Transcription
These are the five trends in 2026 that every rider should be aware of because if you don't know about them, then you're kind of sabotaging your chances at success. I'll start with trend number five and then build upwards toward the number one trend that's definitely going to have a huge impact on the year. So, let's get started with number five.
Selling direct is the future. So, do you guys remember when self-publishing was like this crazy cool new thing? No. Well, I'm old. I do remember it. Well, self-publishing needs to move aside because now selling direct is the new thing that most indie authors are doing. So, think about this logic. Self-publishing came about because publishers were taking too large a cut of the pie and so they switched to Amazon to self-publish. Well, now Amazon is taking a very large piece of the pie, 30 to 70% a lot of the times. So, authors are saying, well, why don't I just sell directly to my readers? By cutting out the middleman, you get almost all of the profits.
Now, Brandon Sanderson is the best example of this with what he did with Kickstarter. But to be honest, you don't have to be a mega best-selling author to do what he did. So, I'm going to give you a little backstory about Sanderson so you can copy what he did. First, he asked himself, "Why am I giving up 90% of my revenue to publishers?" Next, he set up his own publishing company, Dragon Steel Entertainment. And then third, he announced on Kickstarter that he was releasing four new books. And lo and behold, what happened? Oh, he got $41 million and 185,000 readers back to Kickstarter.
Now, I know what you're thinking. I'm not Brandon Sanderson. And you're right, but you can still do what he did. And I'm going to give you four companies that will allow you to streamline the process of selling direct to your audience. The first is Bventi. And this is something that's good if you already have an existing website. This is a company that started with organizing pre-sales for books and now has expanded to handling all book sales. They handle those pesky details like inventory management and shipping logistics. But here is where you really get the goodness. They only charge 3%. And if you add on the payment processors, which is another 3% is a total of 6% that is being cut off from the profit of your book. Compare that to 30 to 70% for Amazon and you're like, "Okay, now I see why so many authors are going to direct sales."
Another great platform you absolutely need to know is Payhip. Payhip is really wonderful if you don't already have a website. It is very user-friendly. You can hop on there and take a couple minutes and build a website that you can sell books directly to people. Once again, the fees are really low. They only take 5% of what you sell or a flat monthly fee of $99. But for most of you, like you'll probably stick with a 5% for most of the time. And what I constantly hear about PayHip is that it is much easier to use than the gorilla in the room, which is you probably know already, Shopify, right? A lot of authors are using Shopify to sell direct, but I find that Pay Hips a lot easier to use.
But now that I've said it, yeah, sure, let's talk about Shopify. This is probably the most used platform to help authors sell their book directly to readers. They take both a monthly fee and a direct percentage of your sales. So maybe it's a little bit more costlier, but it has a lot more functionality and allows you do a lot more stuff. So if you like that sort of complexity and you're willing to like weigh in and really figure it out, then Shopify might be right for you. And then lastly, I should mention Backer Kit, which is kind of like a Kickstarter model where you propose your book and then people will fund you to write it. What Backer Kit's really good at is providing the add-ons and the bonuses to people who want to like level up and get like a special edition of your book or maybe you throw something in if they pre-order early, something like that.
So, what are the downsides of selling direct? I would say that the main downside is that you're not getting the algorithm boost from Amazon. You're not getting that visibility. you're not getting all those reviews collected in one place and that does create sort of a drag on your ability to sell your book. But I think the obvious upside is that you get to keep a lot more of your money, which is a good thing. Perhaps the biggest upside though is that you know who bought your book. With Amazon, it's some shadowy anonymous person. You don't know anything about them. If you sell direct though, you know the names and emails of everyone who bought from you. And that way when you release the sequel, you can reach out to the people who read the first one and be like, "Hey, I've got another one. Want to read this one, too?"
Anyhow, if you want to educate yourself more about Selling Direct, check out Jane Freriedman's paid newsletter, The Bottom Line. She talks frequently about this and gives a lot of insight into how exactly you can pull this off. Also, I want to mention that my coaching program, Bookfox Lab, is starting up a new cohort soon. I have a few spots left. So, please, if you are interested in getting help with your novel, jump in the link in the description. Check it out. Reach out to me and I can get you hooked up with that.
Okay. So, now let's move on to the next huge massive trend in 2026, which is number four, how to deal with the explosion of AI writing. So, I haven't mentioned AI at all on this channel, and I think most of you are probably glad that I haven't. Like, there are a lot of writers out there who are pretty firm about wanting to write without the help of AI. They want to use their own brains to create their stories. But I do think it's time now that we're staring 2026 in the face to wrestle with a lot of the challenges that AI creates for authors and talk about, okay, what are the best ways to deal with it?
So, let's just get a sense of the landscape right now. AI written books are only going to grow, right? In the future, there will be websites that you can go to. You can upload your character names and an outline and a machine is going to spit out 80,000 words for you. Also, the percentage of AI written books, it's only going to grow as a percentage of books as a whole. So, what are the challenges for most writers out there? The challenge is how do you stand out as a human writer when there's a million or two million more books published every single year cuz AI has accelerated the whole writing process. It's tough to stand out.
