The other day, I was chatting online with some writer friends about how using tropes in our book descriptions and social media posts can help readers find our books.
Interesting how one small discussion can send you down a rabbit hole 🙂.
I hopped over to Claude AI and asked about popular tropes in Christian historical fiction, set outside the United States. I was delighted to see that two of the example titles it gave were books by our own Carolyn Miller.
Go, Carolyn! You’re in the system.
Well, in that particular search, anyway.
By ‘the system’, I mean that Claude knew who Carolyn was, understood what she wrote and considered her books relevant enough to recommend.
That matters because some readers are no longer starting their search for a new book by scrolling through Amazon. They’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity or whichever helpful robot happens to be nearest:
I love warm, Christian historical romances set in England. What should I read next?
And the AI gives them a list.
The term you’ll increasingly hear for making yourself visible in those answers is Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO.
Think of it as SEO’s younger, faster-moving cousin who has arrived at the family gathering, rearranged the furniture and announced that everything works differently now.
Traditional Search Engine Optimisation helps our websites and books appear in search results. GEO is about helping AI tools understand who we are, what we write and when one of our books might be a good answer to someone’s question.
GEO doesn’t replace SEO. The usual foundations still matter: useful content, clear information and a website search engines can read.
But the way people search is changing.
Instead of scrolling past hundreds of tiny covers, a reader can now ask for:
A funny cozy mystery with romance, a coastal setting and a mouthy parrot.
Well, that might be too specific.
Not that I have any particular books in mind...
Whether we love AI, tolerate it or wish it would go and sit quietly in a cupboard, AI-assisted discovery is becoming part of the publishing landscape.
So how do we help it understand our books?
1. Make sure the internet knows who you are
If your website says you write animal-forward romantic cozy mysteries, your retailer biography says mystery and your social media profile says simply author, search tools have to work harder to understand where you belong.
And search tools, like overtired readers, may simply move on.
Use consistent descriptions of yourself, your genres, your series and your books across your website, retailer profiles, social media and reader platforms.
You don’t need to paste the exact same biography everywhere. The basic facts just need to agree.
This also reduces the chance of an AI tool getting those facts wrong.
As we know, AI can be extremely confident while being spectacularly mistaken.
2. Tell people what the book actually is
Your categories, keywords and book descriptions should make it clear what kind of book you’ve written.
Use the language readers use when searching: small-town romance, grumpy/sunshine, biblical fiction, romantic cozy mystery, flannel-forward holiday romance (is there any other kind?) with rescue dogs or whatever applies to your sub genre.
For Christian fiction, it may also help to clarify the role faith plays in the story.
Is faith central to the character’s journey? Is the book overtly Christian? Is it faith-inspired or faith-filled?
Readers shouldn’t have to guess, and neither should a search tool.
This doesn’t mean stuffing your description with keywords until it reads like a shopping list:
Small-town, grumpy/sunshine, second chance, forced proximity, mail-order bride with a dog.
Although I would probably read that.
It means making the genre, emotional promise and major tropes easy to recognise.
3. Give every book somewhere to live
An author website, even a simple one, gives search tools a reliable source of information.
Where possible, give each book its own page rather than relying on one long row of covers and buy buttons.
Include the things a reader might actually want to know: the description, genre, setting, series information, major tropes and retailer links.
You can also add publication details, reviews, endorsements and information about faith content where appropriate.
The goal isn’t to build a shrine for an algorithm.
It’s to create a useful page that answers a reader’s questions. It's a bonus that clear information is also easier for search engines and AI tools to understand.
4. Let other people mention you
You tell the world about yourself through your website.
Reviews, interviews, blog posts, reader recommendations and book club discussions show that other people recognise your work.
Keep your Goodreads author profile and book information up to date.
I’m feeling a wee bit convicted as I type that.
Claim your retailer author pages. Encourage readers to review and recommend your books. Take part in reader communities when it feels natural.
The important word is natural.
Dropping into an unrelated Reddit discussion to announce that your book is available now for only $4.99 is unlikely to delight readers, moderators or algorithms.
Genuine mentions help build a clearer picture of who you are and what you write.
5. Ask the robots what they think they know
One useful way to begin is simply to ask.
Try:
What can you find online about me as an author? Please cite your sources.
How would you describe the genre, themes and tropes of my books?
What information about me or my books appears inconsistent or unclear?
Then check the answers.
Do not assume they are true just because the AI presents them in a tone of calm authority. Ask for sources. Try the question in more than one tool.
You can also ask:
How could I make my website and book pages more useful to readers and more discoverable through AI-assisted searches?
This is one of the better free uses of these tools. They’re good at spotting missing or confusing information.
You still need to decide whether their advice is sensible.
This is also true when asking AI for life advice, medical advice or whether you should cut your own fringe.
Where do we start?
I’m not an expert on this. I’m learning as I go, and I certainly can’t point to my own website and say, ‘Do exactly what I’m doing.’
Funnily enough, my website is down as I write this because I’m trying to make it more GEO-friendly. So... things are going extremely well.
But I wanted to raise the subject because it matters.
We don’t have to like AI. We don’t have to use it to write our books or run our author business. But we do need to understand the world in which readers are searching for their next favourite read.
Start with one thing. Check your author biography. Update one book page. Make the genre and tropes in one description clearer. Ask an AI tool what it thinks you write and see whether the answer makes you nod, laugh or consider banging your head against the plasterboard.
The good news is that the basic principle isn’t particularly new or frightening: write good books, provide accurate information and make it easy for the right readers to recognise that your books are meant for them.
If you'd like more information, you can read Google’s guidance on AI search and SEO.
And if you have questions, insights or experiences with AI recommendations, please leave them in the comments. I’d love to know what you’re discovering.
Now, if you’ll excuse me... (slinks away to go and fix her website).
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