Dan Holloway

This author has written 919 articles
BookFunnel Launches WooCommerce Plugin

News Podcast: BookFunnel Launches WooCommerce Plugin; Substack Opens Sponsorships; New Book Carbon Calculator; Kindle’s Story So Far Goes Live

On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway covers a week dominated by new tools for authors and readers alike. He reports on BookFunnel's new WooCommerce plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites, Substack's rollout of paid sponsorships for writers with 100 or more paid subscribers, and the launch of the Book Carbon Calculator, which lets print-focused authors generate a certified carbon footprint for their titles. He closes with the long-awaited launch of Kindle's Story So Far feature, an AI-generated recap tool that raises familiar questions about training data and copyright.
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Green Book Alliance Launches Book Carbon Calculator

News Summary: Green Book Alliance Launches Book Carbon Calculator for Publishers and Authors

The news for the past week or so seems to have been primarily about useful tools for writers. We've had decreased friction from BookFunnel and increased revenue opportunities from Substack. Now we have a tool that really helps to connect creators with their audience's values. It won't, of course, be for everyone or all audiences. But for some it may be incredibly valuable as "proof of value." The Green Book Alliance has just launched the Book Carbon Calculator.
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Tim Ferriss Warns AI Is Killing Nonfiction Sales

News Summary: Tim Ferriss Warns AI Is Killing Nonfiction Sales; Substack Launches Creator Sponsorship Program

Before I get to Substack, I'll start with another story signposted by Jane Friedman this week. Be patient, it's relevant. Tim Ferriss is one of those "public thinkers" most of us will know from somewhere, whether that's the game-changing and hugely successful book The 4-Hour Workweek (and subsequent "Four Hour" titles) whose wisdoms many of us have spent so many more than four hours a week trying to implement in our lives, or his equally influential productivity and lifestyle podcast. If anyone is going to make a success of self-help writing, it's Tim.
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BookFunnel Launches WooCommerce Plugin

News Summary: BookFunnel Launches WooCommerce Plugin; Amazon Rolls Out “Story So Far” Kindle Feature

Thank you to Nate Hoffelder, whose Morning Coffee newsletter pointed me to the week's closing stories. I am particularly grateful to him for picking up news from BookFunnel that I would otherwise have missed. BookFunnel is one of those tools I know many authors use as part of their marketing and fulfillment service, and one that is perennially on my list of things I really must get around to spending the time to understand and start using.
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Audiobook Growth Returns To Double Digits

News Podcast: Audiobook Growth Returns to Double Digits; Title Glut Shrinks Author Slices; How Many Readers Actually Pay?

On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway reports that audiobook sales grew 9 percent in the US and 10 percent in the UK in 2025 — a return to double-digit growth — but cautions that active titles grew even faster, meaning many individual authors are getting a smaller slice of a bigger pie. He also questions a suspiciously low 0.03 percent figure for AI-narrated audiobook sales, and examines an Authors Guild survey finding that only a quarter of readers paid for the book they were reading last month, with library lending and "other sources," including piracy, making up much of the rest.
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Authors Guild Report

News Summary: Authors Guild Report Finds Only 25% of Readers Paid for Their Last Book

A new Authors Guild report has reached a stark conclusion: most readers are not paying for the books they read. To put it bluntly, that would seem to be the conclusion of a report from the Authors Guild. The report is dated December 2025, but the press release only came out in the last week, suggesting that some crunching and considering has been going on in the interim. I'll have a look at the more noteworthy findings and what they suggest for us as authors (Publishers Weekly's headline on the piece clearly cites a connection to declining author incomes), but first I want to situate this somewhat.
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US Audiobook Sales Grow

News Summary: US Audiobook Sales Grow 9% to $2.43 Billion; Active Titles Up 43% as Revenue per Title Falls

I wrote recently about the 60 percent growth in audiobook listening reported by Spotify in 2025. This week we have figures on the whole of the audiobook market (in the US at least), which help to contextualize that growth. The figures come as the Audio Publishers Association announces the findings of its two annual surveys: hard data on sales from Toluna, and a comprehensive survey on listening habits from Edison Research.
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Social Reading Partnerships Expand

News Podcast: Social Reading Partnerships Expand; Indie Bookstores Hit 1990s High; Oxford Gets a Romantasy Bookstore That Welcomes Indies

On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway reports on a week dominated by good news for readers and indie authors alike. He covers new social reading partnerships — Kobo with StoryGraph, and Everand with Fable — that let readers track, share, and experience books together. He reports on the American Booksellers Association's announcement that indie bookstore membership has hit its highest level since the 1990s, driven largely by single-genre stores focused on romance, fantasy, and romantasy. And he ends with a personal highlight: a new romantasy bookstore called Bad Girl Books is opening in Oxford — in the former Albion Beatnik space — with a specific welcome for self-published authors.
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Libraries Challenge Big Five On E-book Pricing

News Summary: Libraries Challenge Big Five on E-book Pricing; Independent Bookstores Hit Highest Level since 1990s

How much should e-books cost? It's one of the most divisive questions of the past fifteen years or so (in our small corner of the world at least), right up there with perennials like pineapple on pizza. The sub-question of this wider question that caused so much angst just before Covid is how much libraries should pay for e-books. You will remember, I dare say, there was much talk for a while of metered usage, and anger at the limited licensing time covered by the purchase of an e-book.
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UK Competition Authority Imposes New Publisher Controls

News Summary: UK Competition Authority Imposes New Publisher Controls over Google’s AI Search Summaries

I tend not to cover national legislation stories, but this week's opener is a bit of a milestone. It will be of direct relevance to many and sets a fascinating legal precedent that everyone will want to track. In a landmark move, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has imposed the Publisher Conduct Requirement (CR), specifically aimed at Google and its use of AI summaries.
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Spotify Reports 60% Audiobook Growth

News Podcast: Spotify Reports 60% Audiobook Growth; ElevenLabs Expands; AI Copyright Cases Narrow the Class

On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway reports on Spotify's investor day, where the company credited its Page Match feature for a 60 percent rise in audiobook listening hours, notes ElevenLabs' quiet expansion as a listening platform in its own right, and examines a troubling trend in AI copyright class actions — where increasingly narrow eligibility requirements around ISBN registration and Copyright Office filings are leaving many indie and overseas authors out of the picture.
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