A “Fan-Finder” AI Prompt and a “Recognize & Reward” Mindset

I’ve mentioned that Yvonne and I are working on a training program to help indie authors master the art of marketing their books and themselves. It will incorporate what we’ve labeled The Taylor Swift Model of Author Marketing.

Taylor’s method is starkly simple: she engages directly with her fans. But simple is not the same as easy. Hosting small groups in her homes around the world for in-person reveals of a new song is a lot of work, right? I choose that famous example not to discourage you — none of us will likely have that many fans or homes to worry about any time soon, eh?

My point is twofold: to emphasize the level of personal attention she pays to individual fans, and to raise the fundamental question of where she found those first few fans who grew — over many years — into the global phenomenon of The Swifties.

One article ties those two together by explaining how, in 2005, the then 15-year-old unknown started a MySpace blog. This was a year before she released her first album. It was before she had a team to help. It was not until 2008 that she won the CMT award as “Breakthrough Artist of the Year.”

By then, she was able to thank her “MySpace people” in her acceptance speech, all 650,000 of them at that point. But what was she doing in between that grew her “friends” to that level?

“… she provided [free] content for her growing fanbase that they couldn’t get anywhere else. … The growing star would not only post intimate blogs that gave unique insider insights to her followers, but she would also engage with them and encouraged the growth of a community both inside and outside of the platform.”

And of course, MySpace was just the beginning. Over the years, she has migrated across new platforms as they appeared. She understands the need to “meet fans where they are and speak their language.” In one interview, she said,

“You just never know what’s gonna happen…every new album release is different because there’s always a new platform, there’s always a new…way to have people experience your music. I just find it interesting, I’m not gonna sit here and ever be the person that’s like ‘it was only good the way it was when I started’…I like the fact that people can experience music in whatever way fits their life.“

Okay, okay. We’re not Taylor Swift. And we’re talking about books, not music. So how can a new author, or one who hasn’t yet built a fanbase, get started?

The “Fan-Finder” AI Prompt

We can learn from Taylor. Her statements about meeting fans where they are and always looking for the next new way to connect with them inspired me to play with how AI might help.

Rather than trying to predict the next MySpace (or TikTok), I wanted to find places where readers who love specific kinds of books and specific types of authors are already gathering. So, things like podcasts with existing audiences, book clubs (virtual and IRL), groups on social platforms, conferences and events (virtual and IRL), and so on.

I hopped on Perplexity.ai and wrote a prompt using our client, Andrew Segal’s latest release, The Lyme Regis Murders, as an example. The book is a murder mystery, with a strong female detective as the main character. The results on the first pass were impressive, but not quite on target, with too much focus on “true crime” in the podcasts, clubs, and events that the AI found.

I won’t bore you with the next couple of iterations, but I want to share the “template” version of what we call our Fan-Finder prompt that you can customize with the details of your book and plug into your favorite AI tool. Then, I’ll show you the results I got, after a bit more back and forth with Perplexity.

Here’s the fill-in-the-blanks Fan-Finder AI Prompt template:

(Note: the prompt is instructing the AI; so “you” refers to the AI, and “I” refers to you):

You are a book marketing professional specializing in helping authors find and connect with readers, both those who are already reading the author’s books and those who are fans of books in the same genre. I am the author of [ book title or working title ] a [ book genre, e.g., “business strategy how-to” or “memoir” or “murder mystery” or “romantasy” ]. My book [ describe the book’s content, message, theme, main character(s), etc., in enough detail to help the AI identify your ideal readers ]. I want you to identify several potential marketing targets: individuals who are influencers on social media for books like this; “groups” on social media platforms with large memberships that are focused on books like this and show lots of engagement, discussions, and recommendations; podcast hosts who review and/or invite authors of books like this as guests; book clubs that meet online or in person and focus on books like this; upcoming virtual or in-person events for readers of books like this that I could attend and/or apply to speak at. Please identify 5 answers to each of these marketing targets [aside: we recommend starting with five each, then you can expand the number when zeroing in on specific targets]. Also, please let me know what other information you may need to improve your results.

Take note of the “aside” and that last sentence. You should always ask the AI what else it needs to provide better answers; the replies often surprise me and frequently improve my results. Which goes to emphasize that you should treat your AI research as a conversation and follow where it leads with your own prompts to get results tailored to your needs.

Here’s what came from one of my follow-up prompts:

Notice that Perplexity included 87 links to the sources it found and offered some potentially useful suggestions on how we might “further refine these results.”

You should keep refining, until you have a handful of targets that seem like “your people” to use Taylor’s phrase.

But now that we have some places where we might find fans of our work, what do we do next?

Recognize and Reward Your Fans

When you arrive at the ball, er, I mean the virtual or real-world place where you’ve discovered that your fans gather, don’t be a wallflower!

Mingle.

Compliment their gown, er, I mean whatever comment they made that you genuinely admire. Ask about their tailor, or where they got those shoes. When they “like” your comment, or smile and thank you in person, keep the conversation about them, as much as possible, unless they ask about your outfit, or your book.

You get that these are metaphors, right?

At the beginning of any relationship, including — or maybe especially — a fan relationship, the conversations are about getting to know each other, not about selling books. Chances are there will be ongoing discussions about other people’s books that you can join in. If you can find or start any about books you’ve read and loved, that’s a great opportunity to bond with your new acquaintances.

That’s the initial “recognize” part. As people get to know you and your work, you’ll get more chances to recognize them in other ways. For example, you could run polls or contests for readers to vote on a cover design or submit ideas for plot twists, characters, or world-building details. You can recognize those who participate, as well as those who “win.”

The other big step in building fan relationships is to reward them. These can reward the entire fanbase, like releasing free content, deleted scenes, short stories, or workbooks, checklists, and such for nonfiction authors. Or you can reward individual fans, like credits in your book for submitting a winning idea or artwork that became part of the book, or a free ticket to your next speaking event (which you may even be able to coordinate with the event organizer to add perks).

In the training program, we’ll be sharing many more examples of these and other ways that authors like Brandon Sanderson, Clara Benson, Marissa Meyer, and others have implemented these kinds of “Recognize and Reward” techniques to grow their fanbases.

But hopefully this introduction will let you get started on your own. Let us know in the comments if you do and how it’s working. You may inspire other authors and, hey, authors can be fans, too!