thousand words. A 10-chapter book with 1,000 words per chapter is already 10,000 words, and chapters can be broken into small, Lego-like blocks you piece together. Action steps for day five: keep writing, and get a second set of eyes on your book from your accountability partner or an editor.

Day six is the weekend, and the focus shifts to trimming things up and locking in the book cover — whether through a premium service like 99designs or a free tool like Canva. It’s a minimum viable book, so don’t stress too much on the cover; you can get feedback and adjust it later. By day six you’re likely tired but in flow, having put in a lot of hours; keep the focus on your ideal reader as you polish the book toward day seven. Recap for the cover: include your title and subtitle, a forward if you have one (especially from an influencer in your niche), plus your author bio and book blurb. Craig Hanley’s rapid book outlining method from day two can help you refine your table of contents at this stage, since your outline should already be close to the finished table of contents.

Day seven is all about clicking publish. If you’ve made it here, congratulations — this is the culmination of the whole week, publishing a book lightning fast using AI, on the frontier of what publishing looks like. You’ll comb through final edits, knowing advance readers and editors will likely find more after publishing — but that’s fine, since you can upload second editions later. The point of the MVB (minimum viable book) is getting a minimum viable version out into people’s hands so you can start using it to grow your platform.

Two recommended publishing options: Amazon, the largest bookstore in the world, which makes self-publishing easy; or an alternative like The Book Patch, a self-publishing platform that has helped publish over a hundred thousand titles and printed millions of copies, letting you order as few or as many physical copies as you want to send to advance readers. Day seven’s focus: refine the last bits of your manuscript (advance readers will catch things you overlook — done is better than perfect), finalize your cover design, and finalize the copy for your book blurb and author bio, then publish through Amazon KDP or The Book Patch.

Action steps for day seven: get your MVB finalized and published, then celebrate — becoming a published author is a milestone accomplishment that so many people want to do and never do. That’s just the tip of the iceberg; the fun part after publishing is marketing and promoting the book, using it as a networking and business-growth mechanism, tying back to the goals set on day one — how many books to send to advance readers, influencers, family, and friends, and what to do to promote the book now that it’s published. Thank you for watching.