For Week Ending 7.17.2026
The Atlantic declares America is officially post-literate, because 51% of adults read zero books last year. Publishers and bestselling author Scott Turow sue Google for training Gemini on millions of stolen books, with Google’s own emails proving they knew the risk. A blind study reveals AI audiobooks beating human narrators head-to-head. Fresh ALLi data shows indie authors now out-earn traditionally published ones, but the market is splitting fast. And is the indie-versus-traditional debate quietly killing your creativity?
The Atlantic Declares the Age of Reading Is Over
According to The Atlantic’s August cover story “The End of Reading Is Here” by Rose Horowitch, America has crossed into a postliterate world where the ability to read exists, but the desire to engage with books has evaporated. It reported 51% of adults read 0 books a year.
The National Endowment for the Arts’ comprehensive survey shows fewer than half of all adults reported reading a book of any kind in 2022. Reading for fun has shrunk from mainstream to niche, with the share of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day dropping from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023.
The decline hits every group, cutting across age, gender, and education levels. Even retirees, women, and college graduates, once the heaviest readers, have seen sharp collapses. Books themselves are getting simpler and shorter, and New York Times bestsellers today feature sentences about one-third shorter than those from a century ago. Kids are reading far less and struggling more. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have declined for a decade, and among 13-year-olds the percentage who rarely or never read for fun rose from 8% in 1984 to 29% by 2025. “Every year older a child gets, the less they like to read.”
Why This Matters for Authors
The traditional audience for long-form fiction and nonfiction is shrinking fast. Heavy readers now represent a small, passionate core, with just 20% of adults accounting for over 80% of books read. This shift accelerates the move toward shorter content, videos, and audio alternatives, pressuring authors to adapt formats, marketing, and even sentence-level craft. Careers in letters, humanities, and related fields look like economic dead ends, which could reduce the cultural prestige and pipeline for new writers. Post-literacy changes how society thinks, debates, and preserves knowledge, and authors who master attention in this environment gain a massive edge.
For most of human history the crisis was illiteracy, people who could not read. Today the bigger threat is post-literacy, people who can read but choose not to.
This story should jolt every indie and traditional author into action. Platforms, algorithms, and habits have shifted. The writers who understand the new reality will shape what comes next.
Sources
The Atlantic: “The End of Reading Is Here” by Rose Horowitch
The Atlantic Press Release: August Cover Story
NEA: Arts Participation Patterns in 2022
Commentary
Jonathan: I actually run a version of this in my own house. If my kids read a certain number of books over the summer, they earn a pizza. I half-blame the end of the Pizza Hut personal pan pizza program for part of the reading decline.
Bryan: The rumors of reading’s death are premature. If it were really dead, four million books wouldn’t have published on Amazon last year. I have an Amazon Ads client who made $500,000 on LitRPG between January and March of this year. His shortest book runs 550 pages and most land around 850, and he writes young adult, coming-of-age stories, so kids are absolutely reading. They’re just not reading print. The vast majority of his sales are Kindle Unlimited page reads.
It’s worth listening to these surveys, but you have to weigh them. If the pool of readers is shrinking, that’s fine. It means the ones who remain are more voracious, and we’re clearly still selling books. Traditional publishers are alive and well too.
Jonathan: The heavy readers, the 20% who account for most of the books, are a huge group. Twenty percent of 300 million is a significant number, and those readers can tear through multiple books. One person told me they read one of my books in a day, which is seven books in a week at that pace.
When I was 22, I got the Ulrika the Vampire trilogy from the Warhammer fantasy universe and stayed up until 5:00 in the morning reading the whole thing, because with an ebook you can just buy the next one and keep going.
Bryan: Part of this is how we train our kids. When parents let children engage only with things that demand a 30-second attention span, you get this result. When I joined the Army, they ran a professional reading program for officers, built on the premise that leaders are readers.
You have to engage with something more deeply thought out than a short article. The same is true for writers. If you’re not a reader, you probably won’t write effectively.
Jonathan: Your nutritional intake determines your output. That’s true for athletes, for military personnel, and for writers. I learned it studying Arabic at DLI, where I had 52 weeks to learn one of the hardest languages on earth. What you eat matters, how much you sleep matters, and what you read matters. If you’re going to write a lot of words in a subgenre, read the best work in that subgenre so you’re pushing yourself while you write.
I do the same thing with YouTube. I’ll watch a video game cut scene, love its action and pacing, and ask how I can reproduce that feeling in my own story. You can’t write on an empty tank.
Bryan: The people you spend time with influence you, and you can spend time with the most successful people in your field by reading their books. Thomas has said that he could pay a lot of money for business coaching seminars, or he could buy the $20 book that holds all of that same best advice.
Jonathan: If any of this scares you, look at what’s selling thousands of copies on Kindle Unlimited and realize that author is already a thought leader. If they can do it, so can you.
Publishers and Authors Unite in Massive Class Action Lawsuit Against Google Over Gemini AI Copyright Theft
According to the Association of American Publishers on July 10, 2026, three major publishing houses, Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier, along with bestselling author Scott Turow filed a putative class action lawsuit against Google for willful copyright infringement.
The plaintiffs filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Case No. 1:26-cv-05870) on behalf of themselves and a proposed class of authors and publishers. They accuse Google of illegally copying millions of textual works to train its Gemini large language models.
Google copied books and journal articles originally provided for limited use in Google Books and other services. The company downloaded unauthorized web scrapes of virtually the entire internet, including pirate sources and paywalled content. Google reproduced those works multiple times during training of its multi-billion-dollar Gemini system. The company stripped copyright management information to hide its sources, and Gemini now generates content that directly substitutes for original human works.
