2469 - Publishing for Real Authority in the Age of AI with Digital Authors' Wiebke Tasch

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Veepka Tash. Veepka, you are the founder and CEO of Digital Authors. You're found on the web at digital-authors.com. Veepka, it's so great to have you. Thank you so much, Josh. It's such a pleasure and honor to be here. Yes. Well, you're originally German. You are living in Mexico right now. And one thing I always love finding out from my guests and other high-level business leaders is what you do for fun when you're not at work. And what is it that you've been doing lately?

1:31So I started dancing ballet like a year ago, which is so awesome. This was always like a childhood dream of mine, but where I grew up, there was no ballet classes. and last year a friend of mine she asked me how do you want to join there's a new ballet class for adults uh open up and I'm like yeah and so it's super fun it's super awesome for for you know for your body and um it's so so amazing learning such kind of like an old dance so to speak and it's super technical and I love it that is remarkable I never thought that uh I mean I'd never considered it, but as an adult learning ballet for the very, very first time.

2:19All right. So what is the experience like? It's really fun. Like in the beginning, I couldn't stop smiling, you know, because it was really like a childhood dream. And then you're right. Like a lot of people like, okay, if you don't start dancing when you're seven or eight or like even younger, then, you know you never can do it and then you know I just did it because it's here in Mexico so it's in Spanish and then ballet is like you know that this it's comes from France so they're using a lot of like French words and in the beginning I'm like I don't know what what they're talking about so I've just like followed the steps and you know looking what other people did and to be honest in the beginning it was just like a weekly exercise thing and now I'm I love it so much I actually want to like buy like a ballet bar and put it in in my living room and you know I can like do some some moves in the evening do some stretching and stuff I really love it it's amazing yeah and that was my kind of my last question on this is you know what have you noticed in terms of your physical body like you know obviously there's a bit of a workout um probably helps with posture i would imagine and yeah what are the physical benefits of ballet that you've experienced first of all i feel more feminine like because you you sit better you know you um like my legs for example like i like sometimes i have like muscle sores on parts i didn't know there are any muscles.

3:54You know, it's like, I can stretch so much better. And I just feel, you know, more feminine. And overall, my body moves better. Well, I am excited. Thank you so much for sharing. I can totally see how that would be, that would give you the benefits that you spoke about. Well, Vipka, your website is digital-authors.com. So let's talk about why 2026 is a great year to get your book put together. I love this question because actually this year and maybe like till 2028 is a great year to publish. And I'll tell you why. um it's something really strange happened at the moment for like the publishing industry and I think it has to do something with AI so let me walk through it a lot of like since AI since like December 2022 you know when like open AI um you know like like people could really get chat HTTP and starting like writing books using chat HTTP within like a couple of days and then uploaded on amazon and then amazon gets like so many books like it doubled from two million books a year to four million books a year and kind of like the market you know was like overflowing with those books and now it's an interesting movement so the people who are publishing books go actually you know go back so there's not so many books uh people don't publish so many books at the moment like the last three years.

5:38But at the same time, people who are searching for good books, especially nonfiction books, are rising. So there's more demand on what people are searching for. People are more hungry about knowledge. People want to improve their life. and looking for like expertise and knowledge that really helps them transform their life. So there is a like growing demand on nonfiction book. And at the same time, there's less and less books published. So this means at the moment, and maybe it's closing in a year or two, it's a perfect time to publish a book because there's kind of a market gap because less authors publish, but the demand is growing.

6:29So it's a perfect time for like a first time author to go in, you know, find a good niche, use the expertise and like writing and publishing a good book. Yeah, yeah. Hey, just a quick technical thing. Take the microphone, move it maybe like two inches further away. It was just popping a little. I was getting some pops. So, anyway, so, yeah, so obviously, you know, folks are probably thinking now, you know, now that, you know, AI is so ubiquitous, you know, you've been seeing, you know, people maybe using those tools in a way just to crank out a book, you know, which is probably good and bad. because now what there's, you know, books that are just kind of just AI slop, which I don't know that that's what our friend who's listening to our conversation wants.

7:26Can you maybe address that? Like how to use AI ethically and in a way that's going to give you the results that you want, not just to, you know, put out some AI slop in your name? Yeah, I love this question. So using AI is I see it very critical because especially like JTTP, a lot of people using JTTP, I think like it's a billion people using JTTP at the moment. And so it generates kind of like the same sentence structure and kind of like the overall like writing flow is very generic and it's always the same stuff. And a little example, like I had a market analysis with like an author from from the UK and she she gave me like a little bit of a manuscript and I went over it and I noticed okay there are some sentences I'm familiar with it's kind of like it's not the system or it's not you it's the system or something you know like like this structure.

8:32And a few days later, I joined, what was it, like a mastermind group. And so the host actually said the same sentence. And I'm like, wow, I bet both of them used ShedGTP and just, you know, repeated what ShedGTP gave them. And it's like, this can be so dangerous if you publish a book and then someone you know buys your book for 20 30 dollars and then start reading it and then it's like i read the same sentence like over and over in other books and like in other publications and then you can really damage your credibility yeah you know if it's if it's come so clear you just be you know lazy and use chat gdb however i would say like ai is a very good tool and there are very good tools for like writing like um cremily or even claude it's like better for writing but it doesn't um replace your own voice you know it's so important to especially in book publishing use your own voice find your own voice tell your story this is the whole point of publishing a book you know you want to tell your story um and the best way of using ai maybe if you if you're not so much into writing but you want

10:04because a business asset just start recording yourself you know recording your ideas recording your thoughts recording your framework and then um work through it or like hire like a you know, book coach, writing coach, et cetera. But don't just, you know, put something in into ChatGTB and then, you know, publish it without an editor and nothing. Please, not just in book writing, marketing, your page copy, your social media content, your email. Do not just trust AI to communicate as you. Okay, that's my little soapbox on the issue. So, Vibka, share with me a bit and our friend that's listening right now, the business justification for having a book today.

