Bo Bennett Rebuilds Hosting Authors With AI

HOST: Bo, welcome back. Twenty eight episodes in, and that line from our very first conversation is still the thesis of everything: "It's not very difficult to publish a book—it's difficult to publish a profitable book." We've traced the whole stack since then, but today I want to talk about HostingAuthors.com, because this might be the place where everything we've built finally has a front door. You said the site was "completely rebuilt using AI." Walk me in. GUEST: Right. So I started the site about maybe four years ago, four or five years ago. And it has a really nice slow climb of authors using it. And they've been very happy. One of the problems though is it was never very easy to create the site. And users would have to either spend like a couple hours watching some videos, learning how to do it. Or they would pay us to do it and we would create it for them. And it would even take us like well over an hour to create a website. And that just really wasn't a sustainable business model for the prices that we were charging. And most authors aren't really the DIY type of people. They're usually not the most technical. So that's where we fell into this little area that was kind of uh unknown. Like we're where we in do it all for you, or was it completely do it yourself? We were a little bit of both. And it just didn't quite work. So, we completely redesigned the site and built all the tools and made all the websites that existed completely compatible with the new system. But now, the users could basically just go through there. The authors could go through and you just click a few buttons and it creates everything for you. And even more than that, you could talk to it like uh you you talk to the AI just like you would talk to a human webmaster. Hey, can you write me a bio and add the bio to the website? Or can you change this? Can you put uh my press release over here? And it'll do all of that. So, it's really easy for anybody to work with. HOST: Yeah, that sounds significantly faster. So, when you say an author can "click a few buttons," what are they actually getting? Is it generating the entire website design, or are they picking a base style and then customizing with the AI? GUEST: So there are no templates per se, but it is like a template based website. Like it's a a standard organization website where you have like the header, you have the footer, and then you have a whole bunch of sections in between. So when you build your website, when the author builds the website, they choose which elements they want. For example, they they're going to want to have like the links to their store. So they just check off where their books are available. And they're going to have like maybe do they have a press release? They just put their press release in there. Do they have a video? They add that in there. The more features that they add, the more uh the more full the website will appear. But even if they don't have a lot of features, you could keep it very plain, very clean, and that looks great too. HOST: That makes sense, tailoring it to what they actually have. You mentioned the AI helps write bios and add press releases. For an author who maybe doesn't have design instincts, what does that process look like? Are they typing in some keywords, and the AI gives them options? How does it ensure the result looks premium, like you said? GUEST: Well, the AI is some of the most advanced AI right now, so it will do it for you. And that's the great part about it, because most people do not have a good eye for design, but AI does. So, it will take your idea, and it'll make sure that the colors are right, and the the uh the HTML is correct, and everything looks great, and that's what it does. HOST: Sure, relying on the AI's design knowledge. You've showcased your own book sites on the platform, which makes sense—social proof right there. For an author with no prior design skills who wants to build something professional, what are the specific inputs they need to provide, and what kind of result can they expect? GUEST: Well, they just provide their cover. They provide their uh description and a few key pieces of information about their book and just kind of press a button and go. And the AI will it'll extract it'll take the cover, it'll extract the colors from it. So, it'll set up the website so it goes beautifully with your cover. It'll create what we call a hero image, which is basically as soon as you uh go to the website, it's the big image you see in the background. And it creates that from your cover. It'll create a logo for you. If you're on one of the paid sites, it'll take your book title and it'll create a logo from that using a similar or the same font. So, everything goes together beautifully. And again, we have AI to thank for all of that. HOST: That's pretty incredible how it pulls elements from the cover and handles design on the back end. You've made the case that owning your reader list is vital, and having a mailing list built right in definitely supports that. But what about Amazon author pages? What does an author lose by just pointing everyone there instead of having their own site? GUEST: Well, Amazon author pages are are are really for Amazon and they're not for the author. As you mentioned, a mailing list is a big part of an author's toolbox. And we have the mailing list feature fully integrated with all of the hosting author websites. And that's from our other company, authormailinglists.com. So, with that integration, when you send when you send prospects, prospective readers to your website, not only if you're running a store, you could get 100% of all your sales. You don't have to share with anybody. But even if you are sending people to other retailers, they could choose from your website whether they want to buy the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, wherever they prefer reading books. If you got the links there, you can make it easy for them. But more importantly, they could actually sign up for your mailing list. They're like, oh, this is an interesting book, an interesting author. I want to know what this person is doing in the future. So, they leave their email address and that's how you build a list. That's how you build a base of readers and you could market your own book and even future books and it makes it a lot easier. HOST: And when you say "send prospects," that connects back to tools like AgentOutreach and Promoto, where you're finding promotional partners and sending pitches. It's about driving traffic to the hub rather than relying on passive discovery. By now, we've mapped most of the Archieboy stack—you write it, edit it, and now you host it here. Where does the author website fit in that sequence? Is this something to set up on day one, or is it the final piece after everything else is ready? GUEST: Usually most authors will put their website together as they're releasing their book. It's all done kind of at the same time. But it really doesn't matter. If you put a book out a couple years ago and you want to do a website now, great. If you want to put your website out before your book's actually out to get some interest, that's fine, too. It doesn't really matter. HOST: So it's flexible, whenever they're ready or whatever makes sense for their launch strategy. You offer a free tier—one book website, no custom domain. You've used free entry points before, like first chapters on BookBud. Is the idea here to just get them on the platform and reduce that skepticism, hoping they'll upgrade down the line? GUEST: Yeah, that's pretty much exactly it. It's important to let them actually experience the tool rather than just read about it. And then once they do, they're going to see the value in it and going to realize that paying nine bucks a month is a great deal for all of these extra features that they're going to get. HOST: Right, hands on experience to show the value. We've now traced the Archieboy stack across twenty eight episodes—from the moment an author has an idea all the way through writing, editing, covers, audio, trailers, press, ads, mailing lists, SEO pages, and awards. HostingAuthors sounds like the place where all of those outputs live together in one place a reader can visit. If an author only ever builds one thing in this entire stack—just one—is the website it? And is that the argument you'd make to a brand new author who's about to spend their first dollar? GUEST: That's a tough question because if you have a website, I guess as long as your book is published and it's linked somewhere, you could use your website to sell that. So it's an important tool, but then like the mailing list is also important, and then you need to get people to your website. So without any kind of promotion, that's kind of difficult. So you could see how all the tools work together, but yeah, the website is a very important piece, no doubt.That's a tough question because if you have a website, I guess as long as your book is published and it's linked somewhere, you could use your website to sell that. So it's an important tool, but then like the mailing list is also important and then you need to get people to your website. So without any kind of promotion, that's kind of difficult. So you could see how all the tools work together. But yeah, the website is a very important piece, no doubt. HOST: Before we go, for listeners who want to follow up on what we covered, where can they find you and the work you're doing? GUEST: They can go to archyboy.com and that's where all their websites live, or they could go to hostingauthors.com to find the website we've been talking about. HOST: Perfect. Thanks again, Bo. Hearing about the complete rebuild with AI was fascinating, especially how it handles the entire design process from the cover. And thank you for spending part of your day with us. Let's get you back on soon, Bo—there's still live data to check in on across a lot of these sites. Until next time—that's a wrap.