Internal Red Flags Ignored
Google knew the risks. Internal documents cited in the complaint show executives flagged training on publisher-provided books as “highly problematic.” Warnings included potential fines in the “$10Bs-$100Bs” range and the likelihood that publishers would view it as infringement and sue. Analyses highlighted restrictive licenses, publisher sensitivity to data training, and weak fair use defenses. Copyright owners explicitly told Google it lacked authorization to use the works for AI training.
Why This Matters for Authors
This suit unites publishers and authors in defense of fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, memoirs, poetry, educational texts, and scholarly articles across thousands of subjects. It preserves claims outside the ongoing In re Google Generative AI Copyright Litigation in California, where publishers initially sought to intervene. The action highlights how unauthorized AI training undermines licensing markets and displaces sales of legitimate works. Gemini’s ability to produce fast, cheap substitutes threatens author incomes and publisher business models. Authors should monitor licensing opportunities and consider how their contracts address AI use.
Publishers and authors invested decades building catalogs and reputations. Google’s actions bypass that ecosystem entirely for commercial gain. This case could set major precedents on fair use for AI training and compensation for creators.
Represented by Oppenheim + Zebrak, LLP and Keller Rohrback, the plaintiffs seek damages, injunctive relief, and destruction of infringing copies.
Sources
Association of American Publishers Press Release
CourtListener: Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Google LLC Complaint
Publishers Weekly Coverage (related ongoing litigation)
Commentary
Jonathan: This sounds a lot like the Anthropic story we just covered.
Bryan: It’s shocking that Google would exploit your information. Remember the company’s original motto? “Don’t be evil.”
Jonathan: We gave them everything, they used everything, and now we supposedly can’t do anything about it.
Bryan: They knew the risk coming out of the ruling in the Anthropic case. This will probably be a long legal battle, and one of two things happens. Either it sets a legal precedent that arrives too late because the training is already done, or Google simply absorbs a settlement it can easily afford.
Jonathan: The Anthropic case already set the precedent, and Google was doing this at the same time Anthropic was. This looks like Google getting slapped for what we already proved we could slap Anthropic for. But does Google care? They still have the data. They don’t have to turn it over, and they don’t have to untrain Gemini.
Bryan: One line in the complaint was a little deceptive, so I dug into it. It says Gemini now generates content that directly substitutes for original human works. From what I understand about how these models train, they’re probabilistic. Given the string of words before this one, what’s the highest-probability next word? A model like that isn’t going to regenerate your book. Even if it consumed Daughter of the Gods in training, no one is going to prompt it and get my book back, and it won’t paraphrase it or pull out segments either.
Jonathan: If Google scraped your book, someone could still prompt it to write something in the style of Bryan Kanter, similar to Daughter of the Gods, and produce a competitor. That’s where market bloat comes in. Readers won’t be savvy enough to know which books to choose, and the imitation is close enough to your style that you’re throwing smoke bombs over the whole market. That’s why I think people ought to write offensive. AI won’t write an offensive book, so if a reader picks up something suspiciously tame, they’ll know it came from a machine.
Bryan: This is really authors and publishers feeling threatened and trying to challenge AI. The genie is out of the bottle. AI will never be worse than it is right now, and every model they release is better than the last. If AI generates bad books, people won’t read them. But if it generates books as good as or better than what you or I can write, people will read them, because in fiction the story matters most.
One of my Amazon Ads clients launched a brand-new pen name in October of last year using AI to write the books. She hit $50,000 in February and about $60,000 in gross sales by March. Her readers clearly did not care. She acts as the director, handling the plotting and deciding what every scene needs to accomplish, then has the AI generate the prose. She just isn’t doing the grunt work anymore.
Jonathan: It’s still absent her voice. You can train AI on your voice, but it will never say what I’ll say. AI was never in the Marine Corps, and it won’t choose the dark-side dialogue options I always choose. Then again, she’s making money, so maybe voice doesn’t matter for her. It comes down to defining your own success. Are you trying to leave something the world will remember, or are you trying to pay your mortgage, or in her case about 50 mortgages?
Bryan: She’s writing to market. She deliberately found a hole in the market and filled it, and she’s not trying to change the world or introduce deep philosophical ideas. She’s writing reverse-harem shifter academy romance, releasing full-length 250 to 300 page books about once a month, and it’s successful.
Jonathan: That genre was slop before AI ever touched it. It’s not my definition of success. I’d love $50,000 a month, but I’d be happier with a book that made people’s lives better.
Many Listeners Prefer AI Audiobooks, New Study Reveals
According to a Variety report, a new Edison Research at SSRS study commissioned by AI audiobook company Spoken found that many fiction listeners prefer artificially generated voices.
The May 2026 survey involved 1,005 fiction audiobook listeners split into groups. Respondents listened to excerpts without knowing AI voices were used. Spoken’s Multi-Cast AI productions, which generate multiple distinct voices for full-cast style audio, scored 61% favorable ratings versus 53% for human-narrated versions. AI versions also ranked higher on narration quality, 66% versus 60%, and overall engagement, 58% versus 49%.
Why This Matters for Authors
AI tools now deliver competitive or superior listener experiences at lower cost and faster production times. Authors gain new options to reach audiobook audiences without traditional narration expenses or delays. Multi-voice AI opens doors for more titles to get audio adaptations, expanding market reach. Quality-focused implementations, like Spoken’s approach, counter backlash against low-effort AI outputs.
The blind study design eliminated preconceptions about AI. Edison Research VP Megan Lazovick noted respondents showed openness to the technology when they experienced it directly. Spoken CEO Phil Marshall emphasized that strong storytelling remains essential, with AI serving as a delivery tool to make stories more compelling and accessible.
