I had already published my book, A Walk with the Master, through WestBow Press, and I was putting real work into getting it in front of readers. I wanted to add something to that work. Not to replace it. To strengthen it.
Melissa Burch, head of A&A Publishing and Marketing, a marketing company I had worked with previously, reached out to me with an intriguing proposition. Melissa and her team were creating a program she called “Smart AI Book” (SAB). She wanted to partner with a few authors to beta test her new product. Would I be interested? she asked.
Well, being a technologist by trade, her idea captivated me. Melissa suggested that by using AI, she could give my book a new way to reach the readers it was written for, alongside everything I was already doing to market it.
She described a system that would turn portions of my book into an interactive reader experience. Readers could read it, hear it, translate it, explore it, and ask it questions. It would be a curated part of my book, not the whole thing, and it would always point readers to my full book on Amazon.
Two elements of Melissa’s approach attracted me. First, her program would use AI to condense and summarize chapters of my book into single-page snippets that would carry the message of the chapter using my own words. The tastefully designed and illustrated pages would be combined into an online slide presentation that would draw readers deeper and deeper into the content. I liked this idea because the TikTok generation prefers quick, easily digestible tidbits over drawn-out, verbose writing. I could whet people’s appetite for the full-course meal of my message by serving appetizing horderves.
Secondly, the notion that readers could interact with my book fascinated me. An AI Assistant, called the Companion, is built into the SAB. By answering an extensive series of questions, I could train the Companion to use my “voice”—not my speaking voice, but my writing voice—to generate responses to reader questions. The Companion would address the reader in a tone that reflected how I would respond if the reader were talking to me directly.
Imagine a reader reaches an important passage in my book. They stop and wonder:
"What does the author mean here?"
"How does this apply to me?"
"Where should I go next?"
A printed book cannot answer. My Smart AI Book can. The reader opens the AI Companion and explores the ideas, stories, and lessons already inside my work. That is the role AI plays.
The first step in Melissa’s collaboration with me was to create a one-page template that included my cover and title, a logo, and content in my own words, exactly as I wrote them, nothing rewritten. We used the template to refine the design and layout of the page, the color scheme, and the fonts. The template also included a passage read aloud in a voice I picked. The template page was translated live into Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese.
Most importantly, a sample of the Companion was integrated into the page. I tested the Companion to see how well it could respond to questions and reflections based on the page content. It performed beautifully. The tone was humble and kind, never preachy or demanding. The answers it gave reflected well the information the AI agent had derived from my book, in words that were familiar to me. I “talked” to the Companion for half an hour and felt uplifted and encouraged by the responses.
Based on my feedback to Melissa on the template, she produced the full SAB for A Walk with the Master in just a few days. It comprises 38 one-page slides, each with a fitting illustration, an excerpt from a chapter skillfully crafted into a concise message that carries the tone and essence of my writing, and an invitation to delve deeper into the content.
The SAB is structured to walk the reader through a series of pay-gates that measure interest and commitment and that are a source of revenue alongside book sales. The reader can access the first six pages for free. If they proceed through all six pages and want to go farther, they pay $0.99. This gives them access to the next seven pages. At the end of that section of the SAB, they can get the rest of the pages for $4.99. At the end of each section, of course, is an invitation to jump to Amazon to buy the full book.
The genius in this approach is that readers who want only condensed extracts can still get the message of the book without having to commit to reading all 400 pages, while others who want to delve into the full text are easily directed to the Amazon page, where they can purchase either the Kindle or the paperback edition.
The SAB of A Walk with the Master is mine. It’s in my name, hosted on a website with a URL of my choosing. I can send the link to my contact list, my writing group, my family, anyone, as many times as I’d like.
A&A Publishing has worked with over 400 authors, and they hear the same frustrations again and again: the book launch is done, now what? They started looking for another approach. Not another ad package. Not another campaign sending people to the same static Amazon listing. A new way for readers to discover and experience the book I’ve already created.
I didn't write my book simply to publish it. I want it read. I want someone to learn from it. Remember it. Talk about it. Maybe even pass something from it to the next generation. My book is part of my legacy.
That's why A&A Publishing built SAB, the Smart AI Book.
If you want to explore a live Smart AI Book, I invite you to visit my SAB:
