SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Askful Skinny Podcast with a guest. I'm proud to present AJ Jamas. AJ, welcome to the show. Please tell us more about yourself. What is your story?

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hey Peter, first of all, good morning and thanks for having me on the show. Peter, like for many years, I thought success meant building businesses, achieving financial goals, and checking all the boxes that society and the community tell us. Then what I thought is I wanted to publish a book to share my knowledge with the world. I invested $65,000 to publish my first book, and I thought that would change my life. Actually, it did, but not the way I was expected to change my life. Financially, it was one of my biggest, biggest disappointments. But personally, it became one of my biggest breakthroughs. Because that experience forced me to stop asking, how do I become more successful? And start asking, How do I become more useful? How can I serve more people? How can I make more impact in the world? And that really, that question eventually became authority publishing, which I founded in 2022. And this is where we help authors, actually, we help coaches, experts, and consultants to make impact with the world, in the world, to share their message, to have a calling, to discover their purpose, and we do it through a book.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Amazing. I have so many questions. For example, for me, uh, my midlife crisis was okay, I have to do something useful so that other people profit, not that just I made money and uh that's it. Um, and I I can relate to your story. Uh it it's um I say it's similar to mine. Uh and I also wrote a book. Uh it was uh the first uh book was uh called Time to Close Your Factory of Broken Dreams. Uh love the title, and then I I moved on from there to the Clarity Compass and so on, and I just published the 18th book today. Uh so I guess I can relate to that, but I would like to have your opinion on on another thing. Would you say that writing a book and leaving the legacy and becoming authority is something that we start thinking of uh when we get in the middle ages, uh sorry, in the mid uh in our midlife, and uh when we get um when when we start thinking about our legacy.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

I believe it's when we discover our calling, when we discover our purpose, and that's very important because the reason why I failed in my first book, I didn't discover my legacy yet. I didn't discover my calling or purpose yet. It was meant that the book would get me more business. However, when I changed my compass, because I now I'm using your word compass when I'm changing my inner compass and started to think that wow, I just now became who I was who was supposed to be. Because in the beginning I wanted to be someone by just put in the book, it was more like an ego-driven stuff. Now it became more like I want to help. This is my calling, this is my my my my uh my purpose, and this is when it came to me that now I have a legacy, I have a purpose that I want to share with the world. So for me, it started with failure. So failure kind of uncovered that legacy for me, and I didn't see that until some some time. For others, it could be another trigger, but I believe is it's not about reinventing ourselves because this is, I think, a lot of people in midlife crisis, they think I need to reinvent myself. I think it's about becoming more of who you've already been, and you've always been, and you're supposed to be. So don't try to create a new version of you, just uncover who you are, and and you will discover your your calling. And and I believe this is where we discover our legacy.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Okay, uh, important question for me, and of course, for our listeners as well. Um, can we discover ourselves uh during writing a book, or should we discover ourselves first and then write a book?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

I think I love the question. Look, it depends. There is no there's no right or wrong answer, but what I can assure you is while writing the book, the author is the most person taking advantage of the journey because the when the writing process of a book forces you in a way or the other to organize your thoughts, to organize your methodology, to understand your audience, to research your audience more. So actually, it forces you to think about you know certain angles of your business or your message that you usually take for granted. So while doing that kind of research and organizing your thoughts, because you're gonna publish that with the word, it changes you. Actually, it it it the way I see it is like Michelangelo. You know your message, you know what you want to have as a statue, but when writing the book, you become the Michelangelo of your own calling because you're gonna start looking at the details and that you know whatever you're revealing or sharing with the word will really have will have the right image that to be shared. Now, does this mean that you don't need to discover your message first? No, of course, you need to do that. So I I think now, in retrospect, I believe it's both. You need to find your calling so that you start writing the book, but while writing the book, you're gonna fine-tune that to make it really ready to be shared with the world.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Amazing. Uh, I would like your take on the technology and of writing the books. Uh, there are so many ads. You just type one sentence and you get a book out of the AI tool. And then there is so many AI tools that will help you improve your writing, and there are so many AI tools that will help you promote your book. But uh, there are also a lot of ghostwriting services. So, what's your your take on AI and writing a book? And what's your take on ghostwriting services? Great, I love the question.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

First of all, I'm gonna ask you a question, and your answer will kind of pre-review my answer. Peter, you have your own personal story that you lived, you experienced, and when you write a book or an article or a podcast, you are sharing your own journey, your own experience with the world. So, my question to you is can AI, can a robot have a story, has a personal story?

