Matt: Welcome back everyone to another exciting, riveting episode of Publish & Prosper. Actually today will be fun, because we're going to be talking about publishing trends for 2025, things we've seen this year, in line with the episode we did at the end of last year with predictions and what we thought we would see as trends for 2025. We're coming back through now and looking at those and see just how many of them turned into full blown trends or became trends and died out. So, pretty fun. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Especially for people like us who are book nerds and data nerds. 

Lauren: And also love being right. 

Matt: Well, you love being – 

Lauren: I–well – 

Matt: I could care less.

Lauren: That's not true. You love being right. 

Matt: Only when it comes to you. 

Lauren: That's fair. But I did go back and listen to that episode while preparing for this one, and there was only one thing that we said in there that wasn't...I don't even wanna say it was wrong. It was just like, I don't have as much conviction about it being right as everything else we said in there. And it was a totally baseless prediction that I said that the – 

Matt: Was it about Taylor Swift? 

Lauren: No, it was not. It was about, custom book embellishments, and how that – 

Matt: Oh. 

Lauren: – whole trend was gonna pop. And it still hasn't, like, it's still happening, but I do think that it is less at its like, fevered height this year than it was this time last year.

Matt: Yeah. I think it depends on what circle you move in. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: There's certainly no shortage of embellished covers and sprayed edges and printed edges and things going on right now. But, it really depends on what circle you're–like, if you're spending all your time in a Barnes & Noble, right, or big major chain store, you're seeing a lot of those. You're still seeing some of it in the indie publishing circles, right? So at Author Nation I think there was still some of that going around. I do think it will die off, or at least lessen because I think for now, especially with digital printing, print-on-demand, it's still somewhat cost prohibitive – 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – for a lot of people. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And even the printers, we know what that equipment costs. And when you don't have enough demand for it to cover the cost of that equipment over a certain period of time, then that gets into capital expenditure that you're just carrying. And a lot of times this machinery is not just bought outright, you lease it from people like HP or Canon or these other printer companies, manufacturers. So, I think some of it'll be due to the fact that yeah, this machinery is not cheap, very few people invested in it. And when you don't have enough indie authors and people willing to pay what it costs to do that stuff, you will see it die down some. But yeah, I think you're right. I think that one, it's lasted a little bit longer – 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – I think, in its current state, but I think it's plateaued. I don't know that it's decreased necessarily, but it's definitely plateaued. And I think there are logical reasons for that. But ultimately, personally and selfishly, I hope that it does decline because I like to see embellishments and special editions for just that. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: Like, come out with a new special edition, a variant cover, for a title that's five years old and it's the anniversary of it, or...for a reason, not just because. I just think that what it does is it inflates the cost of books. It creates this false sense of like, yeah, I just, you know. 

Lauren: I mean, I think that's kind of where I'm saying like, I don't wanna necessarily say that I was wrong about that prediction when we're talking about the episode we did last year and then now what we've actually seen happen this year. I'm still not calling myself wrong on that one. I'm just saying I'm less right than I thought I was going to be. 

Matt: Oh, you're so Italian. 

Lauren: Yes I am, thank you. 

Matt: You were wrong, but – 

Lauren: We'll see. But there were plenty of other things that we talked about in that episode that we were dead right on. 

Matt: Sure. Yeah. 

Lauren: Like, right on the money.

Matt: Let’s be fair too, what we're about to touch on and what we touched on in that episode–if you're in the publishing industry, a lot of that stuff was fairly obvious. 

Lauren: Right.

Matt: At least if you were paying attention. And so the things we're about to talk about again, I mean. It's not rocket science. We're not cracking a cold case here. This is stuff that, again, if you're in the publishing industry and you've been paying attention, you've probably noticed this. Maybe we have some data to add to the context or there might be some extra viewpoints or perceptions that you weren't aware of. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think it's just interesting to kind of see like, you're right. There is no breaking news in here. There are no major plot twists in here. Anyone that has been paying attention has seen this coming. Some of this stuff has been ongoing for years. If we go back - 

Matt: Been building for years. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. But it's, I think it's really important to continue to track those trends year over year and see oh, actually this is something that is gonna continue to grow. It's been on the rise steadily for the last few years. And we're gonna continue to pay attention to that, continue to draw attention to that and continue to talk about it. 

Matt: Yeah. Some of these definitely hit their tipping points this year. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Which I think is important, or their inflection points, however you wanna look at it.

Lauren: Yeah. 

[5:28] - High Level Intro / Episode Summary

Matt: Alright, so let's jump in. 

Lauren: Alright, yeah. 

Matt: There are four things that we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about AI and how it pretty much dominated every conversation, which we knew it would. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Every event we went to that was publishing-related - 

Lauren: Across – 

Matt: Actually, not even just  

Lauren: – every industry. 

Matt: Yeah, I was gonna say – 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – not even publishing-related. 

