Amazon's "Ask This Book": Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

 

Amazon just added a new Kindle feature called Ask This Book.

Reading a book on Kindle and have a question? You can type a question about the book you’re reading and get an AI-generated explanation instantly ... inside the book itself. Not a quote. Not a page jump. An interpretation.

Forget who a character is? Ask. Unsure why something matters? Ask. The system explains it in its own words, without the author’s voice, and without leaving the page.

And that raises a real question for writers.

This isn’t a reference tool. It’s not helping readers find what they already read. It’s telling them what the book means. And it’s doing that without the author’s voice.

There’s no opt-out. If your book is on Kindle, this feature can explain it, summarize it, and interpret it. You don't see the questions. You don’t see the answers. You can’t fix mistakes. You don’t get a say in how your work is framed.

So, writers, how does that feel?

Does this help readers stay immersed or does it put a machine between you and your audience? Is this a useful assist, or the start of something that slowly rewrites how your work is understood?

The Authors Guild is already pushing back (as they should), arguing that this effectively turns books into annotated editions, without permission or new terms. Amazon didn’t negotiate. They just turned it on.

Some people will say it’s accurate. Maybe it is. But accuracy isn’t really the point. The question is control (and voice) and where interpretation begins and ends.

Copyright is about control over how work is reused and reshaped. This puts a machine between the writer and the reader. Even if it’s accurate, it’s no longer the author’s voice doing the explaining.

And once this becomes normal, it won’t stop here. Explanations become summaries. Summaries become condensations. Condensations become rewrites. Then something else entirely. And every step moves the reader further from the original work.

Does Ask This Book feel like a helpful tool for your readers or a line that shouldn’t have been crossed?

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For more details, check out “What Amazon’s ‘Ask This Book’ Feature Means for Authors” 

How Confident CTAs Drive More Conversions

 

You were taught to say please.

Good manners. Polite. Civilized.

All good things ... except in a Call to Action.

When you say “please” in a CTA, you’re not being courteous. You’re being hesitant.

“Please sign up.”

“Please download.”

“Please consider…”

That one word quietly tells the reader: I’m not fully convinced this is worth your time.

A strong CTA doesn’t beg. It leads. It assumes confidence. It believes in the value. It removes friction instead of adding doubt.

If what you’re offering truly helps, don’t apologize for asking.

Say what to do. Say it clearly. Say it confidently. And save “please” for the dinner table.

 

Here are 16 examples of confident, no-apology CTAs ... the kind that lead instead of ask:

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Poll Results: Copywriters’ Fears About AI in 2026

In an informal, unscientific poll, responders indicated that copywriters’ biggest fears about using AI cluster around losing work, losing value, and losing trust in their own (and others’) writing. Many see AI as both a useful tool and a direct threat to how they get paid and how their craft is judged.

1. Job and income security

• Fear that AI tools will replace human-written ad copy, blogs, emails, and social posts, shrinking demand and pushing rates down.​
• Anxiety that clients will switch to “cheap” AI output and only hire writers to lightly edit, devaluing deeper strategic and creative skills.​
• Worry that entry-level and junior roles will disappear, making it harder to build a career path toward senior creative or strategy roles.​

2. Being misjudged or distrusted

• Fear of being falsely accused of using AI when they did not, especially as AI detectors often flag human work as “machine-written.”​
• Concern that clients and managers will trust AI detectors over the writer’s word, damaging professional reputation and relationships.​
• Unease that audiences may assume polished, efficient copy is “just AI,” making it harder to prove the value of expert human craft.​

3. Loss of creative identity and craft

• Anxiety that AI will homogenize tone and style, flooding channels with same-sounding content and making original voices harder to spot.​
• Fear that writers will be pushed into prompt-tweaking and editing instead of concepting, storytelling, and big-idea development.​
• Worry that constant reliance on AI will dull skills like ideation, structural thinking, and nuanced phrasing over time.​

4. Ethical, legal, and IP concerns

• Fear that their past work has been scraped to train models without consent or credit, undermining ownership of original writing.​
• Concern about accidentally publishing AI-generated material that includes plagiarism, inaccuracies, or fabricated details, with legal or brand consequences.​
• Discomfort with being asked to “just run it through AI” when the underlying data, permissions, or attributions are unclear.​

5. Practical quality and workflow worries

• Worry that AI will confidently generate factual errors or made-up case studies that slip through and damage credibility.​
• Frustration that prompting, checking, and rewriting AI drafts can be time-consuming and sometimes slower than writing from scratch.​
• Concern that clients will overestimate AI’s capabilities, expecting instant, perfect copy and compressing timelines even further.
  
  
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I win. Google me.

