Inside Marketing with MarketSurge

Speaker: Welcome to Inside
Marketing With Market Surge.

Your front row seat to the
boldest ideas and smartest

strategies in the marketing game.

Your host is Reed Hansen, chief
Growth Officer at Market Surge.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hello
and welcome back to Inside

Marketing with Market Surge.

If you're a creator, author, or
marketer putting content into the

world right now, here's a question you
probably haven't asked yourself yet.

Who actually owns your
work once AI gets involved?

My guest today is Julie Trsad,
head of US publishing@alet.ai

and someone who's been navigating the
publishing industry for over 30 years.

Long enough to see trends come and
go, and long enough to spot a real

inflection point when it shows up.

She was experimenting with eBooks
back when they came on CD ROMs and

helped launch the not so big house
long before Tiny Living was a thing.

And she's focused on one big question.

How do creators protect,
monetize, and future proof their

work in an AI powered world?

If you write, publish market content
or build a business or a brand,

this conversation is going to make
you rethink ownership, ethics, and

opportunity in a very real way.

Julie, welcome to the podcast.

Julie Trelstad: Thank you.

I'm delighted to be here

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Julie Trelstad: talking about
co, ownership of rights.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Awesome.

Well, let's start kind
of, uh, in the beginning.

You've been in publishing
for several decades.

Where does this moment where AI
is getting involved in publishing,

rank in terms of disruption
compared to everything you've seen?

Julie Trelstad: Compared
to everything you've seen.

It reminds me a lot of the 1990s
when eBooks came onto the scene

when all of a sudden everything was
published online instantaneously.

Also, Amazon too, like all of.

And every book was available in the world.

so I think it, this is different though
because I think we understand it less,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: hmm.

Julie Trelstad: What is happening
behind the scenes is it's easy.

If you sell an ebook,
somebody reads that book.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Right,

Julie Trelstad: to it.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: right.

Julie Trelstad: and today, a machine
may ingest the content of your book

and you have no idea where it's going.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

No, that's a, I mean, it's been
pretty remarkable for a lot of things.

I'm just learning about the
publishing world, but, uh, the

speed at which it's affected things
and the just the pervasiveness, I

mean, it's touching everything now.

Let's talk a little bit about the, you
know, AI is writing a lot of this content

and, or generating a lot of this content.

What are some of the misconceptions that
authors and publishers have about how

AI is involved in written content today?

Julie Trelstad: They I don't
know about misconceptions, but

they're really upset about it.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: I think one thing
is probably worth talking about

is just in recent history that.

GBT, Claude and others
are new on the scene.

These are technologies that have been
in development for a really long time,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Julie Trelstad: it wasn't until they
started literally training on books

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Julie Trelstad: well-structured
content that they became smart

enough and conversant enough.

Before that time they were training
on more like technical manuals

and all kinds of things that
weren't like fully formed English.

so there's really.

Two things that are happening here.

One is that large language models just
like much ate the world's library.

Everything that was digitally available
and even things that weren't, that got

scanned in and were put into these things.

And, that means is that these models
seem to be as good as writing as

the average writer or good writers,
so it feels like it can write

really fast and really quickly

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: you know, if you
talked about AI a lot, it's all

based on a mathematical formula.

What is the most likely next word.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm.

Julie Trelstad: basically the output of
these models is like in the aggregate.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: It doesn't give
you a lot of creativity, but it

gives you what is the average thing
that an author would say next?

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

So the part I'm sure that
is driving everybody.

in this industry crazy and
getting bothered is ownership.

And, you know, the AI's, like you
said, it's consumed all of the

world's literature and writing.

Do most writers own the
rights they think they own?

And what does ownership mean
when AI's in the picture?

Julie Trelstad: I'm just gonna go back to

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Julie Trelstad: where things, authors
and publishers were caught flatfooted

when they discovered when eBooks came
on the scene, like 98, 99, whatever.

They realized that the publishing
contracts did not include ebook rights.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Oh,

Julie Trelstad: So there was no explicit

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: I.

Julie Trelstad: If a book was published
before 1991, none of the contracts with

anyone said that the, that was owned.

And I think we're back in that
same loop that none of our

publishing agreements or contracts
explicitly state that AI can use it.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: I see it.

