Lauren: Wait, what are you doing? Oh, God. It's okay. I'll wait. Literally we've had this planned since the two year anniversary episode, when he was so upset about the lack of confetti. I got the rest of my team in on this. They were going to come into the studio in the middle of us recording and surprise him with confetti. But unfortunately for Matt, he's impatient.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: Do you feel festive now?

Matt: I did until you made me sit here for five minutes while you got ready. 

Lauren: Excuse me? You got up and walked out.

Matt: I'm just kidding. I’m joking.

Laurie: Sorry to interrupt.

Matt: There we go. Now it's 100 episodes.

Laurie: Happy birthday!

Matt: That's what you should be doing. Is that what you told me there weren't any big ones out there?

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Okay. Thank you. You understood the assignment.

Lauren: I did understand the excitement. 

Matt: Okay, good. 

Lauren: Thank you. Anyway, happy 100 episodes.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: Can we get back to recording now?

Matt: We are recording.

Lauren: We sure are.

Matt: Yeah.

 [1:36] - Intro

Lauren: Anyway, it's been 100 episodes.

Matt: 100. We made it. To 100. 

Lauren: How’s it feel?

Matt: I feel like I'm a hundred. 

Lauren: It is also your birthday today. As–the day that we are recording this –

Matt: As we record this, yeah.

Lauren: It is. It is Matt's birthday also. So you’re feeling extra old. 

Matt: As it airs…so I am, I am half the amount of years old as episodes we've recorded. 

Lauren: Wow. 

Matt: Yeah. Well, a little more.

Lauren: Wow. And I bet you feel every every minute of those episodes 

Matt: All the time. 

Lauren: Yep. Well, we did it. We made it to 100 episodes. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Not that we're ending here. You know, we have plenty left to go. 

Matt: No, I finally got a confetti cannon – 

Lauren: You finally – 

Matt: – so we're definitely not ending here. You just secured your job for another year.

Lauren: Thank goodness. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Thank goodness. This will be our last episode for 2025, though.

Matt: Boo.

Lauren: Well. 

Matt: Actually, that's okay. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I need a vacation. 

Lauren: Right. So we're going to take a break for the month of December, and we will be back in the new year with new episodes. So we thought to celebrate 100 episodes and also to wrap up the year that we've had here, this would be a good time for us to follow up on last week's episode. Which was looking back on industry trends and other things that were happening throughout 2025, and thought we might talk through some things that we think are coming in 2026. Or maybe not coming, but…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Continuing on.

Matt: Yeah, I think continuing or maybe even some emerging trends, 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You know, maybe stuff that's not quite obvious just yet. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Things like that. I don't like the word prediction. So I’ve asked Lauren not to use the word prediction.

Lauren: I, I tried really hard – 

Matt: Which I think is hard, yeah. It's hard because everybody does like every podcast does a prediction episode, every blog writer will write a predictions blog. And I think that word is way overused, but I don't think anybody's making true predictions. We're all just giving our opinions and weighing in on trends. Dying, emerging trends, whatever.

Lauren: Yeah, some big ones. Some small ones. 

Matt:  Yeah. 

Lauren: Maybe some fun ones. Maybe some straightforward ones. We also have not compared notes on this, which I think will be really interesting. 

Matt: Yup. 

Lauren: I don't know what Matt's predictions are going to be and he doesn't know what mine are going to be.

Matt: I mean, you could probably guess what some of mine are going to be, but still.

Lauren: I could guess if I wanted to put some money on it. I did try to, I went through my whole ridiculous t-shirt collection last night. And somehow I don't have any t-shirts that have Madame Leota or any kind of like, crystal ball on it. I wore my magic eight ball shirt, which is the closest that I could get. But. 

Matt: I don't have a Madame Leota shirt either. I do have Madame Leota tattooed on my arm.

Lauren: That's true, you do.

Matt: I'm going to leave that covered for now. 

Lauren: Understandable. 

Matt: I don't want it to influence anything here.

Lauren: That's fair. So we will not be pulling out any crystal balls for this episode. Or magic eight balls. 

Matt: No. But let it be – 

Lauren: We will make some educated – 

Matt: Let the record show we are huge fans of – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – Madame Leota Toombs.

Lauren: Do you realize that a very recent episode I wore my Leota Toombs Fan Club shirt?

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Great, excellent.

Matt: It was the last episode wasn’t it? 

Lauren: Yeah. Great. We're doing so good.

Matt: I think you think that I don't pay attention.

Lauren: No, I know better. 