So, let me tell you how to do it. If you are a human-only writer, these are some strategies you need to employ. First, I think it's a really good idea to market yourself as all natural. So, in bodybuilding communities, they have this question where they'll go around to like super jacked guys at the gym and be like, "Hey, bro, you natty or not?" And you see this look of chagrin on their faces as they lie and say, "Yeah, man. I'm I'm natty. I'm natural." No, I mean, some guys freely admit like, "Yeah, I I juice. I take a lot of stuff." And other guys are like, "No, no, I'm I'm really doing this without the aid of stuff." I think that sort of natty or not question is going to become more and more popular for writers. Writers are going to be asked like, "Hey, is this book partially AI written or not? Are you natural or not?" And if you can say right out of the gate like, "Hey, I wrote this myself. Connect with me as a human. This came from my brain." I think there are a large percentage of readers that are going to connect with that and want those type of books.
The second strategy you should employ to sort of bite the onslaught of AI written books is to write more humanly. And here are seven ways that you can write more humanly. For instance, you can make your story seem more human by using instinct when constructing your story line. What are machines going to be good at? They're going to be good at following formulas, right? Of taking like very strict step-by-step process and copying that for a book. What is the advantage of a human to be able to write something that isn't formulaic, that's feels creative, that breaks a few rules, that does something that other stories haven't done before. Two, you should draw from the peculiarities of your life. The stranger and more personal the details, the more difficult it is for AI to replicate that. A third thing you can do is simply to pay attention to language. What AI programs are really good at is the mechanical instruction style pros. What they aren't quite as good at is a deaf turn of phrase or poetic phrase. And even when they write poetry, it's more like doggerel. You know, like it hits all the beats, but there's no life in it. So my recommendation to you is to use language which is surprising to use a deaf turn of phrase to use a word which is made up that you create for your particular world inside your world building. The more you create a human style which is unique to you certain words that you use certain words that you make up the more difficult it is for AI to sort of ape or copy your style.
The fourth thing is to create deeply human characters. Characters who are inspired by actual people that you know. characters who have deep psychology because AI isn't very good at understanding human psychology. That's sort of a weakness that it has, at least currently. We'll see how it adapts in the future, but a lot of pleasure in a novel is seeing a person alive on the page. And right now, right now, people are better at doing that than computers are. A fifth step you can take is explore more emotion in your book. And I'm not talking about just like the typical expected emotions. Oh, someone died. She's sad. I'm talking about contradictory emotions. I'm talking about counterintuitive emotions because the deep caverns of the human heart are a place that humans are right now best at excavating and AI is fumbling about. It often misreads the emotion and screws it up. So lean into your deep understanding of the emotional landscape of your characters. Lastly, in your book, try to focus on categories where humans have the advantage. So a great example of this is humor. Yeah, AI can tell a joke, but humor is a lot more than just joke telling, right? You can have sort of absurdities in your novel that humans are really good at detecting and laughing at, but AI is not particularly good at creating. Another good example would be sarcasm because you are saying the opposite of what is actually intended and AI often misses what that is. A third example would be subtlety. Humans are very good at detecting subtle clues in dialogue and subtle clues inside of a narrative. AI isn't very good at writing that. And lastly, subtext. What is beneath the surface of your story? What are you not saying, but your readers really understand what's really happening? If you focus on stuff like that, it's really hard for AI to imitate.
Oh, and my editor recently said to me, "Hey, why don't you ever tell your viewers to subscribe?" You should, and that's a good suggestion. So, I'm doing it here. Please subscribe if you haven't subscribed already. It's encouraging to me, and I will feel loved. And uh if you've already subscribed, please like the video. that would be awesome. Thank you.
Now, let's move on to the third huge trend that you absolutely need to know about. It is growth of deluxe editions and collectibles. Once you establish some kind of relationship with your viewers, then you have the opportunity to sell not only your regular copy of your book, but also sort of a premium collectible edition of your book. And I can't even tell you how excited people are for these diehard fans. They don't want the regular stuff, right? They want the deluxe edition and they're willing to pay a lot of money for it. So, what do these look like? A lot of them have sprayed edges that you can see designs or images or illustrations upon. Some of them have extra material like deleted chapters. So, think of them as sort of a director's cut of a DVD. And some of them have extra illustrations so the diehard fans can see characters that are beloved or they can see worlds that they've imagined before.
So, little case study here. Indie author Cadence Snow offered her customers her first ever deluxe edition and she was a little bit worried like I don't think this is going to sell at all. Are people going to be angry with me? It was her Evelyn Maynard trilogy and had gold foil and embossed covers and illustrated chapter headings. Like nice little perks like that. Now the pricing might surprise you. She set it at $100 a book. And this is probably why she was worried like am I going to sell any of these? Surprise, surprise, surprise. This was her bestselling product. When she was at a recent conference, she sold more of these than anything else. So, not only are deluxe editions like this really good for rewarding people who love your work, but it's also really good idea for social media, right? Cuz people take the book, they show it on social media, it looks beautiful, it's great marketing. Plus, the money you make on a deluxe edition like this is quite lucrative. Yeah, it costs maybe double to print the book with all the special bells and whistles, but you're charging say anywhere between five and 10 times as much. So, your profit margin is much greater.
