← The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn
01:11:12
Loading summary
Transcript3 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more@thecreativepenn.com and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives. I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 844 of the podcast and it is Saturday 3rd January 2026 as I record this and we are off into the new year. And as ever, I love January. Everything feels fresh and new and anything is possible even though it's only a few days after last year. But I I love the reset and in today's show I'm sharing my thoughts and predictions about the year ahead as well as quotes from lots and lots of people about what might our way. That is coming up in the main section of the show and there are extensive show notes today, so if you want references to anything I'm talking about, please go to the Show Notes and have a look at that. You can always find them at thecreativepenn.com podcast. Go to the number and this is 844 and you can find all the links. So that's coming up in the main section of the show. In Writing and Publishing thanks to everyone who's left comments and thoughts on my round of of 2025, sharing yours and also my goals for 2026. Thank you for all of that and I know many of you will be writing and planning about the year ahead. So I wanted to share a post from Becca Syme, who is always very wise and provides excellent perspective for people like me and maybe you when we get carried away with making way too many goals for the year. Becca posted five things that authors should focus on in 2026, including quitting the right stuff. Authors are encouraged to narrow down the focus by stopping activities that do not yield results. So don't just add more to your list. You know, we're like, oh, I'm going to do all these new things. But if you're adding new things, you need to get rid of stuff. So rather than trying to do everything, such as managing your seven different social media platforms or multiple marketing strategies or multiple series, Becca suggests focusing on the things that you are best at or most suited to. And of course, Becca recommends Clifton Strengths assessment as one way to figure that out. One of Becca's quotes that I like best also, which I heard her say at Author Nation 2025 if you don't know if it's working, it's not working. So if you don't know if it's working, it's not working. Because if it's not obvious like results like income or email signups or downloads or whatever, then it's not working. Or if you hate it. And I often feel like we hang on to things too long. So as part of making goals for the year ahead, maybe also think about what you're going to let go. The book Quit by Annie Duke is also really good. That's Quit by Annie Duke. That can help. But yes, stop trying to do everything, quit some stuff. And as Becca said, there quit the right stuff. Also, the AI tools are getting pretty good at this now. If you turn on memory, which I I turn on everywhere, I want, I want them to know my work, I want them to know what I'm doing. And Claude knows me pretty well. And I had this new idea. I always have lots of new ideas. And I was talking about it and I was like, let's do research into this and that and the other. And Claude literally said, with your master's degree and the books you already have and the podcast and the goals you have and your Patreon, do you really think you have time for this? Well, I think it was the first time that an AI system has actually challenged me on whether I should do something. And if it had been a person, I might have reacted and said, well, you know, you don't know anything, of course I should do it. But as it was Claude, it was less emotional and I took a step back and I was like, oh, you might be right. Those of you who love buying new domain names for new ideas will understand this. Thankfully, that's as far as I got. I bought a new URL, I got really excited, and then Claude actually stopped me from investing any more time on this, at least for now. I've kind of parked that idea. Becca also posted on how to edit your Author business for 2026, which is a similar idea. It's about looking at the alignment factor and what works for you rather than shoehorning all the must dos into your life based on what other people say is important. And I wanted to mention it because I am just about to give you a load of trends and predictions and I want to make sure you don't just go, oh, I should do that. I should do. I know you will, some of you, but please think about alignment. How much do you want to do something? How much might you enjoy it? Don't force yourself to do something you're going to hate. Long term it won't work. Hence why I'm still podcasting since 2009 and I am not doing hardly any video. Also, Becca does mention competence, although I would argue you have to give things a try and see if you like them and can learn to be better. So for example, I didn't know anything about podcasting when I jumped into it in 2009 and I learned as I did it and got better hopefully and now it's the backbone of my author business. I learned to be competent. So yeah, lots of really good things there. Check out Becca's Quitcast, which is on YouTube and also on audio podcast apps. Probably wherever you're listening to this then I also wanted to mention Substack because I betcha that some of you have put on your list of to DOS for 2026 start a substack because is quite trendy in the community right now. So I do read a few substacks. But I share my thoughts here and also in my Patreon. So I will not be starting a substack. But my good friend Orna Ross has decided to start posting there and has opened her substack with an essay on Is Substack good for indie authors? And hers is ornarross.substack.com and I'll link to it in the show Notes. But the long article, as Orna says, is based on the research she did when thinking about moving her reader community from male Poet and Kit and Patreon and social media all over onto substack. So I definitely think you should read this if you are considering it. So Orna says Substack is better suited than any other platform to the kind of writing and sharing I want to do now. I want to open the doors to my own process, share more about my life as a writer and self publisher of literary fiction and poetry books, two challenging genres where indie authors can feel less visible to work out. For myself as much as for anyone, my decisions and reasoning as I go, I want to bear witness to how art, politics, grief, love and power interweave over time across countries and centuries through the microcosm of how creativity actually unfolds in one indie author's working life, I feel this kind of witness. Writing may, in the age of AI carry more weight than advocacy. So this already demonstrates what works on Substack. It is a place for thoughtful long form writing. It's not for author updates as most of us use email marketing for substack. I don't think is a replacement for what I use kit for or what you might use mailchimp or whatever. Like it's not for author updates or I've got a new book. So yes, Orna does talk about the model of Substack. When writers publish on substack, work isn't just landing in a blog post or a newsletter. It lives in a web and app ecosystem designed for it to be found, read, shared, commented on, and recommended. There are free and paid features as well as community things and recommendation algorithms. Now does it sell books? Orna says writing for Substack calls on adjacent skills for authors, a feel for what travels in online spaces, some basic copywriting for headlines and subject lines, and a willingness to publish frequently and conversationally. These are different skills to writing a book. If you want to use your substack to promote your books, you'll have to offer your offering in a way that appeals to your target reader. But perhaps that is not even the point. As Orna says, if Substack helps us to write more honestly, more consistently, or to be more alive to our readers, then it's doing a powerful