On this week's Self-Publishing News podcast, ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway previews SelfPubCon 2026, running free over the weekend of October 17–18 with a Jane Friedman keynote, sessions on Kickstarter crowdfunding and local marketing, and an indie author lab for pass holders. He also opens the Written Word Media Indie Author Survey — whose past results tied higher earnings to bigger backlists — and reports on OpenAI's bid to have a key market dilution study thrown out of court.
Listen to the Podcast: SelfPubCon 2026 Asks Where Indie Publishing Goes Next
Show Notes
About the Host
Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.
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Read the Transcript
Dan Holloway: Hello, and welcome to the Self-Publishing News in what is, here in the Northern Hemisphere, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, otherwise known as the season of conferences and surveys. And we start with the best and most exciting conference of the year always, which is ALLi's own SelfPubCon, which is notionally a day, but a day spread in terms of 24 hours over the course of a weekend of October the 17th to the 18th to coincide, as always, with Frankfurter Buchmesse, which will have been going on prior to that.
SelfPubCon Returns October 17–18
And as always, there is a theme, and the theme for this year's SelfPubCon is, “Where is indie publishing going, and how do you go with it?” It is basically, if one wants to go back to poetry, it is one of those forks in the road moments — which will be the road less taken and which will be the road that more pursue — as we consider, amongst other things, Jane Friedman's what is bound to be absolutely barnstorming keynote called The Indie Author's Next Move.
So I will make sure I leave a link, but you will find links everywhere on the ALLi website as to how to sign up. Signing up, as always, is free, and that will give you access to the live feed of SelfPubCon. You can again, as always, get an all-access pass, which gives you access not only to SelfPubCon 2026, but access in perpetuity to previous SelfPubCon events.
So you can pay for that, or you can get access on a live stream basis for free. And so let's have a little delve into what might be on offer there. Obviously, as I say, Jane Friedman is going to be offering a session on the indie author's next move. There will, of course, be lots and lots of discussion of AI, what it means for us as a creative community.
There will be, no doubt, discussion of how it can help, but also discussion of how it can hinder, as is always the case with such technological advances. There were a couple of sessions that really, really got my interest, however, and I will give you some details of those and explain why. So first off, on the second half of the conference, we have a session called Crowdfunding's Next Chapter, and this is being delivered by Oriana Leckert from Kickstarter, and that is very much something that is on my radar and is tapping into this trend that we've talked about a lot in this column, which is, I guess you would call it, the special edition culture that has grown up as authors connect more directly with their fans, and fans look for enhanced experiences, shall we say.
So special editions, special artwork, merchandise, special events, particular types of connections with authors, particular interesting kinds of bundles — all the sorts of things that Kickstarter can actually serve really, really well and help to empower authors to connect directly with readers and give them the kind of things that readers as fans would want.
So that's one session, and the second session, again, is on the same sort of theme, and this is on the first day, and it is Penny Sansevieri, who is giving us a session titled Why Local Marketing Is the Indie Author's Newest Advantage. So there is lots to love about that. I'm not sure I necessarily think that the word newest is applicable, as someone who's done sort of live events and events in local bookstores a huge amount.
But it is certainly the case that we are seeing as never before this sort of growth of the single-genre bookstore. So I was at a conference recently, not a publishing conference, just a sort of a conference with global business people, and I got talking to several people there. We got talking about books, and a couple of people had mentioned that romantasy bookstores had opened in their hometowns, as they have in my hometown of Oxford.
So it is really interesting to see, as I say, this growth of bookstores that are offering more than just books and are, again, catering to fans who want more than just to read the books. They want a particular kind of connection with the authors they love, and they want a particular kind of connection with the material they love.
They want events. They want merch. They want special editions and bundles and so on. So lots of stuff, as I say, that caught my eye like that. There are, of course, sessions on selling books, selling more books, goal setting, and at the end of the conference, for those who have an access pass, so on the 19th of October, there is going to be a one-day indie author lab where you can talk to experts about your latest projects, your latest manuscripts, get feedback, and get advice on how to take your book into its final form and then into the market, which will, we hope, love it.
So yes, ALLi's SelfPubCon 26 is coming very, very shortly. And a link will be in the description below for you to go and sign up. There is also, of course, another book conference going on in the form of Frankfurt, and I will be reporting on that as it happens. So that brings us to surveys, and a particularly interesting survey is now open.
Written Word Media Opens Its Indie Author Survey
Again, link in the description. That is the Written Word Media Indie Author Survey. And Written Word Media are an ALLi partner member. They do great things. They are particularly involved in marketing. And so this is a survey that is looking at the best ways for indie authors to market their works.
It is not the first in the series of these surveys, so that always makes it particularly interesting because the results are going to start to give us trends. And last year they had some really eye-opening stats. I seem to remember reporting on it, and one of the things that raised my eyebrows more than anything else was the number of titles that people were publishing who were earning the most.
There was a direct correlation between the amount that people were earning from their books and the amount of books they were publishing. And the increase got steeper if those books were clustered in series. So for example, people earning $10,000 or more per month in general had more than 60 titles published.
Yes, you've heard that right, six zero. And those who had one to three books were generally earning under $100 a month, and everything in between followed a linear structure with progression — more earnings from more books. And that earning increase, as I say, getting steeper the more you use series for your books.
So one of the interesting things from last year is the genres. So the overwhelming genres amongst best-selling authors — those genres over-represented, as the survey authors put it, in the highest earnings brackets — were romance and fantasy, which is no surprise to anyone. What was a surprise to me, taking the survey this year, is that there isn't a romantasy genre.
So, romance and fantasy are still separate genres. So it might be, if you are a romantasy author, you have to decide which genre is your primary one, and we maybe will miss some insights into that as a particular genre, or maybe that is a sign that it is considered still at the moment to be a fashion trend and not necessarily an ongoing and long-lasting thing.
But nonetheless, do take part, because it's a really fascinating survey, and it will give us some great results that I will report on.
OpenAI Moves to Throw Out a Market Dilution Study
And I will end with one significant piece of AI news, and this is a legal request from OpenAI, in regard to the cases that have been brought against them, for a recent study on market dilution to be disconsidered or thrown out by the courts — so struck off and not taken as part of evidence.
So the case that is being brought against OpenAI relies, amongst other things, on the argument that the proliferation of AI-generated titles dilutes the market. That is, it lessens the opportunities for human authors and therefore damages earnings potential. You will remember that one of the viral surveys that did the rounds a little while ago was Turen Chakraborty's paper on specifically this subject of whether AI-generated content was diluting market earnings potential for authors, especially for indie authors.
And the finding of that survey was indicative of the fact that it might be. So what OpenAI are now arguing, based on Chakraborty's CV, is that this survey may have been funded by interested parties, and so they're using a version of the follow-the-money argument to suggest that this isn't an unbiased survey and therefore should be not considered by the courts.
Chakraborty has denied this and stated that this is a misreading of his CV, and that actually the grant that OpenAI are alleging has gone to funding this survey wasn't going to fund this survey — it was going to fund something else. It remains to be seen what the courts say, but obviously it's a significant piece of research that supports the notion that the market is being diluted.
So whether or not the courts can consider it is an important issue for future settlements in relation to OpenAI and others. And a reminder that just because the Anthropic case is now settled, it is not the case that we are out of lawsuits and potential for payout and settlements. So do watch this space.
We will make sure that whenever settlements are announced, they are widely publicized and give you the most opportunity we can for staking your claim in them. And with that, I very much look forward to speaking to you again at the same time this week and then seeing you around at SelfPubCon '26.