Julie Trelstad: we're in a moment
this year there was a huge lawsuit.

Have you heard of that?

A few months back with
Anthropic, they had to pay $1.8

billion to authors,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: I wow.

Julie Trelstad: that was because they
scraped the material belonging to

the authors without their consent.

it wasn't because Claude used
this material for AI training,

that wasn't a problem at all.

considered perfectly fine by the law.

What was bad was it was
stolen, it was pirated.

It was not paid for.

There were no agreements in place.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: So it
was the output that was the problem

that it regurgitated and when it
generated content, is that the problem?

Julie Trelstad: yeah, that's,
no, that's another thing.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: more like it was.

Basically, it took,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: the material
without paying for the material.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: So the law,
basically, so far, the lawsuits

are saying it is okay for software
companies to use books to train their

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: just not okay for
them to not pay for using the model.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: But when you talk
about input and output, that's

interesting too because input is
like that mathematical formula,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Huh.

Julie Trelstad: If I was gonna
say, write me a novel that's

like Stephen King and it does,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: King can sue
for that because it's similar

enough to his own work,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: I see.

Interesting.

Julie Trelstad: that he was
ingested, but he can sue like another

author trying to use AI to copy
him and pass it off as his work.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay, so
I assume that there's a big void in.

How should they pay for this content?

You know, because like you
said, there's no contract.

I mean, up until a point that it,
that mentioned anything AI related

and so they, it just, the current
ruling is that they must pay.

It's not known how much or how so there's
a little bit of a, we're sounds like

we're a little bit in the early days.

Okay.

Julie Trelstad: That it reminds me a
lot of actually, if you think about

it, most of the revenue for large
published books in the United States is

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: from book sales.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm.

Julie Trelstad: from
selling foreign rights.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Interesting.

Thank you.

Julie Trelstad: and publishers make
a ton of money selling the content

of the book so it can be published
in different languages and different

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: around the world.

this kind of ai is gonna be,
I think, treated the same

way we treat foreign rights.

It's like another, it's
like an ebook, right?

It's another layer.

Of things that authors can get paid
for and all creators can get paid for.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

So, you know, I assume that this
affects, big names in the industry.

Big, writers.

I would be flattered if somebody was
using my writing to inspire output by, ai.

I, I'm nowhere, I'm sure nowhere
on anybody's radar, but I,

but for the average marketer.

Business owner, coach, consultant that
wants to self-promote their own brand,

they're generating content, maybe not
to the fame level of a Stephen King.

What kinds of concerns should they
have and how can they, protect

themselves in this situation?

Julie Trelstad: There are the
protections that you can put

on your website that can keep,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: But on the other
hand, you keep readers out,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Right.

Julie Trelstad: text file, but

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: models work
is it it usually separates

itself from the metadata.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: so I'm coming to you from
Amid ai and I just wanna explain one,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah, please.

Julie Trelstad: thing, and that
is that in Europe the laws are

different from the United States.

In Europe.

There is a law in place that
actually says that all training

models, and this is since 2019,
have to compensate the authors.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Julie Trelstad: So there was
like, they don't have, they've

been paying authors for a while.

So alet.ai

is a.

Was a machine readable copyright.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: words, it is like a
digital thumbprint of your content.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: you can upload it
into the system and it creates an

identifier that lives with the content.

in publishing, we have copyright notices,
and we also have what we call an ISBN

that identifies a book or the standard.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: Again, those things
can be stripped away from the content.

They're just like on the first page, and
they're not related to the content itself.

So Amli, in order to solve this problem
in Europe like how do we identify which

pieces of content we're using and who
owns that content and who do I have

to contact to license that content?

Using the omelet identifier solves that
problem because if a machine is looking.

Through a database of content,
it will see this new identifier.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: so in the past it
was just like, there was no real way

to tell and no real way to proof.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Well, so does AI present any
opportunities for writers?

You know, is it all negative?

Julie Trelstad: No, I don't
think it's negative at all.

Number one is I think for authors
today and the authors I'm working

with, they're making liberal use of
AI to help them market their books,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Julie Trelstad: to help them troubleshoot,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: hmm.

