Matt: Welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. This is episode number 52. Is that right? 

Lauren: Yes, it is

Matt: 52 and they're 52 weeks in a year. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: I don't know if that actually lines up though, cause we started last year. 

Lauren: It does not. We started last year and we've taken some time off throughout. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: So technically we are at a year's worth of podcast episodes. 

Matt: In a year and two months? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Oh, that's not bad. 

Lauren: Yeah. We started on - 

Matt: We're going to take some more time off though. 

Lauren: Yes, we are.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yes. This is going to be our last episode for 2024. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: So we'll be off for the next two weeks. 

Matt: Couple of weeks, yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. And then we'll be back in January with brand new episodes. 

Matt: Hopefully. 

Lauren: Hopefully. 

Matt: No, I’m just kidding.

Lauren: Famous last words. 

Matt: We'll be back in January. That’s correct. 

Lauren: Oh no. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: That's so ominous. 

Matt: So, but today we're going to talk about a number of things, because what we're going to do today is we're going to do a recap of 2024, right? So we're going to kind of run down like what were some of the most popular trends and topics for the year in publishing, obviously, and primarily self-publishing. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: There's not many of them. I think the conversations were pretty focused this year on just a few things, especially if you went to any in-person events or things like that, you will have noticed that most sessions, most things really revolved around just a couple of topics. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So we're gonna talk about those today and maybe even throw out some probably baseless and useless predictions for 2025. We'll see how far we get in this and whether or not we get tired of each other before the end, but. 

Lauren: I mean, if that's the metric, then I don't know how far we're getting into this at all. 

Matt: Yeah, never say never. 

Lauren: That's true. 

Matt: All right. Yeah, so let's jump in. I think that there was one obvious trend this year and it was also pretty much a trend last year too, but I think most of the conversations we had for sure - for obvious reasons - at a lot of the events and things that we were around, one of the biggest conversations was around direct sales and whether you should do it or not, how to do it, how to do it effectively, as well as all of the parallel conversations that seem to happen in tandem with direct sales conversations. 

So I thought that we would kind of start this segment with a little bit of data. At this point, I don't think we have to try and convince people too hard that there's benefit to selling direct. I do think people are still finding it hard to get into it, especially if they're early stage authors and creators. If you've been writing for a little while, or you've been writing for a long time, especially if you have multiple books, it is a little easier to get into direct sales. 

But nonetheless, here's a few pieces of data to kind of help people wrap their heads around just how many people are starting to adopt it and what some of the benefits might actually be. This first one is from our friends at Written Word Media. Every year they put out a big survey of their users. I believe they typically get responses back from anywhere between 1,500 and 2,000 users. But nonetheless, on the subject of selling direct for them, they said about 87.5% of their authors said they have their own website. And of that 87.5% of authors, 29.6% of them are selling books directly from their site. What's important to note here is that as a 2.6% increase from that same question the previous year in 2023. 

So they are, you know, in their user audience, they're seeing growth of people selling direct. And now again, that 2.6% increase, I'm not quite sure how many authors that comes down to, but nonetheless, that's a pretty nice chunk. In general, 30% of the people that have websites are already actively selling direct. Now the second part of the question that they asked their users was, for the rest of them, how many of them plan to start offering direct sales next year? And 33.2% of them said they were going to try and start selling direct next year. Also a nice number.

Now on the other side of that coin for us at Lulu, we have some actual metrics around people who are selling direct and just the sheer volume of stores that are being created, whether that's on Shopify, Wix, or WooCommerce. And so, just in the Lulu ecosystem, there are over 22,000 active stores using the Lulu Direct plugins. So those are Shopify stores, Wix stores, WooCommerce stores. But 22,500 active stores, meaning they're actively selling books using the Lulu Direct plugin. Just through Lulu alone. That's a lot of stores. 

Lauren: A lot. 

Matt: Now what's especially important for this conversation is to note there was a massive increase this year versus last year. That's about a 520% growth for us over the previous year. So whatever was going on between last year and this year was enough to drive a lot more people to try direct sales. And again stick with it, because those are active store numbers. I'm not counting stores that signed up, connected a book, and then never sold anything or are not actively selling.

And then lastly, I'll give you one more number. This is a fun one, but just for November of this year alone. So this would include Black Friday, obviously, but for the month of November, just through Lulu Direct stores, self-published creators and authors sold over 40,000 print books. 

Lauren: Damn. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That's a great number. 

Matt: That's a lot of print books. 

Lauren: That’s a lot of books. 

Matt: That's print books only. Over 40,000 and that's just Lulu Direct users. So direct sales is alive and well, and it is growing. If on some platforms you'll see small percentage rates of growth, on others, you'll see massive ones. I think it really just depends on the tools being offered and the education that's happening around the topic. But I thought it'd be nice to start this segment with a little bit of data. 

Lauren: I think what you just said there is really important and it ties in with what you said at the beginning of this episode and this data like, absolutely supports it. I think that, you know, you said at the beginning of this episode that, that we don't have a lot of key topics for this roundup this year because it was a lot of the same conversations happening. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: whether it was in newsletters or communities or conferences and events, whatever it was, a lot of the conversation this year were the same few topics. And moreover, most of those topics were the same conversations that we've been having for the last few years. There isn't really anything new in here as much as it is we're continuing to see these trends and these interests from authors. 

But I think the difference, and I think that what we're seeing here and what this data is proving, maybe last year or the year before that at conferences and events and community spaces and stuff like that, the conversations that we were having were: this is why you should be selling direct. Like, this is why it's valuable. And a lot of us and like other people that feel that way, trying to convince authors and creators that this was something that they should be paying attention to, something they should be considering, something they should be doing. 

