Career Growth Advice from Allison Lane, Non-Fiction Book Coach | Career Tips for Women in Publishing and Branding

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 128
Featuring Allison Lane

Episode Title: #128 From Corporate PR to Book Coach: Unveiling Publishing Secrets : Allison Lane Shares Her Career Insights

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Allison Lane


Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there, my name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the 2B Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. 2B Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation. If you've ever dreamed of writing a book, growing your personal brand as an author, or using your expertise to make a bigger impact, this episode's for you.


Hi there. Welcome back to another episode of the 2B Bolder podcast, where we highlight women who take bold steps in their careers and lives. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Allison Lane. Allison is a successful leader in the world of publishing, marketing, and author branding. Allison is a non-fiction book coach and host of The Author's Edge. She specializes in helping women publish their books, build their platforms, and launch with impact. Her expertise is all about boosting visibility, attracting media attention, and helping authors grow their influence. Allison, welcome to the show. It is so exciting to have you here. Secretly, I've wanted to write a book, and I've got that in the back of my head. So I’m thrilled.

Allison Lane (Guest): I'm so I'm so happy to be here because everybody wants to write a book,

Mary Killelea: Right

Allison Lane: And no one knows how to do that. So, they put it on the back burner. It's a dream they'll never fulfill because they don't know where to start. That's why I'm excited to be here because everyone has a story to tell. And I'm not talking about fiction. And I'm talking about your lived experience as a story. It might be a self-help book. It might be a historical view of women in sports. I mean, it could be your breast cancer journey and you now have tips for people who are recently diagnosed. That's once you give tips or insights or advice, that's no longer memoir. That's a blend. That's why I'm so excited because people need to know what the process is so that they can do it. They can go and be bolder.

Mary Killelea: I love it. Okay, so let's back up for just a minute though. Let's figure out or hear the story of how you got here. So like you know your career path. I know. I know. We're going to go deep into what you do today, but it, you know, the career journey is so interesting to so many people because they can begin to see how you did it and maybe take the same steps.

Allison Lane: Well, I studied in college the only thing that I was good at, which was writing. And unfortunately for me, I had a stepfather who said, "Writer, what are you going to do? Just write?" Like, how? And so journalism was at least a job. So I majored in journalism. I was just glad to have a major that didn't require math.

Mary Killelea: Right.

Allison Lane: So yes, and right after college, I promptly got a job waiting tables because it was a recession. And 10 months later, I got an offer for essentially like a glorified internship at Pepsi in New York. And I was in Annapolis, Maryland. You know, I had never been anywhere. I think that the reason why they offered this is back in the times of snail mail, the reason why they offered me a role was because they were tickled by my outreach letter. It wasn't because I had been, you know, gotten this many grades or whatever. This was back when you'd send, you know, a cover letter and a resume in an envelope and lick a stamp. They weren't even sticky on the back. You had to do all the licking yourself and send it away and hope that someone wrote you back.

Mary Killelea: I remember those days.

Allison Lane: Yeah. I mean, and so every choice of the paper stock and the feel and you wanted it to be memorable, anything you could obsess over, I did. My paper was like a blush pink. I mean, who cares now, right? And when I sent my pitch, I sent them a recipe for a margarita and a margarita glass that was shaped like a cactus. Who does that?

Mary Killelea: Yeah, that's pretty impressive.

Allison Lane: Just because and I said here, you know, and I have all these skills that relate to the job that I would like to get. Plus, I can make a mean margarita and I can gallop like a cowgirl cuz I love horses. And they thought that was so memorable that they had to have me, you know, on their team for a whole three and a half months. And I thought this is the beginning of it. And it didn't occur to me that it was at 3 months I was going to move home. I'm so optimistic always like of course it's going to lead to something, right? How could it not? So I started there and then moved at the end of that time. I got a job at entry level at a PR agency in New York City to where I had never been and started at the bottom making barely like money for pasta and I worked in PR agencies and there were big global companies but you know you're still one minion and working with on McDonald House, Ronald McDonald House account or I worked some of my accounts included like men's clayborn men's wear and fashion lines and like whatever needed to be pitched I was great at. , and eventually I ended up doing a national tour for a client who was shy and didn't want to go on TV. And they, my leadership said, Allison will do anything. like, well, I mean, I'm a good speaker and I can certainly talk to a meteorologist before the Today Show comes on. I did that and I had to wear a costume. One time I had to dress as a burrito and like with a whole mascot thing with my arms sticking out and do a taco dance. I dressed as craft barbecue sauce. I dressed as a train engineer because we were engineers. I'm doing air bunnies engineering a new flavor. But it was a great experience of a really important lesson which is to say yes.

