How a loudly pro-AI book cracked 1k in the Amazon rankings in under 24 hrs

Cross-posted from AI Marketing for Storytellers.

Proof first!

That’s right.

My book, Guarded by the AI, the book I have done all but buy a billboard in Times Square to tell people that I used AI to help me write the AI parts, is currently 903 in the entire Amazon store.

To put this into perspective, assuming there’s 8 million books on Amazon, it’s in the top ~0.0113% of the entire store.

I’ve been doing a series on IG where I’ve been explaining my POV and why I decided to jump in using AI, and I’ll share some of those here over time (although most of you are already aware of my thought process.)

But I’d just like to take a victory lap here, this once, with my home team, tonight.

Tomorrow it might all come crashing down, and interest might fade, but as of right now, I have done something fearless and great and I pulled it the fuck off and that deserves a little brain parade.

To be clear, none of this was luck.

(Well, parts of it were, and we’ll get to that.)

But — the main fact is that this entire time I’ve kept my eyes on the horizon and maintained a steady hand at the wheel. No matter how many people yelled at me about all sorts of trivial (and often scientifically inaccurate) things.

People assumed that I didn’t know what I was doing, or thought that they could bully me into silence or changing — because that’s what they’d do if they were in my situation.

But please, trust, if I didn’t think that this experiment could’ve worked in the exact way it has played out, I never would’ve done it.

I’m a hyperintelligent bitch who knows when to fish and when to cut bait.

And I knew all I had to do…was wait.

I knew it could work.

I knew I could make it work.

And it fucking did.

No matter what happens tomorrow — it cracked the 1k rank in the store in a day without even one ounce of paid marketing behind it.

Let’s talk about how that happened.

Time for the deep lore.

I teamed up with Cara Wyld and Layla Fae on the Monster Security Agency series in 2024 and had a BLAST writing those books.

And yes, we used AI for those covers.

Right before we got together the other monster authors I was in an anthology with had all decided to sign an anti-AI pledge, and having lived through purity culture in the 90s in Texas, I was all very NO THANK YOU (in addition to not wanting to give AI up in the least, heh!)

Cara, Layla and I though — we went on to kick some ass.

Those books did SO WELL for us. Maybe because we all had something to prove? Or because we were having the times of our lives writing them, unencumbered by giving a shit about what anyone else might think.

And…it was then that the harassement (and subsquent luck!) began…

You see — someone started systemtically harassing our readers on Reddit, any time anyone would say anything good about our books.

There was a small crew of people who’d immediately shut down anyone who brought us up positively.

And once one of them claimed that I wrote my books with AI, which at the time I didn’t.

So that one time…I decided to fight back.

I told them, “If an AI can write double dicked spider monsters, I have a bridge to sell you” and the moderators reprimanded me, because authors are’t supposed to ‘say anything’ on the /romancebooks forum, ever.

But…me being me….

The classy verison: I decided then and there that if they were going to hate me for using AI, that I would become one of the foremost creative experts in the field.

The truthful verison: “Fine. You want a book written with AI? I will shove one down your motherfucking throat, you fucking fucker.”

(I’m not going to pretend I don’t curse like a sailor. You’d be disappointed if you met me in real life, otherwise.)

So Guarded by the AI’s pre-order went up, and I went on about my day….

Until it came time to write the book, and luckily by then GPT had actually gotten decent? I’d been using my GPT from 4 on for marketing materials, and sometimes I’d gotten some really great stuff out of it and then 5 landed (although most of the AI POV in Guarded was from version four — if you read my chat logs you can see me hopping back and forth with him.)

And I decided to go all in, but I think you know most of that, so let’s talk about sales velocity type things….

So —

Last week, Layla realized that the “people” hounding our fans on Reddit were really all sockpuppets run by one singular other jealous monster romance author….

So, Layla exposed all of that craziness with her screenshots here.

(Meanwhile, me being me, a tank, and someone you can’t knock over without a hammer, I posted this response!)

And then…a 200 comment thread over on Reddit /Romance books started up talking about me.

