Thomas: Welcome to Author Update, your weekly dose of publishing news that actually matters for your career.
Jonathan: Today, Nancy Drew entered the public domain, along with Miss Marple, Sam Spade, and more than a dozen other iconic characters you can now legally write about. We will reveal exactly which 1930s books are available, why Conan the Barbarian becomes so exciting in 2028, and what this means for fiction authors. Plus, the Novel Marketing Conference just sold out for the first time ever.
We also have 48 hours’ worth of predictions about the AI bubble that refuses to pop, skyrocketing computer prices, and why the anti-AI movement is about to take on a branded political identity.
Public Domain Day
Thomas: Public Domain Day is here. Several years ago, Disney failed in their ongoing effort to extend copyright indefinitely. Copyright is one of the few laws explicitly described in the U.S. Constitution, and its purpose is spelled out clearly.
Congress is authorized to secure, “for limited times,” exclusive rights for authors and inventors in order “to promote the progress of science and useful arts.” In other words, copyright exists to promote creativity, not to lock it away forever.
Originally, copyright lasted 14 years, with a possible 7-year extension. No copyright could exceed 21 years. That remained true until the 20th-century Disney-led lobbying era, when Congress repeatedly extended copyright terms. Beginning around the time of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie, nothing entered the public domain for generations.
Eventually, though, Disney’s extensions ran out. Works are now re-entering the public domain each January 1.
Jonathan: Hence the Winnie-the-Pooh horror movies on Amazon Prime.
Thomas: Exactly. Every January 1 is now Public Domain Day, when new works become available. Why does this matter for authors? Because copyright includes the exclusive right to create derivative works. If you invent Star Wars, you control Luke Skywalker stories. No one else can legally write and sell Luke Skywalker fiction without your permission, unless it qualifies as parody or falls under another exemption.
I am not a lawyer, but I have studied copyright for more than a decade, and I care deeply about it. I also dislike much of our modern copyright law. That said, here is why Public Domain Day matters for writers.
You can now legally create derivative works from certain characters whose early stories have expired. Sherlock Holmes has been in the public domain for decades, which is why new Holmes stories are published every year. But until now, you could not legally do that with Nancy Drew.
Nancy Drew
As of yesterday, the earliest Nancy Drew novels are now in the public domain. You may republish those books, which is mildly interesting, but more importantly, you may now write your own Nancy Drew stories. You can place Nancy Drew into your own literary universe, and the rights-holders cannot stop you.
However, you must base your character on the original works that are actually public domain. Nancy Drew has continued to evolve across later adaptations, and those newer versions are still protected.
Winnie-the-Pooh
The same applies to Winnie-the-Pooh. The public-domain Pooh is not the Disney Pooh with the red shirt. The shirt was introduced in the 1960s and is still copyrighted. If your Pooh has a red shirt, your work is based on the later version and may violate copyright.
So always reference the earliest text, not later adaptations.
We are now reaching an era where genuinely fascinating characters are entering the public domain, which creates real opportunity. For beginning authors especially, I love the idea of practicing storytelling using established characters and worlds. You can focus on narrative craft rather than world-building from scratch, and you benefit from a built-in audience.
There is an old principle that says, “Be faithful with what belongs to another before seeking what is your own.” Writing one Sherlock Holmes story, for instance, is excellent practice for writing mysteries and for handling a character who is smarter than you.
Sam Spade
Now you also have Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon. If you want to write gritty noir, you may now use the original Sam Spade as he appears in the novel. Later versions remain protected, so read the book and base your work on that.
Solomon Kane
Solomon Kane has also been entering the public domain through successive short stories. Many iconic pulp characters first appeared in serial form, so each additional story adds more usable character detail as it expires.
Solomon Kane, created by Robert E. Howard (the same author behind Conan the Barbarian) represents a starkly different form of masculinity than Conan. Conan is pagan, barbaric masculinity. Solomon Kane is Christian masculinity. He is a Presbyterian who hunts evil with righteous fury. He hates wickedness and believes God has called him to destroy it. He rescues the oppressed by pursuing the wicked.
He is a fascinating character. You can now write Solomon Kane short fiction. Read the original stories. Avoid basing your version on the more recent film adaptation, which is still copyrighted.
As with Betty Boop, focus on the 1930s version, not later reinterpretations. There is a reason those early versions became iconic.
