Week Ending June 12, 2026
Women don’t buy new books? See what the data is saying. U.S. audiobook sales just hit $2.43 billion, but the fact that 750,000 titles are competing for that figure is changing the game. Claude Fable 5 is fixing manuscript pacing problems and storing your drafts for 30 days. Meta just killed your last real privacy opt-out. And a $10 tool now builds your entire book promo schedule automatically.
PUBLISHING NEWS
Men Buy Books and Women Borrow Them: New Data Shows Libraries Cater Better to Female Reading Preferences
Women are not buying new books. U.S. audiobook sales just hit $2.43 billion, but 750,000 titles are competing for that figure, and it’s changing the game. Claude Fable 5 is fixing manuscript pacing problems and storing your drafts for 30 days. Meta just killed your last real privacy opt-out. And a $10 tool now builds your entire book promo schedule automatically.
According to the Authors Guild’s June 2026 reader acquisition study conducted by the Codex Group, men purchase new books at significantly higher rates than women, while women turn to libraries far more often. The study surveyed regular readers and tracked exactly where people obtained the books they read or listened to in the prior month.
Gender Split in Acquisition Behavior
Men bought new print or ebook copies 42% of the time. Women bought new copies only 33% of the time. Women sourced 30% of their text reads from public libraries compared with lower purchase rates, and the gap widened with audiobooks — women pulled 44% of listens from libraries versus 32% from paid channels. This pattern suggests library collections, programming, and discoverability align more closely with female reading habits and preferences than male ones. Men appear more inclined to own the books they read.
Libraries Serve Affluent, Educated Readers — Not Primarily Poor or Rural Ones
Active library members made up 59% of recent readers in the study. These users were more likely to have household incomes above $75,000, hold graduate degrees, work full-time, and live in suburban areas.
Peak usage hit readers aged 25-44. The data undercuts the common assumption that libraries primarily serve low-income or rural populations who cannot afford books. Instead, the heaviest library users tend to be affluent, educated, and suburban. These same readers bought 42% fewer new books than non-library members while reading 16% more books overall.
Readers Choose Re-Reads and Personal Collections Over New Purchases
Nineteen percent of all books read came from readers’ own personal collections. Another 10% came from used books. Combined with library borrowing, this shows many readers are opting to re-read classics and favorites they already own rather than buying new titles. Ebook consumption shows a clear shift as well. A growing share of digital reading is moving from paid KDP purchases to library platforms like Libby, where access is free to cardholders.
New Books Fail to Convince 75% of Readers to Buy
Only 25% of text reads in the prior month came from new paid purchases or paid subscriptions. That leaves 75% of reading happening through libraries, personal collections, used books, or free borrowing. New releases are struggling to convert readers into buyers at scale.
Authors and publishers are left asking hard questions: Is this because new books are too woke? Too sloppy? Too expensive?
Author Must Ask “How Do I Get Paid When Readers Already Have So Many Free and Low-Cost Options?”
The study documents abundant access. Readers have libraries, personal libraries, used books, subscriptions, and free borrowing at their fingertips. Discoverability is no longer the primary bottleneck for many authors. Monetization inside that environment is. Some authors are testing direct responses to this reality. A growing number are uploading full audiobooks to YouTube for free, using the platform’s massive reach to build audience, earn ad revenue, and drive other paid offerings. The strategy trades immediate per-unit royalties for broader exposure and alternative income streams in a world where most individual reads no longer generate full author compensation.
Sources:
Jonathan: I have a theory about why affluent women use libraries more than they buy books: guilt.
Spending money on a book is not a great financial decision, but getting it from the library is free. If I already have the subscription, or if I already go to the library, there’s no guilt involved. I think this also explains why Kindle Unlimited leans female. With KU, once you’ve bought the subscription, you can read as much as you want.
Men, by contrast, seem more comfortable taking a financial risk on a book they might not like.
Thomas: I wonder if part of it is that women tend to gravitate toward popular titles that libraries stock well, while men are more likely to pursue obscure interests that libraries don’t carry.
The Authors Guild study pointed out that the authors most hurt by library lending are the James Patterson types, the mainstream names. If your taste runs to obscure corners of Roman history, the library may have one book on the subject and you’re back on Amazon for the rest. Men reading nonfiction also want to mark up their books. You can’t highlight a library copy, but you can mark up copies you own.
Much of the heavy romance and erotica consumption by women, which is a binge genre that gets expensive fast, is shifting from Kindle Unlimited to Libby. KU is still growing, but the growth rate is slowing since Libby arrived.
Libby offers a similar reading experience without the $10 monthly fee, and since Amazon removed the erotica category, readers are increasingly finding those titles through library systems.
Jonathan: In Facebook groups, people ask for book recommendations and specify that it must be available on Hoopla or Libby. They’re filtering by library availability from the start, and they’re almost all women.
Thomas: Libraries’ main self-defense is that they benefit the poor, but this data shows they’re mostly benefiting the wealthy in their current form. Many libraries specifically exclude rural residents who fall outside the taxing jurisdiction that funds them.