Matt: And sometimes I’m not paying attention. 

Lauren: No no no no, I know better than to assume that you are not paying attention. Because you pay attention to things – 

Matt: Probably, probably the wrong things –  

Lauren: – that I think that you’re not paying attention to, and then all of a sudden I find out the hard way that you totally caught that.

Matt: Well, and then there's other things, or I'm in a meeting or something, and I'm like, I said that? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And you guys are like, yeah. And I'm like…and it's either really good or really stupid. So. 

Lauren: We do frequently threaten to record all conversations with Matt.  

Matt: You probably should.

Lauren: We probably should. 

Matt: It shouldn’t be a threat. It should be a given.

Lauren: I do have all this equipment. I should be doing this more often.

Matt: Well, I mean, you got Gemini and Otter and everything else. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: On our laptops. So. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

[5:06] - Matt Predicts: More publishers will lean into POD as part of their business strategy in 2026

Matt: All right, let's jump in.

Lauren: Okay. Sounds good.

Matt: You want me to go first?

Lauren: Sure, yeah.

Matt: Okay. I wrote my three down. 

Lauren: Wow. 

Matt: Because I didn't want any eyes to see at first. I didn't want any spoilers.

Lauren: Breaking news?

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Go for it.

Matt: So my first one is that print-on-demand will switch from being a cost center into a competitive advantage for forward-thinking publishers. And what I mean by that is, yes, there are a lot of publishers that are using print-on-demand now as part of their supply chain, as part of their distribution chain, as a way to fulfill certain products or test certain things. And hats off to them. And I think those are the ones that are going to continue leaning into print-on-demand into 2026, for a lot of reasons. And I think others who have been sitting back and kind of watching or have felt a little bit trepidatious or hesitant will realize in 2026, especially by the middle of the year, that they really should. Print-on-demand models will become as important, I think, to the publishing supply chain as some of the other things that have surfaced over the years. Including AI, to a degree, and we'll get to that. But I think right now, certain people view the print-on-demand model, and even digital printing, even if they are using it a little bit, as more of a cost center. But I think more and more people, publishers, small, medium and large, especially medium and large, those are the ones that have to really pay attention to even the most minute increments of a percentage point of margin. Like they have to watch that like a hawk, and that's really how they make–I mean, we've talked about before, the large traditional publishing houses, they make decisions about books based on projected sales and what it will do to their PNL sheets. Point blank. It doesn't mean there aren't people who enjoy good literature working in publishing houses. In fact, there's tons of them. But at the end of the day most of the big ones, they're owned by media companies. They have shareholders and stockholders and people that they report to. So they have to be thinking about things like will this change, fundamentally, the way that we approach our supply and distribution chains in a positive way, where our shareholders, our stockholders our…our owners are going to see benefits there? And so I think POD, print-on-demand, is definitely going to become a much larger presence in 2026. And I say that based on the steam that it's picked up this year in 2025. The conversations I've been having personally with people at traditional publishing houses and other organizations. As well as what we're seeing out there from others who are kind of doing the same thing.

Lauren: I had a very similar prediction. Oh, sorry, I used the forbidden word. I had a very similar idea. I did say that whether it's going to be for socio-economic reasons or cost benefit reasons, I do think that we are going to see a lot more traditional publishers looking for new solutions–new to them, not new to the world–new solutions for bringing costs down and bringing their production not necessarily in-house, but in-continent, perhaps? I think that they're going to be looking for more local printers, for solutions that do not require ordering 10,000 copies offset printed overseas, that then have to be shipped and…sometimes lost at sea, sometimes take six months to get here, paying international tariffs, stuff like that. I think that that's something that for a variety of different reasons, more and more publishers next year are really going to be looking at, if not complete, POD digital printing solutions, at the very least, a hybrid way to kind of merge that into their existing strategies.

