I have come across several fascinating pieces on the changing shape of marketing for indie authors over the past week. The news item that frames them picks up on Tuesday’s theme of new tools, with some more AI gizmos courtesy of newsletter platform Beehiiv (ironically, the announcement comes a week after I finally signed up to have my newsletter with them).
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
It’s a fairly comprehensive set of web-building, analytics, segmentation, and monetizing tools for anyone who wants to make their newsletter the heart of what they do. You can explore in depth in this piece. But what is very clear is that this kind of AI-driven tool for marketing is only going to increase.
How AI Is Reshaping Metadata and Discovery
Mark Williams has written a fascinating piece on just how AI is changing marketing. He takes a deep dive into its impact on metadata and SEO. These are areas that, as writers, we spend a lot of time thinking about in order to improve our discovery. I remember back to the days when the “colon plus keyword-stuffed subtitle” phenomenon was exercising a lot of angst, controversy, and consideration on Amazon.
The earlier AI marketing tools that we have seen platforms develop for several years now have focused their attention on helping authors navigate this SEO minefield. They look for the most appropriate keywords and metadata for a book.
Williams makes a strong case that generative AI will change the whole way metadata works—because it changes how search works. People are no longer searching strings of keywords to find their next read. They are asking conversational questions of AI chatbots, often using voice first.
The result is that what they discover might not be determined by the match of keywords to search strings, but by something much deeper and more organic. Williams is one of the balanced technophiles, and this feels like a valuable insight into a changing landscape. His piece in The New Publishing Standard is available here.
TikTok Shop and the Demands of Modern Marketing
Jane Friedman also has a fascinating marketing article in her newsletter The Bottom Line. As it’s her research and behind a paywall, I won’t rehash too much, but it features ALLi’s own Sacha Black. And the gist is fairly simple: TikTok Shop is a great tool for marketing.
But that “great” comes with a lot of caveats, most of them around the time and effort authors need to sink into maintaining the shop to avoid falling foul of TikTok’s tight customer service rules. And the recommendation is to maintain diversity of channels.
Thoughts or further questions on this post or any self-publishing issue?
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