Also entering the public domain this year:
- Betty Boop from Dizzy Dishes by Max Fleischer
- Blondie & Dagwood from Blondie comic strip by Chic Young (engaged but not married characters)
- Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard (Continuing to roll into the public domain)
YA Characters:
- Tintin from Tintin in the Land of the Soviets by Hergé
- Nancy Drew
- Joe Palooka
- The Shadow (Proto Batman)
Children’s Characters:
- The Little Engine from The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
- Dick & Jane from Dick and Jane readers by William S. Gray
- Pluto from The Chain Gang by Walt Disney (Warning: Still Under Trademark)
10 Bestselling Books from 1930 Were:
- Cimarron by Edna Ferber
- Exile by Warwick Deeping
- The Woman of Andros by Thornton Wilder
- Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
- Angel Pavement by J. B. Priestley
- The Door by Mary Roberts Rinehart
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Chances by A. Hamilton Gibbs
- Young Man of Manhattan by Katharine Brush
- Twenty-Four Hours by Louis Bromfield
Entering Public Domain in 2027
- Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton
- Tarzan from Tarzan the Invincible by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- John Carter from ongoing Mars stories in 1931 by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Buck Rogers from ongoing comic strips in 1931 by Philip Francis Nowlan
Interestingly, the top-selling books of 1930 are almost entirely forgotten today. Bestsellers often do not survive the test of time, because they resonate with the zeitgeist of a particular year rather than with universal human experience. Classics endure when they tap into deeper themes.
Thomas New Year’s Predictions
The Anthropic Settlement Check Will Go Out, and Drama Will Ensue
Jonathan: The real problem is publishers not sending authors what authors think they deserve. It is like when someone wealthy dies and everyone starts fighting over the inheritance. The more parties involved, the smaller everyone’s slice becomes.
Thomas: It usually costs around $10,000 for a company to go into arbitration, which is still cheaper than a full court case. But if you are a publisher with 500 authors who all trigger arbitration, and each case costs $10,000, you are suddenly looking at about $5 million in expenses. That could be a huge mess.
So that is my first prediction. Some authors will get money. I have friends with dozens of books in the Anthropic settlement who are looking at checks in the tens of thousands of dollars. But since this is not a personal-injury settlement, that income is likely taxable. Most large payouts people are familiar with involve personal injury, where the taxation issues are different. This is not that.
The AI Bubble Will NOT Pop
Thomas: My next prediction is that the AI bubble will not pop, at least not in the way people expect. Jonathan may disagree with me, but I am going to take a stand on this.
One hallmark of a bubble is irrational exuberance. Another is widespread denial that a bubble even exists. During a true bubble, everyone says, “There is no bubble. This is a sure thing.” No one is saying that about AI. If you listen to the chatter, it is overwhelmingly anti-AI, yet AI continues to grow, and the growth is driven by real market demand.
Another hallmark of a bubble is rampant speculation. But there are no pure-play AI companies on the stock exchanges to speculate on. OpenAI is privately held. Anthropic is privately held. xAI is privately held. If you want AI exposure in the stock market, you can buy Meta or Google, but their AI ventures are only a small part of their overall business. If their AI work fails completely, the companies will still be fine. If AI goes to the moon, their stock might bump up, but their other divisions will mute the impact.
Look at the last big hype cycle: the Metaverse. Facebook rebranded as Meta and poured around $80 billion into it. Most of that money is gone, but Meta’s stock is still fine. The company still earns billions from Facebook and Instagram. The Metaverse bubble popped, but the underlying company did not disappear, and neither did social media.
Meta is likely to miss AI as well. They have done just enough AI to get sued by authors, but not enough to make real money. Nobody is using LLaMA at scale. If you wanted direct AI exposure, the only obvious play has been Nvidia.
Thomas: Nvidia is not an AI company. It makes graphics processing units, the chips in your Xbox or PlayStation. If you have a gaming PC, it probably has an Nvidia GPU. Those same chips are used for crypto mining, which is where Nvidia saw its first big stock surge.
Now AI has created a second wave. Nvidia has sold every chip it can make. They have already sold out their entire 2026 production. It is January 2, 2026, and the year’s supply is gone. Demand is that high, and their ability to meet it is not sufficient, which will have knock-on effects throughout the tech world. Authors will feel those effects in some surprising ways.
So when people say, “The AI bubble is going to pop and life will go back to 2019,” they are misunderstanding how bubbles work.
Jonathan: We did not stop using the stock market after crashes. We did not stop using houses after the housing bubble popped.
Thomas: Exactly. None of the big bubbles worked that way. The railroad bubble of the 1850s did not cause trains to stop running. In fact, modern bankruptcy law was created partly so railroads could go bankrupt while the trains kept running under new ownership. Everyone agreed the trains were still valuable.
The same thing happened with the automotive bubble, often called “automobile mania,” in the 1910s. It did not make people stop driving cars. There was a time when every few years brought a major breakthrough in automotive technology. Eventually innovation slowed, the bubble deflated, and the industry consolidated, but cars never went away.
The dot-com bubble did not make people stop using websites. The social-media bubble did not make people stop using social media. It just killed MySpace and Friendster. That is the right metaphor for AI.
Not every AI company will win. Many will fail. But AI itself is not going away. The winners will absorb the losers’ assets as the market consolidates.