job regardless of the numbers. Now, of course, things change, and while right now a lot of people think Substack is great, please back up your subscriber email list because apparently you can do that within substack. So yes, if you do use the platform, please set a reminder once a month to back up and download your email list just in case Orna closes with without doubt, Substack can be a powerful place to publish, connect and think in public. But for indie authors, the real question is not whether substack is good or bad in the abstract, but whether it serves your creative goals, your genres, your temperament, your definition of success in personal news. Well, obviously there's been Christmas and New Year. I have seen some of my family. I'm the eldest of five siblings, two brothers, two sisters, and we really only see each other over this holiday period. So it was lovely to see everyone. And then I've mostly been working, to be honest, as Jonathan, my husband, has been finishing his MBA dissertation and I've also been out walking a bit when it's not so cold. It has been pretty cold. I've also been preparing these epic solo podcast episodes, which is a really big job. This one has taken me ages, but I'm really pleased with it. I do like making sure everything is highly researched. Plus I've been working on my webinar for Business for Authors, which is coming up this weekend, Saturday 10th of January and then I have another one Saturday 24th of January. The links are at thecreativepen.com live so if you want to transform your Author business in 2026 then come and join me. You can also get the replay if you buy a ticket and the slides and other material. Patrons get 25 discount so please check the Patreon site if you are a patron before booking. Thanks also for all your emails and comments and photos this week. I've had so many emails about the 2025 roundup and the 2026 goals so I won't read all those. But thanks to Diana for a photo Listening from Queenstown, New Zealand. A lovely picture of a lake and forest and mountains and I love Queenstown. I have been there many times and have had many happy times. Only happy times actually. It's one of those places in the world that is only happy for me. So yes, that's Queenstown in New Zealand. Thank you Diana. And also to Rachel who sent a picture from beautiful Highland park in Rochester, New York. I imagine that's New York State today. Snow on the tall old fir trees and actually it looks very Narnia. So two completely different places in different hemispheres. Oh wonderful. So please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes I'm particularly interested in your comments about today's show, what you think about my trends and predictions. You can leave a comment@thecreativepenn.com or on the YouTube channel. You can also email me joannathecreativepenn.com Send me your thoughts or pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. So today's show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com thecreativepenn thanks to the 15 new patrons who've joined over the last few weeks and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering writing, craft, author business, AI tutorials and more. This week I shared a much more in depth article about how AI will impact author business in 2026. This particular episode is much wider in its focus, but the Patreon article is far more on the specifics of AI and actions to take. Patrons also get a 25% discount for my business. For authors, webinar and other webinars, the Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com forward/the creative pen right, let's get into it 2026 Trends and Predictions for Indie Authors and Book Publishing Number one, more indie authors will sell direct through Shopify, Kickstarter and local in person events. And more companies like bookvault will offer even more beautiful physical books and products to support this. This trend will not be a surprise to most of you. Selling direct has been a trend for the last few years, but in 2026 it will continue to grow as a way that independent authors become even more independent. The recent Written Word media survey from December 2025 noted that 30% of authors surveyed are selling direct already, and 30% say they plan to start in 2026. Among authors earning over $10,000 per month, roughly half sell direct. In my opinion, selling direct is an advanced author strategy, which means that you already have multiple books and you understand book marketing and have an email list already or some guaranteed way to reach readers. That is more than just a social media channel. In fact, Kindlepreneur reports that 66% of authors selling direct have more than five books and 46% have more than 10 book. Of course you can start with something small like a table at a local event with a limited number of books for sale or even one book for sale. But if you want to consistently sell direct for years to come, you need to consider all the business aspects now. Of course, selling direct is not a silver bullet. It is much harder work to sell direct than it is to just upload an ebook to Amazon. Whether you choose a Kickstarter campaign or Shopify or Payhip or other online stores or regular in person sales at events or conferences, conferences or fairs. It is all much harder work than just clicking on KDP and uploading. You need a business mindset and business practices. For example, you need to pay up front for setup, ongoing management and bulk printing. In some cases you need to manage taxes and cash flow. You need to be a lot more proactive about marketing as you won't sell anything if you don't bring readers to your books and products. But there's a reason we do it. Selling direct brings advantages. It sets you apart from the bulk of digital only authors who still upload ebooks to Amazon only or maybe add a print on demand book. That's still not everything. And in an era of AI even more rapid creation that number of just digital books is growing all the time. If you sell direct, you get your customer data. You can reach those customers next time through your email list. If you don't know who bought your books and don't have a guaranteed way to reach them, you will more easily be disrupted when things change. And they always change eventually. Kindlepreneur notes that 45% of the successful direct selling authors had over 1,000 subscribers on their email lists, with a clear positive correlation between email list size and monthly direct sales income, with authors having an email list of over 15,000 subscribers earning 20 times more than authors with email lists under 100 subscribers. Now if it's if that I'm just breaking out of my notes here, but if that sounds daunting to you, then I will just remind you that we all start with nobody on our email list. And in 2008 when I started my email list I had zero people on my list. But over time and I've never paid to add to my email list when I say that I haven't. I might have done like a few Facebook ads back in the day, but mainly I do free first in Series the Author Blueprint, for which I talk about in the intro to this thecreativepenn.com blueprint and my free ebook jfpen.com free those are my two main email free things that I've had for many, many years and of course updated over time. But the point is you can grow to more than 10 books and you can grow to more than 15,000 subscribers. It just takes time and consistency. So back to my notes. Selling direct means faster money, sometimes the same day or the same week in many cases or a few weeks after a campaign finishes as with Kickstarter. Compared to if you're you know, any of the retailers are 30, 60, 90 days later or with traditional publishing it can mean a lot later. Now remember, you don't have to sell all your formats direct. You could keep your ebooks in ku, do whatever you like with audiobooks and still have premium print products direct. Or start with a very basic Kickstarter campaign, including digitally. You could launch your ebook on Kickstarter, then put it in ku, or have a table at a local fair and just try