Lauren: Yes. This is definitely not limited to the publishing industry. I don't know a single industry that isn't talking about AI right now. How they're talking about it is different – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – from industry to industry. But this is a worldwide conversation. 

Matt: Yeah, that’s fair. 

Lauren: And will continue to be. 

Matt: The second one was direct sales and how we felt it was gonna continue to trend upward in terms of adoption and usage. Which it did. Third is we were talking about how traditional publishers of all different sizes, small, medium and large, as well as academic publishers, more of that traditional publishing world outside of indie publishing, would be exploring new ways to incorporate print-on-demand into their models. And they have. And then lastly, this trend of authors and creators trying to build tighter relationships with their fans and readers building community around what they're doing. So we're gonna talk about those four things. And we're gonna jump into the most fun one first, which is... 

Lauren: Debatable. Which is actually very on brand for the topic. So we are gonna talk about AI, and how AI has been kind of an overwhelming part of the conversation for better and for worse.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I will say right up at the top though, before we start getting into these, we are gonna be pulling a lot of data points from different resources and stuff like that. I will try to cite them whenever possible, but everything is gonna be linked in the show notes. So if you wanna look into any of this further, if you have any questions about any of this stuff, definitely check the show notes. I'll have all of our sources cited there. 

[7:17] - Trend 1 - AI Use in Publishing

Matt: Yeah. So AI. Obviously it is a massive elephant in the room. Everybody's rooms. There were a lot of predictions in late 2024 about AI. The obvious ones were that it was just gonna get better. And better tools would keep getting released and workflows and automations and ways to use it for productivity, as well as creative purposes. We know that on that creative side, there's a lot of resistance there and probably for good reason.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But there were a lot of cool new tools and things that did get released in 2025. I think that when you look at authors and creators and even publishing companies and anybody that has anything to do with creating books, pre-press work for print books, actually printing books, getting books to stores. Like, there's so many facets of that process that AI can actually streamline where it doesn't have to touch the creative part. And I just think that more and more authors, publishing companies, designers, people are getting more comfortable with it in terms of streamlining that work that really nobody likes to do. Even on the printing side, we use it for order routing and things like that, to a degree, and lots of other people are. So there's a lot of cool uses for it right now. 

Lauren: I think that we are in a really interesting position as both people and employees at a company that are kind of right on the line of multiple industries. Because we're kind of seeing both sides of the conversation, where there's so much conversation dominating the publishing industry, where people are very anti-AI. In the traditional publishing industry there's a lot of people that are really anti-AI usage at all. And it comes from a lot of places of fear of creative rights and is it taking creativity away from authors and writers and artists and other kinds of creators. Which I don't always fundamentally disagree with. But we are also seeing the other side of the conversation with a lot of the other industries that we're part of, like content marketing and digital marketing and content entrepreneur industries, where we're seeing people that are really coming to terms with the incredible ways that AI can be helpful and useful in streamlining business processes and stuff like that.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Where it's not being used as a replacement for creativity and it's not being used as a copywriting tool or a graphics tool or something like that, but it is being used for everyday business practices. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And stuff like that. So it is really interesting to kind of see and be participating in both sides of that conversation. And I am always a little bit interested in the fact that I feel like people that are very immersed in one of those two industries does not really get to see the other side of that. 

Matt: Yeah. I think that its best use right now, if you're just strictly talking about the big three, like using ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity, I guess you could also throw Gemini in there, but really ChatGPT is probably one of the best at this. If you're an indie author or a creator or small business owner, or a whole host of other types of roles, if you're not using Chat GPT as a business consultant, then what are you even doing? You can get so much helpful information out of it, as long as you give it good parameters. Even as an indie author, if you're working on your next book and you really don't like the way your last few launch campaigns have gone, and you want to design a better go-to market strategy, like that's the perfect use for that tool. If you're also falling behind on some of the other business-related tasks that go along with being a full-time indie author, indie creator, it is so much better at this stuff than it was last month, three months ago, last year. Like, using it to do all that stuff is what it's for. There's no time to be afraid of it anymore. You need to get in there and use it, and that's the best use of it. When you talk about AI in our industry alone, when you talk about what it's good for, what it's not great for. And then kind of the debatable aspects of it. What it's good for: the production stuff. Anything to do with your business, helping you develop a go-to-market strategy, helping you develop a marketing plan, helping you develop ways to differentiate yourself from others in your space, things like that. That's what it's great for. Now. There's certainly a lot of things that it's not great for. And I think that's where the valid fear comes in, which is, you know. Amazon themselves will admit this too, but everybody is seeing the massive flood of just AI slop, like just garbage that is cropping up everywhere as it pertains to books, and written content and things like that. And it's–I mean, from one month to the next, it just gets worse and worse and worse. That's why we can't have nice things as humans. We instantly use them for bad. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. This is something that could have been great and immediately got used by bad actors in the worst way possible.

Matt: We did this with the internet. We – 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: – we got something really cool and we ruined it. And then we did this with social media. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Right? We got something really what could be cool and we ruined it, and now we're gonna do the same thing with – 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – with AI we already are, so. 

