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Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

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Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#21

Post by coldtea »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

>Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation?

Because increasingly many people wont even stoop to reading an article, but will put on some bs video - even for tutorials

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#22

Post by seanw444 »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

There can be a lot to gain from the graphics and audio, depending on the topic.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#23

Post by _pdp_ »

> Find your 1,000 True Fans. If you started off doing this well but have meandered, it’s time to revisit. Get very clear on who those 1,000 people are.

Well this is the difficult part. You can 10x the number of followers and still have less than 50 true fans.

On the actual content, I am actually not surprised at all. These AI systems are surprisingly convincing when giving personal advise - for better or worse.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#24

Post by twright »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

One would make a long education video to hold eyeballs longer that can lead to more ad revenue (if that's your goal and your video is sufficiently entertaining).

I've commented about this before [1] but a lot of my simple searches lead to monstrous walls of text with tangential information about the query. The answer is buried well past a simple ctrl-F on the page. It definitely varies for domain though.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45830763

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#25

Post by jpieper »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

Isn't it obvious? The creator gets paid much more, in whatever currency they care about:

- ad revenue - youtube algorithm placement - sponsored content - street cred

With an article, if you're lucky google will base their AI overview on it, and the creator gets bupkis.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#26

Post by mrweasel »

wps wrote: post #6

I never understood how anyone could write more than 40 pages of “self help”. Especially not for a general audience. All self help boils down to the very foundation of your worldview, all other advice stems from it.

All weight loss books, if they are truthful, boils down to: eat healthy, exercise more, everything in moderation. That doesn't really make you money, which is what the author actually want. Other categories are equally padded, or the topic has been sufficiently covered for 2000 years or more.

The whole spiel about "I just want to help others in the same situation" died with the Internet, because for the past 30 years it has been entirely feasible to publish your advice and guidance for for free. The books are just for money and fame.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#27

Post by PaulHoule »

deadbabe wrote: post #8
dvh wrote: post #3

Now I'm curious, were there any self-help fiction books?

Yes! plenty of them: The Secret, The 4-hour Work Week, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, etc…

I think there are some good things in the 4-hour Work Week but the concept as a whole is problematic: e.g. Tim Ferris himself has more like a 400-hour work week. Rich Dad Poor Dad is a right wing scam. There is a psychotechnology that people call "magic" but The Secret and Think and Grow Rich won't teach you it.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#28

Post by ndiddy »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

It's because you get better ad rates on Youtube than if you made a website and posted the information there. Additionally, the current state of the web (Google only exposing SEO blogspam, AI overviews making it so ~60% of searches end without the user clicking on a site) pushes people further and further away from making websites.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#29

Post by neutronicus »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #13

> How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps? Why make a 24-minute Youtube video instead of an article with proper navigation? This is slightly off-topic, but this is a pet-peeve of mine. I believe that for most practical purposes hypertext beats video: - you can Ctrl-F through text (well, now you sort of can searc…

The right 15 seconds of video can be extremely helpful with household tasks. I'm thinking specifically of super-tactile ones like getting such-and-such panel off the car or appliance so that you can get at the bit you're looking to replace. Those can really be worth a thousand words.

Of course I'd prefer a blog post with many looping, silent 5-15 second gifs and no extraneous like-and-subscribe and life-story-delivery. But c'est la vie.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#30

Post by bryanrasmussen »

_pdp_ wrote: post #23

> Find your 1,000 True Fans. If you started off doing this well but have meandered, it’s time to revisit. Get very clear on who those 1,000 people are. Well this is the difficult part. You can 10x the number of followers and still have less than 50 true fans. On the actual content, I am actually not surprised at all. These AI systems are surprisingly convincing when giving personal advise - for better or worse.

depending on the medium one might be better served with a single middling fan with a lot of disposable income, then 10 true with little money available.
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