Marshall acknowledged valid criticism of cheap AI productions but said this data “changes everything” for how his company approaches Multi-Cast adaptations.
Sources
Variety: Surprise: Many People Prefer AI Audiobooks, New Study Finds (article by Corbin Bolies)
Spoken AI Audiobook company statements via Edison Research at SSRS study, May 2026.
Commentary
Jonathan: Keep in mind this study was commissioned by an AI audiobook company, so let’s interpret the data with that in mind.
Bryan: I work as an audiobook consultant and guide new authors through the ACX process. The old listener surveys said most people preferred human narration for its inflection and emotion. I’ve created beta AI versions of some of my own audiobooks, and it isn’t easy. It’s simple to drop a book into Eleven Reader and let it read, but it won’t pronounce the same word the same way twice, and it certainly won’t nail inflection and pacing on its own.
Jonathan: It’s like directing another take. Each pass is another generation, but it’s the same idea as recording it again.
Bryan: It’s hours and hours of tailoring to get it good enough. This study used an expert team working with these tools. It was more than just grab the book, pick a few voices, and let it run. I guarantee it was a lot of work.
Jonathan: The comparison here is multicast AI against a single human narrator, which sounds like higher production quality simply because there are multiple voices. That skews it. The fair test is full-cast human against full-cast AI.
Bryan: I also want to see whether multicast even comes back. Thomas thinks it will. Early audiobooks were multicast, with sound effects and music, like the old Star Wars books. For a mix of reasons, listeners actually preferred a single narrator reading to them the way a parent would. Full casts were also expensive, especially across a series. Even now, when male-female audition teams come in, my clients almost never prefer them. The one exception is a romance subgenre that alternates his and her perspectives, and even there each narrator handles every voice within their own chapters.
So take the study with a grain of salt. It’s the drug company running the test and announcing the vaccine is safe. The real test is how this plays out in the marketplace over the next two or three years. Right now you can’t get an automated voice onto Audible through ACX. The only route is the virtual voice program through KDP, and that’s terrible. They just released the full-cast Harry Potter, and I’m curious whether it gets traction, because they have been marketing it to me relentlessly.
Jonathan: Every time I log into Audible it pushes that title, even inserting it as an ad on other audiobooks.
Bryan: That heavy a push tells me they aren’t getting immediate traction. If they were, they wouldn’t have to lean on it so hard.
Jonathan: I’m doing a mix of human narration and AI production on Devil Dog right now. I narrate the whole thing myself, then use an AI computer-system voice for a computer character and an AI voice changer for a British female character so I don’t have to fake that voice, and I layer in music and sound effects. In a recent Novel Marketing episode, Thomas called that approach one tier below the top, where the highest tier is a full professional cast with full professional production, more like the old radio plays.
The 5 Tiers of Audiobooks: Which One Should You Publish
The Truth About Self-Publishing in 2026: The Data and The Facts
According to the Alliance of Independent Authors, indie authors now earn more than traditionally published ones. ALLi’s 2025 Indie Author Income Survey found that the median self-published author income reached $13,500, growing at a healthy 6% year-on-year. The typical traditionally published author earned only $6k-$8k and trended down.
The Indie Author Bookstore is now live. In Spring 2026 the Alliance of Independent Authors launched the Indie Author Bookstore, an online showcase of thousands of indie-authored books all gathered in one place, so readers and influencers can now discover quality indie titles easily. Self-publishing is now Plan A. Fewer than 50% of authors under 45 now want their next book traditionally published, and a majority actively prefer the self-publishing route, according to the Authors Guild. Indies are selling direct, with 30% of authors now selling direct and a further 30% planning to start in 2026, per ALLi and Written Word Media data.
Author Sentiment and Demographics
93% of indie authors describe themselves as somewhat or extremely positive about self-publishing, according to Kingston University research. A reverse gender pay gap exists, with self-published women earning approximately 41% more than men, the mirror image of traditional publishing.
Innovation and Expansion
AI powers marketing, with up to 45% of authors using AI for marketing and research and some 70% of users reporting a positive impact on their business, per ALLi and BookBub. Libraries open doors, and more than 15,000 US indie authors gained entry to libraries thanks to the Indie Author Project, according to Publishers Weekly. Offerings expand as indie authors move beyond e-books and POD into multiple formats and services, from audiobooks and libraries to speaking at festivals. Indies stay prolific, and the average number of books written by authors spending 50% of their time or more on writing reached 14, per ALLi.
These numbers paint a clear picture. Self-publishing delivers higher median earnings, greater control, faster iteration, and broader opportunities. Traditional paths still work for some, but data shows indies build sustainable careers through direct relationships, diverse formats, and smart tools like AI. Younger authors vote with their manuscripts, and the momentum builds.
This change is part of a broader industry evolution where authors who treat publishing as a business thrive. Backlists compound, direct sales grow, and platforms reward consistency. Indies who ship often and connect directly with readers capture the upside.
Sources
Jane Friedman on ALLi Indie Author Bookstore Launch
Authors Guild Survey Insights via Jane Friedman
Publishers Weekly on Indie Author Project
Manuscript Report on ALLi 2025 Survey
Commentary
Jonathan: ALLi opening its own online bookstore is something I’ve considered doing myself. Pulling indie books together in one place means readers and influencers can finally discover quality indie titles easily.
The shift in perception is remarkable. In the ’90s you didn’t tell people you were self-published. It was a point of shame, back when covers were made in Microsoft Paint and your distribution was the trunk of your car. Now when you say you’re self-published, people look at your book to judge whether it’s any good instead of assuming it isn’t.
