On this Creative Self-Publishing stream of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Orna Ross shares her five-year publishing plans and predictions, exploring the seismic shifts in publishing over the past five years, from AI innovations and subscription models to the rise of indie authorpreneurs. She delves into the new challenges authors face in a crowded, tech-driven market and uncovers the exciting opportunities that will transform how indie authors publish. Looking ahead, Orna shares her vision for the future, where creativity, technology, and community reshape author-publishing.
Listen to the Podcast: Five-Year Publishing Plans and Predictions
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Further Reading
- Creative Self-Publishing: ALLi's Guide to Independent Publishing for Authors and Poets
- SelfPub3 Author Business Campaign
- The Go Creative! Workbook and Planners
Sponsors
This Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast is sponsored by Orna Ross's Creative Planning Program for Authors & Poets. If you’re feeling daunted by the enormity of your writing and publishing goals, or overwhelmed by your to-do list, or you’re just not sure what way forward is best, Orna can help with a proven planning process devised specially for writers.
All our ALLi podcasts are proudly sponsored by Bookvault. Sell high-quality, print-on-demand books directly to readers worldwide and earn maximum royalties selling directly. Automate fulfillment and create stunning special editions with BookvaultBespoke. Visit Bookvault.app today for an instant quote.
Thoughts or further questions on this post or any self-publishing issue?
If you’re an ALLi member, head over to the SelfPubConnect forum for support from our experienced community of indie authors, advisors, and team. Simply create an account (if you haven’t already) to request to join the forum and get going.
Non-members looking for more information can search our extensive archive of blog posts and podcast episodes packed with tips and advice at ALLi's Self-Publishing Advice Center.
About the Host
Orna Ross launched the Alliance of Independent Authors at the London Book Fair in 2012. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller’s “100 top people in publishing”. She also publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is greatly excited by the democratizing, empowering potential of author-publishing. For more information about Orna, visit her website.
Read the Transcripts
Orna Ross: Hello, and welcome to the Creative Self-Publishing stream of the ALLi podcast, Self-Publishing with ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors. I'm Orna Ross and Creative Self-Publishing is my stream. Sometimes I do it solo, sometimes I do it with a guest. Today, it's a solo episode.
I wanted to address some questions that I got from one of our partner members, the lovely BookBub, which I know lots of you use for promotions for your books when you have them on discount. BookBub is a good friend of ALLi's, right from the start. We began in or around the same time and they are asking a number of people, not just self-publishing people, but in the wider publishing industry, what's changed in publishing in the past five years.
They're looking at all the different changes that we've all seen. And let's face it, the past five years have been full of changes. So, it's a good question and it's always good at this time of year, I think, and December, January, somewhere along the line, to look back in order to look forward. And those of you who are part of my GoCreative planning programs will know I'm a big believer in the review, actually taking time out to look at things.
So, when BookBub sent the questions through, I thought, let's share this with the wider ALLi listenership so we can all think about what's changed in our own publishing over the past five years.
So, the questions they asked just to run through them quickly first, and then I'll come back and actually answer them.
What are the biggest changes or shifts that we've seen in the publishing industry since the beginning of 2020?
What new challenges are authors and publishers facing now that didn't exist five years ago?
What new opportunities do we have that didn't exist five years ago?
And what's coming across the next five years?
And a final kind of question, what are you most excited about looking ahead to when you look forward in the next five years?
And if you had to choose one prediction about a change you expect to see in publishing by 2030, what would that be?
I've seen a number of things shifting in the self-publishing space and what's interesting is that they are reflected in wider publishing as well, I think. I'm going to be focusing in this episode, obviously, on indie authors and self-publishing, but it is interesting to see how, in one sense, we run along as parallel sectors in the industry, but in another way, the things that are affecting one of us are affecting all of us.
So, I'm going to choose the biggest change since 2020 is the rise of subscription models. So, we see this with platforms like Kindle Unlimited, obviously, that have been there for a long time, but growing ever more popular. But also, we're seeing authors doing their own subscription services and also tapping into services like Substack and Patreon.
And what stopped people from doing this before, from that sort of more direct contact between author and reader, I think, was the readers weren't on for it. They weren't interested, but readers are now getting tuned into the whole idea of subscription models for authors, reader clubs, book boxes on subscription. All of these things are becoming much more popular in author publishing and across the publishing sphere.