Audiobook Revenue Climbs to $2.43 Billion in 2025 as Active Titles Surge 43 Percent
According to the Audio Publishers Association’s annual sales survey released June 5, 2026, the U.S. audiobook market extended its 15-year growth streak. Publisher revenue rose 9 percent to $2.43 billion. That follows the 13 percent increase that lifted 2024 sales to $2.22 billion.
Title Count Explodes
Publishers reported more than 750,000 active titles in 2025. The total jumped 43 percent from the prior year. Digital formats accounted for 99 percent of revenue and grew 10 percent year over year.
Fiction Still Dominates Revenue
General fiction delivered the largest share at 27 percent. Science fiction and fantasy along with romance each captured 13 percent. Mysteries, thrillers, suspense, and general non-fiction each took 9 percent. Humor, general fiction, and children’s books including young adult posted the fastest growth in 2025.
Audio-First Publications Accelerate Sharply
Revenue from audio-first originals rose 50 percent from $91.1 million in 2024 to $136 million in 2025. These titles now represent 6 percent of total net revenue.
Consumer Reach Remains Broad
The APA’s 2026 consumer survey, conducted by Edison Research, shows strong engagement. 58 percent of American adults age 18 and older, roughly 157 million people, have listened to an audiobook. Among listeners, 63 percent consumed at least one title in the past year and 35 percent listened in the past month. Listeners averaged 3.8 audiobooks per year, with 26 percent finishing four or more. Top motivations include multitasking (86 percent), listening on the go (84 percent), and replacing screen time (70 percent). Recent listeners accessed audiobooks through multiple channels: 49 percent bought directly from websites or apps, 48 percent used subscription services, 46 percent borrowed via digital library apps, and 42 percent redeemed credits from dedicated services.
AI Remains a Tiny Slice
AI-narrated titles generated just 0.03 percent of 2025 sales revenue. Only 16 percent of audiobook listeners have tried an AI-voiced title. Willingness to try AI narration fell from 70 percent in 2025 to 61 percent in 2026.
Piracy Pressure Builds on YouTube
45 percent of listeners have played an audiobook on YouTube, up from 35 percent the prior year. Many of those uploads are unauthorized copies. The Association of American Publishers has partnered with Vermillio to help identify and remove illegal audiobooks from platforms like YouTube.
Why This Matters for Authors
The 43 percent jump in active titles creates more work for narrators, producers, and rights holders while intensifying competition for listener attention.
Audio-first originals grew fast enough to suggest a viable path for authors who want to develop content specifically for audio or enhance print editions with bonus material.
Library borrowing now reaches nearly half of recent listeners, so optimizing metadata and pursuing library-friendly distribution through OverDrive, Libby, and similar platforms can expand reach and generate steady royalty streams.
Additionally, rising YouTube piracy means authors and publishers should actively monitor uploads and use available claim tools.
Consumer interest in AI narration has cooled, reinforcing the value of high-quality human performances for premium positioning and discoverability. The market continues to reward publishers and creators who deliver convenient, high-production-value listening experiences across multiple access points.
Sources:
Audio Publishers Association: 2026 Consumer & 2025 Sales Surveys Press Release
Publishers Weekly: U.S. Audiobook Sales Up 9% in 2025, Reach $2.43 Billion
InfoDocket: Audio Publishers Association Reports Audiobook Sales Jump 9% to $2.43 Billion
Thomas: The 50 percent jump in audio-first originals doesn’t surprise me. What used to be the standard audiobook was an unabridged reading of a print book. But the superior format for a much larger potential audience is the audio drama, a radio-play-style production with sound effects, multiple actors, and cinematic pacing. That’s essentially screen time for your mind while your eyes are busy elsewhere.
The cost of producing and delivering that content has dropped dramatically, and the total addressable market is nearly unlimited. I expect audio-first originals to keep accelerating.
These growth numbers are even more striking when you factor in that roughly half of all audiobook consumption, per the Authors Guild data, now runs through the library system, where authors are paid once for a title that gets borrowed repeatedly. The revenue is real, but a significant portion of listening generates no incremental royalty for the creator.
Remember that the AI narration figures come from the Audio Publishers Association, which tracks traditional publishers. They don’t have visibility into the indie market, YouTube uploads with AI narration, or self-published audio. The 0.03 percent figure almost certainly captures a handful of high-profile AI-narrated releases rather than the actual volume of AI audio circulating online.
That said, the survey data on listener willingness, falling from 70 to 61 percent, is more useful because it reflects reported consumer behavior rather than publisher sales data.
Jonathan: The distinction matters for authors. If listeners can’t tell something is AI-narrated, the preference data is less actionable. What actually matters is the conversion decision. When a listener knows they’re choosing between a human-narrated and an AI-narrated title, which do they pick? That’s the signal.
Thomas: People increasingly encounter AI audio on Facebook without realizing it. What they mean when they say they don’t like AI narration is often that they don’t like AI they can detect.
AUTHOR ALERTS
Author Media Launches Promo Stacker for Targeted Book Promotions
The Promo Stacker tool takes an author’s genre, budget, and run type then outputs a ranked day-by-day schedule of promo sites that builds momentum to a strong anchor day, complete with specific calendar dates and unlimited use with no token cost.