SPEAKER_01 7:22

I I I don't think so. I'm I'm I'm really skeptical. I write a lot of books, and yes, I use AI um to help me organize my thoughts. Uh to also for a research.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Great, help you organize your thoughts. That's what I'm actually coming to. Great, yeah. Please go ahead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Uh, I also use it for uh deep research, uh, because I I I um I always start any topic with a history and what what happened in the history, what happened before, and how things develop. And uh I I I find AI extremely useful in that situation. It is, it is AI cannot um let's say produce a good story, they can just produce a copy of existing stories, so they can just change subject and and all that stuff. But uh, if you want your own story, you you have to work any and it's still writing a book, I don't want to scare anybody off, but it's still a lot of work, it's uh or maybe even discipline, it's it's a special skill that you need to learn and master. And I always get humbled when I write the next book because I think oh, it's gonna be easier with that book. No, it's not, it's harder.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

It's it's it's never easier, even with the use of technology. I agree with you, and and and and just to add to your point, Peter, basically, you said that you have your own story, your own personal experience, whereas AI does a research of what is out there in the world. So this now makes us distinguish AI written books and AI-assisted books. So, in what you just shared with me, we call that AI assisted, and that's perfect. We should use AI to assist us in our research, in our finding, in the history, even to check our manuscript when it's written. It could tell you about some developmental editing, it could tell you about a lot of stuff. But the wrong use of AI would be AI written books which feel robotic. It feels, you know, like uh you know, uh kind of dry. And and and by the way, when authors come to us and they have a manuscript, there is a kind of in our checklist or in our process, we need to check the manuscript first before we we sign off. And part of checking the manuscript, before we read it, even we pass it through an AI checker. There are a lot of tools that make you check if this is AI written or no. And if the book is AI written, automatically we refuse to partner with that with the author. Now, if we know that this is genuine content, it's authentic, however, AI was used to assist them, that's beautiful, that's perfect. Everybody does that actually. So so going back to your question, AI written, a definite no, AI assisted, a definite yes, and we should do that because it helps us to become to have more potential. Like I heard it from one author, it's called potentialize. AI helps us potentialize what we're doing in a way, and and uh and also just to add one last thing here. I don't want to go too much technical. Whenever you publish a book on Amazon on Ingram Spark, as you know, there you have to dis you have to declare that there's this kind of disclaimer if you used AI in the content or in the cover. And if you use that, you have to declare that. And my guess is this will allow the algorithm of Amazon to give that book a second-class citizen kind of visibility. That means you're not gonna get the right visibility. And if you said no, but you used AI, automatically Amazon will know that because also they have AI tools, and they're gonna ban the book andor the author. It's very possible.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Okay, I have two more details I want to discuss. I I think uh our our uh viewers and listeners will enjoy that uh or benefit a lot of that. Uh, what's your take on ghostwriters, especially for the people that are not literal, they're not talented to write. Yeah, are are are ghostwriters a legit support to help you write your book?

