Cori Wamsley Of Aurora Corialis Publishing: How AI Is Disrupting Our Industry, and What We Can Do About It

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I’ve always loved reading, and I majored in biology and English, hoping to become a scientific writer to bring together my two interests. I ended up working for the government for ten years as a technical and scientific writer and editor, and at the second of my two positions — this one at a national lab — I was often able to interview our scientists, showcasing their stories so people could get to know their interests. I got to tell some truly amazing stories about their hobbies and volunteer work while I was there, and it got me interested in helping people tell their stories. In my spare time, I was writing novels, so I was no stranger to storytelling.

I started my business with the intent of helping people with general web copy or articles and blogs, but as more business owners found out about my novels, I got questions about how to write a book. I started editing books and, after a year, started my coaching programs. After a few years of guiding authors to write and publish their stories, I realized that there were so many steps and complications to the publishing process that it was easier on my authors if I handled it all for them. That led me to open my publishing house in the spring of 2021, and I’ve been helping leaders write and publish their transformational stories ever since!

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

We stand out for our exquisite storytelling expertise and our bespoke book production. When I work with an author on their story, I get to ask lots of questions during the writing process to help them fill out the story in places that the author may not have thought of. I’ve asked authors to trim out tangents and dug into details on some of the pieces that would truly connect with the audience. My goal during book production is always to help the reader see that the author truly gets them. I want the reader to know that the author has been in their shoes so the book can build that know-like-trust factor. I believe that stories are incredibly powerful for leaders to showcase not only their expertise, but also the ups and downs of their journey because no one wants to work with someone who is “perfect.” We all make mistakes and backslide, so we want to see that others do it too. It gives us hope that their results are attainable for us as well.

A continuation of the storytelling is the creation of the cover. Our designer develops covers that accommodate the desires of the authors as well as the marketplace in which the book will reside. We want our books to fit in and also stand out. The covers are unique to the author, their topic, and their audience, but also look as professional as books from traditional publishing houses.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Aside from having a deep knowledge of book development and the publishing process, I have benefitted greatly from my adaptability, curiosity, and confidence.

Often, tech doesn’t cooperate the way we think it should, so I have had to be adaptable and quick thinking, in some cases, to work around issues and navigate different platforms for the different steps in publishing. I’ve learned so many different tools for book development, production, and publishing, and there will likely be many more in the future that I’ll need to learn. Being able to pick up on new things quickly, change lanes to keep things moving forward, and problem-solve when we hit a speed bump have kept my business on track. Just in the past week, I’ve had to navigate a bizarre tech issue with my team that was making a document convert improperly, and we managed to figure it out by doing things a little differently from usual. That work-around got us to the end point!

My curiosity shows up in my business as a love for storytelling. If I didn’t love storytelling, my job would be ridiculously hard. I spend much of my time helping people hone their stories (when I’m not navigating tech issues, lol!). I particularly love when I talk to an author about what lights them up and then have the pleasure of digging deeper with them. I get to ask them about how they felt and what they did. These are rare treats in the book world because usually, when you read a book, you aren’t speaking directly to the author to get the answers you want! I make sure that those answers are in the book because nonfiction readers should be led down the path that you want them to discover, not left to wander in the woods, especially with self-help! On a recent book, I was coaching my client through how to tell about a difficult time in their lives, and we discussed where she felt the stress in her body so she could talk about that. Then, we covered how she sees this incident today and how she can write about that reflection. It’s important to give the reader hope, so we led them to that in the text.

I’ve been confident in my writing skills and my ability to guide my authors on creating books that work for their brand the entire time I’ve had my company. This is a skill that I learned in my previous career as a writer and editor for 12 years before I started my freelancing business. It came from not only being a good writer to begin with by also learning from the edits that my fellow writers made when they reviewed my work. It came from learning how to write different types of work (press releases, web stories, white papers, informational pieces for headquarters, fun stories for the local paper, etc.) and from mimicking different managers in quotes that we wrote for them. I had to be adaptable and creative. I had to be quick and certain. After years of this sort of writing, I was certainly confident in my abilities to write and to help others be better writers and amazing storytellers.

Let’s now move to the main point of our discussion about AI. Can you explain how AI is disrupting your industry? Is this disruption hurting or helping your bottom line?

I personally haven’t seen a change to our bottom line because of AI. The issue that we are running into is with people cutting corners to get through the book writing process.

I work with people who have a transformational story to share, and if an author wants to ask AI to write their book for them, it just can’t capture that. When you want to talk about your personal experiences, they are all yours. They aren’t something that you can put a request in through your AI tool and have a unique story come through because YOU are the one who knows all the nuances. YOU know what happened.

I know that a book can take a long time to write, and there are great things that you can do to save time with AI without relying on it to write your entire book for you. You can ask it to help with the outline and with rephrasing things in a way that makes sense. You can take materials that you’ve written or spoken and ask it to organize, rewrite, and streamline. THEN you can go over it yourself to ensure that it sounds like you and includes all the beautiful nuances that only you, as a human, knows and can include.

