Frequently asked
The questions people actually ask before buying.
Tight, honest answers. If you've got a question that isn't here, email hello@ai-field-guide.com — that's a person, not a help desk.
What is the AI Field Guide?
AI Field Guide is a series of 47 practical guides on using Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Cursor, and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) in real work. Each guide is built around a specific role — business owner, solopreneur, marketer, author, clinician, non-coder builder — and a specific tool, at a defined skill level. The guides are written by Mark Reeves and published as PDFs (direct from ai-field-guide.com) and Kindle eBooks (Amazon). The project exists because most AI-for-X content is either too breathless or too theoretical to actually use. AI Field Guide ships frameworks, prompts, and workflows you can run today, then keeps them updated as the tools change.
Which guide should I start with?
Start with the free one — AI for the Curious. It's a 30-minute plain-English tour of every major AI tool that helps you decide which paid guide fits your work. After that, the answer depends on your role: business owners start with Claude for Business Owners; marketers start at the Beginner Marketer guide and move up; authors and writers start with ChatGPT for Authors; non-coders who want to build start with Cursor for Non-Coders. If you're not sure, the picker tool on the site walks you through three questions and recommends a guide.
Is this on Kindle?
Yes. The paid guides publish on Amazon Kindle — the free guide, AI for the Curious, is direct only and stays free forever. Kindle pricing matches the direct site exactly: $9.99, $19, or $29 per guide depending on tier. The publisher on Amazon is "AI Field Guide" and the author is Mark Reeves. Bundles (11 targeted bundles built for your role or tool, from $49) and lifetime updates are only available direct from ai-field-guide.com — Amazon doesn't support either format. If you live in Kindle, buy there for individual guides; buy direct if you want a bundle or if you care about lifetime updates.
How is this different from a YouTube tutorial?
YouTube tutorials are great for the first 90 seconds — somebody opens ChatGPT and says "look at this." But you can't search them, you can't lift prompts cleanly, and they don't get updated when the tool changes a week later. AI Field Guides are written documents you can search, copy from, and run against. Each guide bundles 20–40 prompts, 5–12 workflows, and the frameworks behind them — material you'd have to stitch together from 30 YouTube videos to assemble. And every direct-channel guide gets free lifetime updates as the tool evolves. YouTube doesn't update.
Is the free guide actually useful or just a teaser?
It's actually useful. AI for the Curious is a 30-minute plain-English tour of Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini — what each tool is for, where each one fails, what every plan costs, the privacy reality, and five real prompts you can run today. It exists to help you decide whether you even want a paid guide and which one. We're not trying to manipulate you into buying — we're trying to make sure that when you do buy, it's the right one for your work. Plenty of people read the free guide and never buy a paid one because their question got answered. That's fine.
Can I buy individual guides, or only bundles?
You can buy individual guides on Amazon Kindle ($9.99–$29 each, matched to the same tier on the direct site). Bundles only exist on the direct channel at ai-field-guide.com — 11 targeted bundles built for specific roles and tools, from $49. If you want one guide, Kindle is fine. If you want everything for your role, the direct bundles save you real money and include lifetime updates. See all 11 bundles →
Do you update the guides when the tools change?
Yes — and this is the single biggest reason to buy direct. When a tool ships a meaningful change — a new model, a new feature, a major pricing shift, a tier reorganization — the affected guides get rewritten within 30 days. Every direct buyer gets an email with the new PDF. No re-buying, no new edition fees. This isn't a marketing line; it's an obligation we hold ourselves to. Kindle copies show the version that was current at publish — Amazon doesn't support the same delivery model. If lifetime updates matter to you, buy direct.
Who is Mark Reeves?
Mark Reeves is the author and founder of AI Field Guide. He writes the entire 43-guide series from the seat of someone using these tools daily — running campaigns, writing proposals, editing content, building small tools — not from the seat of someone reading about AI and predicting the future. Mark Reeves is a pen name; the work behind the books is real and tested, the byline is for brand consistency across 47 guides. The email hello@ai-field-guide.com reaches the human directly. There's no editorial team, no ghostwriters — every guide is written by the same person, then tested in real work before it ships. Read the full About page →
What tools do you cover?
Five: Claude (Anthropic), ChatGPT (OpenAI), Perplexity (research and citation), Cursor (the AI-native code editor that non-developers can also use to build software), and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — the new discipline of getting cited inside ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews when buyers ask AI for recommendations. We don't cover Gemini in depth yet because the product is changing too fast to write a stable guide; we mention it in the free guide. We don't cover Midjourney or image-only tools — different category, different audience.
Do I need to be technical to read these?
No. The default audience is non-technical operators — business owners, marketers, authors, clinicians, solopreneurs. The Cursor guides are the only series that touch a code editor at all, and even those are written for non-coders (the entry-level Cursor for Non-Coders guide explicitly assumes you've never opened a terminal). Beginner-level guides assume nothing. Intermediate-level guides assume you've used the tool for at least 30 days. Professional-level guides are for senior operators building production systems, not for engineers — they cover orchestration, governance, multi-agent setups, MCP, and team rollout, not low-level code.
What's the difference between Beginner, Intermediate, and Professional guides?
Beginner ($29) assumes you've never used the tool — pre-flight setup, privacy, your first 5–10 prompts, the basics of brand voice. Intermediate ($39) assumes you've used the tool 30+ days and now want a system — Projects, Artifacts, Spaces, Pages, custom GPTs, file analysis, prompt chaining, real campaign workflows. Professional ($49) is for senior operators running production AI in real work — multi-agent orchestration, MCP integrations, cost control, team rollout, governance, what's still impossible. Most buyers start at Beginner and move up. A few skip ahead — that's fine if you've got the reps.
Why isn't AI for the Curious on Amazon?
Three reasons. One: Amazon doesn't permit free books indefinitely; KDP free promotions are capped at 5 days every 90 days. We want this guide to stay genuinely free forever. Two: it's the lead magnet for the direct channel — sign up with an email at ai-field-guide.com and the PDF is in your inbox 60 seconds later. That direct relationship matters more to us than a Kindle download. Three: the free guide is the on-ramp to deciding which paid guide fits — it makes the most sense to read it on the site where the catalog lives. The 29 paid guides are all on Kindle. The free one is direct only.