Mary Killelea: Mhm.

Allison Lane: Somebody wants you to do something and you think, well, that's not the path that I suspected or is this going to be respected? You know what it was? It was super visible. And it allowed me to stretch skills I didn't know I had and be visible doing it. So, I got promoted early and I was always good at finding a hook for a story, any story. The first media coverage of casual Friday was pitched by me to Good Morning America featuring Clayborn men's wear and the segment which aired was the producer said, "You mean people cannot wear a suit and a tie to work?" And I said, "Not just that, you can wear denim." I mean, it was like I had sliced the bread. And that's what I mean. I mean, you think everyone is listening, they're you're wearing denim and you're, you know, god forbid you're not wearing a tie on a Friday. I mean, women used to have to wear pantyhose,

Mary Killelea: Right?

Allison Lane: Requirement in the olden days when God was a boy. That is what used to happen. So that's how I started and very quickly I knew that New York wasn't my home. I grew up in Annapolis, Maryland, and I was used to being able to see grass and sky, but I knew I wanted to stay in a big city because Annapolis seems so small town, which it is, but it is super charming. , so I asked for a transfer and I worked at a global agency and they said, "Choose an office you want to work at, just don't leave." And I said, "I hear Chicago's nice." Because I had, they had just sent me on a national tour. I had gone everywhere on the company's dime and stayed at really nice hotels. And the reason why I like Chicago is because I was single and the men there carried more weight physically than the men in New York who I could literally carry around. They were so thin. The European cut off everything and all the guys were just they weren't they they I don't know they weren't my thing. So in Chicago, I just thought that's where they keep the the nice guys who were real the

Mary Killelea: Muscles.

Allison Lane: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I moved to Chicago. My agency quickly rented me out to Quaker Oats to be inhouse sort of embedded. And at the end of that stint, Quaker Oats bought me from my agency because I loved it. Because I knew what life was like in the agency. You get a new client and you publicize it, but you're really just part of an entire marketing plan cuz PR and publicity which are not the same thing are one channel within marketing. There's also events. There's also now social or digital or speaking and and then how you leverage that and I just wanted to see more. So, of course, I took the job and I was Quaker got acquired by Pepsi, which was a huge being in media relations. That was my job to be a spokesperson back when there was no caller ID. The phone rang and it was the Wall Street Journal. Do you have a comment about this? Which meant I had to be ready all the time. to spin a hook that was relevant not just to the question they were asking but to you know maybe a greater nutrition trend or agriculture opportunity. You know, bioengineering makes strawberries able to withstand frost and it's not the scary thing that people thought it was all the time. So, I just had to be ready and I loved it. I loved being immersed and I loved being a source and I loved representing so many different brands but also the finances because marketing drives the business. So it was important. It was like getting an MBA without having to spend a dollar.

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Mary Killelea: That is such an interesting journey and I and I love the way you brought it to life and I can obviously tell you're very good at storytelling. You mentioned PR versus publicity and how it's different. Can you touch on that before we get into exactly what you do today?

