NotebookLM

I’m a fan of harnessing AI as a tool in writing your books, but NOT of actually using what AI generates to write your books. In fact, I call the writing AI generates “AI Slop.”

Well, my dear friend and Chief Creative Officer at Your Bestselling Book, Jen Tate, has turned us onto a brand new tool from Google: NotebookLM. It’s free and it’s the best tool ever for organizing your notes and writing. In fact, the real beauty of it is that you don’t have to organize anything anymore! 

Just open a new Notebook. Then add your source materials, which can come from a Google Drive, file upload, even a YouTube channel. Now, you have your own private (it’s not shared publicly, like any content you input into ChatGPT) folder. You can ask the AI questions, such as, “What are the main themes of this writing?” and “Suggest a table of contents.” 

Not only does NotebookLM answer your questions, but it footnotes where in the endless pages of source materials you uploaded it found the answer. This is so helpful! You can say, “Where do I talk about how to write a successful conclusion?” and it will show you the page where you wrote about that topic. Amazing. 

NotebookLM is super handy for people like me. I have bits and pieces of writing all over the internet, from HuffPost to Forbes to the YBB newsletter, to the transcripts of the Masterclass videos that I recorded for the Your Bestselling Book course, to the TED talk I gave… Now I have added all these as sources to a Notebook of just my writing. And the AI can spit back an entire, brand new 1,000 word article on a subject I’ve addressed … written in my voice!

If you want a quick overview, checkout this excellent “How to Use NotebookLM” YouTube video Jen found. There’s also a New York Times Hard Fork podcast episode about NotebookLM, in which they discuss how the AI takes a literal credit card statement and turns it into a realistic sounding podcast with two hosts. It’s incredible. And terrifying. Wow.

Writing Tip of the Week: Create a Notebook

You just have to try this. 

Upload any file or direct NotebookLM to source material in the form of notes you’ve taken, articles you’ve written, speeches you’ve delivered, podcasts you’ve recorded, Google Docs you’ve created…

Then ask it questions. “What are the main themes I’ve addressed?” or “Give me a table of contents for a book.”

I’d love it if you’d tell me how you end up using it!

Aloha,
MeiMei

Quote of the Week

After listening to @KevinRoose and @CaseyNewton on Hard Fork today, I had Notebook LM make a podcast… The output is striking. Definitely having some AI vertigo here. 

~Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kyle Whitmire