with one book. There are so many options. I have lots more tips for Shopify and Kickstarter specifically@thecreativepen.com sell directresources if that's something you're interested in. However, I also recommend the novel marketing podcast next on the Shopify why Authors Keep losing money. And this is Thomas Stadt Jr. Who's been on this show several times. I've been on his show and it's interesting. We agree on some things, but we disagree on a lot of things. This is one of the things we disagree on. But his episode on the Shopify Trap is a good counterpoint to my positive endorsement of selling direct on Shopify. Among other things, Thomas notes that a fixed monthly fee for a store doesn't match how most authors make money from books. It also the complexity and hassle eats time and can cost more money, especially if you pay for help. And it can reduce your sales on Amazon and weaken your rankings. And essentially if you haven't figured out marketing direct to your store, it can hurt you. Now I want you to listen to that because I do think like getting into selling direct. It's so great if you go into it sort of eyes wide open, but if you don't, then for sure it's not necessarily going to be the best thing. As I said, it's not a silver bullet. What Thomas says is true for some authors, for some genres, for some people's lifestyle, but for authors who don't want to be on the hamster wheel of the Amazon algorithm, who want more diversity and control in income, or frankly, who want to be more independent as well as the incredible creative benefits of what you can do selling direct. So for example, you can't do sprayed edges or foiling with an Amazon print on demand paperback. So none of the gorgeous print stuff or products or merch or any of that can be done just with Amazon. So I would say consider your options in 2026, even if that is trying out a low financial goal Kickstarter campaign or selling a couple of print books at a local fair. Now, interestingly, traditional publishers are also experimenting with direct sales. Kate Elton, who is the new CEO of HarperCollins, notes in the Bookseller's 2026 trend article, we are seeing global success with responsive Reader Driven Publishing, subscription boxes and TikTok shop and crucially developing strategies that are founded on a comprehensive understanding of the reader. Now my feeling on seeing HarperCollins doing TikTok shop and subscription boxes implies to me that we are way past the peak because those things, if they're being picked up by traditional publishers, then yeah, new things on the horizon and I'll get to that in a bit. It she also notes, AI enables us to dramatically change the way we interact with and grow audiences. The opportunities are genuinely exciting, finding new ways to help readers discover books they will love innovating in the ways we market and reach audiences, building new channels and adapting to new methods of consuming content. So again, when The CEO of HarperCollins is talking about using AI, we're not in the early days. Two AI powered search will start to shift elements of book discoverability from LinkedIn's 2026 Big Ideas generative engine optimization is set to replace search engine optimisation as the way brands get discovered in the year ahead, as consumers turn to AI, chatbots, agentic workflows and answer engines appearing prominently in generative outputs will matter more than rank in search engines. So Google has been rolling out AI mode. You might have noticed this with AI overviews and is beginning to push them into the google.com itself in some countries, which means the start of a fundamental change in how people discover content online. Now. I first posted about Geo Generative Engine Optimization and AEO Answer engine optimization in 2023 December 2023 and so again, this is not new. And now I think it's going to start properly changing how readers find books. Now. For years we've talked about the long tail of search, but now with AI powered search, that tale is getting even longer and more nuanced. AI can understand complex conversational queries that traditional search engines struggled with. So you can now ask what's a good thriller set in a small town with a female protagonist who's a British journalist investigating a cold case? And get highly specific recommendations. This means your book metadata, your website content and your online presence needs to be more detailed and conversational. AI search engines understand context in ways that go far beyond simple keywords. The authors who win in this new landscape will be those who create rich, authentic content about their books and themselves, not just promotional copy. As economist Tyler Cowan has said, consider the AIs as part of your audience because they are already reading your words and listening to your voice. We're also in the organic traffic phase right now, where these AI engines are surfacing content for free in inverted commas. But paid ads are inevitably on the way and even rumoured to be coming this year to ChatGPT. Now this is my my take. By the end of 2026, I expect some authors and publishers to be paying for AI traffic rather than blocking and protesting them. So yes, I would definitely be one of those people. As soon as there is a way to pay for traffic through ChatGPT, I will for sure be doing that. So it will be interesting to see whether that becomes possible for small people like me in 2026. This kind of ties into what I'm going to come on to in a minute as well with Amazon. But yes, as I said in all these platforms go from an organic traffic phase where they just send traffic to people into a paid traffic. I mean, remember back in the day when Facebook, you'd put a post up and everyone would get it, everyone who followed you would get it. And then that disappeared, didn't it? The same on Amazon, you used to be able to put a book up and people even saw it and they certainly don't anymore. So yeah, I think that we're moving into this. I mean, ChatGPT launched in 2022, so we're in year 14, 4. We're moving into year 4, I guess, of this new era. And so yeah, by the end of 2026 I expect some authors and publishers to be paying for AI traffic rather than blocking and protesting them. So for now I recommend checking that your author name and your books are surfaced when you search on chatgpt.com as well as google.com AI mode. So go onto Google, do a search and then click the AI mode that is powered by Gemini, which is Google's AI. You want to make sure your work comes up in some way like are you invisible? And you will be invisible if you have blocked AI from your website, for example. Now I found that Joanna Penn and JF Penn searches all brought up my Shopify stores, my website, my podcast, Instagram, LinkedIn, even my Patreon, but did not bring up links to Amazon. Now I found that fascinating. If you only have an author presence on Amazon, does it appear? Test all those different sites, see what works. Do you need to improve anything about what AI search brings up? Now traditional publishers are absolutely looking at this with Publishers Weekly doing webinars on various aspects of AI in the first few months of 2026, including sessions on GEO and how book sales are changing, AI agents and AI assisted book marketing. And again, if traditional publishers are doing this, we are not early. Now, in a 2026 predictions article on the Bookseller, the CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing noted the boundaries of artificial intelligence will become clearer, enabling publishers to harness its benefits while seeking to safeguard the intellectual property rights of authors, illustrators and publishers. AI will be deeply embedded in our workflows, automating tasks such as metadata tagging, freeing teams to focus on creativity and strategy. Challenges will persist. Generative AI threatens traditional web traffic and ad revenue models, making metadata optimization and SEO I would say GEO critical for visibility as we adjust to this new reality online. Now again, if the CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing. Now if you don't know Bloomsbury Property I would say would be one of the most traditional of traditional publishers. If you have been in London and in Bloomsbury the area, I mean it just is the stereotype of what a traditional publisher is in my mind. So yeah, very interesting. AI will be deeply embedded in our workflows, so definitely something to consider there. 