Allison Lane: Sure. When I was at Pepsi or Quaker, there was publicity. Publicity is someone else like a media that you're not paying for or reporting on you or your brand or you know like let me pick something up. Okay, so this is BS Bees lip butter that I'm holding up. So, Birds Bees has a new better lip and it has orange blossom and pistachio. Like, oh, you know, you could see Cosmo magazine including this. That's publicity. That's super. But when we talk about PR, we could be talking about a grassroots effort to have people write in and suggest new ingredients. So we're extending the activation to include more people. It's not just can you please cover this which is great. The publicity is great for awareness. Public relations engages people and that's so meaningful now because I went from Pepsi to Unilever where I ran PR and marketing or marketing communications. Everybody calls it something different for the hair care and the deodorant business in the US. So that was Axe deodorant body spray. If anybody has a teenage boy, I am sorry because I led the team that launched that in the US. I was there when we mediatrained Nelly who was super stoned and but and I also was talking to the New York Times frequently about the you know new channels of business and about financial results of Unilever and how the growth of a new segment of men's personal care was going to change the face of the industry and plus at the same time launching the Dove campaign for real beauty which was happening at the same time. I loved that. I loved that I had that experience and that I got to do such interesting things with such generous budgets. Those budgets were just the best and with such smart, creative, passionate people.

Allison Lane: And then I reconnected with my college flame and through Google, he googled my name and we rekindled. And when I say flame, I mean we dated for three weeks. There was no big u but we are today married and our daughter is 14 and our son is 16 and a half and it Chicago just didn't feel like the place. So we moved to North Carolina where I went to Berts Bees which is why I always have BS Bees on me and then I went to the body shop where I got my makeup for free. That was great. And and then eventually I was like, gosh, I'm sort of tapped out with the beauty industry. I went into analytics and I led employer branding and media relations for SAS analytics because sometimes you have to stretch, right? And that's the thing about figuring I could have climbed the ladder at Unilever but it meant going farther from what I really love to do. It meant like not doing PR anymore now doing customer marketing like I don't like the higher you go the less you get to do the thing that started you on that path and there are a lot of meetings when you're at the top meetings which is kind of boring.

Mary Killelea: You've worked for some giant brands. At what point did you say I can do this on my own and I want to shape it the way I want to shape it? Like what was that moment where it was like aha?

Allison Lane: Oh well the moment should have been when my old boss from BS bees came to visit me at SAS and he just said what are you still doing here? You've already in your first year taken them from, you know, low on the great place to work list to number one and then you did it a consecutive year number one unfortunately but it simply through storytelling changed the way that I represent like that they represented the company in their application. Nothing else changed. And he's like why are you still here? And I was thinking, what? This is utopia, but it's boring for somebody like me after two years. I was like, give me something else to do. And they were like, nope. We want you to do that forever and ever. Amen. And I like God, oh, I'm going to need more to do then. And so I started taking on more and more. And eventually my sweet husband got a job offer that was in Maryland. So, we got to move back to my hometown out of nowhere. I got to be with my mom and she had cancer. So, we were there for years until after she passed.

Allison Lane: And then I got a I was working at a new company and I got a another new boss who came in and didn't bother to learn anybody's last names and disregarded all the accomplishments of all these very seasoned leaders and said to me like, "Well, what you've been doing isn't really PR." And I was like, I am going to stab you through the throat. I mean, I cannot believe you're talking to me like that. I just had to quote, unquote seven executives in one year. Yeah. I haven't been doing media relations because the business is poo. I just thought I cannot work with him and I'm old enough that I don't need to. Yeah. And so it was that moment I just said I cannot. And it happened to be two weeks before the pandemic. So that was not great planning. But I had already started on the side helping women pitch their books to publishers and also teach people like here's how you pitch media because I was in a writer's group. We would meet on Zoom once a week and people would lament like the you know I got a no and I'd say well pull up you know show share your screen let me see your pitch and it was you know a dumpster fire. I'm like I don't know how to pitch media. Nobody knows what a proposal is when you're proposing a book. It's a business plan and a sales forecast for your book. No one gives you a book deal because they love the idea. They love the sales opportunity of the product, which is your book. It's totally different than what you would expect. And it's your job to showcase that your book has sales potential and that you know that you are in charge of its marketing and your own. So to me, I just started doing that and I've been busy ever since.

Mary Killelea: That's so that's so interesting because I've talked to a lot of people and people never position publishing a book in the way that you just did the financial it's a product. Show them how you're going to make them money versus just sharing an idea which I think is so interesting. I'm a woman and I come to you and I say I have a book idea. Walk me through what you do.