And those kind of - those conversations have largely kind of worked. And now the shift in conversation is, okay, how do we do that? You have convinced us over the last few years, like now it's time to actually start doing that. So I think like this Written Word Media metric that it's almost 30% of people that have their own website are selling their books. But then an even higher number of people that have their own website are planning on adding direct sales to their website next year. 

That to me says that over the last year, they've been doing the work at these different educational spaces and events and saying like, okay, what do I have to do to get there? How do I set my store up? What do I, how do I get all my ducks in a row so that I can get started on doing this? 

Matt: Yeah, I agree with that. I think what you're describing and I love this - to get a little more nerdy about it - is you're basically, you're describing the adoption curve. Anytime a new piece of technology or functionality gets released into the world, that's something that might even be a disruptor per se. You have this adoption curve, right? And so you always have early adopters and that's where the curve starts. And I think again, like you described, a few years ago, several years ago, there's a few of us that were out there talking about direct sales and how to do it and why you should do it, and you had some early adopters kind of jumping on and trying it out.

These are the same people, by the way, that would be early adopters and trying other types of technology out, like AI assisted tools and things. But nonetheless, you start with those early adopters, and they'll start playing around with it and maybe they start telling some people about it. And in the meantime, you have others that are kind of evangelizing it. Usually the platform providers like us and you know, maybe one or two others. And then as time goes on, you start to get more adopters. You get - there's different terminology, you can use early majority or things like that - but you start to get a little closer to the height of that curve of adoption. 

And I think what we're seeing now, what you just described, is now we're on the backside of that curve where we're peaking and curving, we're getting a lot of that, the late adopters or the late majority coming in. And so I think that that also explains that huge jump we saw in stores being created - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - and active this year versus last year, because I do really think that this year, more than ever, it connected for people and they've started sort of piecing this puzzle together. And more importantly, understanding like the remarketing abilities of having that customer data. So I think you couple that with tools getting easier to use and people getting less intimidated by things like sales tax conversations and stuff like that. 

And so I think that's why we're at the peak to the backside of that adoption curve, that bell curve. So yeah, thanks for letting me get nerdy for a minute, but that's exactly what you just described. And I agree with you a hundred percent. I think we're at that point, which is great. 

Lauren: Which I do also think is - to jump ahead here and make a prediction for 2025 - I think that we're going to continue to see this. Following that curve -

Matt: Why would you jump ahead so far? 

Lauren: Because it was such a good segue right there. We're just going to continue. We'll talk more about it later. 

Matt: I was going to put a curve model up there and talk about it, but I don't want to get that nerdy. 

Lauren: I mean, if you want to, you should. 

Matt: There's a great book out there, though, if anybody's interested, called Crossing the Chasm that really talks about this, this effect, and especially as it's related to technology development and things like that. But nonetheless, the concept is pretty standard. So yeah, anyways. 

Lauren: Cool, okay. 

Matt: Some pretty cool data there. You'll probably see a lot more data coming out throughout the month of December, as we record this. And certainly as we go into 2025, a lot more people will be dropping their measurements, their statistics and their recaps of the year, especially as it pertains to direct sales and other topics. But these are great numbers to see. It's really nice to see people adopting it. 

For now, most people are adopting it in tandem or conjunction with a distribution strategy, which is fine. I think ultimately people more and more will see the benefits and start to shift their focus to be a lot more on selling direct and really relying on distribution solely for whatever crumbs they can provide at the end of the day. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think we're seeing that a lot in - two places that I saw that conversation happening a lot this year: the Circle community Wide for the Win. That's, I mean, literally within the name, there is the idea of the practicality and the benefits of selling across multiple retail channels, including a direct sales option. And then when we were just at Author Nation in Vegas, there were several sessions about going wide with your sales and distribution. 

So even the people that are not quite ready to make the jump to exclusively selling direct, which—you've heard us debate extensively over the value so we don’t need to get into that here, but if that's something that you're interested in, that's I think a trend that we've seen a lot this year, is people adding just another distribution option in selling direct if they're not quite ready to just exclusively sell direct. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Which I think is great. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I think that's great, because you never know, like, one of the things that we saw happen this year was Barnes & Noble, and Barnes & Noble just kind of abruptly deciding that they were gonna restrict certain types of content from their online stores. And maybe I'm speaking out of pocket here, but I don't think anybody is relying specifically on Barnes & Noble sales as like, their main distribution platform. 

But I'm sure there were people that were affected by their books being pulled from Barnes & Noble, and their books no longer being available for distribution, whether it's ebooks or print books on Barnes & Noble. And if that was your main distribution source and you suddenly got cut out from that, that hurts a lot less if you have a direct sales option as a backup solution, or anything else as a backup solution. You never really want to rely on just one ecommerce solution if it's one that you don't have control over. 

Matt: Yeah. And to take it outside of publishing, there's so many studies that have been done on… I hate to use the term millionaires, but just what society in general would deem a successful person, millionaire to billionaire, doesn't matter. But one of the most common traits, attributes, commonalities that they found when studying these groups is that they all had multiple streams of revenue coming in. So it wasn't like, you know, just one person who made some ungodly amount of money from one thing. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: That's it. Like that's, that's actually pretty rare. Entrepreneurs and other people who achieve a level of financial success, I should say, one of the most common factors was that they all had multiple streams of revenue. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So taking it back to an author, or somebody who wants to create books for a living, you know, whether you identify as an author or an entrepreneur or a content entrepreneur, it doesn't matter. Multiple streams of revenue is important. It does allow you to continue doing the things that you want to do. So absolutely, I think the concept of going wide and all those other things is all, it's all good. But at some point, if you haven't already, you really should not ignore the data that's in front of you and what's happening right now and try out direct sales. 

Lauren: Like some individual author success that we've seen recently. 

Matt: Man, that was a whack ass transition. 

