Authors Gain Control of AI - David Meerman Scott Champions a New Creative Process to Produce The Fandom Playbook
New York, NY, Sept. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Entrepreneur Press today announced the acquisition of two titles by international bestselling author David Meerman Scott. One is a new paperback edition of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans. The other is a major new work, The Fandom Playbook: Building Your Human Connection in a World of Digital Chaos.
The Fandom Playbook is both a print book and interactive companion AI chatbot being created as a derivative of Fanocracy. It’s a revolutionary collaboration with artificial intelligence developed by Cone.ai. Both books and the AI chatbot are scheduled for release in mid-2026.
The interactive AI chatbot, adapted and fine-tuned on David's content, including Fanocracy, will serve as an always-on learning companion, guiding readers of The Fandom Playbook and answering questions in real-time as they implement the ideas in their businesses.
“This use of AI is a milestone in the publishing world, an opportunity for authors like me to take control of our creative process,” Scott says. “Many of my books, containing my original ideas developed over decades of hard work, were used to train large language models. That's precisely why this new approach is so important—it puts control over intellectual property back into the hands of the author.”
“Deploying AI, fine-tuned to my own content to help me create The Fandom Playbook, allowed me to get my strategies into the hands of entrepreneurs and marketers in new ways that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. Authors like me can use this groundbreaking AI to help them create derivative offerings, including workbooks and chatbots adapted from their popular titles, allowing them to generate more revenue from their original ideas. I’m thrilled to get the creative process back where it belongs, with authors.”
“David has always challenged conventional marketing rules,” says Adam Witty, Founder and CEO of Advantage Media, publisher of Entrepreneur Press. “Now he’s leading the way in book publishing, too. The Fandom Playbook combines David’s powerful voice with learning tools partly created via AI, benefiting people and organizations of all types who want to build fans. We’re excited to bring this trailblazing work to readers worldwide.”
The Fandom Playbook hybrid print book and interactive AI tool is being created as a fun, practical, and engaging interactive guide for entrepreneurs, marketers, creatives, and organizational leaders who want to grow devoted fans around a brand, product, person or idea. Cone.ai created a “walled-garden AI” application fine-tuned on Fanocracy as well as millions of words of David Meerman Scott’s original creative output, including more than 20 years of blog posts, other written content, transcriptions of his speeches, and select podcast episodes.
The Cone.ai AI model, as well as a team of learning professionals, including instructional designers and psychometricians (experts on learning assessments), contributed to the creation of the first draft of a set of actionable steps to build fans, including frameworks, checklists, brainstorming tools, and exercises to make it easy to implement the ideas in Fanocracy. Scott then completely revised the draft, editing and adding stories, context, and thoughts so the tools are easily understandable.
David Meerman Scott’s books have sold nearly a million copies in 30 languages. He’s known for marketing titles including The New Rules of Marketing & PR (now in a 9th edition), Fanocracy, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, Marketing the Moon, and Newsjacking. With The Fandom Playbook, he ventures into unexplored creative territory by integrating generative AI tools from Cone.ai into his writing process.
“I know how to write a book, but I’m not an expert in the nuances of how adults learn,” continues Scott. “The experts at Cone.ai, as well as the AI tools they developed, help translate my strategies for growing fans into tactics that are easy to implement and effective at putting my ideas to work. While AI is involved, The Fandom Playbook starts and ends with my creativity.
“The system was fine-tuned on my content, and I used it to guide the AI, ask it questions, and challenge its output—sometimes rejecting its suggestions, sometimes reshaping them, and occasionally being surprised by how it reframed my own ideas. I’m thrilled that tools from Cone.ai helped me to write The Fandom Playbook and that Entrepreneur Press saw the potential of this new offering and partnered with me to get it out into the world.”
“It’s important that amazing authors like David can keep creative control in the Age of AI,” says Jason Freeman, CEO of Cone.ai. “David is setting the example of how authors can safely gain that control, leveraging AI to better connect with their readers and not just add to tech companies' profits. We are privileged to work with David and the many bestselling authors, such as Verne Harnish and Dr. Nick Morgan, who recognize the importance of David's pioneering approach.”
“David has always been a trailblazer, willing to take risks and innovate in ways many authors aren’t," said Paul Roetzer, CEO of SmarterX, founder of AI Academy, and host of the Artificial Intelligence Show. “The Fandom Playbook challenges publishing norms and explores the frontier of how to apply AI to the creative process. This is an opportunity for David to engage his audience in new ways through an AI chatbot trained on decades of his experiences and intellectual property.”
About Entrepreneur Press
Entrepreneur Press, published by Advantage Media in collaboration with Entrepreneur Media, provides practical, actionable books for entrepreneurs, business leaders, and innovators. For over 40 years, its catalog has featured works by top thought leaders and successful entrepreneurs and business owners, offering insights and strategies to start, grow, and sustain businesses. Books are available in print, digital, and audio formats.
About David Meerman Scott
David Meerman Scott is a business growth strategist and international bestselling author of a dozen books including Fanocracy, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, and Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. His books are published in 30 languages from Arabic to Vietnamese and have sold nearly a million copies worldwide. David’s expertise includes how to align marketing with the ways that people buy and how to grow fans of any business. He is a passionate live music fan, obsessed by the Apollo lunar program, and loves to hike, surf, and dance the Lindy Hop.
About Cone.ai
Cone is an Artificial Intelligence company that is rewriting the learning playbook. Over $200B is spent annually in corporate learning and development, but the skills gap is growing rapidly. Cone co-founders are focused on a paradigm shift to active learning—supported with world-class expertise—to develop the skills needed in this new age of AI.
About Advantage Media
Advantage—The Authority Company provides CEOs, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries with an array of services that assist them in building their Authority in their areas of expertise, enabling them to gain exceptional visibility, credibility, and recognition. Those services include book publishing, public relations, partner brand amplification, personal brand websites, social strategies, content creation, podcasting, and more. Since the company’s founding in 2005, Advantage has built Authority through publishing and media for 2,500+ CEOs and entrepreneurs through imprints including Entrepreneur Books and Entrepreneur Press.
Contact Info
Miguel A. Casellas-Gil
mcasellas-gil@theauthoritycompany.com
+1 813-395-9362
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Entrepreneur Press
Entrepreneur Press, published by Advantage Media in collaboration with Entrepreneur Media, provides practical, actionable books for entrepreneurs, business leaders, and innovators.
David Meerman Scott
David Meerman Scott is a business growth strategist and international bestselling author of the upcoming book and interactive AI chatbot, "The Fandom Playbook: Building Your Human Connection in a World of Digital Chaos."
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