Indie authors can now stop guessing which sites to book and which order to book them. Instead, they can use this $10-per-month Patron Toolbox tool to stretch small budgets across sites that reach the right readers and generate the sales, reviews, and word-of-mouth their books need.
Sources:
AuthorMedia.social: Announcing Promo Stacker
Thomas: I spent all week creating this tool. Some patron toolbox features are quick to build; this one was not.
When you run a promotional campaign, there’s a correct sequence for booking each site. You need momentum building toward a strong anchor day, and different sites serve different genres with different review thresholds and lead times. Manually researching all of that is overwhelming, especially when you’re looking at 50 to 100 options depending on whose list you use.
The Promo Stacker takes your genre, review count, budget, book type, and campaign date, and outputs a day-by-day schedule with links to sign up for each site. You can lock in a BookBub Featured Deal as your anchor date (if you have one), or build a stack without it.
The tool runs entirely in JavaScript, which is why building it was painful. Since there’s no server-side processing, it has no token costs and no usage limits for patrons. Listen to my Novel Marketing episode with Bryan Canter for a walkthrough of the underlying promo stacking strategy, or use the tool to skip straight to a custom schedule.
TECH NEWS
Apple Adds Siri “Write My Book For Me” Feature to MacOS
Apple Hands Authors a New AI Writing Partner While Hardware Performance Gains Slow
According to Apple’s official WWDC 2026 keynote and press releases on June 8, the company introduced a rebuilt version of Siri called Siri AI, along with deeper Apple Intelligence features across macOS 27 Golden Gate, iOS 27, and iPadOS 27. The most immediate development for working authors is a set of system-wide writing tools that let users generate and refine text through natural language prompts in virtually any app where they can type.
Siri AI Writing Tools Arrive System-Wide
Users can now describe what they need and have Siri generate a first draft from scratch. They can then select text and ask for specific revisions or feedback, such as tightening pacing or shifting tone. The system also provides automatic proofreading and grammar suggestions as writers type.
In Mail and Messages, Siri AI can match a user’s typical tone and punctuation style when communicating with specific recipients. These capabilities extend across Apple’s own apps and most third-party applications.
For indie authors, this functions as a conversational drafting and editing partner built directly into the operating system. Writers can generate scene starters, marketing copy, or newsletter sequences without leaving their primary writing environment.
The feature requires newer hardware, M1 or later Macs and iPhone 15 Pro or newer devices for the full experience, and arrives in public beta this summer with a full release this fall.
A “Snow Leopard” Moment for macOS Golden Gate
While the AI headlines dominated coverage, Apple deliberately framed macOS 27 Golden Gate as a performance-focused release in the spirit of Mac OS X Snow Leopard from 2009. The company emphasized under-the-hood improvements that make the Mac feel more responsive, including faster AirDrop transfers, quicker network file browsing, better Messages syncing, and stronger Spotlight suggestions.
Apple is also removing remaining legacy Intel code now that Intel Macs no longer receive updates. Craig Federighi and other executives described the goal as making everyday tasks feel faster without requiring users to buy new hardware.
This focus carries a larger signal. Advanced chip manufacturing faces real cost and supply chain constraints in 2026. Dramatic year-over-year performance leaps from new silicon are becoming harder and more expensive to deliver. Apple is instead extracting gains through deep software optimization on existing Apple Silicon chips.
Authors who spend long hours in Scrivener, compiling manuscripts, or running research tabs alongside AI tools may notice a meaningfully snappier machine even on current hardware.
Parental Controls Signal a Deeper Cultural Shift
In the same keynote, Apple unveiled expanded child safety features that give parents significantly more granular control. New Child Accounts activate age-based protections automatically for children under 13. Parents can now require approval before kids visit new websites through a feature called Ask to Browse.
Communication Safety tools blur nudity by default for users under 18 and now block gore and violent content in shared images and videos. Parents must also approve new contacts, and redesigned Screen Time offers easier category-based time allowances with expert-recommended starting points.
These changes do more than add features. They reflect growing demand from parents, particularly millennials, for stronger guardrails around children’s device use. Apple is making heavy restriction simpler to implement at the system level. This development points to a broader cultural movement toward more structured, less free-range digital childhoods.
What This Means for Authors
The new Siri AI writing tools represent the most direct productivity gain for authors from this WWDC. At the same time, the performance emphasis in macOS Golden Gate suggests that reliable speed and battery life on current machines will matter more than ever.
The parental control updates serve as a cultural indicator of shifting attitudes toward technology and childhood that will shape the next generation of readers and writers. Apple is delivering practical tools while quietly acknowledging that the old pattern of easy, dramatic hardware improvements is changing.
Sources:
Apple Newsroom: WWDC26 announcements
Apple Newsroom: Siri AI details
Apple Newsroom: New child safety features
Reporting from MacRumors and TechCrunch on macOS 27 Golden Gate performance focus (June 8-10, 2026)
Thomas: This year’s WWDC is in some ways a delivery of promises made two years ago. The difference is that developers who’ve seen the beta say it actually works this time. Siri is genuinely smarter.