Lauren: Well, if you didn't want to take it… 

Matt: I’m just kidding. 

Lauren: I can talk about my favorite billionaire if you want, but - 

Matt: Well. 

Lauren: You can talk about a more specific example if you would prefer. 

Matt: Actually while you're on that topic, I need you to confirm something. 

Lauren: Yes? 

Matt: A, it's pretty impressive that I think on release day of that book, she's what? Over 800,000 units? 

Lauren: Over 800,000 units, which is the second highest launch of a nonfiction book in -

Matt: Single day number. Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. And I think the first was Barack Obama's post-presidency memoir. 

Matt: Well, so what I need you to confirm is: I saw several things that cited there was lots of typos and misspellings and things in the book. 

Lauren: I love my girl. It's a mess. 

Matt: Really?

Lauren: It's a mess. 

Matt: So that doesn't do a lot for the cause of self-publishing.

Lauren: It doesn't, but I - one of the things that I have actually, that I've seen… the general feedback that I've seen from a lot of people is not necessarily that it's discounting the fact that it was self-published. Like people aren't really looking at this and being like, oh man, this is why she should have gone the traditional publishing route instead, I think a lot of people understand why she chose the route that she did. 

And also like are saying like, look, it clearly worked for her. Like she's, she's clearly like, pocketing an amazing amount of profit off of this book. But rather the takeaway that people are getting from it is she definitely should have hired some freelance editors or formatters or page designers at least, or something. Something. 

Matt: The funny thing is, a lot of people don't realize this, but there's so many traditional books that are chock full of…

Lauren: Oh, yeah.

Matt: Misspellings and errors and things like that. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I just thought it was kind of funny. Like you just said that the two headlines I found yesterday, one was the sheer volume of units that were first day sales. The second was about misspellings and things. And it was just like, really? Come on. 

Lauren: Yeah, it was… So I did go to Target at five o'clock in the morning on Black Friday to get it. And I did not need to. It is still available at my local Target. 

Matt: Some. I was at a Target last night. There were zero. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: And then I told you I was at a Target several days ago and they still had… 

Lauren: Yeah, so. 

Matt: They didn't have a ton of them, but they did have some.

Lauren: The Target that I went to, they did still have copies available later in the weekend. But I do have a friend who - he was the last person on line at the store that he went to to get a copy of the vinyl. Which for the record was like - that was the bigger priority to me. Like, I wanted the book and I'm glad I got the book, but I was there for the vinyl. 

But I, you know, I got back and I got home and I couldn't go back to sleep. So I was just laying in bed flipping through the book. And it's it's six thirty in the morning. I'm still defrosting from being outside and I'm sitting there flipping through this book that I just waited an hour and a half in line for and I was looking at it and I was like… It's not great. 

Matt: But there's always the chance that you didn't do that and you missed out. 

Lauren: Oh, I mean, yes, for sure. And also even a not great book is still, it's still like a really fun little memento of a really - 

Matt: And you get to retain your super fan status. 

Lauren: That's so true.

Matt: If you hadn't have done that, you could have potentially lost your super fan status. 

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, that's - 

Matt: That’s. 

Lauren: Yes, obviously I need everybody to know - 

Matt: You gotta protect that. 

Lauren: - that I'm in the top 0.1% of Swifties. 

Matt: Yeah. Oh my gosh, as everybody was sharing their Spotify Wrapped over the last couple of days, I opened mine up and I was like, I'm expecting to see whatever cool music I listen to because I'm so cool. My top thing was business podcasts. And not only is that embarrassing enough that it wasn't something cooler, I was in the top 1% of all listeners globally for business and financial podcasts. 

Lauren: Wow. 

Matt: That's pathetic. 

Lauren: Wow. 

Matt: Uh, yeah, don't let the tattoos fool you. 

Lauren: You’ve lost your street cred entirely. 

Matt: If I ever had any, it's way gone. I did not share my Spotify Wrapped this year. 

Lauren: It’s okay. 

Matt: So there you go. Yes. So that transition you tried to make a few minutes ago is an accurate one. So again, we always try to remind people when we talk about self-publishing and print-on-demand and indie authors, we're always including our friends who are content entrepreneurs, people who are not writing fiction. They're writing other pieces of content. Oftentimes not for the sole purpose of making money off the book itself, but for using that book to bring in other streams of revenue, right? So consulting gigs and things like that. But we did recently see a launch from an indie author, a content entrepreneur. He's a marketer by trade. It was a Tilt Publishing release. His name is Louis Grenier and his first five days, he sold over $16,000. And we're not putting his business out there in the street. He actually has a LinkedIn post where he breaks down how he did that and the total number of orders and revenue he made. And we'll link to that in the show notes. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So for any of you, indie authors or others who are out there who are maybe just starting out or still not quite believing the hype around direct sales and publishing on your own and things like that, here's a great example of that. He used a hybrid publisher, Tilt Publishing, but nonetheless, it's a form of self-publishing and he sold direct. So his marketing strategy was not only that he was selling direct and you had to get it from him, but he was very vocal about the fact that he did not want to support a large third party platform and its billionaire owners and all the other stuff that goes along with it. And he did really well. 

So again, first five days over $16,000. A lot of self-published and indie authors, they won't see that in a year. But the level of effort that he put in, the plan that he put together for his launch and subsequent sales strategy were just really cool. And he puts that out there on his LinkedIn posts for everybody to check out. So I would suggest people check it out. It's really cool. 

Lauren: Yeah, I'll definitely have that linked in the show notes. And also I meant to say this earlier, but the Written Word Media indie author survey that Matt referenced at the beginning of this episode will also be linked in the show notes. 