Allison Lane: You have a book idea. Tell me who it's for. Are you already in that space? I would hope so. Because if you want to write non-fiction, you cannot emerge from a hole in the ground and say, "I've already written the book. like yes, but nobody knows who you are and you haven't tested that content yet. And so that oftentimes what's an easy yes for a publisher is oh you're already a leading voice in this space. You are contributing to the media, which by the way is easier than writing a whole book. And PS, nobody wants you to write your whole book. Please don't. No one, no agent, no publisher will even accept your manuscript. They are not going to read it. They want your book proposal, not your manuscript. They don't want your whole book. So don't take your sabbatical now to write your whole book. Nobody wants it. So you come to me and you say, "I have a book idea." And I say, "Great. Who's it for?" And what I mean is, "Who are the audiences?" and let's quantify them. What problems are they saying they have? Not that you think they have, but where are they? Are they in a Discord group? Are they really active in a LinkedIn group? Are they part of an association? We need to know where people are congregating and you need to already be there. And most of the time, people who are writing non-fiction, they really know who their audiences are, but they're always thinking too small.

Mary Killelea: Tell me more.

Allison Lane: Well, take ADHD for smartass women behind me. Mhm. Instant number one has sold tens of thousands of copies and it's been out for a year. So, good on her. Everyone's a debut writer with me and none of my clients ever describe themselves as a writer or an author. They say, "I wrote a book." Like, yeah, I know. And you've been on, you know, CBS This Morning, but whatever. You're not going to call yourself a writer. They're always thinking too small. So Tracy Otsuka, the author of ADHD for Smartass Women, said, "Well, my audience are women who are diagnosed or suspect they have ADHD." Yeah, that's on the nose, your audience. But here are your other audiences, HR leaders at big organizations because they are finding that people don't have linear career paths anymore. And as people change and women particularly have late onset ADHD which happens with pre-menopause and menopause and sometimes after child birth and I'm an ADHDer proud about it. They're shamed rather than celebrated. And let me give you an example. I am an ideal person. I can find the creative selling point or many creative selling points about anything because I've been trained for 25 years. That's all I did and I love it. But when I was doing that in my last job, a colleague said to me, "When you talk, I feel schizophrenic." And I thought to myself, "When you talk, I fall asleep." cuz you were such a boring girl. And the next week I was diagnosed with ADHD and I thought she leads HR. She should really know her poo. But she didn't. And it's the perfect example of if you don't offer employees a chance to grow and turn what could be seen as negative behavior and celebrate it and find a way to make it shine. You will lose people and they will lose me. But everyone is changing. So for Tracy, HR leaders were an audience. Also the financial market, banking because ADHDers need help. They're ex they're impulsive and they need help setting up automated ways to save. So banking is a really big sales opportunity, but she didn't have that perspective because she just thought about the individual, but to me thinking about the markets. So that's just one example.

Mary Killelea: And that's a great example because like as you're talking about it, I like gosh, I would have never thought of that. And so, thank you for running that through. And I love the topic above personal branding. And you mentioned this earlier, but a lot of women, I think, would say that the book is going to help my personal brand. Or do you see it as, which I think you do because you mentioned it earlier, was having a personal brand is essential to launching a book or is it?