When someone uses AI to write the entire book, not only are they giving away their power to something that is crawling around on the internet and collecting the ideas of others to create their words, but they are also not sharing some of the “remembers whens” and “those were tough days” and “that one time I” pieces of the story. They are missing out on the best thing about their story which is the unique perspective of the individual that the story is about.

People can also feel the energy of the author in their words based on the word choices, the cadence of the sentences, etc. Using AI takes that away. It makes the writing soul-less, which means that the reader may get good information from the book, but they won’t want to connect with the author because they feel understood. Using AI to write your book for you is doing your brand a total disservice.

On top of that, according to a lawyer friend of mine, you would not be able to copyright the book if AI wrote it for you. Some AI tools could claim copyright to the book because, honestly, you didn’t write it. They did. It makes it very difficult to protect your work in this case. (Please note that I am not a lawyer, but because of this issue, I would not take on a client and copyright their book if I knew they wrote the book using AI. Please ask a lawyer if you have questions about the legality of using AI for your writing.)

The major disruption to the industry is in the quality of the books that could be turned out. My concern is that authors will take this shortcut to crank out a book quickly and not care about the results of the book. AI doesn’t have feelings. It doesn’t understand what you experienced and how others went through the same thing. I’ve seen some AI-written emails that were heartless because the user didn’t look at the meaning or implication of what they were saying. Slang, colloquial speech, and turns of phrase are all pieces of language that AI may or may not get. I want books to be connection tools, and I’m sure most business owners who write them do as well.

Which specific AI technology has had the most significant impact on your industry?

There are a couple different writing bots that people will feed information to and then request a blog post, email, or social media post. For short pieces, it’s not as much of a problem, especially if you aren’t doing it all the time, but for longer works like books, it’s not a great idea.

A friend of mine has used an AI tool to help her find phrasing that makes sense, which I don’t think is an issue. Again, it’s all in how you use it. Pieces, ideas, bullet points … those are all great! You can be smart about using it as a tool and ensure that your own voice comes through by doing the bulk of the creation yourself.

Can you share a pivotal moment when you recognized the profound impact AI would have on your sector?

I attended a conference where I was talking to someone about how my company helps people write books for their businesses through coaching and ghost writing, and I felt like his eyes glazed over. He responded that he knows of an AI tool being developed to write books for people’s brands so “they don’t have to bother.” I almost barfed.

The fact that he thought that was ok was really sad to me. Where is the connection there? How do you expect someone to read the book and get anything other than basic information out of it? Why “write” a book if you’re not going to put your heart into it? It’s not going to have your unique flavor, your emotions, the way your stomach dropped when you found out X, and all those other things that let the reader see that you get them. You might as well put out a math textbook for all the connection you’re going to get from it. (No offense to all the lovely math textbooks out there serving their purpose.)

How are you preparing your workforce for the integration of AI, and what skills do you believe will be most valuable in an AI-enhanced future?

Because I’m the one who connects with potential clients, I talk to them about the story they want to share. I haven’t run into anyone who said they plan to use AI to write their book, but because of the extensive discussion I have before agreeing to work with them, it would likely come up. That will give me a chance to talk to them about ethical uses like outlining and some phrasing, if they get tangled up.

In an AI-enhanced future, we will need to make ethical choices about when to use AI and how. Relying on it to make creative works just isn’t ok, especially when we are using those works to represent ourselves and our brands. If you want to make a design to use as your phone wallpaper, awesome! But making a design and then passing yourself off as an artist, is a little different. That didn’t come from you. It came from a set of instructions you fed a tool. And because of this, I think we will see AI tools outlining more rules around their use and who owns what in the future.

What are the biggest challenges in upskilling your workforce for an AI-centric future?

My biggest concern would be if my ghost writer is using AI for writing, but knowing the person I work with now, that wouldn’t be a problem. I imagine that some ghost writers will pop up over time who try to use AI for the book writing and make it look like they are writing it themselves, but at least the way the tools are now, the writing will come across as flat and will lack the nuance you need to make your own writing sound like the “author’s” voice. As far as increasing their skills, for my industry, I think it would be more a question of making sure that we still work with ghost writers who are gifted writers and are capable of telling stories well. Those who are in love with the craft will continue to do the work. We as publishers just need to keep our standards high and work with those who are doing the job right.

What ethical considerations does AI introduce into your industry, and how are you tackling these concerns?

The biggest ethical concern is ownership of a written work. As long as the copyright office doesn’t allow books to be copyrighted that are written with AI tools that crawl online, then those who do so will not be able to protect their work. The issue is that many people don’t know that it isn’t ethical and that they possibly can’t copyright it. Many also think that just adding “copyright” and the year to the copyright page of a book is enough. But when multiple people share the same concepts in their books, we will definitely see court cases where those who wrote blogs and online articles without AI are fighting those who used AI to write their book and came up with the same concepts. Sadly, even if you used AI for part of the book, I don’t know that you would be able to protect your work in court if others didn’t use AI.

I simply tell my clients not to use it for their writing so there are no questions about it. I don’t want them to run into a copyright issue later, and I certainly don’t want them to do anything that could be unethical.