Matt: Yeah, I love to see authors like that too, who are - I don't think his first primary goal was to make a bunch of money off the book itself. Ultimately, Louis wanted to get that book into the hands of people who wanna be better marketers and also to use that because he has other things that he… he does. He's got online courses. He's got a master class. He's got other things. And so $16,000 in book sales, that's great. But that also means however many units that was, it was several hundreds of units, are now potential leads for him. He has that customer info. He knows who bought the book, which version they bought. And now he's got a list he can remarket to for his online courses and his master classes and all those other things. So I think that's really cool.

Lauren: Yeah, it's absolutely really cool. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: This conversation has been… has been ongoing, like we said for years. And it's also, you know, if you've listened to maybe a single other episode of this podcast, you know, this is something that we talk about extensively, like we - 

Matt: Selling direct? 

Lauren: Yeah. Once or twice. 

Matt: Not us. 

Lauren: No, never. 

Matt: Never.

Lauren: Never. What? 

Matt: Never. That's my next sweatshirt: sell direct. 

Lauren: Did you ever find that list of ideas? 

Matt: I realized that probably… good for you. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Maybe not so good for the general public. 

Lauren: Sad.

Matt: Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. 

Lauren: All right. I'll just break out my Cricut. It's fine. I got this. 

Matt: You were supposed to do that a long time ago. 

Lauren: I know. I don't remember what it's for. 

[20:53]

Matt: I'm actually going to skip down because the second one I think we should talk about was arguably either a larger topic than direct sales or of the same stature in terms of conversations being held publicly online, whatever. And that is obviously the onset of AI within the world of publishing. 

Lauren: Well, yeah, I mean, I think that AI - 

Matt: You said that like, duh. 

Lauren: Well, no, no, no, but - sorry. I didn't mean to. 

Matt: That’s alright. 

Lauren: You're right, I did. 

Matt: Duh. Well, yeah. 

Lauren: I think that AI as a conversation, regardless of whether it's in publishing or not, like that has been the hot topic in pretty much every area that we're interested in. Especially in publishing, we've seen it more and more this year. And I think also, the same with selling direct, this has been an ongoing conversation since prior to 2024. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And it will continue to be a conversation - 

Matt: Oh yeah, for sure. 

Lauren: - moving forward in 2025. 

Matt: And in fact, just like you jumped the gun earlier, I'm gonna jump the gun and say one of my 2025 predictions -

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: - is that AI actually helps people market and sell better next year, including direct sales efforts, so. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt:  We will continue to hear these topics and see these topics. You're right. But we're actually going to start to see these topics crossing paths more next year. Guaranteed. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think you're right about that.

Matt: I don't know what I'm going to guarantee it with, but I'm just saying. 

Lauren: Next year's recap episode… at this time next year, we'll just listen back. We'll do a live commentary listening back to this episode and seeing all the things that we were wrong about versus all the things we were right about. 

Matt: Yep. Yeah. 

Lauren: We're going to be 100% right about everything. And that's the first thing we're going to be wrong about. 

Matt: More than likely. I think - 

Lauren: But - go ahead. 

Matt: Go ahead. 

Lauren: No, I was gonna say, let's talk about AI and publishing, so you go ahead. 

Matt: Yeah, I think when it first hit, it was all bad. Everybody was just like, no, no, no. And the first thought for everybody was like, oh, it's gonna take my job.

Lauren: Yeah, including me. 

Matt: AI is gonna write all the best romantasy books and all the best cozy vampire fiction and - is that a thing? 

Lauren: I don't know, but now I really want to write - well, I don't wanna write. I want somebody else to write cozy vampire. 

Matt: I'm gonna do that. 

Lauren: Okay, great.

Matt: I’m gonna copyright and trademark that - 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: - as soon as we get out here. 

Lauren: That’s gonna be your…

Matt: So anybody listening, go ahead and try it. 

Lauren: Your new, your…

Matt: That's my niche. 

Lauren: Your content niche? 

Matt: Niche, my content niche. 

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: I think that like a lot of other things, people take their cues from other people in the industry. And I think initially industry heavies and other people were also freaking out. And so I think that kind of made it a little bit worse. I think we're at a point now where a lot of people are coming to terms with AI in the publishing industry and what it can and cannot do and what it should and should not do. I think there's still a lot of authors and creators concerned about it. 

I think that's probably normal, because we are seeing more AI tools that generate written content, albeit most of it is bad. I've yet to see anything that was AI generated, whether it was a paragraph, a short story or a full blown novel that was actually decent, let alone great. 

Lauren: Yeah. I think that's been a thing that's been really… you know, the initial response to all of this was, oh my god, it's gonna replace humanity in the creative arts. And then as we're seeing it evolve and even as we're seeing it improve, the general consensus now definitely seems to be… Everyone can always tell when something was created with AI. Like, yeah, there are books out there or movie scripts out there that were made and published that are definitely AI and everybody knows it. And all the reviews of it are bad and like the sales numbers aren't good on them. People are not… they’re not being fooled by this content, which is ultimately going to discourage… If they're not making any money off of sales of books that were written by AI, then they're not going to keep making books written by AI. Because their bottom line is more important than artistic integrity. 

Matt: Maybe. I think that is the nature of AI though and what it does for people. 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: What do your bracelets say? 

Lauren: Oh. My bracelets today say Ghost Host. I really just wanna be at Disney right now. 

Matt: I know, right? 

Lauren: Like so badly. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Magic 8 Ball. 

Matt: Magic 8 Ball? 

Lauren: Magic 8 Ball. It's from the Fall Out Boy… 

Matt: I mean, I know what a Magic 8 Ball is. 

Lauren: I know, but it's from the Fall Out Boy tour I went to this year. 

Matt: Of course, okay. Enough said. 

Lauren: It was kind of like a running motif throughout it, but I was like, we're looking into the future. We're, you know... 

