Audible Lets Listeners Talk To Dracula

News Podcast: Audible Lets Listeners Talk to Dracula; Plaintiffs Drop a Key AI Study Against OpenAI

On this week’s Self-Publishing News podcast, ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway shares what authors asked most at SelfPubCon 2026: newsletters and copyright, including why registering before the new year’s fee rise could save you money. He also covers Audible’s beta feature that lets listeners explore a story and talk to its characters, starting with Dracula. Then he reports that the plaintiffs in an OpenAI copyright case have dropped Tuhin Chakrabarty’s market dilution study, and that Books by People has launched to certify human-written books.
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Interactive Nonfiction Book

Questions, QR Codes, and Quizzes: Producing a More Interactive Nonfiction Book, with Anna Featherstone and Maria Doyle

In this episode, ALLi’s Nonfiction Adviser Anna Featherstone chats with author and learning strategist Maria Doyle about the production and distribution decisions behind her book Everyone’s a Teacher. They explore questions including: Might your nonfiction book serve readers better if it asked more questions? How can QR codes enhance the reading experience? How do you turn a book with visual elements into an audiobook? And what if you gave readers a quiz to see whether your book is really for them? This episode will give you fresh ideas for producing and distributing a book in a way that really engages readers.
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Society Of Authors Defends AI Charter

News Summary: Society of Authors Defends AI Charter; Books By People Launches Human Authorship Label

This week in "who could possibly have seen it coming," there has been a reaction against the Charter of Ethical AI Use I reported on at the end of last week. The Charter seeks to set standards it wanted companies working in the industry to adhere to if they do use AI, such as transparency, consent, and licensing arrangements with creators.
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Audiobook Listeners Buy In Multiple Formats

News Podcast: Audiobook Listeners Buy in Multiple Formats; AI Splits the Ghostwriting Market

On this week’s Self-Publishing News podcast, ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway digs into Audible’s new Nielsen IQ study of 18,000 listeners, which finds audiobook fans buying the same books in multiple formats — and still seeking out human narrators. He also covers Smashwords adding pre-orders and pre-sales through Draft2Digital, and a Bookseller report on how AI is splitting the ghostwriting market in two.
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Anne Carson Wins Nobel

News Summary: Anne Carson Wins Nobel; Pangram CEO Claims Minimal False Positives; Ghostwriters Lose Lower-End Work to AI

As well as being conference season, it is of course "that time of year" in another way familiar to all of us who follow literary events. Last week saw the Nobel committee announce its annual roster of prizes, including that for literature. So congratulations to Anne Carson, whose winning citation praises her "bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature."
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Book Marketing In A Changing World

Book Marketing in a Changing World: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What’s Next with Orna Ross and Joanna Penn

In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Orna Ross and Joanna Penn discuss how book marketing is changing—and what still works. Drawing on their experiences updating their own marketing guides, they explore the growing role of AI, alternatives to social media, the renewed importance of print and in-person marketing, and why email lists remain essential. They also discuss how authors can develop marketing strategies that fit their goals, personalities, and resources, rather than trying to do everything.
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Audiobooks Drive Cross-Format Reading

News Summary: Audible’s NielsenIQ Report Finds Audiobooks Drive Cross-Format Reading; Human Narrators Still Matter

Audiobook companies like to publish numbers with two kinds of finding. First, that the audiobook market is expanding. And second that they as a company are responsible for a large amount of the good stuff they have just demonstrated. Spotify has so far been the leader in this field, but Frankfurt Book Fair saw Audible jump headlong into the space with a much-vaunted report commissioned from NielsenIQ that was launched there.
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Inspirational Indie Author Interview: Liz Harris

Inspirational Indie Author Interview: Liz Harris Builds an Indie Career on History, Romance, and Creative Freedom

My ALLi author guest this episode is Liz Harris, a historical romance author whose path to publication took her from a lifelong love of reading and writing through teaching, travel, traditional publishing, and eventually self-publishing. She talks about how history and place shape her fiction, the freedom she found as an indie author, the importance of treating publishing as a business, and why she chose to remain indie even after returning to traditional publishing. 
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