Allison Lane: Well, it helps. The thing about a personal brand is that many, many women think that the book gives them permission to establish a new personal brand. And I am here to tell you, and I know you're probably in traffic listening and thinking, personal brand, what is that? Let me just explain. The personal brand is what you're known for and it's not the name of your job description. You're not known for being a project manager. You're known for transforming ideas into big events. How cool is that? where you're known for creating community spaces where people come together. You could be a landscape architect, you could be a trash collector, it doesn't matter. We don't need to know what your title is. We need to know the result of your work. And the sooner you make that shift on your LinkedIn profile, the first thing people should do is delete whatever they put under title and use it in their head. Instead of title, think headline. What do you want people to know about the result you that ensues when you're involved? That's what you put there. So, it's really nice when people have enough information that they can take that step before their book comes out because an agent and a publisher wants to see proof that you have established yourself as an expert. When I say expert, I'm not saying, "Oh, everyone knows that you're leading all the research at Harvard." No, they don't. Only your peers do. So if you want to be known as an expert, you have to be known to audiences outside of your immediate work life, which means showing up on LinkedIn or starting a Tik Tok or a Substack or going to events or contributing to doing LinkedIn lives. I mean you kind of have to step out of your industry and be visible. So the best thing is when people do that and they take those steps early because your book coming into the world is really too late for you to establish yourself because you need to be known in order to get booked on podcasts. You need to know what you offer and I don't mean the method. I mean the end result transformation. For example, while I am a PR expert who cares nobody cares. Sometimes people ask me what do I call you? You call me Allison. If you want a job title yes I'm an author coach but nobody cares about that. what they care about is I want to be the go-to authority in my field and I want to add a book to my to the way I come into the world and a book is a great way to start to expand your career especially when you've reached the top of where you might be like if you're the department head of your of you know the school of humanities at a university, you're not going to become the department head of the business school, too. Like, you're probably at the top. That's the perfect time to expand your career. And it does have to be your choice. You have to think bigger about yourself because you don't have to leave that career behind. You're just expanding it.

Mary Killelea: M so as a businesswoman you know leaving corporate and going on your own what has been the biggest challenge that you were most surprised about?

Allison Lane: gh technology. Oh my gosh. When I say I miss the budgets, I miss being able to call the IT department and say, "Can you or or even like the digital marketing agency, I need a website and it needs to look like this and use this brand script and here's the messaging that I've been using. Thank you. And because you can really start you can really go down a rabbit hole and start learning too much.

Mary Killelea: Yeah

Allison Lane: You do need a website. You do not need to hire someone. And also, you do not need to become an expert in websites in order to make this work. You need someone trusted that is going to show you the shortcuts because she made all of the mistakes. Yes, folks, I'm talking about me. I made every mistake. I created my own website on Wix. It was horrific. Then I moved it to WordPress and I deleted my website twice by accident two times by clicking the "I don't know" box, a button. I still don't know. I couldn't, I couldn't tell you. And then I had a firm talk with myself and I thought what I really need is tools that come in a box like you know like everybody likes the 64 crayons in a pack like Crayola Master Pack. No, you don't because you don't need five shades of green. If you want to make blue green, get the eight pack. mix of your blue and your green. So, what I like is kind of like a Garanimals-type, everything-paint-by-numbers package because if I’m spending time fixing my website or deleting it or not, it’s time away from what I love doing and also as a business person, I earn when I am actually performing the thing that only I can do. I don't earn when I'm maintaining my website. So it's not a good use of my time to be setting that up.

Mary Killelea: So what have you learned personally about yourself and like self-reflection?

Allison Lane: self-reflection. I have learned that I succumb to the sunk cost fallacy where, you know, like, , well, it costs so much, let me try one more time. No, girl, cut that bait. No. I know now that I have to have criteria before I ask someone for their recommendation. I have a friend who I love. She's an author and now a client, which is fun. She's super techy. her website and her CRM that she uses, easy peasy. She said, "Oh, I'll help you. You'll love this one." And I bought it and I promptly had to hire someone that was super expensive to do all the things. And I thought I could spit nails, you know? I just cannot believe she recommended this. But I didn't tell her. I need it to work like pushing a button. Like one button. You're telling me I have to go behind and I have to know the commands. I barely know the commands for Word, you know. I know that there's a button for undo. That's what I really like. I need to know now enough about myself to be simple about my criteria. I need this to work like it has a mind of its own because I'm not going to.

Mary Killelea: What brings you the most joy from your job?