Lauren: It's what we do best. 

Matt: Great track record there. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I think there are kind of debatable uses of it. Like Matt was saying with some of these tools. I think it was actually a year and a half ago at this point that Bublish launched their AI Author Toolkit. Which is a great tool to have access to. Something like that is great. Something like using Midjourney for 100% of your cover design and then having your book get completely torn apart and also like, you’re questionable of whether or not you own the rights to your cover design in the first place. That's maybe not the best usage of these kinds of things. 

Matt: Or how about nobody buys it, cause your cover looks really weird. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I've yet to see an AI-generated book cover that I thought was like, whoa, that's amazing. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: I mean. 

Lauren: Same. 

Matt: Prove me wrong, send me one. But otherwise, I've seen a lot of them in the last twelve months and I've not seen one where I was like, man, that's pretty sick.

Lauren: Yeah. Like, wow, that was really worth it, for sure. But there are definitely different angles to that usage and to that conversation. I think that the more important takeaway when it comes to stuff like this is, I mean this is, we just celebrated our two year anniversary of this podcast, right?

Matt: Yeah. I didn't get a gift. I didn't get any confetti. I didn't get anything. 

Lauren: Oh, I'm so sorry for you. 

Matt: You should be. 

Lauren: There was confetti in the episode. Sorry if you didn't watch the video and see it. 

Matt: I did. 

Lauren: Oh, okay. 

Matt: But as the person that was sitting in this room and didn't actually get any confetti blown on them, it was… 

Lauren: I'm so sorry.

Matt: It was a little bit anti-climactic. I –

Lauren: Well 

Matt: Go on.

Lauren: It’s okay. You'll survive. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But, I think that maybe the fourth episode that we did, ever, was about AI? Like one of our, one of our first like first ten episodes –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – in 2023 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Was about AI. This is clearly a topic that is not going anywhere. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: It's going to continue to be pervasive throughout not just the publishing industry, but all industries. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And if you are staunchly and actively avoiding it, you are ultimately going to get left behind. And I'm not saying that you need to use it in everyday practices. I mean, it gives me the chills when I'm talking to adults in my life and instead of saying I Googled something, they say like, oh I asked Co-Pilot. And I, and I, my response is, I would prefer if you didn't. Like, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying that you need to reach that level –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – of doing it. But if you have no experience, if you don't even understand how these tools are possibly applicable to you, there is going to reach a point where the industry has outpaced you and you don't wanna be there. Especially because it is so important to stay in the know and in the loop. And even if you are making the conscientious decision to not use these tools, you should still be aware of them and of the usage behind them. 

Matt: Yeah. At a bare minimum, like if you're an indie author that's listening to this and you're one of those that has not really tried it, do the bare minimum. On one of your existing books or your next book, use it just for better metadata and discoverability. Look at Bublish, there are other tools out there that are using this and just try it for that. And look at what it gives you, what it returns. And I guarantee you, you will look at what it gives you back by way of optimized metadata and other stuff and you'll be pretty surprised at not only how on point it is, but how it probably surpasses what you could have come up with after sitting there for four hours trying to figure out, what you should put in for your book description and other metadata stuff that's gonna go to Ingram and these other channels. So yeah, I agree. Either catch up or get left behind big time. 

Lauren: Yeah. Even if for no other reason than knowing how you need to position your book in the market in order to be able to have your books discoverable by these tools or like –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – be, you know, whatever. 

Matt: Yeah. You need to know how to position –

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – your book in the market so that another LLM can steal it.

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: – and rip it off. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I'm just kidding. 

Lauren: Well, but no, you're, I mean, you're not wrong. Even if you need to like, have an awareness of them –

Matt: Well we just convinced them they should do it. I don't wanna go down this path of now convinced them they shouldn't.  

Lauren: But that's where awareness is important. It's understanding and awareness.

Matt: Sometimes ignorance is bliss. 

Lauren: Well, yes, but. 

Matt: I'm just kidding. 

Lauren: Not if you want your business to continue to grow in 2026. 

Matt: There's a lot of tools where, if you do your homework, they're not using your content to train their LLMs or anybody else's. They ingest your content when you upload it, they use that to give you the feedback you're looking for, it either gets purged or just stays within that private ecosystem, so. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Just do your homework, yeah. 

Lauren: Yep. absolutely. 

Matt: Alright. That's AI. I don't really wanna talk much more about AI. 

Lauren: Great, me either. 

Matt: Who could have predicted that? The second –

Lauren: You or me? 

Matt: Well. 

Lauren: You not wanting to talk about AI is shocking. Me not wanting to talk about AI is on brand. 

Matt: I love AI, but you know, I love it for very specific things.

Lauren: Yes. 

[17:16] - Trend 2 - Direct Sales Adoption

Matt: What I love even more than AI is direct sales. 

Lauren: I know. 

Matt: Direct-to-consumer sales. That's why I wanna move on. 

Lauren: I know you do. Go ahead. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Go for it. 

Matt: So we did talk about this in December of 2024, and we did talk about how even though 2024, we saw a lot of growth in that sector, we just felt like it was just going to pretty much double in 2025. And I think for the most part—there are people still reporting data, people who have not put out their end of the year reports yet. But even just looking at our own internal data, as well as, you know, some of our industry partners that we've been able to talk to. We know for a fact that direct sales, direct-to-consumer sales, people selling their content direct using things like Shopify or Wix or a WooCommerce plugin for their WordPress site or any of these other number of platforms that have popped up, by the way. There's a lot of sites out there like Stck, Books.by, where they're specifically, you can just basically build a landing page for your book. They handle all the transaction, everything else. It's almost like the Shopify for authors or creators, right? Nonetheless, this has become so common and so easy that I think that not only will it continue, but I think you're really gonna start seeing a lot of major players adopting it now going into 2026. A lot of medium to large publishers are gonna have Shopify stores and direct sales routes. Some already do, some are experimenting with it. We know that Hachette has been experimenting with direct sales. We know that Abrams and some of the others sell direct off their website. So I think that we're gonna continue to see this trend growing. You know, this ability to own your own data, to own that experience from end to end, to cut out some of the middlemen that are essentially just taking percentage points of profit away from your P&L sheets. I think we're gonna continue to see this growing. In 2025 so far, year to date, we're up 41.8% over last year for new direct sales stores created using the Lulu plugins. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Right? So, Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce. 41.8%. That's huge. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. And we still have, at the time of this recording, we still have about six weeks left in this year. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: So. 

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So we'll probably finish out the year somewhere closer to 44, 45%. Cause we know we'll see a big uptick between now and the end of the year as well.

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Every month we've seen a steady increase, month over month. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Especially compared to the previous year too. Again, just looking at our own internal data. This is a trend that's not going away. And in fact, it is still trending upward. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: And, you know, you can talk to other people in the industry, you can talk to other players. Just, I think the onset of all these new tools that are coming out, ones that are specifically focused on authors and books, that alone should give you a pretty good idea of how this is going, so.  

Lauren: Yeah, we just did an episode on, building a landing page to sell your book direct if you are not yet, or interested in general in the place of having a whole website built out. We just did an episode on this. So I'll link that in the show notes if you haven't listened to it yet.

Some of the tools that Matt just referenced, Stck and Books.by are, are tools we talked about in that. But I think it's also really important and kind of relevant to point out the like direct correlation between selling direct and revenue. Because that is also something, you know, we've seen like a steady adoption rate increasing month over month, and compared year over year for direct sales this year. But we've also seen that increase in like net sales. We just recently put out a report that, we did a survey earlier this year of a little over 2000 authors, creators, business owners, content entrepreneurs, and asked them a fairly robust list of questions and some of them were about direct sales and 33% of the people that responded to that said that they were selling direct from their own website. But of that 33%, 47% of those respondents are making over $40,000 annually from their book sales. And I don't think that that's a coincidence. 

Matt: It's not, no. 

Lauren: The authors that we're seeing and the creators that we're seeing that are making the highest revenue from their book sales are selling direct. 

Matt: They're selling direct, but many of them, let's be clear, have added direct as a sales channel into their portfolio. We're not saying that they stopped doing the other things. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: We're saying that they added direct sales as part of their go wide strategy. It doesn't mean they pulled their content from the other sites, the other retailers, the other distribution channels.

It means they built a direct sales pipeline to their fans and audience. If you're spending X amount of dollars per month–let's say on Facebook ads to drive people to your book, why would you spend that money to drive those people to Amazon? Let Amazon spend their own money on that. If you're making an effort or spending money on driving traffic, it should be to you. And if you're doing that, you should not then redirect them over somewhere else to buy your book. You should be able to sell it to them right where you have them land. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And that's the whole point of it, so. 

Lauren: Yeah. It is, and it is absolutely something that we're seeing… We know people are going wide with their book sales. We're seeing that across the industry. We did do an episode earlier this year on how to go wide with your book sales, and it is one of our top five highest performing episodes from the year.

Matt: Not surprising. 

Lauren: And I'm not, I'm not surprised by that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And I think that is one of those ones that the numbers will continue to tick up over time. 

Matt: Yeah. Cause the biggest sort of differentiator between self-publishing or any publishing and traditional publishing these days is just access to sales and distribution. As an indie published author or a creator or a business, anybody… Yes, you can put your title in Ingram distribution. You can put it into Amazon and all these other…you can do that, but your title does not get treated the same as a traditionally published title in distribution that has salespeople behind it actively promoting it into retail. And, when you talk about self-publishing, indie publishing, basically it's easy these days. Because of the tools and the technology and just where we're at now. It's nothing honestly, in terms of effort, resources, to get a book into market. You can get a good one into market, paying for an editor and some other things. It's–that's not the problem. The problem is always, and probably always will be as long as that, that stream is gate-kept, access to retail and sales channels, right? So the more sales channels you can add for yourself as an indie published creator or author or business, the better off you'll be. Because I don't think it's gonna be anytime soon where that gate's gonna be open for you to go into distribution in the way that traditionally published authors are. 