Matt: Yeah. And I think that's all accurate. And again, what's great about print-on-demand, and I didn't mean to talk this long about it. It's not just the direct financial ramifications of utilizing and integrating a print-on-demand model into your supply and distribution chains, but it's all of the trickle down effect. So offset saves you money on printing. There's no argument there. Offset printing produces a really good book. And there are offset printers in the US, really good ones, that will continue to get used. And let's not, let's not mince words here. I mean, upwards of 80% of the print books that are in the market right now were offset print. That will still be a thing. It's more about offset print brings other costs with it, right? You're getting a cost savings on the printing, but now you're doing more heavy lifting in terms of shipping. Now those have to be warehoused. They have to be fulfilled. They have to be re-shipped to distribution centers or other retailers. Then you have books potentially sitting on the shelf in the warehouse. There's a depreciation there, there's obsolescence rates, there's returns that start to stack up. So it brings with it all of these other costs. Whereas print-on-demand, when utilized in a really smart and effective way, gets rid of those costs. So yes, the per unit cost on a book is higher than an offset unit. But you're getting rid of warehousing, you're getting rid of all the labor involved in fulfillment and pick and pack and shipping. You're getting rid of those other shipping routes. You're actually decreasing the amount of shipping time, right? You're doing a lot of things to get rid of those associated costs. So it's not even necessarily a strategy about replacing offset any time soon, because it still is the most cost effective way to have large numbers of books printed. Although you will see, like you mentioned, more and more of it being done in the US, the offset printing –

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – than outside of the US, because of geopolitical stuff and other things. But the other problem with that is it offset, they have minimum order quantities. And those MOQs make it pretty much cost prohibitive if you need to do a shoulder run of, let's say 800 units, you know what I mean? That's just not – a test copy, by the way, when you're setting up a new title and offset to get a proof copy, right. We used to flip out because BookBaby would charge like $49 for a proof copy. And we were all like, oh my God, that's crazy. But a proof copy for an offset run, a new title set up, can be anywhere from $400 to $1000. For one proof copy. There are just costs associated with it that make things somewhat cost prohibitive. So, there's other stuff. But again, being able to stay within border or closest to your buyer is really gonna have a lot of benefits. You're right about that too.

Lauren: I think there's also just a lot of ways that, having experienced working in a traditional publishing house, I think there are a lot of in-house ways that digital printing and POD could be really helpful for them. Even when it comes to things like proof copies or something like an ARC, which is still a less polished, watered-down version – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That still has to be produced. That still takes time. And that's still like if they place the order for them a few months ahead of time, which is how they have to do it. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And then something happens where they get a really cool earned promo opportunity, but they have to have a physical copy of the book in hand to send to…

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – to get it included in a round up or a book box or something like that. They don't want to have to wait for those single proofs to come in. Or maybe they've already ordered exactly the number of ARCs that they expected to need, and suddenly an opportunity comes up that they need more. And you can just run off a couple copies with print-on-demand. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So I do think that there's going to be a lot more ways that people are going to be using this stuff in-house, and also in larger business strategy next year.

Matt: Yeah, the in-house thing, again, for some that is a big deal. For some it might not be. But the last part of that would be this idea that as a publisher, there are times where you need to test titles. You need to test titles for seasonality, you need to test them in new markets. You might just need to test a new title in general. Again, having the agility and flexibility that comes with a print-on-demand model makes that much easier and more cost effective with a much lower lift. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So that kind of stuff, absolutely correct. 

[12:29] - Lauren Predicts: More authors will approach their brand with hybrid publishing (blending self-publishing and traditional publishing) solutions

Matt: Okay. What's your first one?

Lauren: Well, we talked about this a little bit in the last episode, but I'm going to bring it up here again. I think a lot more authors as well as publishers are going to be looking at the hybrid solutions available to them. And I don't necessarily mean hybrid publisher in the way that we've talked about them in the past, as a self-publisher, indie publisher that will help you with the production or the marketing or whatever. That's not what I'm talking about. I mean like, people that are going to say, okay, well, you know, I have this traditional deal, like I have a contract with a traditional publisher, and I am going to continue publishing the books that I have in that contract with them. But I also want to take back some of my own control, and I also want to take back some of my audience and ways to communicate. And I want to start approaching this as a business, as a brand, as like, my author brand, regardless of who my publisher is and what my publishing contract looks like. And I think that we're going to see a lot more authors in the year to come that are going to be doing a mix of traditional publishing and self-publishing. And specifically with that self-publishing, doing things like selling direct, building their email lists, connecting with their readers, looking for ways to take not necessarily take back control, but not be relying on their publisher for a lot of that stuff. Because I think that's really important. I think people are starting to see how important that is. In the same way that publishers are going to be looking into solutions for how to mix both traditional publishing and indie publishing, I think that authors are going to be taking more of the lead on well, if this traditional publishing solution isn't working for me, I have other options here, and I'm going to go the self-publishing route. 

Matt: You're 100% right. 

Lauren: I'm going to direct sales route, I'm going to go with whatever makes sense for them.

Matt: You're 100% right. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Just to be clear, what is your first one? Like, one sentence, what is it?