Julie Trelstad: a beta reader
or to, help them brainstorm.

Can you like, give me
suggestions of where to go next?

Some people are writing with it,
but I almost find that's as hard

as because you have to train
it so much to sound like you.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: So that's like
useful uses that authors are having.

But on the flip side, now eBooks and
audiobooks are representing about half

the revenue that authors are making now.

it's a kind of they weren't getting
this kind of revenue from these kind of

products 10 years ago or 15 years ago.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Julie Trelstad: I do think that
in the next 10 to 15 years that.

Having these micropayments almost like
a Spotify, when AI uses your material

either in a specialized chat bot or
when it uses to train, you should

be able to be compensated for that.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Julie Trelstad: worth noting
that AI can't train on ai.

It can't like create a
document and then train itself.

It really needs unique human content.

And high quality expertly written
content, like the human piece

absolutely needed for the development
of the future of the technology.

And I do believe that in the future
we're gonna see like specialty medical

apps, specialty marketing apps, and
they're gonna wanna use the best

quality, most reliable content, and
they will be willing to pay for that.

It may be that instead of reading
a book, you know you are having a

conversation with a book on a chat bot.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Interesting.

You know, I think people, you
mentioned a few ways that.

professional writers are using ai.

Um, you know, they're brainstorming,
they're checking their written

content, and in some cases, maybe
probably writing some of the

sections that are being published.

Are there any, what's the ethical
discussion in the, like the book

writer community around using AI
to generate any of the content?

Julie Trelstad: Yeah,
They don't like it at all.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: there's no I've
been on a podcast with a couple of

writing groups and they just like,
we don't even wanna talk about ai.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: I see.

Okay.

Julie Trelstad: it seems too easy,
and there was an instance actually

where a romance writer last year
accidentally left a prompt in her

writing in the middle of a chapter

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Oh, no.

Julie Trelstad: Whoops.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Oh, okay.

Julie Trelstad: that's good.

'Cause I think that writers are
mostly worried about being ripped off.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Julie Trelstad: and I've seen it.

I interviewed a woman who
had recently wrote a book for

one of the major publishers.

It was, an autobiography of a famous
historical figure, she published

this book with Random House.

Two weeks later, not even two
weeks later, there were eight.

Similar books that were causing market
confusion, that had similar titles

that were AI generated copycats of her
book at a slightly cheaper price point.

And, it was like, wow.

And.

The industry like Amazon and
Barnes and Noble, and the retailers

are really playing whack-a-mole.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Julie Trelstad: are, if you upload a book
to Amazon today, it'll ask you a big box.

Did you use ai?

And you're like I used Grammarly.

I'm not sure how to answer that question,
but I'm assuming that most people who

are doing this are not checking that box.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: complete human compliance.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Interesting.

Julie Trelstad: And I know this woman's
publisher was sending out notices and

take down and get rid of those books.

they're fake.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: but it is a
problem that I think the industry

is addressing fairly rapidly.

I wouldn't be surprised if they come up
with solutions to prevent this kind of

stuff in the next two to three years.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Wow.

Wow.

That is, that is daunting.

Now I, I'm interested in alet.ai.

Can you tell us a little bit about
your, you know, your business?

You know, what's the, the
mission and goal and, and

Julie Trelstad: Absolutely.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
Tell us how it works.

Julie Trelstad: So I have been
recently working with a company

called Street, which is a.

Digital book distribution company.

Basically it's really big.

It's like the largest independent
distributor in Italy and in Germany,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Julie Trelstad: was helping
bring it into the United States.

The owner pivoted Giacomo DiAngelo and
got together with his friend Tus Pan,

Tus had started created basically an iso.

It's like a.

IO identifier.

So I think of it like an ISBN.

It's a standard number
that identifies a product.

Tus invented this way of
taking any piece of content.

It can be a podcast, it can be a book.

It can be an article, it can
be a photograph, and creating

this digital identifier for it.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: and then we
realized that's not enough.

Because once you have the
identifier, you need to know who

it is that owns it and exactly
what rights they're granting to it.

So the identifier on its own
allows you to opt out of ai, but

it doesn't allow you to license it.

Alet was created to solve the
problem that all these works.

