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Ok, it wasn\u2019t a fancy academic book, but still\u2026<\/p>\n
I want to share how we did it, and what we learned about generative AI in the process, but first some context.<\/p>\n
For a long time, my friend Professor Narelle Lemon and I have talked about writing a book called \u2018Rich Academic \/ Poor Academic\u2019. The title is an obvious riff on the bestseller from the 90s called \u2018Rich Dad, Poor Dad\u2019, which contrasted the Dad who played by the rules in his public service job (and was poor), with the entrepreneurial Dad, who did not respect the rules (and was rich).<\/p>\n
To be clear: \u2018Rich Dad, Poor Dad\u2019 is a thoroughly terrible book. I don\u2019t suggest you read it, and yet\u2026\u00a0There\u2019s something in the playing by the rules and getting stiffed thing that rings true, especially in academia.<\/strong><\/p>\n Universities are \u2018greedy institutions\u2019 that happily exploit our goodwill and passion for our work, as is demonstrated in the\u00a0wage theft scandals we read about in the papers<\/a>. Many academics we know \u2013 including you perhaps \u2013 are extraordinarily talented, but do a lot of unpaid hours. This tendency starts in the PhD and only gets worse over time (if you\u2019re new here, welcome: try not to step in the overwork shit- it\u2019s everywhere).<\/p>\n Narelle and I try to avoid giving an in-kind donation of time to our employers. We use time outside of paid hours to make money on the side. We use this extra money to attend conferences, buy books, access expensive subscription services (looking at you ChatGPT), hire in help, and get the latest equipment. Basically to buy stuff our universities won\u2019t pay for, but which helps us do our jobs. We both earn enough extra income to cause us headaches at tax time: Taylor Swift would call this a \u2018champagne problem\u2019.<\/p>\n We think more people should have champagne problems like ours. We often evangelise academic side hustles with colleagues, but talking about money at an academic social event is a bit like farting in an elevator. Most people don\u2019t want to admit they are interested \u2013 publicly. Privately people ask us for advice all the time. I did\u00a0a blog post<\/a>\u00a0on the topic of side hustles in 2020 and realised I had a lot to say, maybe a whole book worth of things. But I could not get a conventional academic publisher interested in something \u2018so niche\u2019. Eventually we decided to self publish.<\/p>\n The problem was, we could never seem to find the time to write it\u2026 But with the help of\u00a0Claude Opus<\/a>, we finally did write the book. It was pretty exciting to punch out 36,000 words in a single weekend!<\/p>\n You can buy Rich Academic \/ Poor Academic directly from Thesis Whisperer here<\/a><\/strong>, for the price of an almond latte in South Australia ($5.37 AUD).<\/p>\n So \u2013 enough context. How did we write a whole book in a weekend?<\/strong><\/p>\n What we\u00a0didn\u2019t<\/strong>\u00a0do was get the AI to \u2018write it for us\u2019.<\/p>\n Taking a lead from Ethan Mollick\u2019s new book\u00a0\u2018Co-intelligence: living and working with AI\u2019<\/a>, we invited AI into this collaboration.<\/p>\n As I\u2019ve written before, the use of GenAI is complicated and fraught with ethical and (potentially<\/a>) legal issues. However, for this project, I was less conflicted.\u00a0Rich Academic \/ Poor Academic<\/em>\u00a0is not a research piece; it\u2019s a \u2018how to\u2019 book, based on our experience and opinions. We wrote it on the weekend, in our own time, using our own computers with our own software subscriptions. The book took a total of 26 human hours to write (I\u2019ll give you a more detailed breakdown of how the time was spent below). So far it has cost us around $1600 AUD, most of the cost relating to accommodation in lovely Victor Harbour, South Australia for our writing retreat 20\u201321 April.<\/p>\n While preparing for the retreat, I experimented with\u00a0Claude Opus<\/a>, my new internet AI boyfriend, (sorry\u00a0ChattieG<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 I still love you, but you know \u2013 as a friend). In my opinion, Claude is the best of what Mollick calls the \u2018frontier\u2019 AI models. Claude is described as more \u2018literary\u2019 than other LLMs; it certainly has superior reasoning skills and a huge memory, which makes it a better companion for academic work.<\/p>\n On the Saturday, we drove to a nearby town to charge the car and get a coffee. During our coffee chat, we threw out most of Claude\u2019s outline and re-imagined the book as a mini \u2018company manual\u2019 in four parts:<\/p>\n We then had a wander around the shops and a leisurely lunch, during which we refined our outline, filled gaps and decided which bits we each wanted to write. Back at the ranch, we got stuck in.