Lauren: That in 2026, authors are going to be investing more into building their own brands, not just relying on traditional publishers or existing contracts, that authors are going to start approaching their author brand as a business, they're going to treat it as a business, and they are either going to be turning to print-on-demand direct sales solutions, or they are going to be blending those into their existing traditional publishing contracts and practices that way.

Matt: That's a good one. 

Lauren: Thanks. 

Matt: I don't know that I have much to add to that one. I think you're correct, in my opinion. I think we're already seeing that. And I think that this year we saw so much more of an awareness and education happening around those things. And it had been building to this, right? Events that we would go to, stuff that you see online content, blog articles, things like that, these topics kept getting touched on. And then more and more and then more and more. And then this year it was like, really if you went to any author event, or even a lot of publishing events, most of what was being talked about was direct sales, authors building platforms, and communities. So I think you're right, and I think 2026 is where you will probably see that inflection point, where I don't think there's any way around it. So yeah, I agree with you.

Lauren: Yeah. I do think that that's something that we've seen broad strokes in general at conferences over the last few years, coming back from events like Author Nation or even me at Momentum. We used to go to these events, and the first half of the conversation would be trying to convince people why they needed a book, or trying to convince people why self-publishing was a good alternative to traditional publishing, or why they should be going wide, what direct sales even was, let alone why it was valuable to be doing that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And we, over the last few years, we've seen this steady trimming down of those conversations. We no longer need to convince people that self-publishing is a good option. We no longer need to convince people that going wide is like a better deal than relying entirely on Amazon. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: We no longer need to explain to people what direct sales are or what that means. We're seeing this like slowly–but not slowly, because it's very much like year over year, where we're seeing –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – this awareness kind of spreading and we don't need to do the sales pitch anymore. It's now just, okay, how do I do these things? How can you help me do these things? And I think that we're going to continue to see that in the year to come.

Matt: Yeah, I agree with that.

Lauren: Yeah.

[16:55] - Matt Predicts: AI tools for productivity will be integrated into most publishing chains by the middle of 2026

Lauren: Alright. Well else you got.

Matt: My second non-prediction, continuing trend or emerging trend, depending on how you look at this one. I think AI will be integrated into most publishing chains by the middle of 2026. And I think that as such, I feel like over 80% of titles will have been touched by AI one way or another. So I don't care if it's traditional publishing, self-publishing, hybrid publishing. I feel like by the end of next year, or even the middle of next year, really, based on the progress of tools that are coming out, the adoption rate of the publishing industry as a whole, but even certain publishers, the adoption rate of AI tools for productivity, for things like automated workflows, personalized reader experiences, editing and grammar and metadata optimization. Like that stuff is really important for discoverability, and even recommendation engines, you know, on certain reader sites, or things like that. I think by the middle of 2026, there won't be a title released, maybe 15 to 20% of them, but I think most of them if not all of them will have been touched by AI one way or another. And I think a lot of people are going to hate that statement. But understand what I say when I say touched by AI. More from a productivity and automated workflow standpoint, not from a creative standpoint. You're definitely going to see it creeping into like, cover art and inside illustrations and things like that. But I think it'll still be very noticeable and people will revolt against that, and they probably should. But where you won't necessarily see it or feel it—because you don't right now. The publishers and the people that are using AI for productivity, for automations, for metadata, you know, optimization, for better discovery, you don't even realize it. You don't feel it, you don't see it, you can't really touch it. But it's there and it's helping people get books to market faster, more efficiently, and sell more books. And that's what everybody's trying to do.

Lauren: I think that that's a really important part of that conversation that tends to get overlooked. People hear AI and they immediately just assume we're talking about AI writing books or AI designing covers or AI, you know –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – having that kind of creative involvement. And…not saying that that doesn't happen and that it's not going to continue to happen.

Matt: Way too much.

Lauren: Absolutely way too much. And I don't agree with or support any of that, I think my stance on that is very clear on this podcast. 

Matt: I think the one thing you and I agree on is that we'll never agree with AI –

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – taking creative control over a book, especially a work of fiction, but even nonfiction. We’ll never agree to that concept. We'll always agree on that. Same with cover art. I don't care how good AI gets. I need a human being that's got the majority control, if not all control over that.

Lauren: Yes. But I do think that understanding that there is a lot of opportunity on the back end.  Production, marketing, metadata, discoverability – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – all that stuff, there is a lot of behind the scenes stuff that a lot of the average consumer doesn't even realize is happening in publishing.

Matt: Nor cares about. 