The reverse gender pay gap is my favorite point here, and I want to dig into it more. The top earners in indie are women, which is the mirror image of traditional publishing.
The offerings keep expanding too. You can order bespoke editions from BookVault and build a genuinely special direct-selling experience through your own website, your own store, or a festival table stacked with your own beautiful books. It’s a good time to be indie. There’s more opportunity and fewer barriers. The only gate left is whether the reader buys your book, which comes down to how well you promote and advertise it.
2026 Mid-Year Author Survey Reveals Split Fortunes for Indie Authors
According to Written Word Media, their 2026 Mid-Year Author Sentiment Survey captured responses from 582 indie authors and delivered a clear message: the market feels turbulent for many, yet nearly half are holding steady or growing.
44% of authors report their business growing or holding steady, with 23% growing and 22% holding. 30% see declining revenue, with the sharpest pain in the $2,500-$10,000/month tier at 36%. 51% expect their income to rise over the next 12 months.
Author Sentiment by Income Tier
Just Starting Out (≤ $500/month) shows an average sentiment of 2.9, marked by uncertainty and overwhelm. Building Momentum ($500-$2,500/month) averages 3.4 and includes the most prolific writers, bullish on future growth. Got Traction ($2,500-$10,000/month) averages 3.4 with the highest decline rate but also active diversifiers. Living the Dream ($10,000+/month) averages 3.9 and is most optimistic and deliberate about platform insulation.
What Growing Authors Do Differently
The survey isolated authors who are currently growing, rate their sentiment 4-5 out of 5, and expect future gains, and these habits appear across every income tier. They accelerate output, with 64% of growing authors increasing writing volume versus 36% overall. They prioritize newsletters, with 58% actively using author newsletters versus 43% overall and running more newsletter swaps. They invest in paid marketing through promo sites, Meta Ads, and Amazon Ads, treating “publish and promote” as the new baseline. They monetize existing catalogs aggressively through box sets (43% vs. 28% overall), human audiobooks (43% vs. 28%), and translations (38% vs. 23%), and AI makes translations far more accessible. They use AI as a pragmatic tool for ad creative, covers, translations, and narration while still disliking AI-generated competition. As a bonus insight, wide versus KDP exclusive distribution shows no meaningful difference between growing and non-growing authors, so commitment to one path matters more than the choice itself.
How Challenges Hit Different Stages
The same events, Amazon’s A10 algorithm change, Meta ad shifts, and AI content floods, affect authors differently by career stage. Just Starting Out authors often feel overwhelmed and view AI primarily as an existential threat that floods the market and hurts discoverability, and financial strain runs high for some with multiple books already published. Building Momentum authors lean hardest into higher output as the one reliable lever after A10 disrupted prior ad strategies, and they begin experimenting with AI for creative tasks while still frustrated by marketplace “slop.” Got Traction authors report the most acute pain, with sudden 30-50% revenue drops cited frequently, and ACX royalty changes compound losses for those with strong audiobook income, so many pivot toward Kickstarter, Shopify, and other direct channels. Living the Dream authors treat diversification as strategy, not crisis response. They lead in translations, human audiobooks, and box sets, report strong results from the Audible beta program, and view AI as a major efficiency lever.
Newsletter usage climbs steadily with success, reaching 73% among Got Traction authors. Amazon Ads usage jumps from 18% at entry level to 59% higher up the income ladder. Free organic channels dominate early, while paid and owned assets scale later.
The Takeaway
The 2026 market shows a stark bifurcation. Roughly one-third of authors face real headwinds, but another half report stability or growth, and the successful cohort spans every income tier. Consistent publishing, direct reader relationships, smart marketing investment, catalog monetization, and pragmatic AI use separate the two groups. Opportunities remain for authors willing to adapt.
Sources
Commentary
Jonathan: The tier sentiments tell a story. Authors just starting out feel uncertainty and overwhelm, treading water. The building-momentum group is hungry and convinced they’re going to make it land. The authors with traction have the highest decline rate, and in my mind those are the ones who feel like they’ve made it and stop trying. It’s Rocky III. Rocky made it, then Mr. T shows up and it hurts.
Bryan: They haven’t learned that there’s a transition from success to scaling, and they’re in the middle of it. It’s a different learning process, and the ones who figure it out end up in the next category.
Jonathan: When you feel like you’ve won, you stop wanting to learn. The living-the-dream earners are the most optimistic, focused on platform insulation and protecting the position they’ve built.
I’m part of the 64% who increased their writing volume. When success comes and money starts coming in, I want to write more so more readers can find my work, and I can take care of my family.
These growing authors also lean on AI as a pragmatic tool for ad creative, covers, translations, and narration. AI makes translations far more accessible, which opens entirely new markets for books you’ve already written. Using an AI tool to promote a human-written book doesn’t mean you like AI-generated competition.
On the wide-versus-KDP question, commitment to a path matters more than which path you pick. If you’re going KDP, go KDP. If you’re going wide, go wide. Stop hamstringing yourself by flip-flopping.
Bryan: I still tell new authors to stay inside the Amazon ecosystem at first. You’re learning the craft of writing, editing, publishing, and marketing all at once while building your website and email list. Until you hit six to 10 books and have an established readership, the extra 15% from going wide isn’t worth the headache.
Jonathan: I agree. Go easier. I’m in KDP, and I sell different versions direct on my website so I’m not violating KDP’s terms of service. If you commit to wide, just commit, because it’s harder. KU has trained its readers to behave a certain way, and that reading culture is different from wide. Some of the advice we give may not apply to you, so know your battle space.