Lauren: Right.

Matt: So this is a great option, probably a better option in the long run. 

Lauren: But I do think that this is actually…I'm gonna jump ahead a little bit because I do think this is something that we are going to start seeing more of, that blurred line between those opportunities for self-publishing versus traditional publishing. I think traditional publishers are aware of how important and how essential to author growth direct sales opportunities are. 

Matt: Of course they are, yeah. 

Lauren: Because they're starting to experiment with that and we're starting to see different areas where traditional publishers are experimenting with not just introducing direct sales into their own ecosystems, but also partnering with authors – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – and coming up with like, hybrid contracts that touch on that. We've referenced, in the past, Jane Friedman does a Key Book Publishing Paths chart that she updates every year, where she talks about the differences between traditional publishing, self-publishing, hybrid publishing. And her 2025 update, she greatly expanded–direct quote from her–that chart because of how many new alternate and hybrid publishing paths are becoming popular and are becoming like, a huge part of the ecosystem. And one of those was a section that she called Rights Sales. Which is mostly traditional publishers partnering with self-published authors, where they are doing hybrid contracts with them. Where it is something like the publishing company will help market and distribute these books, but the authors are retaining rights to direct sales or rights to certain formats of the book. Because the publishers want these contracts, they want to capitalize on these really successful self-published authors, but the authors know better than to give up those rights that they have. 

Matt: Well, they're, they're learning better.

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. We're seeing that happen in some places in the industry already, and I think that we're going to continue to do so in years to come. 

Matt: Yeah. I think it's ironic and funny at the same time because what's happening is for the longest time traditional publishing houses had all the power and the reach. And mostly reach, right? And mostly through really well done distribution contracts and agreements and things. And they've always had the core on the market when it comes to brick and mortar retail distribution. Now though, you see a lot of authors and creators who are spending a lot of time building their own reach. And so you start to have this offset, or this…almost like a set of liberty scales, this balance between creators, authors, and traditional publishing analysis. And I think that everybody's battling for reach and market share and the better that authors get at it, the better that creators get at it, it seems that traditional public houses get a little worse. And I think part of their strategy right now is that they're just picking up new authors that have huge reach because they know they're great at it, and the traditional publishing houses are kind of losing out a little bit on that front. I just think it's kind of cool to watch that happen. And again, when you can build an audience and then leverage that for a better contract with a traditional publishing house, then by all means go do it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Especially if you can retain some direct sales rights or special edition rights or... If you can navigate and negotiate the best of both worlds for yourself, you should. I mean, I don't think we're gonna be living in a world much longer where it's an us versus them mentality, indie publishing versus traditional publishing. I think the lines are just gonna continue to get blurred, but in a good way. And I think that each side is recognizing the value and benefits that the other side can bring to the table. I think before long traditional publishing houses are gonna realize that yeah, I mean, we're gonna have to give up certain things in order to gain some more profit margin points. And that's why we push so hard for indie authors and creators to just keep building your audience, because that's your real leverage. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I mean, you could be the best writer on the planet, write the coolest book on the planet, but honestly, if you don't have an audience, if you don't have follower accounts, if you don't have, buzz, people talking about you, the chances of you ever landing, a big traditional publishing contract or just getting your book out there on a mass scale are slim to none, so. 

Lauren: Well, and I think we're also seeing in that same vein, and in the same way that we're seeing the lines blur, we're also seeing authors that are taking a hybrid approach because they realize, or they are realizing how accessible these things are. And also how the quality and like, the content gap between these two paths is shrinking constantly. I know at least two of my favorite authors this year, that have been traditionally published in the past, self-published this year. And I think we're gonna see that happen a lot more often. 