Jonathan: The problem is the metaphor. When people say “bubble,” they picture a soap bubble that pops and disappears. That has not been how these things work in the real world.
You also have to account for behavior. You have hundreds of thousands of actors in a complex system, constantly reacting, hedging, and trying to manage risk. Then you have government interventions that slow or redirect everything. That creates a messy descent or reshaping, not a clean pop.
The American economic system is extremely competitive. You will see companies overextend, get annihilated, get absorbed, and sell out. You will see new entrants rushing in. When we were targeting terrorists in Iraq, every strike caused others to react, even if they did not know why it happened. They would see a plane overhead and assume, “They know exactly where we are,” when in reality we had no idea where they were at that moment.
People develop superstitions when things happen for reasons they do not understand. That is what you are seeing culturally with AI as well. So I agree with Thomas: the bubble is not going to burst. It will adapt. AI is far too useful to vanish unless we have a full-blown, literal Butlerian Jihad.
The Anti AI faction will get a name and a political identity.
Thomas: That is a good segue to my next prediction. I think we will see the rise of an organized anti-AI faction this year, with its own name and political identity.
Up to now, we have jokingly called it the “Anti–Butlerian Jihad,” referencing Dune and the Dune prequels. In that universe, humans fight a holy war against thinking machines, which is why there are no computers. Instead, they have Mentats, humans trained to function like computers.
The problem is that most people who are passionately anti-AI are not the same group of people who have read Dune and the prequels. The overlap is tiny.
Jonathan: The difference is between Erasmus throwing Serena’s baby off a balcony in Dune, and people complaining on YouTube or Reddit.
Thomas: Exactly. So this movement will eventually get its own label and brand, and it will form a recognizable political identity.
We are starting to see the early stages of it. Bernie Sanders has begun positioning himself against AI. Right now, the energy is mostly on the left, though there are people on the right who are also threatened by AI, as Alexander Macris and others have pointed out. There are anti-AI people on both sides, but for different reasons.
The left is, at the moment, more passionately anti-AI in certain online spaces. Go on Bluesky and say you write with AI. They will burn you at the stake. You will not get the same reaction on X.
The problem is that this eventually collides with a core progressive belief: faith in progress. Progressives tend to believe things get better over time, that technology improves life. People on the right are more skeptical. They see culture as cyclical. Good times create weak men, weak men create bad times, bad times create strong men, strong men create good times, and the cycle repeats. There is “nothing new under the sun.”
For progressives to become consistently anti-AI, they would have to admit that technological change can be bad and that “progress” can be harmful. That either fractures their movement or forces them to live with a major internal contradiction. They might simply tolerate that inconsistency. It would not be the first time.
Jonathan: I am not sure they are married to “progress” as a pure concept. I think they are married to progress toward certain goals: unity, tolerance, green energy, utopian visions you see in a lot of science fiction.
So anything that advances those goals is framed as progress. You see it in some recent political announcements. Policies are sold as “progress” toward a collectivist ideal, even if they undermine competence or merit.
I also do not agree that only the left is against AI writing. I am in conservative writing groups where people are vocally anti-AI too, but for different reasons.
Jonathan: In those groups, the argument is more about competence. It is not “AI is destroying the environment” or “AI is inhuman; it is not art.” It is, “You are not good enough to make art the way it is supposed to be made, so you are cheating.”
Thomas: And there is a spiritual angle. Some say AI-generated art is soulless or even demonic. The conversations on the left and right about AI are happening in different universes.
Jonathan: People also have different internal “reason-generating mechanisms.” That is true across the right as well. The right is fragmenting into many camps with different rationales, which will be interesting to watch.
zI really do not care about AI for its own sake. I like things that work. I want authors to win. If a tool helps authors win, I want them to use it.
It is like the Marine Corps argument: “I qualified with iron sights, and you kids use ACOGs and scopes now.” Yes, and now they can shoot better. That is an improvement.
Thomas: The goal is not to suffer. The goal is to adapt, improvise, and overcome. If suffering is part of overcoming, fine, but the point is to win.
Jonathan: When we are shooting at each other, I want to shoot better than the other guy.
Thomas: By the way, Ann asked if I have a merch store selling mugs like the one I am using. If there is demand, I will create a merch store. I have even considered having mugs at the conference. I need to fix some alignment issues on this prototype, but we will see.
Let me move on to another prediction, though I am sure we will circle back to AI.
Gold & Silver Bubble
Thomas: I want to compare the supposed AI bubble with the gold and silver bubble, which almost no one is talking about.
Silver hovered around $25 an ounce for ten years. It bounced between $24 and $27. When it passed $30, I thought, “Okay, silver is getting expensive.” In the last six months, silver has gone from $30 an ounce to $80.