 

Curt Cignetti, Head Football Coach at Indiana University at Bloomington

I’ve been thinking about Curt Cignetti lately, mostly because his story keeps bumping into everything that annoys me about how we talk about success now.

You know how it goes. Everyone says “be patient,” but what they really mean is “don’t make me uncomfortable by stepping off the approved path.” Stay put. Optimize your resume. Trust the process. It’s like being told to keep circling the airport on a delayed flight because eventually the runway will clear. Maybe. Or maybe you just run out of fuel.

Cignetti didn’t wait.

And that’s the part that sticks in my craw ... in a good way.

Here’s a guy who did everything “right” for decades. Long assistant career. Big programs. National championships. Alabama. Nick Saban’s office. The whole cathedral of college football prestige. And still, no one handed him the head coaching job he was “supposed” to get. At some point, patience stops being wisdom and starts being denial. Not grit, but inertia wearing a motivational hoodie.

So at 49, an age when modern culture quietly nudges you toward “managing expectations”, he took a job most people would pretend not to see on a map. Division II. A 60% pay cut. A program that had been losing so long it probably forgot what winning felt like. People warned him he’d disappear down there. Like success is a Wi-Fi signal and you lose bars the farther you get from the Power Five.

What gets me is that everyone meant well. They always do. “You’ve got it made.” “Don’t throw this away.” “Just wait.” Those phrases sound supportive, but they’re really about risk management for the person saying them. If you fail while following the script, no one blames you. If you succeed by ignoring it, you quietly indict the whole system.

Cignetti went anyway.

Part of it was personal. His father had built that Division II program into something real. Hall of Fame real. Field-named-after-you real. And Curt had spent his whole career being “Frank’s son,” which is its own kind of invisible weight. Nepotism is a funny word ... sometimes it means you’re handed everything, and sometimes it means nothing you do is ever fully yours.

So he went to a place where the expectations were low enough to trip over. And he won. Immediately. Then he kept winning. And nobody noticed.

That part feels painfully familiar in the age of algorithms. If you’re not already trending, you’re invisible. If you’re not winning in the “right” zip code, it doesn’t count. It’s like shouting into a canyon and being told your voice doesn’t exist because the echo didn’t go viral.

He moved again. Won again. Still no calls. He was in his early 60s by then, which in our culture is roughly the age where we start gently suggesting hobbies instead of ambition. Retirement plans. Consulting. Maybe a podcast, if you’re lucky.

Then Indiana called. Not out of belief, but out of exhaustion. They had nothing left to protect. When you’re the losingest program in college football history, dignity is already off the table. You might as well try something unfashionable.

And Cignetti showed up like someone who had run out of patience for polite lies.

“I win,” he said. “Google me.”

People laughed because confidence without branding feels rude now. You’re supposed to hedge. Add context. Credit the team. Thank the process. But he wasn’t selling vibes; he was stating a record. In a world addicted to potential, he showed up with receipts.

What followed still feels unreal. Eleven wins. Then sixteen and zero. A perfect season in a sport designed to prevent them. Beating programs that are basically religions. Winning a national championship with players nobody else wanted. A quarterback who couldn’t get on the field somewhere else, now holding a Heisman like it was always meant to be there.

And suddenly, the culture caught up. Eight-year contract. $93 million. The same people who would’ve warned him against the Division II job now calling it visionary. That’s how it always works. We love risk ... after it’s been de-risked by success.

The thing I keep circling back to is how simple his insight was, and how hard it is for people to accept: if you wait for permission, you’re outsourcing your life to a committee that doesn’t know your name. Institutions don’t discover you; they absorb you once you’re undeniable.

Modern culture tells us to build personal brands, but what it really rewards is people who quietly build proof. Proof doesn’t trend. Proof accumulates. It’s slow and unglamorous and often happens in places no one’s watching. Like Division II football fields named after someone else.

Cignetti didn’t hack the system. He walked around it. Took a side door that looked like a service entrance. And by the time anyone noticed, he was already holding the trophy.

Which makes me wonder about myself, about anyone reading this, how many “step-down” moves we’ve dismissed because they didn’t look impressive enough on LinkedIn. How often we confuse visibility with value. How many times we’ve stayed put not because it was right, but because leaving would’ve looked irrational to people who weren’t going to live with the consequences anyway.

Sometimes the path up looks like a demotion. Sometimes the only way to be taken seriously is to stop asking to be taken seriously. And sometimes the most rebellious thing you can do in a culture obsessed with optics is to go somewhere unfashionable and do undeniable work.

“I win. Google me.”

Arrogance? Maybe. Perhaps better explained as impatience with bullshit.

And honestly, we could use more of that.