Matt: Oh. 

Lauren: And then Year of the Snake, which is my Chinese Zodiac Year. 

Matt: Gotcha. 

Lauren: And next year is going to be the Year of the Snake again. 

Matt: I would assume, okay. I like the first one. I don't really care about the other two. 

Lauren: I know. I knew you would like that one and not the rest of them and that's okay. 

Matt: Well, anyways, what I was saying is I think the very nature of AI is such that people will continue trying to make books and movies and music videos and all kinds of other things with it, regardless of what the end results are from a creative aspect, even financially because it's so cheap to create stuff with AI. That's why they'll keep doing it. It's a game of numbers for them. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So if somebody - and there are people doing this as we speak and have been - somebody will create a thousand books with AI and flood Amazon with 1,000 titles. But that person doesn't care if every title except for one is a dud. If that one title generates revenue, it's almost pure profit. 

Lauren: True. 

Matt: So that is, you know, the counter argument to this whole AI and don't worry about it taking your job, creativity blah blah blah blah blah. That's not gonna stop the bad actors from using AI to flood the markets with, with AI, you know, created books and movies and things like that. Because it does, it's - it's just a game of numbers, so. It's not gonna get any better, I think, in those terms. But I think the reality of it is is most humans, like you said, they will understand what is AI generated and what's not, and they're going to naturally, like they always have, gravitate towards human created content. We don't read books and watch movies and listen to music out of no real sort of inner drive. We do it because we want to be entertained. We want to have an emotional response to something. We want to feel something. And so again, that AI content is not going to do any of that for you. 

You might get fooled into buying an AI generated book online. I'm not saying you won't. And it might be about something like John Deere tractor repair and your John Deere tractor just took a dump and you need to fix it. But at the end of the day, when you get that thing, you're still going to know whether it was created by ChatGPT or not, and you won't get fooled again. But you certainly won't buy a cozy vampire romance novel that was generated by an AI robot and not know what you got in your hands. The only person that's gonna write a really good, cozy vampire romance novel is gonna be me. 

Lauren: And I can't wait to read it.

Matt: And I'm not gonna use ChatGPT to do it. 

Lauren: No, but if you need an editor or a beta reader, you know where to find me. Something that you just said in there is something that I've noticed a lot at the marketing and content entrepreneur conferences and events that we attended this year. Because I remember last year, I don't remember which event it was, but there was one event last year that you and I were at, and we were at a lot of the same sessions together, and every single session that we went to was about AI. 

And by like two o'clock in the afternoon, you and I were both just sitting there, like staring dead-eyed at whoever was speaking the whole time, because we were like, this is… Like even the sessions that didn't have AI in the title suddenly became about AI and it was just beaten into us over and over again throughout the day. And there's been a shift now since then, a lot of the sessions that I went to this year were more along the lines of AI is never going to replace the humanity that you as a human marketer bring to your brand. And so instead here, let's talk about these really cool AI assistants and AI tools that you can use to help do the mundane tasks and the mindless tasks that are slowing you down throughout the day so that you can spend more of your time and effort focusing on the things that require your human touch. 

Matt: Right. So don't use AI to write your novel, but use AI to help you write the marketing components to sell your novel. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Yeah, exactly. It's like the cliche that exists right now, or not cliche, but there's a saying right now that I love and it's: AI is not going to take your job, but somebody who knows how to use AI might take your job. You got to jump in and get comfortable with it. So we know that a lot of authors out there are still feeling some sort of way about AI, are not sure about it. And the truth of the matter is nobody has any idea what AI in publishing looks like for next year. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: You know? Or the year after that. I mean, again, the nature of it is that it's also constantly changing and evolving, so. But we do know, and I think it will always be true, that it can't replace human creativity, human emotion. It can't elicit responses like a human can with their writing. So use AI for what it's good at, for productivity. Use it for the tools and making your life easier, like we talked about. I think it is important for people to understand right now where it's at, and try to even maybe potentially roadmap where it's going. But what we do know is that it's great for assisting you and doing a lot of the things that you don't like to do. Even things like bookkeeping for your author business, right? 

What we also know is that there's not a lot of really good sort of legal boundaries or parameters around AI and using it and what that means. A lot of publishing platforms and retailers still don't have any clear cut sort of guidelines and boundaries on that sort of thing. I mean, I would love to see the statistic around how many titles on Amazon are AI generated at this point. I bet it's a pretty big number. 

Lauren: I’m sure. 

Matt: Yeah, I don't know. I think we just need to keep not being afraid of it. We need to keep stepping into it and making sure that we're aware of everything that's coming out. And that's not to say there aren't some good tools out there that have AI in them. I mean. 

Lauren: Oh, absolutely. But I do think that you're right before we shift into that, because I actually do want to recommend some tools. I don't want to say know your enemy because that sounds really dramatic, but to a certain extent, yeah, know… be aware of what tools are out there, what they can be used for, know what is going on out there so that you know what's useful to you, what is a threat to you, what isn't a threat to you, and whether or not you can work with these things. Or around them, if that's easier.

Matt: I think what you mean is keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Okay, I can go with that one instead. 

Matt: You were gonna tell us some tools that you like. 

Lauren: Yes, I was. We have a brand new blog post out now that is about Sudowrite, which is a really cool AI fiction writing tool. I personally have not used it, but I was very delighted by the blog post and reading it, and also spoke with them at Author Nation. They had a really cool booth set up where they were doing demos and stuff like that. 

Matt: I've messed around with it. It's really cool. 

Lauren: It does seem really cool. 

Matt: I think for authors in particular, and even indie creators, the Bublish AI Author Toolkit -

Lauren: Oh, yeah. 

Matt: - is really cool.