Gold hovered between $1,300 and $2,000 an ounce for a decade. Do you know what gold sells for now? Around $4,500 an ounce. People think Nvidia stock is going to the moon, but gold and silver are going to the moon faster.
This shows classic signs of irrational exuberance. No one is calling it a bubble. There is rampant speculation, and anyone can buy in. You do not need a brokerage account or access to private markets. Anyone can buy gold or silver.
Some people argue the dollar is collapsing, but for the dollar to collapse, it has to collapse relative to other fiat currencies. As bad as our Federal Reserve and fiscal policy are, most other countries are worse. We are all running from the same bear, but the dollar is still on its feet. The euro is crawling. The yen is dragging itself forward with one hand. The bear is coming for all of us, but it will reach the dollar last.
It may be that all the COVID-era money printing is finally leaking from the banking system into the broader economy, and this is fiat currency losing value across the board. I do not know. This is why you should not take financial advice from podcasters.
But if you want to talk about a real bubble, gold and silver look more like it than AI. Even then, gold will not go to zero. It may not stay at $4,500 an ounce, but it will still be worth something. Silver is likely to retain value because it is used in weapons, electronics, and chips, including AI chips.
China is also panicking and not allowing silver to leave the country, which adds complexity.
So next time someone lectures you about the “AI bubble,” ask them what they think about the gold and silver bubble. Their answer will give you a sense of how well researched their opinions really are.
Jonathan: When we talk about gold and silver here, we are talking about purchasing power. As fiat currencies decline, people panic and buy things they consider trustworthy, like gold and silver. Historically, though, when a currency has fallen that far, most people cannot afford to buy the gold and silver they stockpiled. You end up like Robinson Crusoe on an island with a chest of gold and jewels thinking, “This is worthless to me. I cannot eat this.”
Thomas: Gold does not have “gold bros” the way crypto has crypto bros. The gold enthusiasts tend to be older investors who have been buying steadily for decades. Rush Limbaugh used to run gold commercials on the radio. It is a very different demographic.
Computers are going to get more expensive.
Thomas: Here is a very easy prediction: computers are going to get more expensive.
All the major computer makers cannot keep up with demand for AI chips. Many manufacturers who used to produce parts for consumer machines, like smartphones and laptops, have switched to serving servers and data centers instead. One of the big three memory makers no longer produces consumer memory at all. They only make memory for servers and AI data centers because demand is so high.
The result is that memory prices have gone through the roof.
I saw this personally. For my 40th birthday, I decided my midlife crisis would be upgrading my PC. I have been building computers since I was a kid. In September, 32 GB of DDR4 RAM cost about $80. By November, the same 32 GB of DDR4 RAM was $250, and by the time I was ready to buy, it was $300 to $350. The price chart was basically a straight line up.
In some places, you cannot even get a fixed price. You walk up to the counter and they check the spot price like they are selling lobster or silver.
PlayStation and Xbox have both indefinitely suspended plans for new consoles. The Switch 2 may sell out and stay out of stock. Computer manufacturers that did not lock in their supply earlier are now stuck dramatically raising prices, which hurts them compared to competitors who planned ahead.
Apple is the standout. They buy and lock in pricing years in advance, paying TSMC in cash so new fabs can be built and so Apple gets first dibs on high-end chips. That is why Apple computers are so fast right now: they are first to four-nanometer, first to three-nanometer.
Currently, Apple is insulated from the worst of the price surge. You can buy a 32 GB RTX 5090 GPU for a gaming PC for $3,500 to $5,000, or for similar money you can buy an M4 MacBook Air with 32 GB of unified memory, all of which can be used by the GPU, plus you get the rest of the computer: the screen, keyboard, webcam, and speakers.
Apple could, bizarrely, become the low-cost leader in 2026 because they locked in pricing so far ahead of time. The idea of Apple as the budget option breaks my brain.
Jonathan: And you also have to consider what is happening geopolitically. China is running military exercises around Taiwan and has encircled it during those exercises. That will affect smartphones, computers, consoles, and anything that uses advanced chips.
Thomas: I was talking with an Apple employee who mentioned Apple keeps a full year of operating expenses in cash in the bank in case China blockades Taiwan. It is that existential a threat.
Most people do not realize that all the Nvidia chips come from one factory in Taiwan. Nvidia does not manufacture its own chips. Apple does not either. About 90 percent of high-end chips are made by TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, in a small number of fabs.
You basically reserve time on their equipment. Apple might “own” certain production windows, Nvidia others. One factory is making all the superchips. If that factory loses power, operations can be disrupted for months.
We saw this in Austin when the local Samsung fab lost power during the “snowpocalypse.” Because semiconductor manufacturing uses elements from across the periodic table and requires extremely stable conditions, a short outage can take months to recover from.