<\/p>\n The first challenge of co-authorship is blending two or more distinct writerly \u2018voices\u2019 together (less important in the sciences, where the \u2018voice\u2019 is more standardised). To make what I call an \u2018AI voice cocktail\u2019 that sounded like both of us, I primed Claude with some of our existing writing.<\/p>\n First, I gave it the PDF of\u00a0Tame your PhD<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0a compilation of my best blog posts from 2010 to 2018 \u2013 around 42,000 words. Noting Ethan Mollick\u2019s advice about giving the LLM time to think can improve performance, I asked it to analyse my writing and give me notes on how to improve. It gave me an extensive analysis and list of suggestions, following up with a nice affirmation:<\/p>\n These are fairly minor suggestions, as your writing is already quite polished and effective for your target audience. The conversational tone, humor, empathy and practical focus are great strengths that make your advice uniquely relatable and valuable for PhD students.<\/em><\/p>\n I then gave it 2 book chapters and a blog post from Narelle\u2019s\u00a0Wellbeing Whisperer blog<\/a>\u00a0and asked it to analyse her style. Again, it gave me a long, detailed analysis and ended with thoughts about how to blend our voices:<\/p>\n Narelle\u2019s personality and values come through in her writing. Her enthusiasm for helping others optimize their potential is palpable. To incorporate elements of Narelle\u2019s style into your own writing, you could:<\/em><\/p>\n The goal would be to maintain your signature style \u2013 informal, humorous, anecdotal \u2013 while layering in select components of Narelle\u2019s more inspirational, self-help oriented approach. The balance will depend on your audience and goals.<\/em><\/p>\n I did a few tests asking it to use this voice to write about different topics, giving it feedback until I felt it had the blend of Narelle and I right. Then I began drafting my sections of the book.<\/p>\n In line with my existing practice, I did quite long, detailed prompts with lots of specific words. Claude is more intuitive than Chattie and can cope with quite sloppy phrasing, like this:<\/p>\n Now we\u2019re going to write a session about publishing ebooks. Let\u2019s do a step by step guide to preparing an ebook (without heaps of detail) and an explanation of the various platforms for selling them. At the end let\u2019s make sure the reader manages their own expectations about the profit they might get from an ebook \u2013 basically the message is don\u2019t give up the day job! The power of a self published ebook, like this one actually, is that you occupy someone\u2019s book shelves and establish your value as a thinker. Give an example here of Inger\u2019s book \u2018Tame your PhD\u2019, which was a compilation of blog posts serving as a great \u2018front door\u2019 to her blog (which was chronological and hard to access). Tame your PhD was bought and shared by people and still brings in business and kudos to this day, especially after she updated it in 2018 to more than 40,000 words and a lovely new cover. Over the last 10 years or so this book has brought in about $6000, all while only costing as much as a cup of coffee. Large volumes of sales over a long tail period are fine, but you can\u2019t live on it \u2013 over this period it would bring in less than $1000 a year. People should instead think of ebook publishing as a way to become more influential and perhaps be asked to do more lucrative consulting and teaching work.<\/em><\/p>\n It gave me about 800 words in response. In the first part, about ebooks, it gave me banal stuff I could read anywhere on the internet, for example:<\/p>\n Step 1: Identify your topic and target audience<\/strong>\u00a0Before you start writing, take some time to clarify the focus of your eBook and the specific audience you want to reach. Consider your areas of expertise, the unique insights you have to offer, and the pressing questions or challenges your target readers are facing.<\/em><\/p>\n Step 2: Outline your content<\/strong>\u00a0Create a clear, logical structure for your eBook by outlining the key sections, chapters, and sub-topics you want to cover. This will help you stay organized and ensure that your content flows smoothly from one section to the next.<\/em><\/p>\n To be fair, I had left it up to Claude about what to write and it only knows the internet, what else should I expect! However, it did provide a structure to write into (and over), so I transferred the text into Obsidian and got to work.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the final version of those two steps on making ebooks (notice how much more \u2018wordy\u2019 I am than Claude):<\/p>\n Step 1: Identify your topic and target audience<\/em><\/strong> Step 2: Don\u2019t get all academic and weird about it.