3. The start of agentic commerce AI researches what you want to buy and may even buy on your behalf. Plus my prediction that Amazon does a commerce deal with OpenAI for shopping within ChatGPT by the end of 2026. So in September 2025 ChatGPT launched instant checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which will enable bots to buy on websites in the background if authorized by the human with the credit card. Visa is getting on board with this and so is PayPal with their essential AI agent payments. So there will no doubt be more payment options to come come in the USA. ChatGPT Plus Pro and free users can now buy directly from US Etsy sellers inside the chat interface. With over a million Shopify merchants coming soon, I am I really wish this was not just the US but it is. Shopify and OpenAI did announce a partnership to bring commerce to ChatGPT and I am insanely excited about this. I assume they're going to roll it out to the UK and all of that later on as it could represent the first time in forever that we've been able to more easily find and surface books in a much more nuanced way than the seven keywords and three categories we have relied on for so long. So I've been using ChatGPT for at least the last year to find fiction and non fiction books because the Amazon interface, in my personal opinion as a user, is polluted by ads. As much as I love indie authors and being an indie author and having the option of paid ads, which I also do as a customer, I find it increasingly hard to find books that I want to buy. I have discovered fascinating books however using ChatGPT and I just don't think I would have found these books because they're very long tail, for example slashed beauties by a Rushby recommendation recommended by ChatGPT as I am interested in medical anatomy and anatomical Venuses and A Touch of the Supernatural. If you don't know what anatomical venuses are, they still exist in museums here in Europe, but are models of beautiful women whose bodies have been sort of opened up so that anatomy students could study anatomy. But why make them so beautiful as the kind of question behind the whole thing. And another book that I found through chat that I just loved. It's called the Macabre by Kosoko Jackson. Recommended as I like art history and the supernatural. Again, it was after a chat around various elements of art history and then I just said, oh, are there any novels based around this stuff? And this book came up and I downloaded a sample. I loved it. Same with Slashed Beauties. Now I just don't think I would have found them because I couldn't necessarily have surfaced them within Amazon. Neither has got millions and millions of reviews. They're not up there on lists, but yeah, so. So I was thrilled with those. Even without direct purchase integration, ChatGPT has shopping research which they brought in before the end of 2025 and I have found it surfaces links directly to my Shopify store when I search on there. Walmart has also partnered with OpenAI to create AI first shopping experiences. So in my mind you have to wonder what Amazon might be doing now. In November 2025, Amazon signed a strategic partnership with OpenAI AI. And even though it's focused on the technical side of AI, those two companies in a room just makes me think they might also be working on other plans. So I am calling it for 2026. I think Amazon will sign some kind of commerce agreement with OpenAI sometime before the end of the year, the end of 2026, which will mean that ChatGPT will surface Amazon links and I think that there will be at least recommendation and shopping links into Amazon stores, presumably using some kind of OpenAI affiliate link or perhaps even instant checkout with ChatGPT for Amazon or something like that. But I think there'll be some kind of agreement. I mean it might also be like the apps. So within ChatGPT now if you go to the app section, you'll find things like Canva or Spotify or TripAdvisor or if you want to build stuff, there's lovable and replit and there's different things. Or Photoshop actually is now in the app store as well. So I think that it maybe Amazon would get an app with in there. But yeah, I think it's going to be interesting to see how that goes. But I am calling it for 2026 and that may be where we get a new marketing angle because if paid ads also arrive in Chat GPT, perhaps it might even integrate with Amazon ads in some way as part of a possible agreement because ads are such a huge revenue stream for Amazon anyway and it's really interesting to consider. Let's say you have a hundred dollars to spend. Would you spend it like if you're an author like me who has Shopify, would you spend that hundred dollars on ChatGPT getting traffic to your Shopify store or would you spend it on Amazon ads within the Amazon ecosystem? So I think there are different ways that revenue streams could be siphoned off from Amazon if people are shopping in different ways. So yeah, really interesting to see how that's going to shape out. But the line between discovery, engagement and purchasing is collapsing because you could be having, as I have done very many times, a conversation about what to read next and then within conversation just click a purchase the book. Especially if you've already pre authorized a certain amount on a certain card. And of course this kind of one click purchase happens within TikTok and the idea of social commerce clearly is already happening. So it used to be that you wanted to know a lot more I guess especially like with Shopify, it's the same as Amazon as in once you've bought from one Shopify store, all your payment stuff carries across on your email so it's all pre populated. It's still very once you've bought on one Shopify store it carries across essentially so it's easy. But yeah, I'm really interested to think about how the next development for book discoverability and sales might be within AI chats and as I just mentioned about traditional publishers getting into all this stuff. In my mind as soon as they are into it, then it is no longer the cutting edge. Which is why if this appears as an option for authors in this year, I'm gonna jump on it because I never want it to be part of the TikTok thing, the short video thing. But maybe this is the next development in book discoverability. This will absolutely stratify the already fragmented book ecosystem even more. Some readers obviously will continue to live only within the Amazon ecosystem. Maybe they'll use the Rufus chatbot to buy, but that hasn't been a big deal. Amazon haven't done a great job of that which is why I think they will do a deal with ChatGPT. Other people like me for example will be much wider in their exploration of how to find and discover books products services. Used the chat GPT shopping tons and before that I was using it to surface things I wanted to buy. So if you haven't tried it yet, go to chatgpt.com click in the box, use the drop down, select shopping research and try. I mean it doesn't have to be for your book. It can be any book or any product. For example, our microwave died like Christmas Eve, so I used shopping research to find another one. But you can certainly do a really nuanced search with multiple requirements and make sure you use many many more. Like have a whole list of things you want far more than you would ever use on Amazon. Also in the results, does it link to Amazon? I found it links mainly to independent sites and stores. But as I said, I think this will change by the end of 2026 as some kind of commerce deal with Amazon seems inevitable. Watch this Space. 