Everyone who bought a new Mac during the Black Friday deals is going to feel like a prophet later. You could get a 16 GB unified-memory Mac for around $750. Last I checked, it was still around $800 on Amazon, which is still an excellent price.
I do not know if Apple will raise prices now that everyone else is raising theirs. It will be interesting to watch. But computers will get more expensive across the board because the two components hit hardest are RAM and SSDs. You cannot build a computer without both.
If you need a new computer, this may be the last relatively “normal” moment to buy, especially from manufacturers who locked in supply early.
It reminds me of when oil prices spiked around 2008–2009. Most airlines had to add fuel surcharges, except Southwest. Southwest had locked in long-term fuel contracts and could buy jet fuel at the old, lower prices. They enjoyed a huge cost advantage for years.
Jonathan: I just covered some of this in my latest Author Arsenal episode about Vellum. Vellum only runs on Macs. Half my comments were, “Does it work on PC?” No, it does not. I said that in the episode.
Authors also need to understand how PC companies build their machines. Most consumer PCs are designed as disposable. You are supposed to replace them every two years. If you are in that habit because those machines used to be cheaper than a MacBook Air, you set yourself up for pain when a spike like this hits. Suddenly you are paying MacBook money for a disposable laptop every two years.
I switched to Apple because their machines last much longer. If you want to survive the coming “famine,” when people at our income level struggle to afford computers, durability matters.
Thomas: Things will be bad simply from AI-driven demand, and catastrophically bad if China and Taiwan enter an open conflict or even a “warm” conflict. China does not have to fire missiles. They can simply blockade Taiwan and stop ships from carrying chips out.
That means a new phone could cost $3,000 or $4,000, if you can even buy one.
I did a full episode several years ago on what a China–Taiwan conflict would mean for authors. I dug into paper prices, Taiwanese lumber, and all kinds of supply-chain details. This was before AI tools could help with that research, so past Thomas suffered for that episode. I hope it stays hypothetical, but it is worth listening to.
Continue to see contraction among traditional publishers.
Thomas: My next prediction is continued contraction among traditional publishers. This was my big “controversial” prediction last year, and it turned out to be correct.
We have reported on publisher closures and emergency acquisitions constantly on Author Update. Another week, another struggling house absorbed or shuttered.
We ended 2025 with some good news about retailers. Barnes & Noble is doing well. But Barnes & Noble doing well does not mean traditional publishers are healthy. B&N may be gaining sales at the expense of indie bookstores or from Amazon selling fewer books. And when Amazon sells fewer books, it barely moves the needle for Amazon, because they make money in so many other ways. For Barnes & Noble, picking up a few percentage points from Amazon is enough to live very happily off the crumbs.
To give you a sense of the problem: in 2025, nine of the ten bestselling nonfiction books were not written or published in 2025. Books typically sell best during their launch year. Despite all their effort and all their pub-board meetings, the major publishers could not produce new titles that outsold their own backlist.
The only 2025 nonfiction book that hit the top ten was Kamala Harris’s memoir, which is essentially a “gimme.” Political memoirs from major candidates always chart well. That tradition goes back to Ulysses S. Grant, whose memoirs finally solved his lifelong financial problems. Political memoirs have been a staple since the 1860s.
So if the pub boards cannot put new titles into the top ten and cannot beat their own backlists, it means they either do not understand what readers want or they are too blinded by their cultural and political assumptions to publish what readers outside the New York bubble actually want.
Jonathan: For example, Spare by Prince Harry was released in January 2023.
Thomas: We saw closures, fire-sale acquisitions, and a lot of flailing. I expect that to continue. Traditional publishers will keep struggling, and indie authors will keep gaining market share. I do not consider that a bold prediction at this point.
Jonathan’s New Year Predictions
Jonathan: I focus mostly on behavior, and author behavior is not going to change much.
Many authors will spend roughly twice as much time complaining as they do actually writing. Social media only makes this worse because it kills productivity. They’ll pour out thousands of words sharing opinions online instead of putting those words into their novels, where they could actually earn money.
People want to feel like good people, and the easiest way to feel like a good person is to take a loud, public stance instead of doing hard, virtuous things. So instead of writing more and building a durable career, they plant a flag declaring, “I am anti-AI,” or “I am anti–electric cars,” or whatever. They join crusades because crusades feel good.
Movements build momentum because they attract people who want to feel righteous, not because everyone has done deep research.
I was talking to my writing group about this using “Trump derangement syndrome” as an example. Many media influencers who spent years hating Trump met him personally and came away saying, “He was funny. He was charming. I hate his policies, but he was pleasant in person.” They never actually knew him. They were participating in a morality play: “Orange Man bad.”
You need a villain to feel virtuous by comparison. You need someone to denounce in front of an audience. It is like the old Marine Corps joke: to avoid getting in trouble for a bad shave, stand next to someone whose shave is worse.