Okay, we have two trends left that you really need to know for the year. Let's check out number two.
Book talk as the primary marketing channel. So, it is impossible for me to exaggerate just how influential book talk has been in selling copies of books. According to Circana Bookcan, TikTok is responsible for selling one in every 12 books. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? That is 7% of the entire book market is being channeled by a single social media platform. That is crazy. That is wild. And how is this even possible? Well, I think it's because TikTok is basically word of mouth but on steroids. And people aren't coming with sort of, you know, these intellectual evaluations of novels. They are just pouring their heart out to the camera and they're using so much passion and their excitement is contagious. The community there is absolutely on fire. And when you see a couple people that you like and admire talk about the same book, what are you going to do? You're going to go to Amazon. You're going to buy it.
So, dear writers, you're probably asking yourself, okay, how does this affect me? Well, if you are publishing a book in 2026, one of your primary marketing goals should be to take ARCs and send them to your favorite book talkers. Reach out to people who read and review in your genre and say, "Hey, I'm publishing a book. Do you want me to send you a free copy?" And just to let you know, you don't need somebody with a million followers. Find people who are talking about your type of book. Even if they have 10,000 followers, 30,000 followers, right? That doesn't matter. What matters is their enthusiasm and their ability to tap into a certain segment of the reading population. So, I do think year-over-year the amount of books that Book Talk sells is probably going to grow by 10% or more. In the last three months, 40% of Gen Xers have discovered a product on social media. 59% of millennials and 64% of Gen Z's. So, this is the main way that you move copies of your book.
And lastly, on a personal note, I just want to say that when I published Blinch Pin Writer, I had a bunch of reviews on TikTok about people talking about it. And honestly, those were the most personally fulfilling. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's great to get print reviews from like important websites and all that, but there was a certain level of personality and enthusiasm that I got to see in these videos as they talked about my book that was incredibly rewarding. So, in addition to selling a lot of copies of your book, it's going to make you feel all warm and tingly inside.
And now it is time for the most important trend in 2026 for all of books and it is number one audiobook takeover. Let me ask a provocative question, but I think it's an important question to ask. Is it more important to have an audiobook or an ebook? Now, 99% of you just said automatically like, of course, ebooks are more necessary. Like, audiobooks sort of like a thing you add on if you've already done the print and the ebook. Like, oh, maybe I should do an audiobook. Well, let me poke some holes in those assumptions. In 2019 and every year since then, audiobooks have generated more revenue for authors than ebooks have. That is wild. I I almost can't believe it. That's crazy, right? And audiobooks are by far the fastest growing part of the whole book market. So, in 2015, audiobook sales were about half of a billion. In 2022, it was about 1.8 billion. And no, we don't have numbers for 2025 yet, but I'm guessing it is almost 3 billion. And I have seen some projections that say by 2030, ebooks are going to be about a $6 billion market. What does that mean for you? It means you need to prioritize your audiobook just as much as you prioritize an ebook.
Now I know I know I don't have an audiobook for Lynchpin writer yet. I am sorry Mayo Kulpa. I do spend an enormous amount of time on this channel and it has sort of sucked up a lot of my time. That and Bookfox Academy and Bookfox Lab. I am working very very hard. So maybe at some point I will get an audiobook out there. But I am recommending to you it's a great idea if you can pull it off. Honestly, the cheapest way is to buy a $50 mic, line an entire room with blankets, and record it yourself. And there's a benefit to that because people like hearing the author. It makes them feel connected to the book in a special way. But if you do have some money to burn and you want to do it professionally, you can hire professionals to do it. So, a 10-hour book costs anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000. And the way that they charge for these things is something called per finished hour, which means if it takes 10 hours to listen to the book, they charge you for 10 hours to make it. Not the hours that they spend recording it, just the finished product time.
Lastly, I just want to say that the performance of a good audiobook reader can really enhance the story. I'm part of a all guys book club and sometimes guys come to the club and they're like, "H, I started reading and I didn't like the book very much, but then I started listening to the audiobook and I absolutely loved it." Like John C. O'Reilly ended up reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and my buddy was just gushing over like what a great reading that was. Now there's always the joke out there and it's always like half in fun half in seriousness that like you didn't read the book, you only listened to it. I always found that a little anal retentive. Let's not try to gatekeep what counts as reading. Right? If there's a blind person, they're reading by Braille, are you going to say, "Hey, have you felt your book yet?" No. You're going to be like, "Oh, have you read your book yet?" So listen, any consumption of a book counts as reading. Let's not be elitist.
Listen, you're almost out of time to check out Bookox Lab. So click the link below if you're interested in joining. And I hope that all five of these trends help you get a better sense of how to navigate the whole publishing business and publishing industry and that your book experiences more success this year because you watch this video.