So, I put that one ahead of the next one, which of course, everybody's talking about all the time, the AI tools and automation generally. So, AI arrived with a bang. We were talking about it probably five years ago, certainly three years ago, and the changes that were happening.
I think though that this year, 2024, was when it arrived with a bang to affect everybody and everybody realizes just how pervasive it is and how it is influencing everything from editing and translation at the production end of things, to marketing and of course, even content creation.
So, there is all the practical and ethical issues around AI and I'm certainly not going to get into that now, but those of you who are interested in that can tap into our ethical guidelines and our practical guidelines for how to cope with that. But obviously, it's been a huge change, and I don't think I've seen anything as divisive in the industry since the arrival of eBooks.
The same sorts of conversations around the arrival of digital publishing are happening now and possibly happen whenever there's a wave of completely transformative technology, but certainly that has been a major change.
Yeah, I suppose we can't really talk about the last five years without mentioning COVID 19 and lockdowns and all those things, which now seem so far away and are not that far away.
Pandemics was pretty good for indie authors in the sense that reading benefited, people bought more, and it wasn't just books, all kinds of content were purchased more.
And the digital transformation that was already happening, for example, Zoom meetings is a good one, these were already in progress before the pandemic, but the pandemic definitely accelerated things like virtual events, digital-first releases, audiobooks seeing significant growth, all of that, and that has stayed with us.
So, that isn't something that has fallen back to where it was in pre-pandemic times. Definitely we're not seeing the same amount of book purchasing as we saw in those years, but the other transformations around digital publishing in particular have stayed with us.
The other change that I would like to mention, and I think is just so important and really gladdens my heart and is a very big part of why I'm such a proponent of independent author publishing, is the whole diversity and inclusion thing.
So, while there have been top-down efforts in trade publishing to put a greater focus on amplifying marginalized voices, and I think that is great, and I think that should definitely continue and expand, the other thing that has been happening is the grassroots up. And I love, personally, grassroots up because I think that's where the real transformation generally happens.
And authors who learn to publish for themselves acquire a skill, and we are seeing that when they do that, not only do we hear from more voices, not only do we see people who have traditionally not been represented in publications being represented, and this is so important, particularly with children's publishing and other kinds of formative educational publishing, academic publishing, all of this really important. But also, as well as those things, we are seeing how indie authors are changing publishing itself by introducing a whole new genre that never existed before and whole new ways of readers having access to what they need that never existed before. I find all of that super exciting.
So, looking at challenges, I think what's most challenging as we have this expansion in self-publishing is that discoverability has become more challenging. Back, I wouldn't say so much five years ago, but certainly 10 years ago, just producing and distributing a book was enough to get readers.
For some books, that is still true, but for lots and lots of books, it's harder now to actually be discovered. You have to do the full work of publishing. You have to do the seven stages of the publishing cycle. You can't leave out. marketing and promotion, in other words. If you want to be discovered, you have to do the groundwork of understanding your book, where it's located in the market, how the reader makes a journey towards you and where you can inject yourself into that journey.
So, as the number of published books grows exponentially, it gets harder to stand out. But I don't think that means that independent publishing is a bad thing, that having a lot of titles out there is a bad thing. I think it just means that we all need to get better at doing what we do, and that is the impact that it is having.
A challenge for indie authors that I do think about a lot is the monopoly of major platforms for those authors who don't take the step towards going directly to their readers and who remain dependent on one major platform for all of their income.
I think that's bad for each individual author and I think it's bad for our sector as a whole, and it's one of the reasons why I welcome the shift towards more direct publishing, writer to reader.
When we've got a monopoly, a large monopoly, in the sector, as in any sector, it limits options for everybody in terms of pricing, visibility, income, all of those things. That continues to be. While I'm talking about an increase in writer to reader publishing, it's still very small. Increasing quickly, growing exponentially, yes, but still not the majority of the market by any means.
Obviously, a concern linked to AI, which I mentioned briefly, is the concerns about copyright infringement and the devaluation of creative work and the whole way in which content was extracted to feed the models, and so on. This is a big debate, and there are concerns around that, and it would be great if we could begin to regularise that and see some licensing opportunities. Not that it's going to be any great source of income for indie authors, but it's important because it recognizes copyright, and copyright is the legal structure on which we all rest.
Our income is dependent on people agreeing that copyright exists, and that copyright is important, and that copyright should be respected.
So, in a situation where that has not happened, we must do what we can to see it happen retrospectively and we must have clear guidelines in place going forward, and that is a challenge. It's not that easy.