<\/em><\/strong> Claude did do much better on the second part of the chapter on ebooks, where I asked it to manage expectations. I\u2019d given it a bunch of figures and thoughts \u2013 it cleaned these up well. Here\u2019s part of the original response to my prompt:<\/p>\n Instead, think of your eBook as a long-term investment in your personal brand and credibility. A well-written, informative eBook can serve as a powerful \u201cbusiness card\u201d that introduces new readers to your work and positions you as a thought leader in your field. Take Inger\u2019s book \u201cTame Your PhD\u201d as an example. Originally a compilation of blog posts, this eBook served as a great \u201cfront door\u201d to her blog, which was chronological and sometimes hard to navigate for new readers. By packaging her best advice and insights into a concise, affordable eBook, Inger was able to reach a wider audience and establish her expertise in the world of academic productivity and success.<\/em><\/p>\n This only needed a light edit \u2013 to change the last line, which was not accurate:<\/p>\n By packaging her best advice and insights into a concise, affordable eBook, Inger was able to reach a wider audience and establish her expertise in the world of research education.<\/em><\/p>\n In his \u2018Co-intelligence\u2019 book, Ethan Mollick describes AI as a kind of \u2018alien mind\u2019 and this observation rang more and more true as I worked with Claude on this book. The trick to getting good results, I discovered, was to continue in the same discussion window, building a version of Claude that \u2018knew\u2019 this topic and how I wanted it to write. Claude \u2018remembered\u2019 our whole conversation and used this, somehow, in its responses. As we worked together, it got better and better at a \u2018one shot\u2019 answer. It seemed natural to tell it when it did a good job, so I lavished praise.<\/p>\n I remembered Mollick claimed that asking the AI to \u2018take a deep breath\u2019 before responding improved results (it\u00a0works<\/a>!). Perhaps praise worked similarly? Narelle and I are both teachers. We had a nerdy conversation about different types of feedback we give students and Narelle suggested a technique common in primary school teaching, to encourage kids to reflect on their learning: instead of saying \u2018well done\u2019, we started asking it to tell us why we were praising it. For example, at the end of an exchange about content management systems, I said:<\/p>\n I can\u2019t improve on that Claude \u2013 excellent job. What did you think was good about it?<\/em><\/p>\n It gave me more than 500 words in response, breaking down various stylistic elements of the text, and ending with:<\/p>\n Overall, the piece effectively combines an engaging narrative, practical advice, and a focus on personal branding to create a compelling and informative guide to building a website for one\u2019s business. By striking a balance between conceptual ideas and concrete recommendations, the text provides readers with a solid foundation for navigating the website-building process and creating an online presence that truly reflects their unique voice and expertise.<\/em><\/p>\n This targeted praise dramatically improved output, but the performance boost came at a cost. I was steaming along, late in the afternoon when, all of a sudden, Claude started to \u2018get out over its skis\u2019, giving me more exaggerated responses to my prompts. It would lean hard into metaphors and use a lot of exclamation marks, almost like a toddler who had too much sugar, for example:<\/p>\n \u201cSo go forth and upskill, my solo research friend! Embrace the joy of lifelong learning, and watch as your superpowers grow stronger with each new skill you acquire. Because when you invest in yourself, you\u2019re not just building a better business \u2013 you\u2019re building a better you. And that\u2019s a pretty darn awesome return on investment, if you ask me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I had to start telling it to calm down (\u201cThat was not quite right Claude \u2013 can you try again, but a little less excitement please\u201d<\/em>). This worked for a time, then response time got slower and slower. Suddenly, I got a warning that I only had \u20187 prompts left\u2019, then 6, then 5\u2026 then it locked me out and told me to come back in four hours. Apparently Claude was holding so much in memory that the compute required for my answers was too high \u2013 Anthropic started timing me out to service other users.<\/p>\n Rude!<\/p>\n I fired up ChattieG, but after the sophisticated conversations I was having with Claude, it felt inadequate. Since it was getting near dinner time anyway, Narelle and I went for a walk on the beach. And in Australia, well \u2013 the beach is something else:<\/p>\n As we walked, we reflected on the irony of the moment: how energetic we humans felt compared to our \u2018tireless\u2019 AI, who was clearly worn out. Claude was sharing cognitive load in ways we couldn\u2019t easily define because, objectively, we still ended up spending a lot of time on crafting text.