Bryan: Taking these two stories together, the foundation that made indie publishing work at all was the platform, print on demand and the ebook. Traditional publishers held everything for so long because of the upfront investment. If you had to run a 10, 20, or 50,000 copy print run and then figure out distribution beyond the back of your car, publishing was out of reach for most people. Thomas often points to the Pareto distribution governing success in publishing, where about 5% of authors make 95% of the income, and I think that’s flattening toward a more normal distribution as competition opens up.
When the platforms first opened, a flood of garbage came in. Then indies arrived with an entrepreneurial mindset, realizing they could build a real business if they produced quality. That opened up tools the traditional publishers don’t have. As an indie author you design your own marketing and keep 100% creative control. Nobody tells you to cut a chapter because they don’t think it’s marketable.
Jonathan: You also get to make your own mistakes and learn from them. If you review-bomb your competitors on Goodreads before your book comes out and that gets out, it’ll murder your career.
Bryan: Small businesses still account for most of the growth and employment in the United States, and opening these platforms democratized publishing the same way. You don’t need a staff of 100 people. You need yourself and a network of professionals, a cover designer, an interior layout designer, editors, maybe someone running your ads. I think it’s creating an author middle class, without the expert gatekeepers deciding what was worth publishing.
Jonathan: Before, if an author left their publisher, it ended their career unless another house poached them. You owned none of your readers. You had no newsletter. All of your marketing ran through the publisher, who bought the ads, handled quality control, and simply paid you.
Bryan: It was serfdom. They only dealt with your agent, and after you split a roughly 15% royalty with that agent you were making about 7.5%. That paid for all the infrastructure above you. They weren’t cheating anyone. That was just the cost of running the business.
Jonathan: Then the automations arrived. AI helps with your ads, and you can run your own. Before Meta Ads and Amazon Ads, nobody knew where to run ads. You needed an agency just to place a newspaper ad. I remember graphic design students in the early 2000s learning to make advertising because that was the only way to tell people about your product.
Bryan: The same thing happened in news media. A handful of network outlets decided what was fit to print, and if they didn’t run it, they’d decided it wasn’t newsworthy. Then blogs, podcasts, and social media broke that control, and suddenly the mainstream outlets no longer owned the narrative. Some of what replaced them is garbage, but some is high-quality, useful information.
Zeitgeist
The Death of Creativity, and the Author Middle Class
Jonathan: Let’s talk about the death of creativity, or at least something I see killing it. There’s an argument raging on social media that keeps making the rounds. A new Simon & Schuster report came out showing that traditional authors only sell about 12 copies per title on average, and that just restarted the war.
Indies are saying, “We’re awesome,” and I’m thinking, “You sold four books last year. What are you talking about?” Then the trads say, “Well, we don’t like those numbers anyway. They’re misleading.”
- What are we even comparing ourselves to?
- Are you writing a book your readers want?
- Are you achieving the definition of success you’re actually looking for?
When I read a book, I don’t care if the author is indie. I care if the author is good.
I’ll pay $16.99 for my Horus Heresy ebook, because that’s the only way I can get it, and it’s trad. I hate the company. They’re woke. But the stories are good, and I really like them. I don’t understand how a company this woke keeps making stories that good. It boggles my mind. They’re going to tank their own franchise.
Bryan: Or they’ll adapt.
Jonathan: They’re actually going through a buyout right now, trying to pivot on their social engagement. But most readers operate the same way. You just want a good book. I want a decent cover, something that doesn’t look like it was mimeographed, and someone who can string words together in a way that makes me feel something.
We authors keep making an apples-to-apples comparison that doesn’t apply to artistic expression. If you go the AI-generation route, you are actually making an apples-to-apples comparison. At that point you’re talking about what kind of director you are instead of what kind of prose writer you are.
I don’t compare my voice to Bryan’s. If I read Bryan’s book, it’s because I want his perspective on logistics. That’s his background, and I need to know more about logistics, so I’ll read his book and take what I learn.
Who are you comparing yourself to?
Jonathan: The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 10:12, “We dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves. But they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.”
I’ve operated on that since the military. I don’t have to be a better linguist than the linguist sitting next to me. I need to understand the material I’m listening to well enough to kill a terrorist. That was my job, and that’s how I studied.
They kept telling us to watch our GPA at the military school. Plenty of the other guys were young, 18, 19, 20, and focused on GPA because that’s what school trained them to do. I told them, “I’m just trying to keep Marines alive and keep bad guys not alive.” That’s the goal.
Bryan and I have the same macro mission, in that we’re both trying to change the world for the better. But on a micro level, we don’t have the same mission, and therefore can’t compare ourselves to one another.
We have different sub-goals in our storytelling. When you read both Bryan and Jonathan, you’ll see different perspectives and passions. I want to write a kinetic fight scene where a Marine is ripping demon skulls off and stomping dudes. That’s what I want to read, so that’s what I write. I want overwhelming odds and men who just don’t care.
Bryan: Even if only 20% of the population are readers anymore, there’s still plenty to go around. My readers and Jonathan’s readers probably won’t overlap much because we’re writing to two different audiences.
What’s the first question every writer should answer?
Bryan: I’m a publishing consultant. I guide people through becoming independently published so they’re not learning every rope on their own from scratch. I start every client with one question: What are your goals? It amazes me how many people have considered what their goal as a writer even is.
It is pretty painful. The first book is not going to pay off. It takes six to 10 books on average to become profitable in fiction. Sometimes you discover the cure for cancer, and it goes everywhere. But that’s not the average experience.
If you don’t have a backlist, you don’t have a marketing strategy. You’ve marketed your one book, they bought it, and then they wonder what else you’ve got. The answer is nothing.