In a zombie apocalypse, you do not have to outrun the zombie. You just have to outrun the slowest person.
You will see that same dynamic through 2026. Crusades and pile-ons will continue because they make people feel like good people with minimal effort.
Guard yourself so you do not get sucked into that time-wasting garbage. We watched a lot of author brands self-destruct when they tried to cash in on trends that sputtered out or made them look awful.
Thomas: Often it is because they spent more time with their author friends in an echo chamber than with their readers. You can get away with almost anything if your readers are on board. Your financial and moral support ultimately comes from them.
If your readers support your stance, you are fine. If they do not, you are not.
Thomas: Let me circle back to one prediction I did not connect properly: Windows 10 versus Windows 11.
One factor making this hardware crunch worse is Microsoft’s plan to end-of-life Windows 10. They announced they would stop supporting it, but when the deadline hit in October 2025, RAM prices were already spiking and people were not upgrading. So Microsoft quietly extended Windows 10 support for another year.
If RAM prices stay crazy, I would not be surprised if they extend Windows 10 again.
On my new PC build, I chose a slightly slower CPU and stuck with DDR4 RAM instead of upgrading to DDR5. I also stayed on Windows 10 because Windows 11 is, frankly, terrible. I have not heard one compelling reason to upgrade, but I have heard plenty of horror stories.
Jonathan: If you are on the “good” version of Windows, do not upgrade to the next one. Wait for the one after that.
Thomas: Windows has a pattern: every other version is good. Skip Vista, stay on XP, then move to 7. Skip 8, move to 10. I am following that pattern. You can pry Windows 10 from my cold, dead hands. I would sooner switch to Linux than Windows 11, especially given the privacy issues and the way they are trying to bolt AI into everything.
I think the first real loser in the AI race may be Microsoft, because everyone hates Copilot. People love ChatGPT. They love Grok and Gemini. People might pity LLaMA, but they do not hate it.
They hate Copilot. They hate Copilot with a burning passion.
Jonathan: Workplace AI is another behavioral factor. Companies buy these corporate upgrades for their computers, and they all come with Copilot. Now people associate Copilot with work, and with work that does not get done as well.
Thomas: You get better results just using the free version of ChatGPT.
ChatGPT’s New Years Predictions
It will feel like a margin recession, even when unit sales look fine.
Jonathan: “It will feel like a margin recession even when unit sales look fine. Publishers and indies will talk about a slow year because costs and ad competition keep rising while reader spending stays selective. Trade revenue softness has already shown up in AAP reporting, which is why you will see more focus on fewer, bigger bets.”
Thomas: “Fewer, bigger books” is always the prediction. Every publisher tries to do that, then ends up publishing more books because they cannot help themselves.
But margins getting squeezed is real. Supply-chain issues will hit traditional publishers, especially in print. They are not hitting indie authors in the same way. Indie authors have roughly the same margins they had ten years ago in e-books, and actually better margins in audiobooks. This is primarily a paper and print supply-chain issue. I agree with this prediction from ChatGPT.
Print will get more expensive, and pricing discipline will get harsher.
Jonathan: “Print will get more expensive, and pricing discipline will get harsher. Expect more list price increases, more hardcover-first thinking for certain genres, and more ruthless trim-size and page-count decisions. IngramSpark has announced pricing changes effective February 1, 2026, which will force a lot of indies to rerun their math.”
Thomas: I am rolling my eyes a bit. The IngramSpark price increase was roughly in line with inflation, around two to three percent. Prices go up every year. That is normal.
That said, list prices will go up. Books will get more expensive. It is not a bold prediction, but I do not have major disagreements with it.
Jonathan: Workplace AI is another behavioral factor. Companies buy corporate upgrades for their computers, and those upgrades come with Copilot. Now people associate Copilot with work, and with work that does not get done as well.
Thomas: And it is not as good. You get better results just using the free version of ChatGPT.
Audiobooks keep stealing share from both ebook and hardcover.
Jonathan: Audiobooks keep stealing share from both eBooks and hardcovers. You will see more audio-first launches, more aggressive audio promos, and more authors treating audio as the primary format for their core readers. The market data and mainstream reporting both point in the same direction.
Thomas: The easiest trends to predict are “trend is happening this year, trend will continue or accelerate next year,” and that is what we are seeing with audiobooks. They are well positioned because listening on your phone is such a good experience, and AirPods are becoming ubiquitous. People who never would have worn wired earbuds are happy to wear AirPods.
We also finally have meaningful competition for Audible. Audible is still dominant, but a whole new group of listeners is discovering audiobooks through Spotify. Audiobooks will keep growing as a share of the pie, which I love.
I half-jokingly say you are not a real author if you do not have an audiobook. Audio was the original format. A thousand and two thousand years ago, that is how “books” were experienced. People were hearers of the word. I have many rants on this, but I will stop there.