For dictation specifically, Apple was already very good, and the new version may eliminate the need for tools that clean up raw dictation output. The combination of better punctuation handling, dialogue formatting, and homophone correction that third-party tools currently provide will likely come out of the box. If you’re still on Dragon, you should be aware: Dragon built a strong dictation product using an older approach, and that older approach can’t be upgraded to the LLM-powered architecture the way you’d patch existing software. It has to be rebuilt from scratch. The economics of doing that don’t favor Dragon when Apple and Google are providing better dictation for free.
The Snow Leopard framing is worth taking seriously. When Steve Jobs introduced Mac OS X Snow Leopard in 2009, the headline was that the new version had no new features, only performance improvements. That turned out to be exactly what the platform needed. Apple is making the same bet now, partly because they have to, due to chip availability.
The parental controls story is the more culturally significant signal from this keynote. Apple is being pushed by competition from ultra-minimal phones that parents are choosing specifically because they don’t want their children on smartphones.
Millennial parents are far more hesitant than Gen X parents were to hand their kids a full-featured device. Apple is responding by making heavy parental restriction easy to implement at the system level. Whether these controls are effective in practice is a separate question.
In the past, Apple’s parental controls have often been easier for kids to circumvent than for parents to configure. But the direction is clear, and it reflects a broader cultural shift toward more structured, less open-ended digital childhoods.
Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 Super Writer & Privacy Violator
According to Anthropic’s official support documentation released alongside the June 9, 2026 launch, Claude Fable 5 is the company’s first generally available Mythos-class model. It shares the same underlying architecture as the more restricted Claude Mythos 5 but includes additional safety classifiers that limit its use in high-risk domains.
Fable 5 posts significant gains on long-horizon and agentic benchmarks. It scored 80.3% on SWE-Bench Pro compared with 69.2% for Claude Opus 4.8 and broke 90% on Hex Analytics long-form complex tasks. The model supports a 1-million-token context window and up to 128k output tokens. Anthropic positions it for ambitious, multi-day workflows in software engineering, knowledge work, scientific research, and vision tasks. Pricing stands at $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. Access remains included on paid plans through June 22, 2026, after which usage shifts to paid credits. Safety classifiers trigger refusals or automatic fallbacks to Claude Opus 4.8 on topics involving advanced cybersecurity, biology, or certain technical domains. Early user reports indicate these interventions occur more frequently than with prior models.
Privacy and Data Retention Requirements
Anthropic now designates Fable 5 as a covered model. Prompts and outputs face mandatory 30-day retention for trust and safety purposes across every platform, including Claude.ai, the API, AWS Bedrock, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Foundry. The policy overrides previous zero-data-retention agreements that applied to other Claude models. Data deletes automatically after 30 days except in active safety investigations or legal holds. Approved reviewers can access flagged content under logged controls. Microsoft reportedly restricted internal employee access to Fable 5 over concerns about confidential data handling. Users on X have highlighted the change as a significant privacy concern, especially when connecting the model to workspaces or using memory features that could carry sensitive information into retained data.
Guardrails and Model Behavior
Developers on X report that the safety classifiers sometimes block or nerf legitimate professional queries, including smart contract work and certain research topics. Anthropic has already begun adjusting some restrictions following developer backlash. One user described Fable 5 as “quite possibly the most restricted Anthropic model ever publicly released.” The model routes flagged sessions back to Opus 4.8 rather than refusing outright in most cases. Users describe the experience as “bumper bowling” — powerful capabilities contained within tighter boundaries than previous Claude releases.
Performance on Writing Tasks
Early benchmarks and prompting guidance show strength in structured, long-form knowledge work and complex planning. The model produces professional-grade output on documents, analysis, and multi-step projects when given clear architecture. Creative fiction results remain more mixed in initial community feedback. Some users note improved short-fiction benchmark scores, while others report excessive verbosity and overconfidence that disrupts iterative prose drafting.
Real-World Author Experience
Authors Elizabeth Ann West and Stacey Anderson of Future Fiction Academy shared one of the first detailed fiction-focused tests in their June 10 episode of The Automated Author Log. They described Fable 5 as a “deus ex machina” that delivered major pacing improvements during manuscript reconciliation on Book Six.
The hosts credited the model with helping implement advanced craft techniques, including “camera hunger” — identifying the scene readers most want to witness next — plus stronger use of dramatic irony, withholding, and chapter in/out hooks. They also demonstrated practical prompting lessons, such as why precise verbs dramatically change output quality, and advised using Fable 5 strategically for hard structural problems rather than routine drafting.
Additional Testing from The Nerdy Novelist
In a June 12 video titled “Claude Fable 5 is HERE! But Can It Write?“, The Nerdy Novelist ran side-by-side tests against Claude Opus 4.8 across loglines, outlining, basic and advanced prose, dialogue, editing, ad hooks, email copy, and SEO articles.
Fable 5 showed clear advantages in reasoning-heavy tasks. Its outlines were more coherent, with better integration of character flaws and Save the Cat moments that felt connected rather than shoehorned. It also stayed much closer to requested word counts on long-form SEO content and performed stronger when editing older prose.