Jonathan: You know what sells book one? Book three.
Bryan: So I ask a series of questions:
- What inspired the book?
- What is your goal for the book?
- What is your overall goal?
- Are you launching a second career or a side career?
- Is this just a hobby?
For me, faith is part of it. I’m a Christian, and part of what I write isn’t just to entertain. I’m doing “edutainment,” inspirational entertainment. I want to write a captivating story, but I also want that story to make you think about new ideas in ways you hadn’t before.
Bryan: My measure of success is how many one-star ratings I get. If I’m not ticking anybody off, I’m not challenging anybody.
Jonathan: Books can be good and still not sell. It might also mean you’re advertising to the wrong people.
Bryan: That’s true. Or maybe I just wrote a lousy book.
Jonathan: But my one-star reviews, the ones that come with a written review, tell me I made somebody mad. And I think, “Cool. Good. How’d you get here?” Nowhere did I promise to be nice to you if you disagree with me. I’m glad you’re here, and I’m glad it made you mad. I get a lot of joy out of that. It feeds my soul. But why did you choose this book?
Bryan: It’s even better if you can tell they read the whole thing. At that point, it forced them to see the world a little differently. They might hate you now, but two or three years down the road they might think, “That was the first time I was ever confronted with that thought. It challenged me. It made me mad at the time, but there was some wisdom in it.”
Are you competing for dollars or for time?
Jonathan: As an independent author, I don’t care about Bryan’s success. As his friend and colleague, I do care, but my business model doesn’t depend on him failing, and I don’t need to compete with him. We’re indies. We don’t really affect each other.
Everyone says a rising tide raises all ships, but it also sinks some crappy boats. Ask the Navy. Rising tides don’t work the same for everybody. I want Bryan to succeed, I want his books to do well, and his book hitting number one doesn’t matter to me at all. I’ll be there in a few months when my next book is done.
What we’re actually competing for is the time and good favor of a small group of binge readers. We’re rarely competing for dollars.
When you buy a TV, the TV companies compete to sell you theirs. Car companies compete to sell you a car, because you’re not buying another one. It’s $50,000 for a little two-door sedan that runs on chipmunks and hope.
They’re competing for your money. We’re not. I’m selling a $6 ebook, a $20 paperback, maybe a $30 hardcover.
We compete on time, not dollars.
Binge readers already have their hobby and already love it. The only question is how long it takes them to read your book, and they prioritize their time toward whatever interests them most at that moment.
Any number of things affect that choice. What did they eat for lunch? “I had Mexican today; I feel like reading something spicy.” That’s a decision? Yes, it is. Or what movie came out that week, or what book they just finished. You’ve got a chain of reader decisions influencing the next book they pick.
So, make your book as interesting as you can. Accentuate the coolest thing about it and scream that over and over. I have a romance plot in In Darkness Cast so minimal it’s not worth mentioning, and I never market with it. I’m not saying, “Come to In Darkness Cast for the scintillating romance.” There’s a dude stabbing a spider on the cover. Nobody cares about romance here.
Emphasize the cool parts and keep doing it. It’ll strike enough people at the same time to build momentum, because a lot of people buy based on what other people bought and recommend.
Who are you actually competing against?
Bryan: Here’s where a rising tide really does raise all boats. We’re competing together against all the other junk in the entertainment space. You’re competing with Netflix and YouTube.
Jonathan: You’re competing with the latest disappointment out of Hollywood. You’re competing with video games, where people actually interact with the story themselves. If a video game has a strong story, it’s got me. I’ll play it.
Bryan: We’re also challenging each other, and that’s healthy as long as it isn’t, “I’m competing against you to put you down so more people buy my book and fewer buy yours.” When it’s, “Let’s make books as high-quality as we can,” you’re challenging me to up my game, to write with better craft, and to read your books and learn what I can pull out of them. Not to copy your voice, but to learn.
Jonathan: Or I’ll watch an interview you do and think, “He presents himself really well here. He’s well-informed. I wish I was more like that.” Then I’ll train myself to present better, which makes me more effective at promotion.
I’ll see what other authors do better than I do. It doesn’t mean I can’t be good at it. It means I’m not good at it yet. So I can spot the weaknesses to work on, the strengths to shore up, or the places I thought I was strong where the market moved on, or the technology advanced.
It’s not just storytelling. I’ll read Bryan’s book and rip off whatever benefits my reader. I liked this POV switch; that was cool. I like that turn of phrase, those metaphors and similes.
Bryan: We’re little large language models training ourselves off other people’s material.
Jonathan: Exactly. I love the saying, “When you steal 10 authors’ work, it’s plagiarism, but when you steal 100 authors’ work, it’s research.”
Ecclesiastes says there’s nothing new under the sun. There’s nothing original. There are basically 10 storylines, and we’re all writing combinations of those through different filters. I write through my view and experiences. Somebody else writing In Darkness Cast would probably emphasize the romance, and there might be a strong story there. I’m not going to write it.
Should you write what the market wants, or what matters?
Bryan: Along the same lines, here’s something that kills creativity. At one of the first writers conferences I ever attended, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, which hosts Colorado Gold every year, I ended up in the wrong workshop. They’d canceled the one I signed up for, so I walked into another one led by a literary agent.
She walked in and asked, “Who’s here to write the book you always wanted to write, your passion project?” I raised my hand. She looked around and said, “You’re in the wrong room. We’re here to make money.”
Then she outlined their process. They go to Target, Walmart, everywhere, to find the next up-and-coming thing. And if she decided it was Amish cowboys, she’d design the cover, write the title and the back-cover blurb, then go to her cadre of authors and ask, “Who wants to write this book?” They were chasing whatever the audience wanted.