Allison Lane: Wow. The most joy that I find from my role is the result that an author sees when they realize how much expanded their opportunities are. When I meet them the first time, I see where they're going because I know what the result is. And even though the whole time I'm working with them, I'll say, "You really need to have something on your website that says, "Book me to speak, and you need to know how much we're going to charge for that because you're going to get one request and then two requests and then you're going to call me and go, Alison, this bank wants me to speak. What do you think $500 is enough for?" Like, no. First of all, it's not. You start at 15,000 people. Because you're a published author and now you're a bestseller and 15,000 is the entry point for being the real deal. So yes, but I see them and then when it happens they say you always believed and it wasn't belief, it's that I can see it. I can see the gap in the market and I can see the conversations being had where an author's message is or an expert's message is needed and is conspicuously absent. So that you know that really butters my role. It just makes me so happy to see people. They're so tickled by what's possible and then they then it becomes reality and they go. I can't. I never would have believed it if you told me and I still didn't believe it and now it's happening and I don't believe it.

Mary Killelea: What does to be bolder mean to you?

Allison Lane: When I think about how important it is to be bolder, I think about dreaming. Forget dreaming. Believing pursuing the goal that's not obvious, that expands your ripple effect. And to get the linear path is really easy. It's old school, right? But the big leap frogs or like me showing up in publishing and being completely different. Nobody has the background that I do. And for a while I had a little impostor syndrome like I'm a lifelong marketer. I can help everyone and a lot of people like to work with you know so and so's been an editor at a publishing house forever and ever. Like well they know how to edit your book but they are not good marketers and if you're looking for a book deal you need a book proposal and then PS you have to launch your book. And when I say you, I mean yes, you. Because your publisher will call you in and say to you, "What are your plans to market the book?" They're not in charge of marketing your book or you. You are. They want to know how their efforts fit into your plan. Holy poo, right? So, you have to think bigger. To be bold means to think bigger than you ever thought.

Mary Killelea: I love that. What's the difference between self-publishing and getting a publisher besides the obvious? I mean, when do you choose one over one over the other?

Allison Lane: Well, let me explain traditional publishing. There are three. So, let's cover three types of publishers. There's traditional, there's hybrid. Hybrid is really important. and themselves. Let's start with tradition. Traditional is Simon and Schuster, Harper Collins, you know, the bigs and then there have been a lot of spin-offs. So, the mediums like Ben Bella or Sounds True. I mean, there are a ton of them. And that also includes I would call them indie presses, but they're, you know, smaller, much smaller. They might publish five books a year and the person who owns the company also still has a full-time job at the lumber yard, whatever. They have distribution. They're a publisher. A traditional publisher gets you your book represented in places where you don't have access. A hybrid publisher and a self-publishing option do not. So, when I say that, I mean like the meeting with the book buyer at Target. They are sitting with the folks at Barnes & Noble and that's not something that you have access to as an author. Also, a traditional publisher, the really big ones require an agent. You have to have an agent. They do not accept submissions, unsolicited submissions, and they often pay an advance, which is an advance against the future earnings of your book. A lot of people think, "Oh, I can't wait to get a million dollars for my advance." No, do not take more money. Take less money. Because if they pay 10,000 for your book and your book earns 12,000, your book is considered a success. If they pay $100,000 for your book and you know, wow, that's really overpaying, but I will take it. And your book earns $90,000, your book will be considered a failure. It's not your failure. It's their failure of their forecasting algorithm of their sales forecast. But that's what happens with any product.

Mary Killelea: Mhm.

Allison Lane: They have to. I mean whether you're working for a medical supplier or a you know a beauty company, a cosmetics company, you have a new product that comes out, a new lip balm that comes out. You have a sales forecast attached to that. And the sales forecast is related to the number of dollars that get put into marketing it or prioritizing that lip butter over another lip butter. The same thing happens with books. So a traditional publisher, you need an agent. You have to have a proposal in order to get an agent. And then there's advanced hybrids that have a ton of different business plans. There might be an advance, there might not. There's more partnership available and fewer hybrids publish fewer books, but that's because they're much smaller. Mhm. Whereas a traditional when you hand in your draft, they say thank you and then they go and edit it and they want you to like the edits, but also you sold your book. So they choose the art that they choose for the cover. They'll ask you after they mock it up, do you like this? and you better have a reason for not liking it because they are the experts and they don't want your opinion on what you think the color of the book should be. But in a hybrid you get that option. In hybrid you get more of a say. And that's great.