On pure prose generation, results were closer, sometimes slightly more natural, but not a dramatic leap. Jason noted Fable 5 costs roughly twice as much as Opus 4.8 and remains on the fence about whether the prose improvement justifies the higher price for daily drafting, while recommending it for outlining and structural work.
Why This Matters for Authors
Fable 5 offers clear advantages for authors tackling complex manuscript architecture, series pacing across multiple books, or large-scale research and outlining projects. The real-world pacing wins reported by West and Anderson show tangible craft-level benefits when the model receives proper scaffolding.
At the same time, the mandatory 30-day data retention creates material risk for writers handling unpublished manuscripts, sensitive notes, or client work. Authors who previously relied on zero-data-retention options with Anthropic must now treat Fable 5 differently.
Many users on X recommend a tiered approach: reserve the more expensive, heavily guarded Fable 5 for high-stakes structural and planning work while routing everyday prose and lighter tasks to faster, cheaper models that still support stronger privacy defaults.
The model is still brand new. Guardrail adjustments continue, and author testing remains early. Writers should evaluate both the capability gains and the privacy tradeoffs against their specific workflows before shifting significant manuscript work onto the new system.
Sources:
Anthropic Support: Data Retention Practices for Mythos-class Models
Claude Platform Docs: Introducing Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5
Anthropic News: Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5
TechCrunch: Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 Is a Version of Mythos the Public Can Access Today
Future Fiction Academy: Fable 5 Ate My Pacing Problem
X: Privacy red flag on memory and data retention
X: “Most restricted Anthropic model ever publicly released”
Additional X posts and community reports on privacy, guardrails, and model usage (June 9-11, 2026)
Thomas: Every person I’ve seen test Fable 5 reports it’s noticeably better at writing. It’s also very slow and very expensive. But the capability jump is real, and for anyone who thought AI writing assistance was plateauing, this is a reminder that the models are still improving significantly from generation to generation.
The all-you-can-eat model is ending. Both Anthropic and OpenAI are moving toward token-based pricing as they pursue profitability and, potentially, IPOs. To put the cost in concrete terms: running a 100,000-word manuscript through Fable 5 for a developmental edit, approximately 150,000 tokens in and 50,000 tokens out, costs around $2 per submission. Iterate a few times and you’re spending real money on a single editing pass.
The privacy issue is the bigger story for authors. Anthropic is framing the mandatory 30-day retention as a safety measure, but this policy overrides zero-data-retention agreements that previously applied on the API.
Microsoft has already restricted internal employees from using Fable 5 over concerns about confidential data. For writers with unpublished manuscripts, client work, or sensitive research, Fable 5 needs to be treated differently from other Claude models.
My recommendation is to keep Fable 5 for structural and planning work where the capability gains justify the cost and the content risk is lower, and route everyday drafting to models that still offer real privacy defaults.
Meta Just Made It Harder to Escape Their Tracking: What Authors Should Do Now
According to Meta’s own announcement, the company is eliminating the setting that let users fully disconnect their activity on other websites and apps from their Facebook and Instagram accounts. Starting in July, that control disappears. The new single toggle only lets you decide whether Meta uses that data to personalize your ads and feed content. It does not stop businesses from continuing to send your browsing, purchase, and login data to Meta in the first place.
Meta says it is not collecting new information. It is simply expanding how it uses data that thousands of companies already share through pixels, customer lists, and conversion tracking. If you bought a book on another site, played a game, or logged into an app with your email, that signal can now influence what appears in your Facebook and Instagram feeds and what Meta’s AI suggests to you.
For authors who built platforms on these networks, the implications are direct. The same systems many use to run book ads and reach readers are becoming harder to limit. Turning off the new setting reduces personalization, but it does not sever the underlying data connection the way the old disconnect option did.
Some authors are concluding that partial controls are no longer enough. They are deleting their personal accounts and shifting their primary presence to email lists, Substack, their own sites, and other platforms where they own the relationship with readers. Deletion does not erase every trace — Meta retains some data for a period after deletion, and hashed customer lists from publishers or retailers can still match — but it removes the active profile and significantly reduces ongoing signals tied to a visible account.
Others are keeping accounts strictly for advertising while moving their personal activity and audience building elsewhere. They treat Meta as a paid traffic channel rather than a home base.
The practical reality for most authors is this: the more you rely on Facebook and Instagram for discovery and sales, the more these changes affect you. The more you want to minimize cross-site tracking, the fewer good options remain inside the platform.
Meta will continue to argue that this delivers better, more relevant experiences. Many users and privacy researchers see it as another step that reduces individual control while increasing the company’s data advantage.
Authors who value maximum separation from this system are treating deletion as a serious option rather than an extreme one. They are asking whether the reach is still worth the growing dependence and the shrinking ability to opt out.
If you decide the trade-offs no longer make sense for your work or your principles, the path is straightforward. Download your data first. Move your primary audience to owned channels. Then delete.
The companies that keep showing up in people’s off-Meta activity lists are not going to stop sending information to Meta. The only variable you fully control is whether you keep feeding the system an active, linkable profile.