There are two terms in mission work: contextualization and syncretism. Contextualization means taking the pure gospel and communicating it in culturally relevant terms. The principles don’t change, but I use the language of the culture instead of, “You’ve got to learn Latin before I can teach you.” I teach it in their language, with metaphors and customs that make it relevant.
Syncretism is changing the message itself to fit the culture so that the audience likes it more.
Apply that to your writing. You can give people whatever they want, and you might sell $50,000 of books a month doing it, but I don’t think you’ll change anybody’s life. If you want an impact that persists after they put the book down, you take a meaningful message and contextualize it.
The best compliment I ever got on Daughter of the Gods came from a beta reader who called me afterward and said, “I put it down and couldn’t get it out of my mind for days. Things in there just bugged me.” It made him think, and that kind of reflection is what changes people’s lives.
So, ask yourself, “Am I giving the market exactly what it wants, or am I taking a meaningful message and contextualizing it so they enjoy the story but get confronted with ideas they hadn’t considered?”
How do you move your readers emotionally?
Jonathan: In my Royal Road story Devil Dog, people ask if I’m trying to be Frank Peretti, trying to portray spiritual warfare behind the scenes, because that’s the closest thing they have to compare it to.
When I sit down, I’m not trying to be Frank Peretti. I’m trying to write an awesome story about a Marine who can punch demons in the face, shoot them, blow them up, and just does not care that he’s in hell.
I’m working on a chapter right now where the depth of the story really comes out, because he hits his first redemption frenzy. He’s hijacked a soul train and just found out there are souls on it that haven’t been claimed yet. They’re not condemned, and one is what the game calls a redemption event. The game tags it, sends up a beacon, and that summons a despair swarm, demons afflicted with the burning of despair, all charging toward this redemption event. It’s a nine-year-old little girl, and I made the mistake of naming her after one of my daughters.
As I was writing it, I thought, “If this were my daughter in her redemption event, how hard would I be fighting?” This is easily one of the most intense and violent chapters I’ve ever written, and that’s saying a lot. It’s draining me. To keep the protagonist from being overpowered, I keep amping the stakes on the other side.
I’m not writing Frank Peretti. He’s actually not that intense with kinetics. He does a great job with suspense and tension, but he’s not writing kinetics like this. I think he’s good. I’m not bashing him, but I’m not trying to be him. If I had to describe it, I’d say Doom mixed with C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. That’s the blend. So I’m not comparing myself to Frank Peretti, and I’m not writing to a market I think exists.
I’m actually expecting to lose readers with this chapter, because it’s where the stakes really land, and they’re very much Christian stakes.
Bryan: I don’t think you’ll lose readers. If you’re writing something that affects you that deeply, that emotion is coming out on the page. It has to, and it’s going to grab them. I have no doubt that when readers hit that scene, it’ll hit them hard.
Jonathan: I hope so. Looking at the readers I have on Royal Road so far, we’ll find out whether the atheists and agnostics are okay with this suddenly, overtly religious story they’re in.
What is the author middle class?
Jonathan: We’ve covered how the author middle class is forming because of the opportunities available through KU and these indie publishing platforms.
For most of history, if you wanted to make a living from writing, you needed a patron. A king, the church, a wealthy nobleman. And if you wanted to run any business at all, remember, this was feudalism. Your options were basically to be a serf working a lord’s land for his benefit so he could pay his taxes, and he could send you to war any time the king told him to.
Serfs weren’t incentivized to produce much, which is why productivity stayed low during feudalism. The individual worker didn’t care. As long as you’re fed, you don’t care whether the lord above you is successful.
Then came the mercantile class. You could have a wagon and travel from town to village to city to castle, selling things you produced or stole. That class wasn’t nobility and wasn’t serfs. They built wealth through trade, commerce, and entrepreneurship, and they had things everyone wanted. Suddenly there were toys, jewelry, beautiful clothes.
There’s a scene in Firefly where the engineer sees a store-made dress, factory-made, and it’s way better than handmade, because nobody around her was a professional at it, and she wants it. Now it’s flipped. Custom-made is the big deal, because you had a master of the craft handcraft your dress or jewelry on Etsy. But back then, store-bought was the big deal.
The same thing happened in American colonialism. It was still a feudalistic society, but we weren’t close enough to the lord anymore. Suddenly it was, “I’ve got to build a community on another continent. I’m good at cutting trees, you’re good at making tools. Let’s work together.”
Bryan: And it wasn’t just the lords who owned the land. You had the chance to own land and start a business. The British coined a term for the Americans. They said we had a “middling sort,” a middle class, the people between the serfs and the lords. Shop owners, blacksmiths, craftsmen who didn’t work a lord’s property but worked for themselves.
Jonathan: My wife made me watch Downton Abbey with her, and there was this great moment in it.
The lord was less competent at business than his Irish chauffeur, who then married his daughter because it’s a soap opera. The chauffeur helped run the estate and was better at it than the lord. Lordship wasn’t based on competency, and this guy could make more money. That was weird for the lord to digest, because a lord is supposed to be in charge, and he wasn’t. He grew to rely on his son-in-law’s advice to keep the estate running and profitable.
That’s what happened in America. The business owners were better than the lords at making money, building wealth, and building a nation. So after doing that as a small businessman, you suddenly hear the king across the ocean, who does nothing for you, say, “I’m going to tax you on everything, because you’re making money and I own you.” That doesn’t sit well.
Why does a middle class matter beyond the economy?
Bryan: A strong middle class isn’t only critical for a strong economy. It’s critical for a democratic society. In England, you were either scratching out a day-to-day living, barely getting by, or you were ultra-wealthy. The wealthy lords cared about policy and taxes and had the time to.