AI narration becomes normal in the low and mid tiers, and premium human narration becomes a louder selling point.
Jonathan: “AI narration becomes normal in the low and mid tiers, and premium human narration becomes a louder selling point. Audible and ACX keep expanding AI options, which will flood the market with good-enough audio, while big releases lean harder into celebrity narrators and performance quality.”
Thomas: What you just heard, ladies and gentlemen, was a human trying to sound like a robot, reporting on what a robot wrote about robots narrating books written by humans in a way that sounds like humans. We have come full circle.
AI voice clones have gotten very good. I am already getting YouTube videos from family members who do not realize the entire video, including the voice, is AI. They cannot tell the difference. The AI voice sounds more human than Jonathan trying to sound like AI.
Jonathan: I am just imitating the annoying AI voiceovers on those courtroom videos I keep watching on YouTube. And my daughter is obsessed with The Wild Robot movie, which is actually really good.
Amazon’s DRM-free EPUB/PDF downloads reshape author behavior and piracy risk calculations.
Jonathan: “Amazon’s DRM-free EPUB and PDF downloads reshape author behavior and piracy risk calculations. Starting January 20, 2026, verified purchasers can download EPUB or PDF for DRM-free Kindle books. Authors will split into two camps: convenience-first authors who go DRM-free, and control-first authors who keep DRM on for new releases.”
Thomas: This is a nuclear bomb no one is talking about. If people can get DRM-free versions of your book, they can feed those files to AI without your permission. Almost no one is looking at this through the AI lens.
I think authors will see their sales increase when they turn off DRM, because AI companies will buy copies. Courts have made it clear that as long as the copy is acquired legally, they can use it for training. To the court, that is “just reading.”
There are many AI companies that could buy your book. That is effectively free extra sales. Expect the drama around this story to increase. We have reported on it before; you can find those episodes in our backlist.
Exclusivity gets more porous, and libraries become a more strategic channel for KU authors.
Jonathan: “Exclusivity gets more porous, and libraries become a more strategic channel for KU authors. The KU-to-library exception changes how authors think about wide versus exclusive because it adds discovery without forcing a full distribution shift.”
Thomas: It is interesting that ChatGPT cited Author Media on this. We reported on this, and it really likes our site. That actually makes research harder, because I keep finding my own articles. I already know what I think. It is a feedback loop.
We will see how big the impact really is. Amazon allowing KU authors to submit books to libraries does not mean libraries will actually buy those books. This is like a romantic comedy where one character has finally decided, “She is kind of cute,” but she still thinks he is an obnoxious jerk.
For the relationship to develop, both sides have to say yes. Right now, only one has.
BookTok influence shifts from discovery to dealmaking.
Jonathan: “BookTok influence shifts from discovery to deal-making. Creators will get pulled deeper into cover reveals, packaging feedback, influencer editions, and even imprint-style partnerships, because publishers want repeatable distribution, not one viral spike.”
Thomas: It will be interesting to see if the BookTok shop has any real effect on sales. I do not think BookTok is going to grow much more. I suspect we are already at peak BookTok, but I could be wrong.
Romance stays the economic engine, and romantasy stays the cultural engine.
Jonathan: “Romance stays the cult economic engine, and romantasy stays the cultural engine. You will see more hybrids, more big-emotion positioning, and continued demand signals from unusual places that still track broader culture.”
Thomas: I hope not. Romantasy and explicit romance are terrible for society and for civilization. They are bleeding into every other genre and doing real damage.
Romantasy is where a lot of Barnes & Noble’s money comes from right now. It is funding their store expansion. Publishing and the adult entertainment industry are merging economically. The adult industry is bigger by dollars, and publishing is starting to tap that revenue. There is a lot of money there, but the smut is very bad for humanity.
Screen adaptations keep juicing backlist, which changes acquisition strategy.
Jonathan: “Screen adaptations keep juicing the backlist, which changes acquisition strategy. More titles get acquired and marketed with filmable hooks, and more authors learn to time promos around trailer drops instead of publication dates.”
Thomas: This is not new. It has been happening for years. It will continue. It is like saying, “Teenagers will keep dressing in ways that offend their parents.”
I was watching Betty Boop cartoons from the 1930s while researching, because Betty Boop just entered the public domain. They were shockingly risqué. There is nothing new under the sun.
Censorship pressure remains a real operational constraint, not just a political argument.
Jonathan: “Censorship pressure remains a real operational constraint, not just a political argument. It will affect school and library purchasing, author-event risk, and how publishers position YA and issue-driven books, because ‘bans’ are still widespread even when the counts fluctuate year to year.”
Thomas: These are not bans. You do not deserve to have a library buy your book. If your book is inappropriate for children, it is not a “ban” when a school library chooses not to purchase it.