Lauren: Yeah. That's not a writing tool, but it is an author toolkit that's much more about publishing and market positioning and helping you figure out your metadata and your book's placement in the market and stuff like that. That's a great example of like, you don't need to use these things to help you write your content, if you don't want to touch that with a ten foot pole. Instead, you can use it for helping you - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Do market research and understand things like that - 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: - and take some of your pressure off of that so you can spend more time writing.

Matt: Again. 

Lauren: Or whatever. 

Matt: Use the AI tools to - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - do all the stuff that you don't like to do or that you're not good at doing. Don't use it to write your entire novel. 

Lauren: Exactly. 

Matt: Use it to write the social media posts that you're going to market your novel with. Use it to help you generate sales by way of maybe you help it write your page descriptions for your product pages on your direct sales site, or these tools that - like Bublish’s tool will help you make sure that your metadata, your book description, all those things that are being fed into the systems that promote your book on these various platforms, that it is up there in terms of compatibility with other titles in that same genre. So use it for, for what it's there for. 

I think one last thing I'd like to point out, and this has become a thing a lot more recently, and that is there's a big, big rise right now in quote unquote publishing startups or publishing tools and companies that are AI based. And a lot of them are really just taking advantage of people and quite literally just taking their money and running, but you're seeing these things pop up a lot. And I think you just need to be careful. Any time you see a publishing company or platform that's promising like, our tool is going to disrupt the publishing industry or we're going to do this or we're going to do that. And then it's coupled with really low prices for, you know, packages or things like that. Just be really wary and do your homework because a lot of people are getting taken advantage of right now by these types of startups. 

And essentially they're no different than scams that existed last year, the year before that. They're just tailoring them more to authors specifically, which really sucks, but. Do your homework. When were they formed? Who's the founder? Who's the team that started it? You know, what are their goals? What's their motivations? What's the end product? What's the pricing look like? In most cases, if something sounds entirely too good to be true, obviously it is. So, you know, keep your eye out for those things. They are popping up here and there. You'll see a lot of press releases and things about some crazy, new, AI-powered publishing startup that's just going to revolutionize everything. And more and more they're not, they're sort of low-budget scams.

Lauren: I don't know. Maybe this is out of touch of me to say, but I feel like of all of the things in life that there are advantages to getting in on the ground floor, a brand new AI tool is not one of them. That's one that I think maybe you should…

Matt: Agreed. 

Lauren: Maybe you should let other people test it out first before you. 

Matt: AI is definitely one of those things where depending on what it's supposed to do, a lot of AI tools, you don't want to be an early adopter. 

Lauren: Right, right.

Matt: You want to treat it like a fine wine. You want to let it age a little bit. Let them get some, some learning in that model and some users on their platform and some testing done. And for your purposes, quite frankly, let them establish some…

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Some reputation and a little bit of authority before you jump right in and start giving them money or your content. 

Lauren: And iron out the kinks too. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So yeah, I mean, we'll see where… and like we said earlier, I think that - I don't think this is a conversation that's ending anytime soon. I think we'll see a lot more about AI in the upcoming year, whether it's AI uses in publishing, AI uses in general, the legality of it. You know, I'm sure that's gonna be a topic of a lot of debate in all forms, as it has been already. So I think definitely not seeing the end of that anytime soon, but we're gonna keep talking about it. We're sure other people will too. We also have a bunch of tools that we've recommended in the past and stuff like that, so.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You can always go back and listen to our other episodes that talk about those. 

Matt: That's true. 

[35:15]

Matt: I think one more thing we'll talk about and then we'll wrap it up. 

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: This year we saw a lot more people experimenting with different formats of their content. 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: So we saw a lot more people this year than in previous years who hadn't tried print books were actually trying print books. They were previously ebook only, had been generating ebook content only, finally taking the plunge and trying print books. We also saw people trying audiobooks for the first time. So as narration tools become more prevalent and less expensive, people can actually afford to get their books narrated as an audiobook. 

And then lastly, the big one right now, I think everybody's still riding that customized printing train. You know, sprayed edges and foil covers and all kinds of crazy leather bound pop-up books with confetti that comes out the first time you open them and you start playing music and a little elf jumps out and starts dancing. No? 

Lauren: You lost me in that last part. But I would really enjoy -

Matt: Wouldn’t that be cool though? 

Lauren: - a book that the confetti popped out of me the first time I opened it. 

Matt: How about a solar powered ebook? 

Lauren: Are you talking about just a print book?

Matt: Yes. Well, do you want to talk about any of those? 

Lauren: Well, I mean, I do think it's just worth kind of acknowledging a little bit. I think that a lot of the like, new book formats conversation of this year got heavily overshadowed by the collector's edition, the bespoke details, the things like that, people wanting to add all of the bells and whistles to their books. And I want to make sure that we highlight the importance of the fact that just authors trying print versions of their books was also a trend this year. And I think that is a trend that has much more value and much more longevity for the average creator. 

Matt: Yeah, and even if you step outside of the realm of indie creators for a moment, self-publishing, and just in general look at the book business. Print books are, the sales numbers are steadily increasing—small percentages, but nonetheless. What most people don't know is print books still outsell ebooks on a global level. So most people are really surprised when we tell them that, plenty of data to back that up. 

So yeah, the idea that people are still in this day and age have not tried print book formats yet and are, is it's a good thing and a bad thing, but you should definitely be trying to work that into your product portfolio because the fact that you've been writing nothing but ebooks up until now and feel like you're doing okay, that's great. But remember there's a whole ‘nother world of readers out there that won't touch an ebook, and you might be alienating some pretty—yeah, me. Hi, it's me. Um, there's a lot of us though, believe it or not. You're alienating a whole new audience, a whole new revenue stream. It's definitely something that you should try if you haven't. 

