I’ve seen some great conversations about titles this week, and it got me thinking, for those of you further along in your publishing journey, how did you land on your title? Did it come to you early and stick, or was it a long process of testing and tweaking? For those still brainstorming, what’s been your biggest struggle so far in finding the ‘right’ one?

And in a complete repeat from June ... our top three contributors for the month are Heather, Jeremy and Michele. :) Thank you for all your contributions. This month we're going to do something different for prizes. Please email @Angela Jones at [email protected] with a 3D image of your book and a short blurb (like 20 words or less) on what the book is about and who should read it with your preferred link for people to purchase it. We are going to put together a little promo graphic for each of you that we will post here and in a YouTube video in the near future. :) Thank you for making this community special!

What’s one goal you’re setting that Future You will thank you for?

I'm getting ready to exponentially grow my email list, so I'm revisiting the tech I want to use. In the past I've used Aweber and MailChimp. Now, I'm looking at Kit.... What are you all using? Plus, why did you choose it, how do you like it, and why do you think it's the best to serve your needs? @Julie Broad, if you're willing to share, I'd would love to hear why you chose Kit over ActiveCampaign and the others mentioned above.

@Julie Broad has mentioned the rise of LLM impact on Google/SERPS several times in the past couple of weeks. Great recent article in EMARKETER puts the general idea into bold relief: To fully understand the impact of what's happening -- and why Julie's suggestion to focus (more) on how to get AI to notice you rather than Google -- take a look at these stats... --Google’s AI Overviews and instant answers are reducing click-through rates (CTRs) by 34.5% (Ahrefs). --Wikipedia, which relies on Google for referral traffic, has seen a drop of 20 million visitors in the past 18 months (Comscore). --Global visits to the top 100 web domains fell nearly 7% from March 2022 to March 2025 (Semrush). --Google’s traffic is down 6.4% (Similarweb). The bottomline: "AI-native discovery is killing traditional funnels." What does this really mean? For one thing, informative and educational brand-evocative content (optimized for long-term relevance) that creates human connections through your ICP's language becomes even more key for marketing success -- especially when you design it to be easily understood and processed by AI algorithms. For another, a big trend is coming in which marketers will shift away from optimizing static content for Google. Instead, they'll begin creating brand experiences that target customers in their local geographic locations. Quick summary: Since AI can do so much more than Google, e.g. analyze search trends, user intent, and location data, it can deliver more highly targeted and relevant search results (e.g. location-specific) -- that no one has to click through ten sites to fully grasp. We're about to shift from prioritizing SEO (Search Engine Optimization, i.e. get ranked for relevant keywords) to prioritizing GEO (Generative Engine Optimization, i.e. get 'ranked' for relevant keywords easily understood by AI). Specifically, this means creating content to intentionally expand the likelihood of its recognition by AI-driven search engines, and in conversational AI responses.