[28:40] - Trend 3 - Trad Pub Adopting POD Strategies

Matt: I agree. I think that that's a good segue into the third thing, which was this trend that we thought would continue and grow–and has–of traditional publishing houses really looking at print-on-demand… Which is often tied to self-publishing, but print-on-demand specifically, for ways to be able to compete better, to gain back some margin. I think it probably helped that there were some geopolitical things that went on this year that also really affected supply chain, and may or may not continue to affect supply chain, or at least the perception of it. When you talk about something like print-on-demand, a model that's built on digital printing, and the ability to basically distribute manufacturing across a wide chain and network, that's a lot more attractive than putting all your eggs in one basket. You know, ordering an initial run of 30,000 copies offset, having them delivered, stored in a warehouse, and then shipped out to all the bookstores for a front list title, new release. That's all fine and good, but what are you doing with your backlist? And what are you doing once that front list title gets moved to backlist? And so continuing the old model of offset print, smaller runs, warehouse em, backlist just slowly chips away at that – Backlist is the money driver, by the way, for traditional publishing. Front list is a, is a nice hit every now and again. But backlist is the steady driver, that's what pays everybody's paychecks in traditional publishing. So finding more creative and profitable ways to do that and not miss out on sales… A lot of traditional publishing houses, you'll have a backlist title, or a lot of backlist titles, where you sell through the copies you have in the warehouse. And now you're faced with…well, this is a steady seller, low numbers, could we do without it? Because the minimum order quantity from our printer's gonna be another 10,000 units. So that's X amount of cash up front, anywhere from 30 to $50,000 up front, sometimes more. It's oftentimes not necessarily, at least in their mind, worth it. And so they just don't do it. And that backlist title becomes unavailable. Now they can just switch it over to a print-on-demand replenishment model and they don't have to stock a warehouse with it. They don't have to do anything when that order comes through, the backlist title's always available. When the order comes through print-on-demand and digital printing allows for it to just be printed and shipped immediately. 

Lauren: We did just talk about this in the episode that we did on magazine printing with print-on-demand.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But while everything that we talked about in that episode was magazine-specific, it is also relevant across the board with all different types of industry publishing models. So any backlist titles, anything that is something that's outta print that you want to – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – have available but not necessarily bring back, order in bulk, deal with storing it or shipping it out to – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – booksellers and stuff like that. Those are all wastes of money in a lot of ways. And something that the industry has not really adapted in the past, is this print-on-demand model. And I do think that you're right, as we're seeing this shift in industry perception and public perception of self-publishing and print-on-demand. It's no longer this taboo thing that has such a stigma against it. People are starting to realize oh, now that we're no longer being snobs about this, this is actually really useful.

Matt: I don't think the general public necessarily cares –  

Lauren: No. 

Matt: – about print-on-demand. If you order a book and you get the book and the book is well printed, you don't care. 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: You don't ask – 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – you don't care. And ultimately, print-on-demand, it took a little while for the technology to catch up and for the machinery to catch up, but we're at a place now where for the most part, depending on who prints it and where it was printed, it's really hard to tell the difference between something that was run on an offset machine and something that was digitally printed for a print-on-demand model. So yeah, I think that that's definitely part of it. I think the other thing you're seeing is that, when you're a big publishing house or you're running, you know, large orders, sometimes you may have under calculated or miscalculated how many copies you need. Let's say you order 10,000 of a nice 8.5” x 11” coffee table book, 380 pages, full color, beautiful. But you're short another 1,500 copies. Like…you don't wanna have to go do another run of 5,000, 10,000 if you don't need to. You can use print-on-demand now to do a thousand, 1,500 copies of a really beautifully done, full color, hardcover, whatever, to fill that space. So there's a whole host and myriad of ways to use it. I think now though, again, we're at this sort of tipping point or inflection point where I do think that the bigger publishing houses and printing houses are realizing like, print-on-demand is something that we can use to not only do right by the environment–there's a lot of EU compliance things that are coming down the pike, and already have, for publishers and book producers. But it's a viable way to start adding margin back into your P&L sheets, to be able to reclaim some of that margin you lost because you've got 5,000 copies of a book sitting on a shelf becoming obsolete. Every month that they're sitting on that shelf or on that pallet you're paying storage fees, you're depreciating the value on those books. And at the end of the year, if they're still sitting in that warehouse, you basically have a liability on the books now, not a profit center. So, yeah, I, I just think it's starting to be seen as the smarter way to, I think, complement the traditional way that you print and sell books by filling in those gaps in a more efficient way.

Lauren: Yeah. I think complement is a really important word there too. We are definitely not talking about replacing offset printing with digital printing in all circumstances. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: No one is saying that when the next Fourth Wing book comes out – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – they should just use exclusively digital printing for that. Like, no. No, no, no. You should, you should offset print a million copies of that book. 

Matt: Well, I don't know about a million, but... 

Lauren: Didn't it sell like 1.2 million in the first week? 

Matt: I'm not sure. 

Lauren: Or something? I think the last one did. We're not saying that there isn't a time and place for offset printing. But to be able to supplement your offset printing with digital print copies – 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – is a great option and a great solution. And I think that people are starting to finally catch on to that idea. 

Matt: Yeah. And I mean this works for industries and people other than traditional publishers. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: We have a whole sort of, I guess, swatch of users on our platform that we call them our B2B segment, but they're basically businesses that use us to print and sell their books, whether they're a book business or a group of authors or publish- it doesn't matter, but. They could just be straight up in the automotive industry and they have printed manuals that they need… You know what I mean? Like, there's so many use cases for that where we've literally helped several different businesses be able to stop spending so much money on warehousing and pick and pack fulfillment and things by switching over to a print-on-demand model. So it is something that is catching on outside of just the publishing industry.