The other thing that's affecting everybody is rising costs of paper and printing. So, the cost of a book is going up and a proportion of readers are still expecting books to be cheap and are very price sensitive. So, we need to be aware of that.
There are also pressures for environmentally sustainable practices, which lots of indie authors and ALLi welcome, but they definitely increase financial burdens. So, that is a challenge.
Another big challenge, I think, is just getting our readers to sit still and read a book.
We're hearing a lot now; we need some proper research on this to see how much of it is anecdotal and how much of it is actually real. We certainly all perceive it to be an issue, and there has been some research, but I think no definitive research as yet around the shortened attention spans that people seem to have because of social media and free content online and all of that can make it more challenging for us to capture and to hold our readers attention. So, that is a challenge as well.
All of these challenges, generally speaking, aside from the AI one, are really challenges that force us to become better publishers. So, if we think about it in that way, I think they are challenges that can be met.
So, what about opportunities then?
Audiobooks remain a great opportunity. They're a fast-growing segment still in global publishing, they've slowed in some territories, but they're still speeding away in lots of others, and authors are leveraging platforms to deliver, create and distribute the book.
So, we're well outside relying now purely on Audible and ACX. However, Audible and ACX continue to dominate the audiobook market. Again, audiobooks can be very easily delivered direct to your readers. So, if you do not as yet have that option on your website, you might like to consider it if you're not Amazon exclusive.
AI obviously is having a big impact with audiobooks, and we're going to see that just grow over the next while. All of the platforms will soon be accepting AI versions, and that helps indie authors, those who are happy to use AI to read the books. The technology is getting better and better all the time, and as I said, more and more distributors are going to be accepting it.
So, that is definitely an opportunity for you because it cuts a major cost, and I say that in full awareness that I'm talking about human beings who normally would do that work. I think it's also important to note that many indie authors just don't have the budget and would never hire a human to do it, or would be very slow to hire a human to do it. So, it's moot as to whether AI is taking all of the human work there. But it is, of course, important to note, that is a trend and that is happening.
We're all going to feel differently about that depending on our personal circumstances, and as ever, ALLi is a broad church and we're not in the business of telling our members what to do, how to publish. That is a decision that you make for yourself. Some of you will be open to using AI technology for audiobooks and I know that some of you will not, but it is certainly a trend and an opportunity if it's one you wish to avail of.
What other opportunities are we seeing?
One thing that's really interesting to me, it hasn't taken off in a big way, and it's something that people have been talking about for years, but I feel that in the last year to 18-months, we are actually seeing interactive books having a little bit of a moment and multimedia storytelling, particularly for younger readers, but also outside of that children's book arena.
So, I'm interested to see if that opportunity continues to develop. Again, it's being powered by AI because things that were very expensive and difficult to do are now becoming possible, and so once that happens, authors are very quick to jump in. Creatives generally are very quick to jump in, to explore and to experiment in a way that a large publisher cannot.
So, I think that's a trend or the seed of a trend and the seed of an opportunity. If any of you listening are interested in that, you might want to look a little further.
The other thing that we're seeing that has been tried in lots of ways and has failed in lots of genre niches, but where it is working, it's working extremely well, is serialized fiction. Now, it has to be structured to be a serialized piece of fiction. It doesn't work to just take your novel and serialize it. That's not how it goes.
But for those who understand the challenges of the genre, it's clear that younger audiences are engaging with serialized fiction more and more. Again, that's something that authors can do on their own websites. If you have the skills of bringing readers over to your website, which are learned skills, there's nothing magical in them. There's no voodoo needed, it's just work and there are ways of doing it.
Community building, I would say, is a big opportunity, and it's a necessary opportunity going forward because authors who are able to build communities around their books are the people who are going to stand out in an age where it is very easy to press a button and produce “a book”, by an AI.
So, human values are what the reader is going to be looking for going forward, depth of engagement between characters in fiction and in subject matter in nonfiction, and poetry. Depth in that sense, but also depth of connection, real connection, between writer and reader.
So, email lists, yes, but more than that, email communications that actually really speak to the person who's receiving it. A sense of having fewer people on your list, maybe, but a deeper connection with those people.
Then, of course, we've got the communities that are building up around social media, Discord, some new platforms that are beginning to come forward, like Blue Sky and Meta's own Threads. Others that are beginning to fade away Twitter, now called X.