Jonathan: So many people yelled at us for saying that.
Thomas: I do not care. You are all wrong. Books with adult content should not be placed in school libraries. Adult books should not be given to children, and you do not have a right to use tax dollars to fund that.
If you want to buy that book yourself at Barnes & Noble, you are free to do so. That is not a banned book. Libraries already “ban” entire categories by simply not buying them. Most public libraries do not stock conservative titles like The Tuttle Twins, and no one in publishing treats that as a “ban.”
AI training rights become a standard contract battlefield.
Jonathan: “AI training rights become a standard contract battlefield. More publishers explore licensing or opt-in frameworks, and more authors demand clearer consent language and a defined revenue split because these deals are no longer theoretical.”
Thomas: I am not sure I agree. Courts have been ruling that AI training is “highly transformative,” which pushes it under fair use. If that standard holds, training on legally acquired copies is legal without a separate license.
You can put all the language you want in a contract, but if Anthropic can just buy a $10 or $20 copy of your book and train on it, that is all they need.
Jonathan: I think we will see a push for licensing. You might need an “AI training license” the way you need a fishing or hunting license.
Thomas: That would require Congress to pass a law. Do you know how many laws they passed last year? Almost none. The legislative branch is basically broken. Without filibuster reform and a return to simple majority rule, almost nothing gets done.
Jonathan: And AI companies have all the money. They will have the most influence.
Thomas: Everyone is strangely comfortable with Congress passing no laws except the budget. As long as that holds, nothing comprehensive will happen on AI licensing.
Direct sales keep growing, but only for authors who treat it like a business unit.
Jonathan: “Direct sales keep growing, but only for authors who treat it like a business unit. Tools make it easier, but the winners will be the authors who build repeatable traffic, list growth, and fulfillment workflows, because direct is leverage, not a rescue plan.”
Thomas: I agree. The only way direct sales work is if you have already figured out how to generate demand for your books. If you are selling fewer than a thousand units a month and think, “Shopify will save me,” you are mistaken.
Shopify does not create demand. It improves margins on demand you already have. That is why I did my “Shopify Trap” episode. Authors confuse “more control per sale” with “more sales.” Those are not the same thing.
Jonathan: Amazon comes with a built-in discovery mechanism. Shopify does not.
Gemini’s New Years Predictions
The “Premiumization” of Physical Books
It predicted continued growth for premium, “trophy” editions and deluxe hardcovers. As long as Millennials and Gen Z are still building out their bookshelves, I think that holds.
Audiobooks: The Golden Era
It also predicted a golden era of audiobooks. This may be the start of that era. We finally have real variety: standard single-narrator audio, full-cast dramatizations, AI narration, multiple versions of the same title. Ten years ago, most books did not have an audiobook at all.
Jonathan: I think it is a fool’s-gold era, or a gilded age for audiobooks. AI narration leaves me cold. I do not like knowing a computer is reading from a script and trying to simulate emotion to manipulate me. But I am not mainstream. We will see what consumers decide.
That ties back to direct sales. Authors love the idea of selling direct because it is good for them. But readers make choices based on what is good for readers.
Thomas: If I already have one-click checkout on Amazon, and 150 million other readers do too, it is more friction to buy from you directly. You have to give me a strong reason to type in my credit card and address again.
Jonathan: Kickstarter is direct sales, and it works because it gives readers rewards and a sense of participating in an event. That benefits the reader.
Authors need to stop thinking only about how a move benefits them and start thinking about how it benefits the reader.
I see anti-Amazon authors who sell four copies in their entire lives. They think they “took a stand,” but their readers are still shopping on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the thrift store. That is where you have to go if you want to reach them.
What about audiobook narration as a career?
Thomas: Mike Kelly asked about audiobook narration as a career. Demand is rising, but supply is rising too, and AI is undercutting the low end.
If you want a sustainable career, branding is key. Pick a very narrow niche and become the number one voice in that niche. You want readers to discover authors through you. Then you can defend your rates.
Otherwise, narration is heading toward commoditization.
Jonathan: You have to beat AI, not just match it. You need to be a compelling storyteller.
Thomas: Meanwhile, good microphones are cheap and abundant. Many authors look at their USB mic and think, “I can do this myself.” Whether they are right or not, they are now pricing your work against “doing it myself.”
It is like being a professional plumber in a world full of handy dads who think they can fix every sink. They argue over every line item. By contrast, a millennial homeowner who is not handy says, “Five hundred dollars to fix it? Great, thank you.”
Jonathan: If you are trying to write a novel in January, use the signup link for the Author Arsenal Writing Challenge. Fill out the Google form so I can get your information before Session Zero tomorrow. Once Session Zero starts, I am not taking any new participants. It is too much work to add people midstream.
Show up for the Author Arsenal Writing Challenge.
