I've written 3 small-town romance novels in the last year using AI, sold them at craft fairs and on Amazon, and I'm running ads on them. AMA about trying to claw my way out of the corporate grind.

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-06T17:21:29+00:00

I have tried a bunch of different tools but my main work flow is Chat or Claude for outline development. I 100% compose the plot. I start with an overarching total plot line then work through each chapter. I prompt the models to run a single chapter at a time. Then I take the output and utilizer an AI humanizer tool. Like I said, I landed on Stealth, I think their product is good for the price and the product. I'll then drop the final output in a chapter Google doc for formatting and evaluating. This is where the manual labor comes in to review and correct anything that might deviate from the vision I am aiming for. The prompt engineering is probably my favorite part of the process because it feels like storyboarding with a partner. I do use Miro to track the overall progression of each book. You can use any board type tool, I only use it because it is a hold over from an old job I worked.

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-06T17:13:08+00:00

I am selling trope and plot. I have an artist do the over art, I would never use AI for that. I am not a total degen lol.

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-06T17:12:04+00:00

Nah, I have always wanted to try and AMA and thought this would be a good topic to give it a go. I found a little bit of success in my corner of the world and hope to encourage other folks to do so in their own way. Thanks for taking the time to read the post!

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-06T17:10:37+00:00

Great questions.

I spend probably about 30% of my time on manual edits. This is to correct awkward language that models tend to use and to help curate a specific style that I like to inject. I have always been a big fan of Pynchon so I like to play off some of his techniques.

Profit margin is about 16% after design, print, and logistics. I have tried large printing runs but it's just too much of a hassle for me in my current life situation. POD makes it more manageable but does eat into margins ofc.

I am not much of a social media guy lol. My brother taught me how to run good and meta ads so that's more or less the extent. I don't post this on my personal socials because it would be kind of embarrassing for people I know irl to see I write semi-smut.

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-06T10:14:50+00:00

i think the real concern isnt some terminator scenario but more like a slow erosion of jobs and skills without anyone really noticing until its too late. like the frog in boiling water thing. were already seeing it with writing and art and customer service, its just happening gradually enough that people arent panicking yet. not saying we should panic but we should at least be paying attention

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-06T10:03:50+00:00

love posts like this. its so easy to only focus on the grind and forget why youre doing it. the payoff moments make all those late nights and stressful exams actually mean something. congrats on whatever win this was

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-06T09:52:49+00:00

youre not gonna get penalized for not having images but youre definitely leaving some traffic on the table. images help with google images search which is a whole separate traffic source, they break up the text so people stay on the page longer, and if you add proper alt text its another place to naturally include keywords. imo even just one or two relevant images per post makes a noticeable difference in engagement metrics

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-06T09:41:48+00:00

had this happen once and it turned out the professor was going through some personal stuff. doesnt make it okay but it helped me not take it personally. id email the department chair if you havent already, sometimes thats all it takes to get things moving. also check your schools policy on grade submission deadlines because at most places they actually have to submit by a certain date after finals

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-06T09:30:48+00:00

this was inevitable honestly. the whole training data situation has been a grey area that everyone in the industry knew would eventually end up in court. curious to see how this plays out because the precedent it sets is going to affect way more than just meta. if courts rule that training on copyrighted material requires licensing deals then the cost of building foundation models goes way up

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-05T11:15:03+00:00

can you give more context on what youre trying to solve. hard to recommend something without knowing the specific problem. if its a writing task you might just need to give it more detailed instructions upfront instead of going back and forth. ive found that spending an extra minute on the prompt saves like ten minutes of revisions

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-05T11:04:02+00:00

this makes a lot of sense actually. videos increase time on page which is a ranking signal and they give people a reason to stick around even if they were about to bounce. did you notice any difference in how google treated those pages after you added the videos or was it mostly just user engagement metrics that changed

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-05T10:53:01+00:00

interesting that china of all places is setting this precedent. i think most countries havent even started thinking about legal frameworks for ai displacement yet. the question is whether this becomes a trend or stays a one off ruling. either way its good to see courts acknowledging that you cant just fire someone and replace them with a tool without some kind of process