Allison Lane: Some hybrids give you an advance. Some hybrids charge you upfront because they consider you partners. To publish a book costs $40,000. So if they don't give you an advance, but they charge you, you're essentially advance paying for the paper, which is great. And they don't charge you 40,000. Say they charge you 10. That's going to be a lot less than you're going to spend when you have a deal with a traditional publisher because they're going to tell you you should hire a publicist. And I'm here to tell you, do not hire a publicist until you have a marketing plan because your publicist will ask you for a bunch of information that you don't have yet. Then there's self-publishing where you have to do everything yourself, all the backend stuff. Then you have to find a formatter, in which people make terrible mistakes with self-publishing. They try to put 300 pages of text into 200 pages because it'll cost less. Like, no, your book just has to have fewer words. They decide what the cover should be despite the fact that when the cover is super duper small on Amazon, you can't make out anything and it just looks like a Pollock painting. So, that's what I mean. Self-publishing is a tricky wicket, but it's great for certain genres like sci-fi, romance, cozy mysteries, erotica, and lots of others. But for non-fiction, I love hybrids because those are real businesses and they are super legit.

Mary Killelea: I feel like we could talk for three hours or more.

Allison Lane: I know. And we're going so over

Mary Killelea: No, but wait, there's two more questions I want to ask you before I let you go because it's just burning with me. AI, how do you see AI being used or are you for it or against it in writing a book?

Allison Lane: Yes, AI is critical to anyone working today. Anyone just like the calculator, we like that. Can everybody you know what's 378 times 45? I have no idea. That's why we have a calculator. U so AI is critical. You must think of it like your intern that does not take lunch. AI is critical in relieving you of repetitive mundane tasks. For instance, you know that you need to post on social media and you used to have to write every freaking social post yourself. Here's what I do instead. I record myself on my phone ranting while I'm, you know, driving home from my daughter's school. It's 7 minutes away. 7 minutes of content. I take that transcript and I say to my chat GBT, "Write social posts about this in my voice for LinkedIn. Do not ever use emojis. Do not make me tell you again. I didn't even name mine. She's like a faceless being to me." But I do. And do not talk back to me. No emojis. None. And always offer value because I want people to not have to sure, you know, fall for that like if you want to hear the answer to the question I just posed, talk to me later. It spits it out for me.

Mary Killelea: It's remarkable, isn't it? It is.

Allison Lane: That's remarkable. That is not writing your book. Do not use AI to write your book. Also, do not upload your manuscript into AI. We don't know what happens to that. But certainly, you know, your favorite blurb when people give you endorsements. Put all those into AI and then ask it to pair those down because endorsements usually people write way too much. Endorsements need to be 8 to 20 words. Ask the AI to pare it down for you.

Mary Killelea: You have been amazing. I gotta know we're going on, but how can people get in touch with you, learn more, because I know there's so much more to learn.

Allison Lane: You can find me. I'm at lanelit.com. You can hit me up there. And on LinkedIn, I'm at Allison Laneit. And then Allison Laneit on everything, but LinkedIn is where I like to hang out. What I want people to know is that the information that you're looking for is not hidden. It's just that there are a lot of voices and you can really spend a couple years procrastinating which you do not need to do. You do not need to become an expert in publishing. You do not need to go to a fancy retreat, a writer's retreat where you're communicating with your inner story that you want to tell. You do not need to do that. Writer's retreats are fancy vacations with strangers and they are wonderful for a lot of reasons, but you do not need to do that in order to learn about publishing. My podcast, The Author's Edge, all I do is explain publishing. Here's how it works. Here's how to make it faster, smarter, more fun, exciting. Don't do these 10 things. Just do this one thing. That's what I want people to know. It is easier than you think when someone will give you the full picture. And that's what I'm doing.

Mary Killelea: I love it. Thank you so much for being here.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bBolder.com. That's the number 2 little bBolder.com.