Lauren: Sure. I think there are a lot of different businesses in a lot of different industries that use a book product that they don't necessarily consider it publishing or they wouldn't think of it – 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: – as I'm publishing a book. But the product that they're, whether it's for internal use or external use, the product that they are creating is a book. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Especially with some of these industries that are doing…you know, annuals. Whether it's a automotive guide that every time the new car comes out, you have to update – 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And then what happens to all those old copies that are obsolete? Or calendars or planners or whatever it is. Like, there's travel guides, all these things, that once they become outdated, what happens to the obsolete versions of them? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: The less waste that you have there, the less you have to worry about that.

Matt: Yeah. I think that we'll continue to see this grow as the technology continues to expand. We’ve spent a lot of time developing our print-on-demand technology, our APIs, our network, and others are doing the same. And so I think we're gonna continue to see this. I think it's a win-win for everybody involved. So I'm looking forward to that. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

[36:33] - Trend 4 - Authors Building Community

Matt: Alright, number four. Last one. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Was authors building communities, connecting more. Authors, creators, businesses. 

Lauren: We've talked about some of this –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – already in this episode. I think this is kind of one of those threads that has…like, all of the things that we've talked about so far kind of prove why people are doing this. Or maybe – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – maybe the other way around. Maybe this is the why all of these other things are becoming, like…

Matt: I think thread was the right word. 

Lauren: Yeah? 

Matt: That's why I paused. I think you actually said it right. I think that even some of the people in traditional publishing that I've talked to recently, they have an interest in creating more communities based around their authors and having direct relationships with buyers and readers and things. And so, you know, I think it stems, or goes all the way from traditional publishing all the way down to the indie author. I think that this thread of community and building direct relationships, yeah, it does weave in and out of all the things we've talked about and the ways to do that and accomplish that. So, I think thread was probably the right word. 

Lauren: I think it's something that is, like the direct sales, this is something that we're seeing across industries as well. And not just publishing-specific, where it's just authors that are working–because authors have always been kind of dedicated to building reader relationships and reader communities.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Authors have–actually, I think a lot of content creators and content entrepreneurs could learn from what authors have been doing for years when it comes to things like street teams and having like, dedicated readers. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And things like that. But Kajabi puts out an annual or somewhat annual, State of Creator Commerce report. And for their 2025 report that they put out earlier this year, they spent the first half of the report, pretty much, talking about identifying the differences between what they called entrepreneurial creators and social-first creators. The main difference being entrepreneurial creators are creators that are owning their own content, their revenue streams. They are building on owned land and not rented land. They're selling products like courses, coaching, memberships –   

Matt: So hold on a second. 

Lauren: – whatever. Uh-huh? 

Matt: They're coining a term, entrepreneurial creators. Wow. It's almost like content entrepreneur. 

Lauren: It sure is.

Matt: It's almost as if – 

Lauren: It sounds – 

Matt: – they just switched the order of those words.

Lauren: It’s almost as if we've been – 

Matt: Wow. 

Lauren: – talking about this for two years, if not longer. I mean, definitely. We've only been talking about this for two years, we've only had the podcast for two years. But yeah. Yes. But they did actually, I will link this report in the show notes, because they do have a lot of data in there to back up what they're talking about as opposed to then the social first creators who are primarily social media 

Matt: Who also sound a lot like influencers. So –  

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Kudos to you, Kajabi, for trying to redefine two things that already existed.  

Lauren: Rebranding.

Matt: Make it your own, go ahead. But basically we're talking about content entrepreneurs and influencers. 
Lauren: Yes. Yes. But talking about the difference between how… Regardless of industry, because they are not talking about specific, they're not talking about authors or fitness influencers or whatever.

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: Like, they are talking across industries. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And really kind of showing the difference just across the board, what they're seeing in terms of revenue, in terms of work life balance and creative freedom and fear of things like, you know… We saw earlier this year the widespread panic of what was gonna happen if TikTok shut down. And the number of creators that had to suddenly come to terms with the reality that they had built their entire platform on TikTok –  

Matt: On rented land. 

Lauren: – on rented land, and that that could get pulled out from under them tomorrow at the whim of a billionaire. I think a lot of people – 

Matt: Or a government. 

Lauren: Or both. 

Matt: Or the combination of the two, yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: There you go. 

Lauren: I think that this year people really kind of had the reality check of, oh shit, we can't do it this way. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I cannot put all of my eggs in this basket if I'm not the one holding the basket. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I think that that's something that we're gonna see a lot more of. And also, this does go hand in hand with the AI conversation too. For the pros and cons of AI. As more creators are using AI as a listening tool, as a way to better understand their audience, as a way to do things like craft reader personas or figure out how to better target their audience and better position their content in the market. Those tools give them the ability to create stronger relationships with their readers, or with their audience, or whatever. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But also the fear of, ‘how do I know that this isn't AI-generated slop created by somebody with malicious intent?’ 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That authentic human connection is becoming more and more important, and that authentic community is becoming more and more important.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So we're definitely seeing an increase over this year, and I think we will continue to see an increase next year in the value of relationship building and community building. 