The other thing around communities that's been really striking in the last number of years; Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms, more and more authors getting involved there. This is all to me, part of the community building approach to publishing. I
suppose the other big opportunity is self-publishing is hot now in trade publishing, and so there are licensing opportunities open to independent authors that would not have been open five years ago.
Print-only deals, we're seeing more and more of them as an example, whereby an author teams up with an indie publisher, or indeed a corporate publisher, for their print edition, but keeps the rights to their audiobooks and their eBooks, and lots of other kinds of deals like that.
Also, within TV and film, self-published books were really not welcome. There wasn't even a structure or a way in which you could get to people, because agents and scouts weren't looking at the indie world and in general, TV and film don't accept un-agented submissions, but all of this is beginning to change.
The stigma is definitely diminished as people have seen what's possible and what indie authors are doing and able to do, and I love all of that, and I think that is an opportunity for those who want to pursue that kind of thing.
So next question is, what am I most excited about looking ahead?
I am super excited about, I think I've already said it, the reader centered innovation that is possible for an indie author to enjoy, and using technologies that allow readers to interact with you in a way that suits you and suits your daily schedule and suits your way of doing things, suits your creative process. All of that is possible now with good boundaries, good creative boundaries in place and good creative technologies in place.
There are so many opportunities to interact with your readers and to deepen engagement and to open new creative paths for you as a publisher. I really am excited about that.
Also, the growing emphasis. diverse voices. As I said, I think the richer and more varied literary landscape that we have now compared to five years ago, and when I project forward, I think that's very promising.
So, as an overall sort of prediction for change by 2030, I'd like to predict the rise of authorpreneurship in its widest sense as becoming a much more dominant model in publishing, maybe even the dominant model in publishing.
I don't know if five years is enough for that, and obviously there are large forces always at play. But the segmentation and fragmentation that is happening in the sector means that authorpreneurship is possible for far more authors than are engaging with it at the moment.
So, this is an opportunity, of course, that is open only for those authors who have the mindset that they're going to be the CEO of their own creative business, that they're going to leverage technology, direct sales, and global platforms to take control of their publishing business, to create a business that really reflects their books in their own publishing model. Whether you're a craft publisher who focuses on the actual production values within the book, or whether you're an engagement publisher who really relishes the feedback from your readers and makes changes accordingly and really responsive to that, or whether you're a productivity publisher who relies on publishing lots of books quickly.
Regardless of which way you decide to do it, there are challenges and there are opportunities. But once you decide that you are going to take hold of it, to become the kind of publisher you want to be, to understand that being a good publisher is a very different thing to being a good writer. They're both hard skills to come by. They take years to acquire, but once you do acquire them, they are super exciting in terms of creativity, and commercially what is possible for you is huge.
I think we're going to see publishers pivoting more and more to offering services and expertise to authors, rather than tying people into contracts and saying, give it over to us here, you go off and write. I think there will be always writers who want to do that, but I think more and more success is going to belong to the writer who takes a different approach to that, who actually wants to get in there, push up their sleeves and do the actual work.
And I would like to see more of that understanding of what authors need in order for this entrepreneurship model to proliferate.
There are lots and lots of AI services, for example, at the moment applying to be partner members of ALLi, and they quite clearly haven't got a clue what authors need because they're very excited about their piece of technology and their idea and what it can do, but they're like a writer who hasn't done any thinking about their reader and what the reader wants. They're coming up with stuff that, quite frankly, no author wants at all.
I'd love to see services, and I think the good ones will become more centered on what authors need, and providing that in a good way.
And yeah, we will see more and more AI tools. More and more fabulous, amazing, mind-blowing tools coming into the marketplace, and I think because of that, I'm willing to risk my prediction on saying that, yeah, authorpreneurship will become the dominant model in publishing by 2030. Why not say so?
So, that's it from me today, and indeed for 2024.
Next creative publishing podcast will be me and Joanna Penn. The two of us are going to do a quarterly session next year where we bring you what we're doing ourselves, how we go about our own publishing, what our projects are, the challenges we're facing, the solutions we're coming up with.
In that whole spirit of doubling down on being human, we thought that would be the most useful thing we could do for you. And of course, I will also be talking to other experts in the independent publishing field next year about how to approach our publishing work as well as our writing in the most creative way possible.
But until then, have a wonderful end of year break. Celebrate whatever you celebrate, and celebrate every day if it's not a special event for you.
I look forward to speaking to you again next year. Until then, happy writing and happy publishing.
