Having known Joe Procopio for years and followed the robotic writing company he works for (Automated Insights), The Skinny likes to joke with Joe about robot scribes and how the heck he finds time to write as much as he does – manually.

Somehow between working as an executive at AI and being a very busy father, the entrepreneur-at-heart finds time to blog – a lot, be it at ExitEvent (which he started and sold) or at his own website.

And now he’s written a second book.

But this time he’s looking to make a little money as an author.

He also assures WTW that robot-writing AI didn’t produce the book.

The new book is titled “The Independent Life,” which follows the recently published and updated “It’s All Nonsense.”

Here’s our conversation:

  • So are you ready to be replaced as an author by artificial intelligence? When’s AI going to start cranking out books?

Actually, we’ve already had a few folks use (AI’s) Wordsmith to do some long form type writing. The capabilities are there.

But I don’t look at artificial intelligence that way — maybe this is because I’ve done automated content for so long. The root of what we call artificial intelligence always goes back to a human, which is what gives the data context and meaning.

The Independent Life, the book, is communication of the human experience from my vantage point on a very niche — although getting less niche — topic of discussion – startup and doing your own thing.

Can a computer write that? Sure. But only if I program it to output my ideas.

That’s actually not a bad use case.

  • Why did you decide to do a second book?

The Independent Life is the next step in a long entrepreneurial experiment, in which I’m trying to nail down the concepts around teaching startup. In fact, I registeredteachingstartup.com shortly after I registered exitevent.com about six years ago.

Once I exited ExitEvent and Automated Insights got acquired, I wanted to give back, mentor, advise, and invest. The more meetings I took, I found that:

1) There weren’t enough hours in a day to have all the coffee, beer, lunch, and dinner sessions that entrepreneurs wanted to have with me.

2) The advice they appreciated most came from “here’s what I did” scenarios and anecdotes from my own experience, generalized to their situation.

3) I was repeating myself quite often.

So I started writing and compiling books. I found this method was reaching people I would never reach in my network or even within the existing startup community. I started getting feedback from people telling me they had been looking for something exactly like this, and they wanted more.

The first book, It’s All Nonsense, hit #1 on Amazon in the Startup category and has been in the top 20 for 16 weeks. So it made sense to do another one.

  • Is this new “copy” or a compilation of previous posts, and if not new did you edit them? If new where did you find the time to write given your job, other writing and family obligations?

It actually goes the other way around. I start with the concept of a book and I start writing piece by piece. The blog lets me test each piece, and I take the feedback I get and rewrite and edit and add additional ideas.

At the end of that process, the books are about 75% new content and entirely rewritten to fit in the context of a long form book.

I think the blog approach is necessary. For one, it allows me to make sure what I’m writing is viable and understandable. But it also keeps the educational conversation going. You can’t learn about startup in a day, or even a few months. You have to keep coming back to the well. I learn new approaches and lessons all the time. And by the way, that’s true of all education, not just startup.

As for time management, I get up early. I reserve an hour every day to write, whether that content goes into an article or the book or just a list of ideas I want to work on.

  • So are there profit motives to this one?

I wouldn’t say “profit motives” but I’m a firm believer in measurement by revenue. If I gave away everything for free, I wouldn’t have a gauge as to whether or not it was valuable. 99 cents isn’t really a barrier to entry.

  • Any differences between writing a blog and writing a book? Which is harder?

Well, like I said, I started this with the concept of the book in mind, and the blog is more of a test bed. It also forces me to write on deadline, which keeps me motivated and keeps me from getting too perfectionist with it.

The book is harder, because everything has to connect. But I go back to one of the things I wrote about in The Independent Life — the blog lets me break up a big idea into lots of smaller ideas, and I can focus on those without worrying about the big picture. But I’m following a roadmap, which lets me tie it all together at the end.

If I set out with a blank sheet of paper and said “I’m going to write a startup book today,” I’d probably freeze up. Breaking down big ideas into smaller chunks is what makes big ideas happen.​

  • What’s next?

I’ve already got the outline done for Book 3, and I’ll be posting new stuff this week.