These programmers and AI companies
wanted to use content, but they

could not quickly and easily identify
the owner of the rights holder.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: So this electronic
piece was created and what we wanted.

We're not a rights agency.

We are just a piece of software

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Julie Trelstad: which, you know, any.

Publishing company.

Any company that has intellectual
property can actually create their

own rights infrastructure on top of it

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Julie Trelstad: is machine readable
and can be, read by AI instead

of requiring a human person to
answer a letter that's been sitting

on their desk for three months,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: right.

Okay.

Very interesting.

And so.

I think you're doing a great thing and
helping writers, you know, kind of arm

writers in this environment where AI is
so prevalent and I think that's fantastic.

Can you tell us a little bit about what
things you might see as coming down the

pike in terms of, you know, will AI.

I mean, will there be more
opportunities for writers?

Will there be fewer, will we
see things more aggregated?

You know what?

And if somebody wants to write and
create, how should they get started?

Julie Trelstad: Oh my gosh.

All these things.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: so sorry.

I know that's probably you've
thought for years about this, but.

Julie Trelstad: Oh no.

I, I've been looking at trends a lot
and I do think number one, we're gonna

see more like automation and writer
help with the sort of the production

oriented issues like fixing typos and

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: You see this?

Julie Trelstad: books and like
all the sort of busy work that

kind of goes around writing.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: I think that AI is
gonna be used a lot in discoverability.

If you look at the new Rufuss AI
that is built into Amazon, it's

really changing the way books are
being presented and discovered,

and I think that's gonna happen.

So for instance, you may be buying
your books right out a check, GPT, like

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Yes.

Julie Trelstad: They may recommend
it, you may click and buy right there.

so these books are gonna, what's in
the book is gonna be known all the ais.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: I see.

Okay.

Julie Trelstad: And then, I think I talked
to you about what the future might be

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Julie Trelstad: might, give writers
more opportunity to be compensated.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: way of thinking about it.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Julie Trelstad: But in ways to get
started, I have some great tips for that.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Oh, perfect.

Julie Trelstad: for like podcast
listeners and so on, I think one of the

most brilliant uses of AI for people who
wanna write a book is the voice to text.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Julie Trelstad: So you can take
your podcasts, dump them all,

Walk and talk and this is my idea for a
book and like all your random thoughts.

And then you can take that recording
and the transcript and ask an

AI to organize it for you and
to put it in reasonable order.

another thing you can do is you
can have an AI interview you and

ask you a bunch of questions.

And then after asking you a bunch of
questions about what you know about

and who you wanna serve, it can then.

you a book outline so you know,
there's a lot of things you can do to

make the process of writing a book,
particularly if you are a business

owner or a coach or consultant,
instead of a professional writer.

A lot faster and easier, especially if
you've already created a ton of content.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Okay.

No, that's, that's very helpful.

You know, I know a lot of business
owners or coaches and consultants

take the approach of using the
book as a self-promotion tool.

And so I think the, their keen to try
these things and continue to use your

book writing as a, as a key tool.

So I'm glad, that there is somebody,
an insider like yourself that

is still very optimistic about
AI and in this literary world.

So well, let me just ask now, if people
would like to work with you, they'd

like to understand how they can protect
their work and maybe get compensated.

What are the best ways to learn more from
you or get in contact with you directly?

Julie Trelstad: Alet AI

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: okay.

Julie Trelstad: you can learn
about registering your book.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Great.

Julie Trelstad: We're
slowly rolling it out.

We have a wait list, but you can
register and as soon as we're ready,

we can put your book in there.

You can sign up for Street Lib,
which is the distribution system,

and if you do sign up for it, you are
automatically brought into the registry

and your rights will be protected.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
Oh, that's awesome.

Julie Trelstad: you'll have first option,
then finally, if you wanna work with

me or wanna, talk about your book, you
can reach me@paperbacksandpixels.com.

Big long URL.

But I work with authors all the
time, at any stage of the process.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge:
Well, thank you so much, Julie.

I'm a big reader and I thought this was
a very interesting topic and, uh, really

nice to hear from somebody that deals with
this day to day and has for many years.

So thank you so much for your insight.

Julie Trelstad: Thank you, Ray.

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