4 AI assisted audiobook narration Will go Mainstream Stream so I've been talking about AI narration of audiobooks since 2019 and over the years I've tried various different options. In 2025, the technology reached a level of emotional nuance that made it much easier to create satisfying fiction audio as well as non fiction. It also supercharges accessibility, making audio available in more languages more accents than ever before. Of course, human narration remains the gold standard, but the cost makes it prohibitive for many authors and indeed many small traditional publishers. If it costs 2,000 to $10,000 to create an audiobook, you have to sell an awful lot to make a profit, and the dominance of subscription models and therefore lower income per audiobook have made it harder to recoup the costs unless you have a big audience. Famous narrators and voice artists who have an audience are still worth investing in as well as premium production, but require an even higher upfront cost and therefore higher sales and streams in return. Now at the same time, AI voice and audio models are continuing to improve and even as this goes out, there are rumours on TechCrunch that OpenAI's new hardware device designed by Jony I've who designed the iPhone phone will be audio first and OpenAI are improving their voice models even more in preparation for that launch in 2026. As all of these models get even better, I think AI narrated audio will go mainstream with far reaching adoption across publishing and the indie author world in many different languages and accents. This will mean a further stratification of audiobooks with high quality, high production, high cost human narrated audio for a small percentage of books and mass market afford AI narrated audio for the rest. AI narrated audiobooks will make audio ubiquitous and just as almost every print book has an ebook format in 2026 they will also have an audio format. Now I straddle both these worlds. I am still a human audiobook narrator for my own work. I human narrated in 2025 successful self publishing the 4th edition and the audiobook is free. You can listen to that wherever you're listening to this Mostly Likely and also the Buried and the Drowned, my short story collection all Human Narrated. I also use AI narration so 11 labs remains my preferred service. And in 2025 I used my JF Pen Voice clone for Death Valley and also Blood Vintage while using a male voice for Catacomb. Now if you go listen to the Buried in the Drowned and then or you can just listen to one story and then listen listen to Death Valley for example and both of these are on YouTube you can listen for free. It will be interesting to see what you think Is my Voice Clone audiobook just as good as my Human Narrated audiobook? Feel free to let me know. So Death Valley Blood Vintage are AI me, the Buried and the Drowned is human me. But yes, I clearly label my AI narration in the sales description and also on the COVID which I think is important, although it's not always required by the various services and lots of traditional publishers don't do it. You can distribute ElevenLabs narrated audiobooks on Spotify, Kobo, Writing Life, YouTube, Eleven Reader and of course your own store. If you use Shopify with bookfunnel, there are many other services springing up all the time to make sure you check the rights you have over the finished audio if you use whatever company as well as where you can sell and distribute the final files files. If that company is just using Elevenlabs models in the back end, then why not just do that directly? Because most services are using other people's models in the back end and just kind of slapping a front end on it. So definitely redo your research over what companies to use. And again this is where you can ask something like ChatGPT or your favorite AI and just say okay, I want to use AI narration for my audiobook. Can you compare compare this service, this service, this service and suggest other services I might consider what are the pros and cons of each and it will do the comparison. And then you can also say okay, which of which models do these services use and what are my rights? Do I keep the rights in the audiobook? That kind of thing? Of course you can use Amazon's own AI narration. So while Amazon originally launched Audible audiobooks with Virtual Voice AVV In November 2023, it was rolled out to more authors and territories. 2025 if your book is eligible, the option to create an audiobook will appear on your KDP dashboard with just a few clicks. You can create an audiobook from a range of voices and accents and publish it on Amazon and Audible. However, the files are not yours, they are exclusive to Amazon and you cannot use them on other platforms or sell them yourself. But they are also free. So of course many authors, especially those in ku, will use this audience option. I have done some for my mum's sweet romance books which are in KU as Penny Appleton and I will also likely use this option for my books in translation when the option becomes available. Because I've paid for a German narrator to do a German audiobook for me years ago and I've literally only just made the money back. So yes, traditional publishers are also experimenting with AI assisted audiobook narration. Macmillan is selling digital audiobooks read by AI directly on their store. Yes, they sell direct. All the links are in the show notes by the way, and this episode, which has taken me a really long time to do this episode has a ton of links. So please do go look at the show notes. You can always find that on thecreativepenn.com podcast and go to the episode and click through so yes, Macmillan is selling digital AI narrated audiobooks, and Publishers Weekly reports that PRH Audio, that's Pen, Penguin Random House Audio, has experimented with artificial voice in specific instances, such as entrepreneur Eli Calloway's posthumous memoir the Unconquerable Game, where an authorized voice replica like My voice Clone was created for the audiobook. The article also notes that PRH Audio embrace artificial intelligence across business operations. The person interviewed said, my entire department at PRH Audio is using AI for business applications now, while indie authors can't use AI voices directly on ACX. Right now Audible have over 100 voices available to selected publishing partnerships as reported by the Guardian, with two options for publishers wishing to make use of the technology Audible Managed Production or self Service, whereby publishers produce their own audiobooks with the help of Audible's AI technology. So in 2026 I think it's likely that more traditional publishers as well as more indie authors get their backlist into audio with AI narration. 5 AI assisted translation will start to take off beyond the early adopters over the years I've done translation deals with traditional publishers in different languages languages German, French, Spanish, Korean and Italian, some for fiction, some for non fiction. But of course to get these kinds of deals you have to be proactive about pitching or work with an agent for foreign rights only, and those are few and far between. Or you have to be so successful that publishers come to you. Now. There are also lots of languages and territories worldwide and most deals are for the bigger markets, leaving a lot of blue water for books in translation. Even if you have licensed some of the bigger markets. So let say you have licensed German, French, Spanish, and let's say other bigger markets, Portuguese, Polish, let's say Arabic. There are still loads and loads of languages and loads of loads of countries. So there's so much blue water in translation now. I did my first partially AI translated books in 2019 when I used DeepL.com for the first draft, which meant I owned the translation and then worked with a German editor to do three non fiction books in German. And so the translation was cheap, the first draft was cheap, but the editing was expensive and so I only did those three books. I have made the money back now, but it took years as I mentioned with the audiobook as well. In 2025, AI