<\/p>\n I use \u2018Timing\u2019 on my Mac to keep track of my time on different tasks. I find this data helpful for forward planning and reporting purposes. Here\u2019s a graph from Saturday:<\/p>\n As you can see, I spent 5 hours and 46 minutes writing in Obsidian and 1 hour 46 minutes talking to Claude. On day two I only spent 25 minutes talking to Claude, the other 6 hours and 57 minutes were all editing:<\/p>\n Mollick suggests readers value text written by AI less than text written by humans. I hope buyers of our book will not feel this way because this book is a true collaboration between all three of us. Claude could have written this whole book without being edited by us\u2026 but I don\u2019t think you would want to read it. Narelle and I could have written the book without Claude, but I doubt we would ever have finished it. Speaking of, we didn\u2019t expect to finish the whole book and get it edited on the weekend, but we did! This was a welcome change from other writing retreats where I have come away with a half finished project, feeling frustrated.<\/p>\n We decided to simply release\u00a0Rich Academic \/ Poor Academic<\/em>\u00a0as a PDF for now. We\u2019ve priced it the same as an almond latte I bought on the Sunday at lunch. Downloads will tell us if you are interested enough for us to make a second release. If so, we will invest time and money making a proper ebook in different formats and commission a cover (this will cost about $1500).<\/p>\n If we do a second release, we\u2019ll incorporate reader feedback, maybe adding more sections (although 36,000 words is already a lot!). We\u2019ve got a feedback survey linked in the text of the book. If you buy it and read it, simply follow the link and fill in the quick reader survey: we will send you our second version for free.<\/p>\n It\u2019s nearly two weeks later and I am still digesting this experience.<\/strong><\/p>\n In his \u2018co-intelligence\u2019 book (which I hope I have convinced you to read<\/a>), Mollick has a couple of metaphors to describe the process of collaborating with AI: the centaur and the cyborg. In centaur mode there is a hard separation between the AI and the human. In cyborg mode, you it\u2019s a back and forth blend.<\/p>\n We were definitely cyborgs that weekend. Claude didn\u2019t actually take away the drudge: it was a true creative partner. It did act as a cognitive support for my frail human self. At the end of our writing retreat, instead of feeling flat out exhausted, I was still bursting with ideas. Narelle has blogged her observations about the weekend on the\u00a0Wellbeing Whisperer<\/a>\u00a0if you\u2019re interested to compare our reflections.<\/p>\n As Ethan Mollick points out, we are currently using the worst AI we will ever work with. I don\u2019t know what the future looks like, but Apple just announced it will incorporate AI onboard the Mac, so I wouldn\u2019t have to pay a subscription service, or worry about privacy risks, exploited labour and environmental damage. An AI trained on my own data? Under my control? Making my life easier and more fun? Take my money!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
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\nBefore you start writing, take some time to clarify the focus of your eBook and the specific audience you want to reach. Consider your areas of expertise, the unique insights you have to offer, and the pressing questions or challenges your target readers are facing. The good thing about ebooks is they can be as long or as short as you like, so do a bit of market research as well. Look for examples of books similar to the one you have in mind, which sell well \u2013 how long are they? What sort of tone and style does the author use? Learn from other people\u2019s success.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWe wrote this book in a hurry and honestly \u2013 we think it\u2019s better than a lot of our more \u2018careful\u2019 prose. We roughed it out using the database\/note taking system \u2018Obsidian\u2019, which enabled us to produce the draft in \u2018chunks\u2019 and move them around. We tried to focus on providing clear, actionable insights and examples that will help you solve problems and achieve goals. For once we didn\u2019t have peer reviewers looking over our shoulder \u2013 sweet relief! In a book just made to sell you can really let your freak flag fly and break the conventions of your normal academic \u2018voice\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Claude-and-Chattie.jpg\")
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