ME vs the Algorithm – An Update

What's happened to my plan to use AI to build an author platform

Hello, I’m alive!

Well, physically… I don’t know if it’s the heat, or the sensation of excess time, but it puts my brain into paralysis. I usually follow creative impulses which then form into coherent thoughts once I start tapping away on my keyboard.

Not at the moment. Right now, I’m mostly finding myself in knots. My mind’s just all over the place, like being flooded with thoughts and ideas but unable to grasp one fully. Do you feel like that sometimes?

I would probably not be writing this right now had I not read this post by Amy E :

The myth of the cookie-cutter ending?

It made me realise that I had been waiting for the perfectly formed post idea flowing onto the page. I had been waiting for a cookie-cutter post. But it’s just not showing up right now, so I might as well get on with it.

I’ve had a few chats with Amy E across the past couple of weeks, and a lot of it was about building an author’s platform – the business side to novel writing.

Because writing a novel for other people to consume one day, you need to eventually promote it like the product it is. It might not just be about the money, but hopefully people will give you money in exchange for your book, which makes it a business.

My default response to this is cringe, because that’s what I do in my day-to-day and I consider it work, not necessarily the sort of thing I want to do in my free time. Attaching that notion to my novel … well…

But I’m still trying to convince myself that there is a pleasant, more gentle way to make things happen. My author-building platform started with Me vs the Algorithm about 4 months ago.

I set up my website with Carrd – £9 per year, but I ended up paying £29 because of add-ons – and a couple of social media accounts: Instagram, Pinterest and Threads.

The website building took me a couple of days. AI is extremely helpful with that, especially if you can work from a template. I had Lovable – an AI driven website generator – create a beautiful website for me and then replicated that on Carrd with the help of ChatGPT.

AI is not my enemy. I am incredibly grateful for it as a small business owner. It has been so useful for practical things – setting up a CRM system, sales forecasts, daily admin and so on – just not for my creative expression.

The Instagram account was easy enough to set up, because I’m already a user. Pinterest and Threads were a different story. I’m not a native on those, and Threads in particular drove me crazy. I didn’t understand it.

What’s worse, the sort of content AI pumped out to populate these accounts was just nothing like me. I don’t write like that. It sounded disingenuous.

I felt estranged before I had even started applying my strategy of personally writing one post a month and then having AI feed all those social media accounts to build the author platform. I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t me.

But as luck would have it Caroline Madden posted this when I was right in the middle of it:

How to build an author platform (without losing your mind!)

So often since I started following Caroline, she had somehow miraculously read my mind and wrote about what I was struggling with. To hear it from someone who had actually been through the whole publishing process was my permission slip to let go and focus on what feels good instead.

I instantly went to delete my Threads account, but - surprise surprise – it wouldn’t let me. I still have to figure out how to delete my account. Bloody leech.

But I kept Instagram, because I genuinely enjoy it and get so much inspiration from Bookstagram while I only post ever so often when I have a new book, post or experience to share.

None of it is AI-generated and I’ve all but forgotten about it by now. It just doesn’t do it for me when it comes to expressing my creative impulse, because that requires my own words.

I’ve also given myself permission to stray a bit. I know, from a business point of view one should stick to one’s core message and audience for most impact, which in my case should be talking to readers about books I like that play in the same field as my novel, as well as world-building, sharing insights from my novel, research and so on.

Don’t get me wrong, all of it is good and fun… but I also enjoy talking to fellow writers, sharing problems I encounter along the way, asking advice.

Potential readers of my novel may not find those notes and posts very interesting, but I’ve made peace with it. The many different parts of me don’t just fit one cookie-cutter, and one has to live a little. So I’ll try and keep it real.

I think what I’ll do going forward is populating my platform with content that is relevant to readers around the sort of novel that I am writing, but also leaving room for other desires, and to mingle with fellow writers, which is one of the things I enjoy most on Substack – the writing community.

After all, none of it will make or break a book deal, but over time create an organic portfolio that showcases who I am and what I write. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

I’d love to read your thoughts below.

Helene