translation began to take off withribeShadow, GlobeScribe, AI and more recently in November 2025, Kindle Translate boosting the number of translated books available available and Kindle Translate arriving is what has really convinced me that this is about to go nuts. So Kindle Translate is currently only available to US authors for English into Spanish and also German into English. But in 2026 this will likely roll out to more languages and more authors, making it easier than ever to produce translations for free. Of course, once again, the gold standard is human translation, or at least human edited translation. Cost is prohibitive, even just for proofreading, and if there is a cheap or even free option like Kindle Translate, then of course authors are going to try it. If the translation gets bad reviews, just unpublish. There are many anecdotal stories of indie success in 2025 with AI translated genre fiction sales in series in underserved markets like Italian, French and Spanish, as well as more mainstream adoption in German. Oh, I could also add Portuguese and Dutch to that. I was around in the Kindle Gold rush days of 2009-2012, and the AI translation energy right now feels like that because there are hardly any Kindle ebooks in many of these languages compared to how many there are in English. So inevitably the rush is on to fill the void, especially in genres that are underserved by traditional publishers in their markets. And once again, we're talking about romance, we're talking about fantasy, sci fi. So essentially this is exactly what happened in the Kindle Gold Rush is traditional publishing just didn't focus on markets that they thought weren't worthy in some way. And so the biggest Kindle Sellers were always in genres that were underserved and now this is happening in other languages. Super, super interesting, interesting. Now, yes, some of these AI translated books will be AI slop, but readers are not stupid. Those books get bad reviews and sink to the bottom of the store, never to be seen again. The AI translation models are improving rapidly and I think Amazon's Kindle Translate may improve faster than most for books specifically, since they will get feedback in terms of page reads and review reviews. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic, which makes Claude widely considered to be the best quality for creative writing and translation. So it's likely this is being used somewhere in the mix. Some traditional publishers are also experimenting with AI assisted translation with Harlequin France. Now obviously that's romance. Reportedly using AI translation and human proofreaders as reported by the European Council of Literary Translators association in December 2025. Academic publisher Taylor Anne Francis is also using AI for book translation, noting following a program of rigorous testing, Taylor and Francis has announced plans to use AI translation tools to publish books that would otherwise be unavailable to English language readers, bringing the latest knowledge to a vastly expanded readership. Until now, the time and resources required to translate books has meant that the majority remained accessible only to those who could read them in the original language. Language books that were translated often only became available after a significant delay. Today, with the development of sophisticated AI translation tools, it has become possible to make these important texts available to a broad readership at speed without compromising on accuracy. So again, if traditional publishers are doing it, it is not. 6. AI video becomes ubiquitous Live selling becomes the next trend in social sales. In 2025, short form AI generated video became very high quality. OpenAI released Sora 2 and YouTube announced YouTube Shorts creation tools with VO3 and if you haven't tried VO3 it's amazing which you can also use directly. Within Gemini there are tons of different AI video apps now. Runway is another very good one. Including those within the social media sites themselves. There is more video than ever and it is much easier to create now Personally do you know if you've been listening to this show a while? I am not a fan of short form video. I don't make it, I don't consume it. But I do love making book trailers for my Kickstarter campaigns and for adding to my book pages and using on social media social media. I made a trailer for the Buried and the Drowned using Midjourney for images and animation and Canva to put them together with Elevenlabs which can generate custom music. But despite the AI tools getting so much easier to use, you still have to prompt them with exactly what you want. You can't just upload your book and say make a book trailer or make a short film. But this may change with generative video and ads, which are likely to become more common in 2026 as video turns specifically commercial. I mean generative video turns Commercial video ads may even be generated specifically for the user, an audience of one, maybe even holding your book in their hands, which you could do using something like Cameos on Sora in the same way that some AI powered clothing stores do virtual trial ions. This might also upend the way we discover and buy things, as the AI for E Commerce and Amazon Sellers newsletter says about OpenAI's Sora app. OpenAI isn't just trying to build a TikTok competitor, they're building a complete reimagining of how we discover and buy things. The combination of ChatGPT's research capabilities and Sora's potential for emotional manipulation I mean engagement engagement could create something we've never seen before, an AI ecosystem that might eventually guide you through every type of purchase, from the most considered to the most impulsive. So yes, in 2026 there will be a lot more AI generated video, but that also leads to the human trend of more live video when you can use an AI avatar that looks and sounds like you, using tools like Heygen or synthesis easier. Live video has all the imperfect human elements that make it stand out, plus the scarcity element which leads to the purchase decision within a countdown period. Now, live video is nothing new in terms of brand building and content in general, but it seems that live events, primarily for direct sales, might be a thing in 2026. Now, I don't usually mention Kim Kardashian, but Kim Kardashian hosted Kimsmas live in December 2025 with a 45 live shopping event, I believe on TikTok, or maybe multiple channels with special guests described as entertainment but designed to be a sales extravaganza. Indie authors are doing a similar thing on TikTok with their books selling direct. So this is a trend to watch in 2026, especially if you feel that live selling might fit with your personality and author business goals. It's certainly not for everyone, but I suspect it would. It will suit a different kind of creator to those who prefer no face video or no video at all on other aspects of the human side of social media. Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram, put a post on Threads this week called authenticity after abundance, everything that made creators matter, the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn't be faked is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right to tools. Deep fakes are getting better and better. AI is generating photographs and videos indistinguishable from captured media. The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything. And in that world, here's what I think creators matter more. It's a really long article, but I'm just going to pick a few things from it, he says. We like to talk about AI slop, but there is a lot of amazing AI content, and we're going to see more and more realistic AI content now. I've talked to my Patreon community about this tsunami of excellence. We've always just assumed that the tsunami of crap is what comes from AI, but it really is turning out to be the tsunami of excellence in recent months, as it's all become so good. These tools are getting better and better. And the word slop can certainly be applied to purely human output too. So if you think that AI content is worse than wholly human content in 2026, you are wrong. It is now very, very good, especially in the hands of people who can drive the AI tools Back to Adam's post. Authenticity is fast becoming a scarce resource. The creators who succeed will be those who figure out how to maintain their authenticity, even when it can be simulated. The bar is going to shift from can you create? To can you make something that only you could create? He talks about how the personal content on Instagram now is unpolished. It's blurry photos and shaky videos of people's daily experiences. Flattering imagery is cheap to produce and boring to consume. People want content that feels real. Savvy creators are going to lean into explicitly unproduced and unflattering images of themselves. In a world where everything can be perfect, affected imperfection becomes a signal. Rawness isn't just aesthetic preference anymore. It's proof. It's defensive, a way of saying this is real because it's imperfect. Now, I was thinking about this. I partially love it, and I hope it's true. I hope we don't need to look good for the camera anymore. As A woman of 50, I was taught that I have to put makeup on to be on camera, and I know a lot of younger women wouldn't necessarily feel the same way. But I definitely would challenge Adam on this, because pretty much every woman I know on social media has been sent sexual messages and or told they are ugly and or fat when posting anything unflattering. I have certainly had both over the years, even for the same piece of content, and I don't expect Adam has been the target for such posting. So this is partly why it's very hard. Like I'm recording this right now. I haven't done my hair, I'm not wearing anything makeup. I'm like, this is not videoable for me. But for many people, perhaps that's what he means by it's imperfect, so it's real. I don't know. But I get his point. I'll let it pass. I get his point. He goes on, labeling content as authentic or AI generated is only part of the solution. We as an industry are going to need to surface much more context about not only the media on our platforms, but the accounts that are shared sharing it in order for people to be able to make informed decisions about what to believe. Where is the account? Like physically, where is the account? And in fact something X did last year is they put the country that the person is posted from because so much of the misinformation about various politicians or whatever was coming from other countries outside the usa, it's obviously stirring, stirring the pot as such. So where is the account based? When was it created? Is it a brand new. Like, is it a throwaway bot account? Which of course so many are. And what else have they posted? For example, I've had an Amazon account since I think the very late 90s. That's still. And in fact my logon is completely different to everything else I use, which is quite good in a way because it was such a long time ago, I guess. My Facebook's really old, my YouTube's really old. Like all of my accounts are super old. My Twitter I think is from 2008 or 2009. So many of my accounts are old and very human. So this is going to be part of this almost social graph I think they call it. So yes, where is the account? When was it created? What else have they posted? Can we trust them? And this is exactly what I've been saying for a while under the sort of double down on being human focus. I use my Instagram fpen author as evidence of humanity, not as a sales channel. Now you can of course do both. Many people sell on social media, but increasingly make sure your accounts have longevity and trust, even by the platforms themselves, not just the people watching or listening. Adam finishes his article. In a world of infinite abundance and infinite doubt, the creators who can maintain trust and signal authenticity by being real transparent and consistent. Consistent will stand out. So that's Adam Masseri on Threads under Authenticity after Abundance link in the show Notes for other marketing trends for 2026, I recommend publicist Kathleen Schmidt's Substack, which is mostly focused on traditional publishing but still interesting for indies. In her 2026 Trends article, she notes, we have reached a social media saturation point where going viral can be meaningless and should not be the the goal authenticity and creativity should. She also says in person events are important again and what publishers must figure out is how to make their social media campaigns stand out if they remain somewhat uninspired. The money spent on social ads won't convert into book sales and I think that plays into the rise of live selling as I've mentioned, which can stand out above the more produced View videos. Kathleen also talks about AI usage AI can help lighten the burden of publicity and marketing. A lot of AI tools are coming to market to lessen the load. They can write pitches, create media lists for you, send pictures for you, and more. I know the industry is grappling with all things AI, but some of these tools are huge time savers and may help a book more than hurt it it. Again, lots of traditional publishing people using AI. So if you have been sitting on the fence, we are three, four years in to the Chat GPT era so I think it's time to dip your toe in. And on the marketing side, number seven, AI will create, run and optimize ads without the need for human intervention and most authors will be happy about that. So as I noted in my 2026 goals, which was the previous episode, I would love to outsource more marketing tasks to AI. I want an AI book marketing assistant where I can upload my book, specify a budget and then just say go market this and the AI will action the marketing without me having to cobble together workflows between systems. Of course it will present plans for me to approve, but it will do the work itself on the various platforms and monitor and optimize things to for me, I really hope 2026 is the year this becomes possible because we are on the edge of it already in some areas. Amazon Ads launched a new agentic AI tool in September 2025 that creates professional quality ads. I've been working with Claude in Chrome browser so there is a now a Claude extension in Chrome that you can use within the browser. So I've been sort of in my Amazon ad account working with Claude helping me analyze my Amazon ad data. Data suggests which keywords and products to turn off or add or whatever and what to put more budget into. For the first time in my author career, I feel confident that I can do ads myself because I have my assistant, but it's certainly not doing it all for me yet. I'll be doing a Patreon video on that soon. Meta also announced it will enable AI ad creation by the end of 2026 for Facebook and Instagram. Now, for authors who find ad creation and monitoring and all that overwhelming or time consuming, this could be a game changer. Of course you will still need a budget, but it will probably be a lower budget than paying a company to do it for you. So with all that said, we will come to number eight A thousand true Fans Becomes More Important than Ever Lots of authors and publishers are moaning about the difficulty of reaching readers in an era of AI slop, but there is no shortage of excellent content created by humans or humans using AI tools. As ever, our competition is less about other authors or other books or authors using AI assisted creation. We're competing against everything else that jostles for people's attention, and the volume of that is also growing exponentially. In fact, dipping out my notes here, I wager that far more people spend far more hours on TikTok watching video than they do reading books. So why do we think we're competing with each other rather than short form video? Now, I've never been a fan of rapid release and have said for years that you can't keep up with the pace of the machines, so play a different game. And as Kevin Kelly wrote in 2008, if you have a thousand true