As a creative agency that delivers professional publishing expertise, when you learn that one of your authors is using AI alongside your carefully curated workflow process, the obvious reaction might be to slightly shudder, thinking: how will this impact the quality of the material? Will they think they can achieve acceptable or better outcomes with an AI writing assistant rather than a carefully assigned specialist? Will they value our expertise in the same way?

On the contrary, I find the concept rather enticing. Because, as much as we have been experimenting with a range of AI-enabled tools ourselves, nothing can quite simulate an authentic, first-hand author experience – so there would undoubtably be valuable learnings for us as a collaborative partner. Selfishly, also, I wanted independent validation that, as intelligent and advanced as AI writing assistants are, you really can’t replace the human professional in every conceivable scenario – and that if this was a performance-based test, Whitefox would place top.

The author in question is Dr. Chad Scott, who, like many of our authors, wears several hats. He is an experienced counsellor, teacher of psychology and an Amazon bestseller author. In his upcoming book, ‘Beyond The Darkness: Transformative Journeys Through Dark Tourism’, Dr. Chad explores some of history’s most profound and challenging sites, from Auschwitz to Ground Zero, and how their connection to tragedy has a reflective and transformative potential.

Chad was very happy to talk to me, and our conversation confirmed a number of areas where AI can be a valuable ally in the process of making and marketing books. He was predominantly using a paid-for version of ChatGPT, Speechify, ProWritingAid and tools that were embedded within broader platforms such as Canva.

Here are the main takeaways.

It greatly enhanced the researching process

We have heard this a thousand times before, but it’s quite hard to interpret exactly what authors mean since the context can vary so much. Every writer has a different creative process. In Dr. Chad’s case, ChatGPT was an essential companion for reimagining some of the details of the places and locations featured in his book. Although he had visited them all before and could recall his emotional response, some visits had taken place over 20 years ago and key descriptive elements had slipped his memory. ChatGPT helped fill the gaps by responding to prompts like, ‘As you enter the Alamo in Texas as a tourist, what was contained within the first room?’

It enabled new ways of working as an author

One area where AI proved especially helpful to Dr. Chad – perhaps the most helpful – was through an app called Speechify, which easily converts writing into speech. This allowed Chad to hear his book as he wrote it, listening to it endlessly in the car, sparking new ideas and catching areas that needed revision. During the editing process, he used it constantly by playing the audio on one screen while following along in the manuscript on another, making changes along the way. By listening at 1.5x speed or faster, he was able to work through the book much more quickly than reading it himself, allowing for numerous revisions in a short amount of time during the developmental edit.

It’s a brilliant way to test concepts and design ideas

The design process is one of the publishing stages authors are most eager to be involved in but are typically distanced from, given they rely on a professional designer to accurately interpret a brief and translate it into a compelling and appropriate design. However, the rise in text-to-image generative AI tools has made it much easier for non-professionals to have a good go. Whilst Dr. Chad recognised this was ultimately no replacement for an actual designer, it was a great tool for him to play around with and explore different design directions on his own time, testing those amongst his readers for feedback before handing over to a trained professional.

The editorial tools were no match for actual editors

In fact, if Dr. Chad were to grade them, AI would receive a D and the editor Whitefox paired him up with would score an A+ – music to my ears! The most promising tool was the AI-editor ProWritingAid which claims to go beyond basic grammar and spelling checks by providing suggestions or ‘sparks’ for making your writing better. When asked if this had any merit, Chad described it as ‘spell-check on steroids.’ While it did catch a good number of errors, he wasn’t impressed with any of the suggestions for rewriting the actual text. The author-editor relationship is a crucial one, and something AI will have to work a lot harder at if it is ever going to stand up to its human counterpart.

What inspired me about Dr. Chad’s curious approach to these tools was that he never intended to shortchange any critical part of the publishing process, but instead see how it could supercharge it. Throughout it all, he continued to value Whitefox as a trusted, collaborative partner.

As we are still midway through the creative process, I am sure there will be more lessons to learn until we bring the book to market and make it discoverable to readers. I look forward to checking back in with Dr. Chad in a couple of months.

‘Beyond The Darkness’ is publishing on 1 May.