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Of course. Look, we it in my company in authority publishing, we help coaches, experts, experts, and consultants. So we are into the nonfiction world, as you might have guessed. Okay, now those kind of professionals they are authors, not writers, and there's a big difference. An author is the owner of the idea, the owner of the story, the owner of the concept, the methodology, you name it. It doesn't mean they need to be perfect in writing, you know, a book that's world-class, you know, kind of editing. So this is where a lot of authors, and we do that actually. So a lot of authors come to us, we do the research for them, we agree on the book structure, then we agree for each chapter what are the topics to be covered, then we we prepare for them for each chapter kind of a questions that they need to prepare mentally for them in advance. Then we go on a Zoom call like we're doing now, and we're gonna record that. And we ask them the questions, they just tell the stories, and now whoever is asking the questions have a lot of experience in taking the juice out of the altar because sometimes they're gonna answer you in a shallow way, then we ask the question a different angle and a different angle until we really nail it in a way. And what happens here after the call for the author, he shared everything, they shared everything. Now we take that transcript now with Zoom Lazoto to transcribe the code, it's not like the old days, and a ghostwriter comes in, they take the transcript from Zoom, and they just start to write in the tone of voice of the author because they're gonna watch the author on the video, they're gonna listen to the way they speak, to the way they talk, to their personality, and they're gonna write in their own tone of voice, but guess what? They're gonna write the author's thoughts, not their thoughts. So legally, the author is still the author of the book because nobody said on the cover is the writer, he's the author.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Okay. Uh, another thing we before we conclude would be uh how important is the editor? Because there are so many uh platforms that help you do the things on your own, but uh, I I know it's uh uh I'll be blunt, it's a suffer, it's a huge suffer to do everything on your own. So, how important is the editor in the process?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Okay, editing, in my opinion, it's what's gonna make or break the book. I mean, you could have the best story, you could have the best methodology, but a wishy kind of washy kind of editing that will not cut it through. So, when we speak about editing, there are two major types of editing. What we call developmental editing, number one, and number two, what we call line editing. And developmental editing, actually, most authors they go only to line editing. Let's let's do the perfect grammar and you know, sentence flow and whatever, which is anybody, any junior editor could do that actually. But the most important part of editing is developmental. And guess what? This is what's gonna distinguish a book or make it stand out of the crowd. Because remember, we spoke about research. We're gonna understand who's the target reader, what are the pain points. Based on their pain points, we're gonna map this out and then we're gonna discuss with the author about the solutions they're offering to that audience to address those pain points. And this is what will make the book structurally follow a certain logic, and then we're gonna research other books because we don't want the author to be just another me book, it's gonna be like only noise. So, while you're gonna cover a big part of what's being covered, you need to bring something new to the table as the author so that you stand out of the competition. This is, by the way, that kind of process is part of developmental editing. Even before you write, now because we know what is the structure of the book and what each chapter should be covering, and then we the the the actual writing starts. Now, even if the author writes the manuscript, we're gonna look back at that structure, we call it the backbone, and we're gonna do the mapping, and sometimes the line, the developmental editors might remove sections from chapter one, put them in chapter five, vice versa, etc. We're gonna juggle things around so that later on the line editor comes in and does the perfect flow of each chapter. So it is it is very important, not for the sake of being perfect in English, no, for the sake of following the logic of what's on the target leader's mind in terms of pain and challenges, and really making sure that in a logical way we're building the story with them by offering the right guidance and solutions.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

That's amazing. AJ, where can our listeners get in touch with you to help structure or decide on the uh their their new book?

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Yeah, so the the way we do it, we call that a clarity call. If if they go to our website, authority publishing, authority-publishing.com, okay. Uh, there is directly a button that we do a clarity call. A clarity call is nothing more than discovering, first of all, the story of the author, why they want to make a book. For me, the butt the why is the most important thing. Why they they want to publish a book, what's their vision of the book? We can and we call that a book posture review. We're gonna review if they're fit for a book or no, and we can tell them on that call if they're a good fit for a book or no, because we from our experience we know really what what what kind of ticks with the audience, you know. So we do that now. For those who have already a manuscript, we do for them a kind of a book posture report. That means we take the manuscript after we sign an NDA, of course, we kind of analyze it, and then we tell them how ready it is for being published or what it requires. So they just go to authority-publishing.com, they click on the top on the header or anyone on the anywhere on the page, and they can uh book a call with us and we take it from there. And they can also check us out on LinkedIn or Instagram or X. My my handle is HJ Chamas for all the platforms. Kept it simple, you know, and and uni unified across the platforms.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

AJ, thank you for all these insights and thank you for uh being my guest tonight.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed uh the conversation, it was fun. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Thank you.