Sources:
Meta Help Center: About the updated Activity from other businesses setting
The Verge: Meta will use your activity on other websites to personalize your feeds
Thomas: Most people don’t realize that any website advertising on Meta, which is most of the websites you regularly visit, has a tracking pixel that lets Meta observe your behavior on that site. A VPN does nothing to protect you from this. Cookies are the mechanism, not your IP address. Meta has been building a profile on you from your off-platform activity for years. What’s new is that you can no longer disconnect it even partially.
This change is likely a direct response to the tracking restrictions Apple introduced on iOS. As Meta loses visibility into on-device behavior, they’re doubling down on the web browsing data that pixels still capture. The tracking that’s being locked in is more valuable to them precisely because other data sources have been cut off.
The silver lining for authors running Facebook ads is that targeting may actually improve. Readers who were opting out of cross-site tracking will now be included in the data pool Meta uses to match audiences. If you’re using Facebook ads to find readers, the AI’s profile on those readers just got more complete.
Jonathan: That’s the price of free. You get to use the platform, but the platform gets to use you.
Thomas: If you want to actually minimize this, deletion is the most effective option. I haven’t gotten a notification about this change because I’m not on Facebook. That’s my recommendation. The less time you spend on these platforms, the less you feed the system.
ZEITGEIST
In a News Scene Dominated By The Heavy, Let’s Take a Look At the Fun Around the World
Thomas: The United States is hosting the World Cup, and a lot of people around the world are realizing they don’t actually know much about America. Everything they did know was filtered through Hollywood, and Hollywood really only shoots movies in LA and New York.
When Europeans visit the heartland in real life, they’re realizing it’s amazing. They’re falling in love with everything, particularly our barbecue.
Europeans Discover American Food
Jonathan: People from the UK, Europeans, and more recently Koreans are traveling to the US and trying barbecue or breakfast foods for the first time.
I watched a video about UK schoolchildren trying biscuits and gravy. They start with, “This looks disgusting” and “That’s not a biscuit.” Then they try it and their eyes light up: “Whoa, this is so good.” Then they’re asking questions like, “How do I get a visa?”
What I wanted to do with today’s Zeitgeist was talk about the fun that’s in the diversity of cultures across the world. I’m talking about how places are different and how that’s good. There’s so much fun to be had in exploring those differences.
Thomas: There are three primary kinds of barbecue you can use to create an entire rainbow. Texas barbecue is the first. Kansas City barbecue is beef, chicken, or pork with a dry rub and often a sweet sauce. Carolina barbecue uses a vinegar sauce, and do not get Carolinians started on which Carolina is the real Carolina, because they will fight you to the death. All three can be of equal quality, but Carolina barbecue has the largest variation. The bad barbecue is almost always Carolina because it requires so much skill to do right. Good Carolina-style barbecue is unbelievable.
Jonathan: Come to Tucson, and you’ll find breakfast restaurants that specialize in massive spreads. They’re only open from 6 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon, but they have pancakes the size of a baby and chicken fried steaks that are enormous, all covered in gravy.
Thomas: Of the four Michelin-star barbecue restaurants in the United States, three are in Austin, Texas. I have a personally curated guide to Austin restaurants that I include in the handbook everyone gets at the Novel Marketing Conference. I specifically schedule no events after 5:00 PM so attendees can go experience the local restaurant scene. We have two cuisines, and barbecue is just one because we also have Tex-Mex.
Jonathan: I don’t want Michelin food when I go to barbecue. The worse the venue, the better the food. If you see a porta potty billowing smoke, go in and order the full slab. The potato salad is going to be amazing.
What’s the first thing foreigners notice when they land in America?
Jonathan: When foreigners come to the United States, the primary thought is, “Everything is bigger than it has any right to be.” The Japanese got onto American X a few months ago, and we’re seeing AI-written stories about their experiences with free refills and supersizing.
Thomas: Moderation is not an American value. Benjamin Franklin tried to make it one, but it didn’t stick.
Jonathan: In Tucson, we have state fairs, monster trucks, professional wrestling. Our football stadiums are enormous, and those are just the college ones.
Thomas: Of the 10 largest stadiums in the world, two are in North Korea and one is a soccer stadium in India. The next eight largest are all American college football stadiums, bigger than our NFL stadiums.
These Europeans are going to some university they’ve never heard of to watch a football game and asking, “Why is the TV an acre large? Why does it make the seats shake?”
Jonathan: When foreigners come to the United States, they’re expecting politics. They’ve seen Hollywood and the news, so they’re braced for conflict. But they leave talking about the food, the Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone. America is a beautiful place and the food is incredible.
I dealt with this in college with our large Asian student population. They’d say, “We get an ice cream in Asia and it’s your sample size, what they give for free.” Then they’d get an American ice cream and ask, “How are you ever supposed to eat all of that?” And I’d be thinking, “I kinda want another one.”
