This “AI obituary” is dead wrong (here’s why)
Tim Ferriss is drawing the wrong conclusion in his latest article
Father’s Day in the Gordon house means one thing: I’m at the grill.
Apparently that’s how it works.
Dads cook their own dinner.
As I was standing staring into the fire reflecting on my week in San Diego, the big takeaway is that humans want human experiences.
We were not designed to process information.
AI does that faster and better than any of us ever will.
What we were designed for is experience.
Meaning. Connection.
That’s what I kept thinking about when Tim Ferriss published something this week that a lot of people in your world are going to misread.
His piece is called “Has AI Already Killed Nonfiction?”
His data is real.
How-to, prescriptive nonfiction is down 46 to 57 percent. AI handles “what is X” and “how do I do Y” faster and cheaper than any book ever written.
A lot of experts are going to read that and put down the idea of writing a book.
That’s the wrong move.
And here’s why.
The Wrong Obituary
Ferriss is writing the obituary for a specific kind of book.
The information book. The lookup table. The “here’s how to do X in 10 steps” kind.
That category is dying. AI is eating it alive and won’t stop.
But here’s what most people miss when they read that article: your book—the one you wrote to grow your business—was never in that category.
When you read “AI killed nonfiction,” you’re attending the funeral for a book you were never writing.
There are two fundamentally different kinds of nonfiction books.
The first teaches you what to know.
It’s comprehensive, neutral, and packed with useful information.
Its job is to inform.
It competes with AI, and it loses.
The second takes a stand. It shows your prospect a path they didn’t know existed. It challenges a belief they didn’t know they had. Its job is to transform.
That book requires a guide.
AI can generate information.
It cannot be a guide (because guides provide meaning and experience).
Ferriss himself says it: the books that survive AI are the ones built on voice, belief, and lived experience.
Transformation.
Narrative.
Not merely information.
That’s the book professionals like you write.
What a Transformation Book Actually Does
Ryan Schmierer launched his book.
Less than an hour after it went live on Amazon, a former colleague reached out. Someone from a Fortune 100 tech company. A connection that had been quiet for 15 years.
He wanted to know if Ryan would come speak at their corporate events.
Here’s the part that matters most.
That colleague didn’t read Ryan’s book. Not a single page.
The book’s job wasn’t to deliver information.
It was to signal one thing to everyone who saw it: Ryan is at the top of his field.
That perception traveled through a 15-year-dormant connection the moment the book existed.
Ryan’s words: “I didn’t believe the MDA formula would work until I saw it myself today.”
An information book only creates value when someone reads it. A transformation book creates credibility the moment it’s published.
That’s not something AI can replicate. AI can write an information book.
It cannot build a career, take a stand on what a market needs to hear, and put that story into the world in a way that moves people to act.
Only you can do that.
What’s Coming
Every corner of the internet is filling with free, competent, generic content.
The expert who writes an information book (or publishes info-content) disappears into that flood.
The guide, the one who takes a stand and shows prospects a path no one else is showing them, becomes rarer with every passing month.
More valuable with every passing month.
The window isn’t closing on books.
It’s closing on information books.
The transformation book has never had a better moment than right now.
The Ferriss piece is worth reading. His data is solid. He’s right that one category of nonfiction is in serious trouble.
He’s just writing the wrong obituary for your business.
The book that transforms, the one that takes a stand and leads your prospect somewhere they couldn’t get to on their own, that book doesn’t compete with AI.
It gets stronger because of it.
Steve “be the guide” Gordon
P.S. Ryan’s result didn’t come from the information in his book (which is excellent, by the way). It came from the positioning. The proof. The signal that he belongs on a stage in front of the people who need what he knows. Next week, we’ll talk about what it actually takes to build the kind of positioning that thrives in the Age of AI.
P.P.S. When you’re ready, our team is standing by to help you:
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