The Robots Have Entered the Bookshop: How to Optimise Your Book Description for AI

Okay, we knew this was coming...

We've always written book descriptions to entice humans to buy our book. But the bots are here, and they don't read our descriptions like we do. They don't feel our words.

Yet people are increasingly asking AI things like:

“Can you recommend a book for someone rebuilding their life after divorce?”

“What's a good book for women who know they want something more from their life but don't know what that looks like yet?”

“Can you recommend a book about leaving an abusive relationship and starting again?”

“I want a practical book about trusting my intuition without all the woo.”

“What's a good book for a woman starting a business later in life?”

ChatGPT, Claude or whatever AI model of choice has to decide which books actually answer that. And that means it needs to understand very specifically what our books are actually about.

AI can infer, but don't make it guess.

This is where we may need to rethink some of our old “show, don't tell” instincts when it comes to book descriptions.

I'm not suggesting we throw beautiful writing out the window because your description still needs to appeal to a human. Clever, evocative, intriguing or poetic language can absolutely stay if it helps the reader understand the experience of your book.

But don't make AI decode it.

If your book is a practical guide for women rebuilding their lives after divorce, say that somewhere.

If it's a memoir about leaving coercive control and starting again, say that.

If it combines personal stories with practical exercises readers can use in their own lives, say that too.

If you make the bot infer the information you want it to use to recommend you, it’ll probably recommend something far more on point.

And no, we're not about to butcher our blurbs by stuffing them with keywords for the robots.

Overloaded Oracles and those a little neuro-spicy, back away from this side quest immediately! You don't need to spend three days “optimising your book for AI”.

(If you don't know your Writer Archetype, take the Quiz! You'll get tips specifically for your creative process, so you can stop following generic writing advice that just doesn't work for you.)

The main point is:

Write for the human. Make it unmistakable to the machine.

We must do what good authors should be doing anyway.

Be clear about what your book is, who it's for, what it explores or helps with, and what readers can expect.

For nonfiction authors, most of this work should happen long before you write your book description. It's positioning. AI just gives us another very good reason to get it right.

Your book description isn't the only thing the bots can read

Information about your book can appear all over the place.

Amazon. Goodreads. Other retailer listings. Your website. Your author bio. Interviews. Publicity material. Reviews. Your book's metadata.

That doesn't mean you need to copy and paste exactly the same description everywhere. Just keep the important facts consistent. The wording can change, the essential information about your book shouldn't. The clearer and more consistent those signals are, the easier it is for humans, search engines and AI systems to understand where your book belongs.

There isn't a magical collection of keywords that guarantees ChatGPT is suddenly going to start recommending your book. And this landscape is going to keep changing. We're simply making sure that when someone asks their AI BFF for exactly the kind of book you've written, it has enough information to know yours belongs in the conversation.

A quick check for your book description

Read your current description as though you've never heard of you or your book before.

Could you clearly tell:

What kind of book is this?

Who is it for?

What does it cover?

What will the reader get from it?

If any of those answers require a bit of guesswork, the bots may be guessing too.

We knew this was coming, so let's make it work for us and our books.