More and more people are, and that's a great thing. We see that in our own numbers at Lulu, the increase in print book projects being created on a per month, per year basis. So I agree, yeah, that's definitely one that should be pointed out. And I think people should continue experimenting with that. Because why limit yourself to one source of revenue like ebooks - and one small source of revenue, by the way. 

Lauren: Yeah. I think it is something that's important. Also something that we've seen this year that I don't think we've talked a lot about has been kind of the reverse of that. Places and companies and organizations that are trying to go green by not automatically printing print materials anymore, but having print-on-demand versions available for customers that want them.

Matt: Oh, yeah, you definitely see that more on a on a B2B business level, especially enterprise level, but an example of what Lauren's saying would be everybody's bought something where it came with like, a paper manual and it whether it was a printer for your computer or used to be when you bought a new car there was a car manual, a little manual in the glove box printed -

Lauren: Little? 

Matt: Well. 

Lauren: It takes up more than half the glove box.

Matt: Well you don’t have to worry about these days, but there's examples out there now where a lot of these companies instead of wasting money printing these things and including them in the box of every printer or in the glove box of every car whatever that might be, you're given a link where you can go and either purchase that as a print-on-demand book, workbook, catalog, whatever it is, or as a downloadable PDF, things like that. So yeah, I think people are getting a little more clever with print in ways that are less impactful to the environment from a negative way - or more impactful from a positive way, however you want to put that. 

Lauren: Yeah. I think it’s - 

Matt: They're just getting more creative.

Lauren: Yeah, I think it's just really interesting to see how people are utilizing the availability and accessibility and ease of print-on-demand. And as the technology gets better and more available and more cost efficient, people are really putting it to good use. 

Matt: Yeah. So on that, the last little piece I think we can spend just a couple of minutes on is again, this idea of custom additions, all of these embellishments that have been really popular I'd say for the last year, but definitely in the last six months. I couldn't tell you a time in the last six months that I walked into a bookstore and didn't see just a sea, a flood of books with colored edges and designs on the edges and crazy embossed and debossed covers with foiling and raised UV spot printing and - 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: - you know, ribbons and sleeves and just, you name it. It's like somebody this year was like, man, we're just going to open Pandora's box of like printing capabilities. And it's really cool on the one hand. And then on the other hand, you know, if you're a creator and you're, you're trying to replicate some of these things for your own title, maybe at a very small scale, it's not easy and it's costly. And in many, I guess, situations right now, because there's not a lot of people that are doing it in a print-on-demand fashion, in a way that is scalable. A lot of people are running into issues with it, but I don't know. I think it's pretty cool. I think you should be careful when you start to try and apply some of these embellishments to your special edition or what you're doing. I hope we keep seeing cool stuff like this, but I hope it doesn't become the norm because then I think it ruins it.

Lauren: I agree. I think that the more it's available, the more that it just kind of becomes… the books aren't special. They don't stand out anymore when it's a whole table full of books - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - that look like that. 

Matt: Even Target now.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You walk into Target and you go in the book section -

Lauren: They have a whole end-cap display. 

Matt: Well, almost the whole book section now. 

Lauren: Yeah. But I think this is one of my like, absolutely baseless predictions for 2025 is I think that the bubble is kind of going to pop on that a little bit. I don't think it's going to go away entirely. 

Matt: No, I think you’re right. 

Lauren: And I don't think it should go away entirely. I think it's really cool that people have this kind of functionality and features available to them. And we've done whole episodes talking about why we think they’re really valuable for creators that want to make a special product for their fans. But I think that we're going to see people kind of - and this is not a phrase that I say very often in my life - but coming to realize that less is more. I'm usually a more is more kind of girl. But I think that we're going to start to see people instead of doing the sprayed edges and the foil cover with the embossing and the debossing and the casewrap print under the dust jacket and the sleeve. 

Matt: Don't forget the sleeve, yeah. 

Lauren: Don't forget the sleeve and the ribbon bookmark. We're going to see people start to really do like, okay, we're going to do one really cool foil detail on the cover of this book. So we're going to pare it down a little bit, still make it special, still make it look cool. But also, it's not going to be a $45 per copy print cost book.

Matt: Yeah, and I think the other part of that too though is that a lot of what you're seeing right now is from traditional publishers. Because most of that stuff can't be done on print-on-demand. Some of it can, for sure. But most of that stuff cannot be done on print-on-demand, not in any scalable sort of way, and in a way that is efficient. So what you're seeing a lot of are books mainly by traditional publishers and mainly that are printed on offset presses, most of the time overseas, sometimes in the States.

I think what's going to happen is you're going to see as this wave starts to die and a lot of these bookstores and these Barnes & Noble stores are stuck with all these quote unquote special editions that aren't so special anymore - because every book looks like that, and now they're going back to the manufacturers to be pulped and recycled or put in the clearance bins in places - that will die off and it will become special again for the indie creators that want to have a true special edition. And maybe, like you said, do a couple of cool bells and whistles that can be done print-on-demand, or a short run from an offset printer with a few cool... 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And it goes back to being a special edition, something special. Right now it's getting to the point where it's just not special.

Lauren: You're right, it's not special because it's - 

Matt: It's no fun. 

Lauren: Yeah. Wow, you said that - that was so sad the way you said that. Oh no. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: Does that mean you don't want to talk about audiobooks then? 

Matt: I don't, I really don't. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: I think people, you know, there's nothing necessarily new there. And I honestly think that the only progress being made with audiobooks right now is the ease with which you can actually create one. So, you know - 

Lauren: Well, I'm going to make a prediction that we are going to talk more about audiobooks in 2025. 

Matt: God I hope that doesn't come true, but whatever. 

Lauren: If I have my way it will. 