Jonathan: Because they had a stake in it. The king changes his tax policy, and that affects the lord. The serf doesn’t care. The serf’s life is going to keep being miserable either way.
Bryan: But in America the shop owner says, “Wait a minute. Your tax and regulation policies, the sugar, the tea, the stamps, those affect my ability to run my business.” Suddenly I care, and I have means to participate in the process.
What was born was incredible. I love our country. I think it’s the greatest experiment in freedom and democratic principles in the history of the world. We’re a representative republic, not a democracy, but the principles hold, and we became the model many other places tried to emulate. I think that same thing is happening in the author world right now.
Jonathan: Yes. Now we run our own businesses and have a stake in how things go. People watch this show to learn how AI is going to affect their author business. How does KU raising its royalty rate to 70% up to $12.99 affect me? How does all this zeitgeist stuff that John and Thomas keep ranting about affect my business? Because you have a stake in it now. It matters to you.
Are publishers the lords and authors the serfs?
Bryan: My guess is most people who watch this podcast are indie authors. In the other model, where the expert does everything for you, they first decide who’s worthy of being published. The traditional publishers decide who gets published and who doesn’t. They also handle the whole business side, so you’re sheltered from it. They’re the lords, and you’re the serf. Maybe you’re a well-paid serf, maybe not.
Jonathan: There are benefits to being a well-paid serf. But lose your lord, lose your publisher, and you’ve got nothing, unless somebody else poaches you.
Bryan: And you don’t have the freedom to express your creativity, which is where we started this whole conversation. Is traditional publishing robbing you of it? They bought your book, so they can tell you, “Our editor knows what makes this book marketable, because our goal is to maximize profit. If it’s fiction, it needs to be 250 to 300 pages, because that’s the sweet spot between production cost, distribution, and what we can charge.” And you need to cut chapter two, or you need to add an LGBTQ character, because if you don’t have one, we won’t buy it.
How is AI flattening the lords and serfs of film?
Jonathan: This joke has been circulating about Netflix for a while, because filmmaking is still very much lords versus serfs. As the writer, you’re a serf. The producers are the lords, and if they decide your character now needs to be Black, or gay, or a woman, or whatever they think will work, they just do it. You have no control over your script or your story. When Netflix does Black Panther, it’s going to be Ryan Gosling. They make bizarre swaps because they think it’ll help the storytelling.
It’s a joke, but the industry really does run on that lords-and-serfs mentality, where the lord decides, and everyone falls in line. What’s interesting is how AI is going to flatten it out, because a lot of filmmaking costs can now be automated. I’m not just talking about CGI. We’ve all seen the slop on X, feeds full of dumb videos. But someone talented, willing to compete and create something good, now has far less of a barrier to pursuing that passion project and still making something people actually want to watch.
Then the big-budget places follow the smaller storytellers. The Darth Maul show on Disney+ happened because of an April Fool’s joke. Somebody made a fake commercial for a Darth Maul show, and it was so popular that Disney thought, “Whoa, you all want this that much?” That whole storytelling trend came from one character, from a joke somebody made independently. No studio, no budget, just a passion project that was funny. People wanted it so badly it confused everyone, and Disney said, “Yeah, we’re doing it, give us a few years.”
Bryan: My brother told me a couple of weeks ago about an independent filmmaker who used only AI to make a feature-length film that’s debuting at a festival, and the festivals are having a fit because they want to disqualify it. The guy has a full-time job elsewhere and said it took him three months in his spare time after work.
Jonathan: That’s insulting to the people still doing it the hard way.
Bryan: But that’s the democratization of media. Some of it will be garbage, just like some of the early self-published books were garbage, but it created the freedom, the competition, and the environment for a lot of entrepreneurs to enter. I think we’re moving away from a Pareto distribution toward a more normalized one, where you really can have a middle class of authors, and we can be part of it. We could also be on the top tail, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But we can also fulfill our purpose as middle-class authors, shaping the world, changing how people see it, and entertaining them at the same time.
Is it worth writing if you’ll never be a superstar?
Jonathan: I agree, and it’s not all about becoming the superstar. Sometimes it’s just about making a living, or adding to the one you already have. That’s absolutely possible today if you write well, develop your voice, keep working hard, read widely to improve your craft, and learn how to reach readers.
And drop the fear. I’m sick to death of people saying, “I don’t want to talk to people.” Shut up. Is your book important? Do people need to read it? Then tell people about it. I don’t want to hear the whining. Sorry, that came out of nowhere.
Professionalism still matters, and you can get it for free in the Novel Marketing Podcast and other great podcasts. You can get awareness of the battle space through Author Update and other indie news services that bring you news and knowledge without trying to gatekeep you out of it. That’s what we were trying to bring with this zeitgeist.
We don’t need to compare ourselves to trads. There’s battle-space knowledge you need about what techniques and methodologies actually work, but crowing about it on social media doesn’t help anybody, because you still have to focus on your business. Saying, “I’m doing better than that guy,” congratulations, you sold 13 books last year. That’s not a business. That’s advanced journaling. Build your business out and do better than you did yesterday.
The real competition is against the person you were yesterday.
Everyone else, you’re learning from and stealing from. I’m going to read Bryan’s book and steal from him, and he’ll take it as flattery, because I’ll tell him, “I totally stole this for my book.”
Bryan: And I’m going to steal that redemption scene of yours for sure.
Jonathan: So get out there and write your book. Stop worrying about what everyone else is doing. Make it the best it can be, watch Author Update to understand the battle space you’re releasing into, and get your knowledge upgraded.