10:54Like, how does it fit and how do you see your top performing clients use their book most successfully? Yeah, again, a great question. because a book, first of all, a book is really like a long-term content and like an asset for you because I see it in my clients. I see studies on this. Like if you publish a good book, first of all, you can attract more premium clients, you know, because a book shows that you can sit down if you don't use JTDB, you can sit down and be very disciplined and write a book and like, you know come up with a framework which is like 100 pages long at least so it shows your discipline you know what you're talking about um it shows your expertise and it's helped you to build the authority and there's so many benefits for example it shortens your sales cycle like because if someone buys your book and they are connecting with you through your story through your framework and it helps you to basically convert cold readers into warm leads because if someone reads your book and you do it the right way and convert them into your audience you know just not like lose the reader so to speak but convert them into your audience and from there into a client so this is kind of like a very good lead magnet um what i also see in my clients and like in studies is you can ask for higher prices in the long term.

12:37You know, it's nothing like an overnight thing. It's not like you publish your book on Thursday and then next Wednesday you can double your price. It's kind of like a long-term asset and a book helps you really do like long-term decisions. And it positions you in your field as an authority. And so if you do it right, like not every book is successful, But if you have like a very well written book, good positioned, good published with like, you know, cover design, layout design, it really helps you position yourself in your niche as an expert. And from there you can, you know, raise your prices and open doors like speaking gigs, you know, podcast interviews with like really good podcasts, etc.

13:27So there's so many possibilities, but it's like in a core, it really helps you to stand out in your niche and using it as like a lead magnet and long-term asset for your business. Okay. So digital authors fits in where? How do you, what jobs do you step in to help your authors with? so the very first thing i do with every also we do like a market analysis and we see okay how is your expertise fitting into the market because it's not just you know guesswork it's like i'm i see this so often um when people just use ai and then hey let's like guess what is the market demand etc so we're using really like softwares and having a lot of data to prove okay what is the demand what people are searching for what is your expertise and how can fit this together so in the very beginning we really do like a market fit market analysis and see you know how can we match like the also with the market and then position them from there so everything, the foundation is like really profound market analysis and everything from there, um, goes.

14:52Yeah. And so, um, if I'm on your website right now, um, it's digital dash authors.com. Um, well, you're a great follow on LinkedIn, by the way. Um, what resource, do you have any resources or like, um, for someone that wants to learn a little bit more, it looks like you've got an online course. You've got to book yourself. Before we get into like next steps for someone who's serious about services, what would you recommend for someone that wants to build more of a relationship with you? Let's do like a market analysis. That's for free. And what I need is just, you know, either like the manuscript, but if you just have like a book idea, I would need the book idea and then maybe just your LinkedIn or your website and see you know what's your offer what's your positioning and then we go from there and then we go like it's usually like 30 to 45 minutes and I'm like checking the market for you checking what are what is possible where is potential where maybe not because usually doing those calls it's often surprising what people think okay I'm going to publish a book in my niche and then I'll check the market and see um yeah there's no demand um which can be like super surprising it's I would say it's like 50 it's like half of people I have a call with um it's like okay there's no market demand but if you like reposition you a little bit people searching for this and people we usually have the data like going back at least 12 months and we can back it up and see okay this is like a trend going on for a little bit longer so and the nice thing in a book market is it's slow you know it's not just it's not like instagram posts or like youtube videos it's really slow so we can like usually see like trends developing um or like going down etc so the first very thing is if you're serious book and market analysis has cost you nothing 30 minutes, and then we see what's actually possible and what's not.

17:08Oh, interesting. Yeah, well, that's helpful to validate the idea before you invest a bunch of time and effort into it. It's like, eh, no, I wouldn't write that book, man. That's helpful to know before you write it. So yeah, free market analysis, your website, digital-authors.com. And so, Vibka Tash, again, you're the CEO and founder. It's been a great conversation. Anything else that you'd recommend for our friend that's been listening to our conversation? Yeah, everybody who want to write a book, I would say trust your own voice. And maybe don't listen too much to other people. Really like trust your own voice, trust your own expertise and just do it.

17:53And maybe like a little tip because I know a lot of people are overwhelmed with writing. And maybe it's also because of, you know, internet social media we're like so overwhelmed and you know flown by by content but if you sit down like if five minutes before you go to bed if you say to yourself hey subconscious in the morning i want to write my first chapter or like the introduction to my book can you give me all the information i get i i need and then in the morning before you do anything else like just make yourself a coffee you know use the bathroom and then sit down and for the next 30 to 60 minutes do nothing else just write just write down what comes out and i give i so many so many people i gave this advice said they're like blown away how helpful it is and how good it works so if you're struggling writing if you have a white house clock just like do this little exercise and you're going to be amazed how, how fast you're going to write and like how much, how many ideas you have and how it's like, how, how, how it's going to flow out of you.

19:06So it's amazing. It's amazing little exercise. Vibka Tosh, your website, digital-authors.com. Vibka, thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you so much for having me, Josh.

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