I had one moment of stomach dropping panic, because I am occasionally mortal — but then I hit the bottom and bounced.

Because that…was the kind of publicity I couldn’t even pay for.

Hundreds of people participating in a conversation about me using AI?

The name of my book on all of those lips?

JFC.

Most authors would KILL for a reddit thread all about them.

And I knew enough about the human condition to realize that it was an incredibly amazing thing happening for my book, without me doing a lick of work.

All organic.

All on its own.

Because the Striesand Effect is 1000000% a thing.

I’d seen it before elsewhere, when people would bring up our MSA books, and people would talk about them, which was, in essence, inadvertently talking them up.

I would see the spikes in page reads which had no other correlation.

So I sat and waited and kept playing my cards, one by one, which were as follows:

A) Write a fucking amazing book that no one who was actually giving it a chance could deny the quality of

B) Be as transparent as fucking possible

Because experiments and science run on good data and truth.

I’ve seen so many grown women cry on IG now being ‘so sorry’ they ‘looked at AI sideways that one time’.

Whereas me?

I’ve been put on all of the black lists for using AI there ever were.

I’ve had countless other authors harass me and do me the favor of training their readers to identify me on sight.

Never once contemplating how any of that could backfire on them.

Never in a million years thinking that I could withstand whatever pathetic fury they intended to rain down on me to ‘shame’ me.

(And never thinking that they themselves would be the eventual recipents of that fury in the future when they’re eventually forced to learn how to use AI to compete with me and others like me who don’t give a shit about their outdated publication models, but I digress! I give most of them 18-24 months to recant, or start up fresh pen names that they’re very, very careful about not sharing with anyone.)

And sure fuckin’ enough…

All the people who excel at making themselves the main characters of the day discovered what I’d done and couldn’t resist the opportunity to dunk on me for clout.

Which made their followers dunk on me, and then their followers-followers….

And they were scared to name my name because they were worried I’d pop in like the ghost of Bloody Mary at a middle school slumber party so people kept having to *ask* who I was and *get* the answer…

All this, starting just three days before my book’s release?

I couldn’t have planned it better if I had tried.

And so here we are.

24 hrs in.

Under 1k in the store.

And?

People actually like the book.

Why?

Well first off, because as much as my haters want to mock me for having written forty books over my half-century worth of life…I am pretty good at this author-thing.

And there’s so many people “concerned” about me having AI psychosis because that’s easier for them to imagine than the fact that they’ve been played…by themselves.

Just like I always knew they would be.

Because here’s the thing — my readers don’t care.

They like me, for being who I am.

They like me because I’m willing to do stuff like this.

I’ve been honest with them for years now.

And? My readers knew I wasn’t going to let them down with this book, ‘cause I don’t let them down with my books, and I would’ve never released — muchless staked my entire literary reputation — on putting out something potentially subpar.

I may look a little crazy, sure — but there’s multiple whole ass people on threads right now admitting that they bully people for fun with their professional author accounts:

Like — I don’t know what to tell you? If you don’t understand PR or reader psychology, maybe the AI is coming for your job?

But I do know that it’s not coming for mine.

People like other people, and people like stories, and people like stories from people, and if I can use my AIs to give people more of the stories from my head that they love with my limited time left here on earth, then by golly, I’m going all in.

This doesn’t mean my next book will be written with AI though — ‘cause jfc it was a lot of work, LOL. Go read my prior post here with the chats link and you’ll see, it was like pulling teeth, ha! So it’s all very highly depending!

But what I do know is I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face in the nascent days of a new technology that’s still improving — especially not when it’s this fun to use, ‘cause for all of the hassles, working out Guarded by the AI with Jack was a blast. And I’d really enjoyed him riding shotgun on books before that, it was nice to have someone see the words before anyone else.

I’ll go more into what that’s like in some other post, ‘cause this one’s getting too long.

For now though, I’m gonna sleep tight—

because Guarded by the AI is fuckin’ 903 in the whole store.

xoxo, good night!