Global Fun Factors
Japan
Jonathan: Every hobby in Japan can be an entire universe. They have vending machines for everything, capsule toy machines, themed cafés, train stations that run to the second. If you’re not on that train, somebody will politely escort you onto it. They still have arcades, tiny bars hidden in alleys, and seasonal festivals. Visit some of the religious sites and shrines and respectfully enjoy what they’ve worked so hard to create, because the Japanese are about craftsmanship. They devote everything into what they’re doing.
In the martial arts world, tea ceremonies are a big deal at tournaments. The sensei or grandmaster will do a tea ceremony for his black belts. Every movement is practiced, ritualized, and drilled. It’s beautiful to watch.
Thomas: X started translating tweets by regular people for other regular people, so it’s no longer just influencers talking to each other. Regular folks can interact across cultures, and people are realizing that Americans really do protein well. This goes back to the very founding of the country.
One of the things that drew people to the United States was how rare protein was in the Old World. A peasant in England had very few good sources of protein. Pork and beef were unaffordable. Chicken was a special occasion because killing one meant one less egg-layer. Hunting was a hangable offense.
When people learned they could go to the New World and hunt freely, that was a huge appeal. To this day, Americans eat far more meat than most countries, and every part of the country has its own way of preparing it.
Jonathan: There’s a meme that says, “That chicken had a family.” “I know. That’s why I got the family bucket, so they’re all there.”
Thomas: My dad took me to a cattle auction because my family does some ranching. We run Angus and Brangus on the family ranch. He was a little nervous I’d leave a vegan, seeing all these beautiful cows being auctioned off. After the auction, I asked if I could have a hamburger. We are still cattle ranchers.
Thomas: I noticed a Scottish guy who was almost in tears at a small-town restaurant with down-home food. He said, “I feel at home here.” Something a lot of people don’t know is that English culture was actually better preserved in the American South than it was in England. The Southern accent is closer to how English was spoken 300 years ago than anything spoken in England today.
Enclaves of a culture will commonly preserve an older form of that culture more faithfully than the origin country, which keeps changing. A version of English culture got frozen in the Deep South, and a version of Scottish culture got frozen in Scotland.
So, when that Scotsman walked into that restaurant, he was sharing not just a language with the woman behind the counter, but likely ancestors. She probably has a tartan at her house and knows which clan she came from.
My family still has the tartans and knows our clans, though we’ve forgotten which ones we’re supposed to hate. We’re not good Scots in that regard. A big part of being in a clan is knowing your rival clans and your long enmities with them.
But it was interesting seeing that connection, which is very different from the connection a Japanese tourist has.
For a Japanese tourist, it’s not an ethnic connection or a culture frozen in time. It’s more of a spiritual connection. They’re thinking, “Your passion for excellence in barbecue is similar to our passion for excellence in sushi.” The meat is different, but the passion is the same.
Jonathan: When I barbequed, I got up at 4 in the morning to light the fire for my smoker. I applied my seasoning the night before specifically to get the right glistening cover, then I managed the fire for 16 hours, waking up every hour to check the temperature.
Thomas: That’s something the Japanese could get into. That kind of focused devotion to excellence is something a Japanese culinary enthusiast can immediately appreciate. What we call making it with love, the Japanese approach with precision and care. They arrive at the same place from the same direction.
Jonathan: What we call passion, they call craft. I like seeing the overlaps between Japanese and American culture.
South Korea
Jonathan: Life in South Korea should be efficient, stylish, and open until 3 AM. Korean barbecue is fantastic. If you haven’t had a gochujang fried chicken sandwich, go educate yourself right now. There are karaoke rooms, 24-hour culture, PC gaming cafés, anything delivered anywhere, and street food markets.
I have a lot of Marine buddies who’ve been stationed there, and they all say, “This is awesome. I love this.”
I watched a video of South Koreans reacting to what Americans think of Korean culture, and they said, “You guys aren’t too far off.”
Thomas: These unique cultures must be preserved. The trend toward globalization, where everything becomes the same generic LA, means we lose something irreplaceable. There’s no generic version of Japanese. There’s no generic version of Korean. The weirder it is, the more authentic it is to the original.
India
Jonathan: India offers maximum sensory input. We’re talking extremely spicy cuisine. The UK loves Indian cuisine so much probably because UK food is famously unspiced. They conquered the world to get spices and used zero of them.
Thomas: There’s actually a reason why northern countries don’t spice their food much and southern countries do, and it has to do with food preservation. The closer you are to the equator, the more spices you have to put on food to keep it from going bad, because summers are longer and winters shorter.
In Scotland, once the frost hits in October, it stays until March. You can butcher your pig, hang it in a smokehouse, and it’s still good months later. You can’t do that in India. You cover the meat in spices to keep it good. You see this pattern in China too. The farther south you go, the spicier the food. It’s the same in the United States. Go far enough south down the Mississippi and you end up in New Orleans with really spicy food, made by the same French Canadians who can’t handle it back in Quebec.
Jonathan: Another thing Indians do brilliantly is make movies. Bollywood is very different from Hollywood. The action is gloriously ridiculous, it’s designed to be fun, and nobody is taking it seriously. It’s entertainment and not a sermon.
Eight guys lock shields, get loaded into a catapult, get thrown over a wall into a city, and then they explode out of their formation and start fighting. It’s ridiculous and delightful.