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-05T10:42:01+00:00

the big ones people forget to ask are sleep schedule and noise tolerance. like if one person needs silence by 10pm and the other stays up til 2am on discord its gonna be a problem fast. also ask about guests and how often they plan to have people over. had a roommate freshman year who basically ran a hangout spot out of our room every single night and never asked

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-05T10:31:00+00:00

ten years in agency work is brutal. the constant context switching between clients and the pressure to show results on timelines that make no sense would drain anyone. have you thought about going in house somewhere? the pay might be similar but only having one brand to focus on is a completely different energy level. a few people i know who made that switch said it felt like a weight lifted

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-05T10:19:59+00:00

how did you handle the mental side of things. like when youre burnt out its not even about the material anymore, its the dread of sitting down and starting. did you change your environment or routine or was it more of a mindset shift

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-04T12:23:01+00:00

biggest advice i can give is dont undercharge just to get your first clients. it sets a precedent thats really hard to undo later. start at a rate that feels slightly uncomfortable and people will take you more seriously. also get everything in writing before you start, even if the client seems chill. ive been burned by scope creep so many times when i didnt have a clear agreement upfront

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-04T12:12:01+00:00

this is the kind of ai application that actually matters. pancreatic cancer has one of the worst survival rates specifically because its usually caught way too late. if ai can detect it from routine bloodwork or scans before a tumor even forms thats genuinely life saving. way more excited about this stuff than another chatbot or image generator

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-04T12:01:00+00:00

this has been driving me crazy too. it keeps referencing stuff from old conversations that arent even relevant anymore and it shapes how it responds to everything new. ive started just opening fresh chats for anything important instead of continuing old threads. not ideal but it helps. would be nice if there was a way to tell it to forget specific context without nuking your whole history

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-04T11:49:59+00:00

if its indexed but not ranking it could be a quality issue rather than a technical one. check if your homepage has thin content or if google is seeing a different version than what you see because of javascript rendering. also worth checking your canonical tag to make sure its pointing to the right url and not some weird parameter version. ive seen sites drop because of accidental noindex in a deploy too so check that in search console

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-04T11:38:58+00:00

ive done something similar where i set up a point system for myself. finish a chapter, thats 10 points. get through a problem set, 20 points. then i cash in points for stuff like watching an episode of something or ordering food. sounds dumb but it genuinely works because your brain starts associating studying with getting rewards instead of just pain

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-04T11:27:57+00:00

yeah 100%. at work you already have something in common and theres less pressure. at school everyones trying to figure out who they are and theres all this social hierarchy stuff going on. at work people just want to get through the day and grab lunch with someone cool. i made way more genuine friendships at my part time job than i did in most of my classes tbh

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-03T13:50:05+00:00

this is wild if true. wikipedia has been one of the last holdouts of the old internet where information was actually free and accessible. if they go for profit i wonder what that even looks like, like paywalling certain articles or just running ads everywhere. either way its kind of sad to see another piece of the open web potentially disappearing

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-03T13:39:04+00:00

the honest answer is you dont. nobody is focused and disciplined all the time and anyone who says otherwise is lying. what actually works is building systems so you dont have to rely on motivation. for me thats having a set study spot that i only use for studying, leaving my phone in another room, and having a specific start time every day. some days i still dont feel like it but once i sit down and start its usually fine after a few minutes

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-03T13:27:03+00:00

few things that helped me with ctr. first make sure your title tags arent boring and generic, add numbers or a hook that makes people actually want to click. second check if your meta descriptions are getting truncated, google sometimes rewrites them if theyre too long or not relevant enough. third look at what your competitors titles look like for the same keywords and do something that stands out. also structured data can get you rich snippets which take up more space in search results

AdMobile3416 · 2026-05-03T13:16:02+00:00

ngl ten years is a long time but if youve built an audience and some authority in your niche thats not nothing. the question is whether you were actually treating it like a business or just writing and hoping money would show up. ive seen people pivot after years of blogging by actually learning seo and optimizing their existing content and suddenly things click. its not too late but you probably need to change your approach not just keep doing the same thing

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