Matt: Hundred percent. I think the definition of community is gonna start to vary even more widely, but yeah, I agree. I think that you almost don't have a choice. And again, you know the topic of discoverability. We've been talking about this forever, you know? Not building on rented land and using those platforms for what their intended, discoverability, but get people over to your space as fast as you can. Never be reliant on those spaces. And so using AI, using other things for discoverability, other platforms, other channels, it does all still lead back to building a community around your content, what you're doing. And ultimately that does tie back into, hey, you build a large enough community and you're gonna have some bigger publishing houses knocking on your door. So yeah, I think this all ties together really nicely. I still like the word thread that you used. It's pulling a thread and you just have all these little...yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. I think that was probably the right metaphor. I don't know. 

Matt: Good for you. 

Lauren: I'll have to go back and listen to it again, cause I've already forgotten what I said. But I do think that that is something that we've seen a lot of this year, and something that we will continue to see. Even in terms of just simple things like the adoption of email marketing, the interest in email marketing.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: We've done two episodes this year on email marketing, thanks to our wonderful email marketing manager Laurie. I'm sure we will do more. I think both of those episodes were in our top ten performing episodes for this year, so it's clearly something that people are interested in. 

Matt: I believe it.

Lauren: The data that we got from that Books and Business Insights survey that we did, we are seeing a lot of the people responding to that with active email lists. A lot of them are claiming them as their highest or second highest channel, for audience development, audience building. And a lot of the people that were the top 5% of highest earners within these respondents are very reliant on their email marketing channels. 

Matt: As they should be. 

Lauren: So–as they should be. And as I think they will continue to be. 

Matt: Yeah. 

[0:0] - Wrap Up

Lauren: I don't wanna get too far into the prediction part of the conversation, because –

Matt: I'm not predicting anything right now. 

Lauren: Well, you'll have to just stay tuned for those. 

Matt: I feel good about 2025.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And a lot of the trends that we thought would continue, or become a bigger trend, I guess. I like the trends that we're seeing, for the most part. So I hope several of them continue into 2026. But I do think there'll be some new things that we talk about, very soon. Maybe on the next podcast –  

Lauren: Maybe. 

Matt: – that we should be on the lookout for in 2026.

Lauren: Yeah. Is that a hint? 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: That you're. You're hinting at – 

Matt: Yes. 

– at the future to come, the immediate future and then the –

Matt: That's a hint. Yes. 

Lauren: Okay. All right. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Well, I like it. And I, I agree. I think it might seem a little early for an end of year kind of retrospective. You know, we – 

Matt: I don't think that's too early. 

Lauren: I don't think it is either. 

Matt: I don't plan on doing much of anything in the whole month of December, so.

Lauren: That sounds great. That sounds ideal, honestly. But no, I do, I do think that as we've talked about throughout this episode, a lot of the trends that we've seen are not new to this year.

I don't think they're gonna change super dramatically in the last few weeks of this year. And I think that we will continue to see more of them in the year to come. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Good job, Lauren. 

Lauren: Wow. Thanks so much. I do wanna say this episode does come out the day before Thanksgiving, so if you're listening to it when it comes out.

Thanks. Thanks for listening. 

Matt: Thanks for giving us your time. 

Lauren: Thanks for using us as an excuse to hide from your family. 

Matt: Yeah. There you go. 

Lauren: If you need us to run this for another hour, let us know. 

Matt: Just goes into a different episode. 

Lauren: Yeah, no, I can–I'll put some recommendations in the show notes. Our longest episodes.

So you can really, ‘I'm doing research, sorry.’ 

Matt: Yeah, 

Lauren: I'm busy. But, you know, if not, you can always come back next week. 'cause we will definitely have some more interesting content for you next week. 

Matt: That's a good idea. 

Lauren: I know we haven't been numbering our episodes, but next week's episode is number 100, so. 

Matt: Interesting. 

Lauren: Kind of a big one, you know? 

Matt: Yeah. Will I get confetti? You can't refer to an episode as a big one or an anniversary when you're not gonna do anything. 

Lauren: I'm so sorry. 

Matt: Yeah. You realize I'm gonna be upset if there's no, like… 

Lauren: I do realize that, yes. Thank you. 

Matt: Okay, I'll just bring my own.

Lauren: Okay. You do that. 

Matt: How about that? 

Lauren: All right. Well, you'll have to tune in next week to see whether or not there was confetti. 

Matt: There probably won't be. This studio is small. Nobody wants to clean that up. 

Lauren: Well, we'll see how it goes. 

Matt: Yeah. All right. 

Lauren: But in the meantime, if you don't wanna wait that long, you can always leave a comment on Lulu's social media. You can comment on YouTube where there are video episodes in full of all these episodes, if you're not already watching them on there. Or you can email us at podcast@lulu.com. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: And we will continue this conversation next week in episode number 100 

Matt: Later. 

Lauren: With no confetti.

Matt: Bye.