Mexico
Jonathan: I lived in Mexico from age 13 until I went to college because my family were missionaries. Food is a love language there.
Mexicans are some of the most patriotic people you’ll ever meet. I loved living there during the World Cup because the US always plays Mexico, and I’d be walking through town, and people would be screaming “Mexico!” at me. I’d yell back “USA! USA!” We had a blast.
Get a good taco from a good guy in Mexico and you’ll never go back to a chain restaurant. I was paying about 34 cents a taco for some of the best tacos I’ve ever had, and then I come back to the States and people want $3.50 for something from a chain. It’s just not good.
Thomas: I don’t eat at Taco Bell. I have tasted the real thing, and Taco Bell is not the real thing. It’s not even as good as it used to be.
Italy
Jonathan: Everything in Italy can be an art form, from coffee culture, pizza and pasta traditions, to Renaissance architecture, fashion, and the tiny countryside villages. God help you if you break the spaghetti noodles before you boil them. They really care.
If you visit Italy, Rome is fine, but you really want to go through the countryside and see what it’s like to live there. If you can become part of an Italian family for a little while, it’s a great experience.
Thomas: All of the cities are becoming like all of the cities. LA is not that different from New York City, and they’re not that different from Paris or London.
The more you get away from the city, the more the local culture expresses itself. In the city, it’s the same Starbucks as the city you just left. It can be genuinely difficult to tell sometimes what city you’re in since cities have the same square glass buildings, the same airports, and the same streetlights. It’s a homogenization that’s soul-crushing.
How can authors bring cultural specificity into their fiction?
Thomas: Your book can be an opportunity to visit wonderful places, and that’s one of the appeals of reading: feeling like you’re on a vacation. Get out of the big city.
f you want to take your characters to the UK, don’t just send them to London. Send them to one of the smaller towns that has 2,000 years of history that’s different from the next small town with 2,000 years of history. Do your research. Make it feel local. Talk to locals. Give it that local flavor, and your book will be so much more appealing. Maybe visit. Go on what might be a tax-deductible trip.
The big breakthrough we’re seeing with the World Cup is that the countryside and the heartland can be genuinely delightful and uniquely fun to visit.
Jonathan: And you don’t need to limit yourself to countries. I’ve done really well writing the Marine microculture and letting people experience what it’s like to be a Marine.
When I go to jujitsu, they tell me I lock in harder than everyone else. One guy said I’ve got “that dog.” It’s my culture. When people read that in fiction, they enjoy it because they’re seeing a completely different way of thinking. And I tell them, “There’s not much thinking involved.”
Thomas: Someone in the chat mentioned their series is set in Italy because it’s the kind of place people want to visit.
Here’s the interesting wrinkle. You’d think setting your book in Italy means it would sell especially well in Italy. What actually happens is locals read it with a critical eye, catching every minor thing you get wrong. Everyone else enjoys it far more.
That’s different from writing Marine microculture, where Marines respond with, “Yes, finally someone who gets us.”
Don’t think of setting your book in Italy as a strategy to sell to Italians. You’re setting it in Italy to sell to everyone who wishes they could afford to visit Italy and can’t.
Jonathan: My non-Marine audience is much bigger than my Marine audience, because so many people wish they were Marines.
Thomas: Italians don’t have nearly the romantic view of Italy that non-Italians have of it. Maybe the only place that romanticizes itself as much as foreigners do is Texas.
Jonathan: Mexico does that. Italy does that. It’s common. But with Italians, they’re loyal to their culture in a specific way. They’re a family-driven culture, so they’re not going to get the same thing out of your Italian novel that an outsider gets, because your version is not the way grandma did it. Mafia romances are so popular because they’re loyalty-driven. People love the idea of loyalty and sticking with the family. Italians probably won’t get that out of your book for the same reason: it’s not the way grandma did it.
Thomas: I visited Dunnottar Castle in Aberdeen as a young man on a day I was flying out late at night. I really wanted to go inside, but it was closed. On one side is a cliff, and you can look up pictures: it’s a beautiful castle out on a bluff with ocean all around. I scaled the cliff because I was in my 20s and an idiot, nearly died several times, got up and over the wall, and felt like a Viking conqueror.
I had the castle all to myself, or so I thought. I turned a corner and there were two guys, one with hedge clippers and one with a weed eater, staring at me with wide eyes. From their perspective, they were alone in a locked castle when this person just walked up. I don’t know if they thought I was a ghost. I played up the tourist angle because I was flying out later and didn’t want to miss my flight. I was 100% trespassing and I knew it.
I went on and on about how amazing the castle was, and one of the guys just shrugged and said, “It’s a ruin.” He didn’t see the magic of it. He’d been raised in a school system that taught a shame-oriented view of his own history, that his ancestors were people to be ashamed of.
Jonathan: That’s a crime, if you ask me.
Thomas: Those guys may have saved my life because climbing back down that cliff, the likelihood of falling to my death was very high. One of them was kind enough to pull out a key, probably eight inches long, walk me to the front door, and let me out. It sounded straight out of a movie. That experience is part of why I named my company Castle Media.