[43:52]

Matt: Alright. Well, you might. So what trends do we expect to see either continuing in 2025 or emerging in 2025? 

Lauren: Well, definitely all the ones I've said so far. So, I stand by what I've said. 

Matt: All of Lauren's trends. 

Lauren: All of my predictions. 

Matt: I think we're going to continue to see direct sales, the adoption curve expanding. Because I think you're going to see more ways to sell direct. And I think more and more tools are going to make it easier. And when I say tools, I don't necessarily mean platforms per se, but I do think tools will continue to emerge and plugins that make things easier for direct sales, like handling taxes or shipping mapping and stuff like that. So I do think that that's going to make that adoption rate increase even more next year. I also think you're going to see more traditional publishers embracing direct sales types of tactics and value adds in their contracts. 

Lauren: Oh interesting. 

Matt: I think you're going to see more traditional publishers allowing their authors in the contracts to have certain direct sales types of rights. We've already seen some of that this year where they've, they've wanted to sign a really popular romance writer or a fantasy writer, and you'll see in the contracts sometimes now where this indie author is getting picked up, is able to keep the rights to… let's say special editions for direct sales on their site. 

So the traditional publisher gets to put out the paperback and the ebook as they normally would, but hardcover is reserved for the author to do through their site as a direct sales option, as a special edition, or things like that. So I think indie authors are getting a lot smarter with these contracts, but I think traditional publishers are more and more realizing that they're going to have to start embracing and incorporating some of these direct sales tactics if they want to continue signing a lot of these emerging authors, because it's just going to be unavoidable. 

Lauren: Yeah. Wow. That's a really, that's a good prediction. I like that a lot. 

Matt: Thanks. I'm definitely on the hit list from traditional publishers. If I wasn't already. 

Lauren: You weren't already? None of them are allowed to listen to this podcast cause we'll both be blacklisted. 

Matt: I'm sure they don't. I'm sure they don't. And we don't get invited to any of their events. This is probably why. 

Lauren: Well. 

Matt: You're welcome. 

Lauren: I mean, I have some friends that work at traditional publishing companies. 

Matt: Are you sure there's still friends? 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: I'm just kidding. 

Lauren: That's fine. 

Matt: What else? 

Lauren: I think that we are going to see more - and this is a trend that already happens, but I think we're gonna see more of it - more content creators and content entrepreneurs using publishing books as lead magnets and not necessarily worrying about getting a traditionally published deal.

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: We're seeing in trad pub in general that nonfiction is on the decline. They're doing a lot more with… Like you have to be a household name, basically, to get a kind of nonfiction deal because they're not willing to take risks, what they consider risks, on like niche names and people that aren't going to sell out their contracts, especially with nonfiction. It's a whole different thing than fiction contracts. 

So I think that we're going to see a lot more creators, whether it's people using books as a lead magnet or as some kind of way to establish themselves as thought leaders or authority figures or whatever, or people that are just monetizing their content, turning more and more towards self-publishing, including those that have already gone the traditional publishing route. That's my prediction for 2025. 

Matt: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think you're already seeing little signs here and there of that too. I mean, there's some pretty large publishers that have already cut out their entire business books unit, you know, and some of their nonfiction -

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But, yeah.

Lauren: Absolutely. And I think that goes hand in hand with the selling direct stuff too. I think these business savvy creators and content entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in general are going to be at the forefront of people saying like, we understand the value of selling direct. And if a traditional publisher isn't going to work with us on that, then that's okay. We'll just do it ourselves.

Matt: Why not? 

Lauren: Yeah, why not? 

Matt: There's a novel idea. No pun intended. 

Lauren: Pun absolutely intended.

[47:42]

Matt: All right. I think that's enough. 

Lauren: I think so, too. Is there anything that you're looking forward to in 2025? Could be work or not. 

Matt: Less work, more sleep. 

Lauren: I'll believe that when I see it. 

Matt: More Disney for sure. I didn't go enough times this year and - 

Lauren: Agreed. 

Matt: I think that's why I've been so grumpy lately.

Lauren: I - I'm not kidding. I genuinely said that to a friend of mine recently. I think the reason that I've been grumpier than usual this year is because there's been a significant decrease in my Disney time. On the ground Disney time. 

Matt: Yeah. I also didn't get my, my annual birthday trip to Disney like I normally do. 

Lauren: Yeah, why didn't you? 

Matt: It's just, it's a long story, but. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Yeah. I also kind of didn't want to celebrate my birthday this year. 

Lauren: Oh, yeah. 

Matt: Because it was the big five-oh, but I don't know.

Lauren: If there's ever a time to go to Disney, it is your 50th birthday. 

Matt: Well, in hindsight, I realize that now. That was a huge mistake. That's a big, big, big, big, big mistake. 

Lauren: It’s okay. We'll make up for it. 

Matt: I won't make that mistake again. 

Lauren: The next time you turn 50? 

Matt: Yes. Which will be next year. 

Lauren: Exactly.

Matt: Yeah. I'm getting - 

Lauren: You’ve tapped out on aging. 

Matt: I'm getting a do over. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That's reasonable. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: Well. 

Matt: I don't think there's anything else to be said. 

Lauren: No, I don't think so either. If there's anything that any of our listeners are looking forward to in 2025, let us know. Leave comments, YouTube, Instagram. You'll find us on all those places. 

Matt: Unless what you're looking forward to in 2025 is no more Publish & Prosper, then don't email us.

Lauren: Don't even think that. Absolutely not. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: That's getting - going right in the trash folder. Anyway, next time we see you, it'll be 2025. Hopefully everything goes well until then. Have a great holiday. Happy New Year. Thanks for listening. I am not going to say we'll see you next year. I cannot do that to myself. I am better than that.

Matt: Later.

Lauren: Later.