fans, you can make a living if you are content to make a living but not a fortune. And of course Kevin Kelly was on this show in 2023 talking about excellent advice from for living. Many authors in the publishing industry are stuck in the old model of aiming to sell huge volumes of books at a low profit margin to a massive number of readers, many of them releasing ever faster to keep the algorithms moving. But the maths can work for the smaller audience of more invested readers and fans if you only make $2 profit on an ebook. You need to sell 500 ebooks to make a thousand thousand dollars and then you need to do it again next month. Or you can have a small community like my patreon.com thecreativepen where people do pay around $2 or slightly more a month. So even a small revenue per person results in a better income over the year as it is consistent and monthly income with no advertising. But what if you could make $20 profit per book, which is entirely possible if you're producing high quality hardbacks for a Kickstarter campaign or you're bundling deals of audiobooks or series of ebooks. You would only need to sell to 50 people to make $1,000. But what about $100 profit per sale, which you could do with a small course or a live event? You only need 10 people to make $1,000. And this in person focus also amplifies trust and fosters human connection. I found the intimacy of my live Patreon office hours and my webinars have been rewarding personally but also financially and are far more memorable and potentially transformative in my theme of the year rather than a pre recorded video or even another book from the LinkedIn 2026 Big Ideas article. In an AI optimized world, intentional human connection will become the ultimate luxury. The thousand True fans model is about serving a smaller, more personal audience with higher value products and maybe services, if that's your thing. As ever, it's about niche and where you fit in the long, long, long, long, long long tail. It's also about trust, because there is definitely a shortage of that in so many areas. Areas. And as Adam Masseri of Instagram has said, trust will be increasingly important. Trust takes time to build, but if you focus on serving your audience consistently and delivering high quality and being authentic, this emerges as part of being human. In an echo of what happened when online commerce first took off, we are back to talking about trust. And back in 2010, when I'd only been atlas a few years, I I read Trust Agents by Julian Smith and Chris Brogan, which clearly needs a comeback. There was a 10th anniversary edition published in 2020, so that's worth a read. Chris Brogan was also on this show in 2017 when we talked about finding and serving your niche for the long term. That interview is still relevant, so here is a quick excerpt which I have lightly edited. His response to my question on this topic back in 2017 here's me and Chris Brogan. The principle of know, like and trust. Why is that still important? Or perhaps even more important these days?
- [65:26]
B
There are a few things at play there, Joanna. One is that the same tools that make it so easy for any of us to start and run a business also allow certain elements to decide whether or not they want to do something dubious. And with all new technologies that comes, you know there's nothing unique about about these new technologies. In the 1800s, anyone could put anything in a bottle and sell it to you and say, this is gonna cure everything. Cancer gone, and the bottle could have nothing. You know, it could be Kool Aid. And so the idea of trying to understand what's behind a business, though one beautiful thing that's come is that we can see in much more dimensions who we're dealing with. We can understand better who's the face behind the brand. We really want people to try their best to be a lot clearer on what they stand for or what they say. And I don't really mean a tagline. I mean, humans don't really talk like that. They don't throw some sentence out as often as they can so that you remember them for that phrase. But I would say that we have so many media available to us, the plural of mediums, that where we can be more of ourselves. And I think that there's a great opportunity to share the you behind the scenes. And some people get immediately terrified about this. Ah, the last thing I want is for people to know more about me. But I think we have such an opportunity. We have such an opportunity to voice our thoughts on something, to talk about the story that goes behind the product. We're all raised on overly produced material, but I think we don't want that anymore. We really want clarity, brevity, simplicity. We want the ability for what we feel is connection and then access. And so I think it's vital that we connect and show people our accessibility. Not so that they can pester us with strange questions, but more so that they can say, this person stands with their product and their service, and this person believes these things, and I feel something when I hear them, and I want to be part of that.
- [67:27]
A
So that's from Chris Brogan's interview here on the show in 2017, and he's still blogging and speaking and writing@chrisbrogan.com and I've put the audiobook of trust agents back on my list, as I think it's more relevant to relevant than ever. The original quote comes from Bob berg in his 1994 book Endless Referrals, where he said, all things being equal, people will do business with and refer business to those people they know like and trust. So that know like and trust principle, I think, is becoming even more important and still applies and absolutely fits with the thousand true fans model of aiming to serve a smaller audience. As Kevin Kelly says, in A Thousand True Fans, instead of trying to reach the narrow and unlikely peaks of platinum bestseller lists, blockbusters, and celebrity status, you can aim for direct connection with a thousand true fans on your way. No matter how many fans you actually succeed in gaining, you'll be surrounded not by faddish infatuation, but by genuine and true appreciation. Appreciation. It's a much saner destiny to hope for, and you are much more likely to actually arrive there. I like that. I like saner destiny. And obviously I posted chapters from the relaxed author a few weeks ago over the over Christmas. And that's sort of what keeps you sane is also a really important thing to consider in your business model. So in 2026 I hope that more more authors, including me, let go of ego goals and vanity metrics like ranking gross sales income before you take away costs, subscriber numbers followers likes and think more about important business numbers like profit, which of course is important if you're running a business. And that is the money after costs like marketing are taken out, as well as the number of true fans and also lifestyle elements like the number of weekends off or days spent enjoying life and not just working. Okay, so that is my list of trends and predictions for 2026. Happy 2026 everyone. So I hope you found my thoughts and trends and predictions interesting for the year ahead. Let me know what you think. What am I wrong about? What did I I miss? Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me joannathecreativepenn.com also send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. Next Monday it's back to interviews. I'll be talking about leaving social media, writing iconic characters and building trust with Claire Taylor. And remember, if you want to transform your Author Business in 2020, join me for my January webinar on business for authors. The first one is this weekend, 10 January details@the creativepenn.com live. Or if you're a patron, remember to use the special link for the discount. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes in show notes at the Creative Pen Podcast and you can get your free Author blueprint@thecreativepen.com Blueprint. If you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook Fpenauthor Happy writing and I'll see you next time.