Lauren: Right. Right. So I do think that's a very reasonable…educated statement. Educated guess, I don't know.

Matt: Let’s call it a…my opinion on emerging trend.

Lauren: Should I use ChatGPT to look up synonyms for prediction?

Matt: Well, the prediction piece there's that I feel by the middle of 2026, more than 80% of new titles released will have been touched by AI one way or another. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: That could be an obvious one, or not so obvious. For some people they'll probably hear that and go, this dude's out of his mind, and others will hear and go, yeah duh.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: That's just how I feel.

Lauren: No, I think that's fair.

[20:18] – Lauren Predicts: Authors & Creators will search for a more universal solution to community building 

Matt: What's your second one?

Lauren: So kind of on the heels of AI in general and this idea of it being used more, whether it's a positive or negative. I've been a part of, I've witnessed, and I've been tangentially near, a lot of conversation this year about community building. And about the importance of proving authentic human connection –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – and human relationships, and making sure that you have genuine and authentic relationships with your audience, your fans, your readers, your buyers, whatever content it is that you're putting out there. But I've also been a part of a lot of conversations where people are talking about how that is getting harder and harder to do for various reasons. A lot of reasons, like quite literally, community spaces are harder and harder to find. No universally accepted solution has come out to replace Facebook groups.

Matt: I see, so you're talking about actual platform technology. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Is that what you're saying? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: I think that there's a lot of different ways that people are finding—people are using email newsletters as a community building tool, but those do tend to be one way avenues. And even in the event where the email recipient can email back to the sender –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – they still can't talk to the list as a whole. 

Matt: Right.

Lauren: There are people that are using Discord or Circle or Patreon or – 

Matt: Mighty. 

Lauren: – or whatever. Mighty. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: There are a lot of different options, but none of them are like, universally accepted. None of them are…everybody has this downloaded. Everybody has a Discord account. Everybody has Circle. None of those are like, it's super easy for the average person to join this community space. Especially as you're turning towards younger and younger consumers. I saw a stat somewhere, I think it was HubSpot, that…I think it was almost 60% of businesses say their primary target demographic is Millennials and Gen Z. So Millennials and Gen Z are not on Facebook. 

Matt: No. I mean – 

Lauren: So there is–right.

Matt: How many people are actually on Facebook anymore like real live human beings? I don't care what age bracket you fall into, but.  

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: I mean, I'm in the 50s now and I'm not on Facebook and I haven't been, but.

Lauren: Literally the only reason that I still have a Facebook account is that I need it for work every now and then, because I'm the backup for Lulu's Facebook account.

Matt: I actually have one. There's no activity on it. I had to open it, I needed to access something at Facebook Marketplace one time. But the point is, it's a dumpster fire. They'll never get it. In fact, it just gets worse and worse. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Meta as a company in general, out of all the social platforms, to me is the worst one. Everything they do is just pure intentional garbage. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: It's just –

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: It's just putting noise into the market for the sake of having their name out there and attached to everything, but nothing of any real true value. Argue with me if you want, but Meta has not offered any real true value to anybody on this planet.

Lauren: I'm not going to argue with you on that one.

Matt: Yeah it’s just, it’s garbage. 

Lauren: I completely agree. But I do think that we are kind of reaching a breaking point with that, where people are going to be putting more active effort into not just building community spaces – 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – but also actually attempting to find a way to do that successfully. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Because I think that it is becoming more and more important.

Matt: I think that's extremely astute and I agree with it that it's not that there's not enough platforms and tools, it's that there is no universal one that everybody agrees is the best. And I don't know if there ever will be. So the problem is you have this group of tools, these communities, these places, whether that's Facebook groups, Discord, Circle communities, Mighty, you name it. And somehow authors are really good at finding the most obscure one as well, because it was free or something, and they wanted to try it. And like, nobody can get in and it's terrible and it has downtime every week. But then you also have over here this growth in popularity in communities. So if you're somebody who's an avid reader, like we are, lots of others out there or the type of person who would be in a community, you probably have a ton of communities you want to be in. 

Lauren: Right.

Matt: And how feasible is that? When you've got, let's say, ten authors that you want to be a part of their communities. Which is great. But all ten of them use a different platform. I mean, that's just not feasible. You'd have to quit your job, ignore your kids and anything else that you had in your life, just to be a part of those ten different communities. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So I think community is great, but it does bring inherent problems. And until a group of people find creative ways to solve some of these issues, they're just going to continue. I do think community will continue to be a thing, but I think it's going to get more loosely defined. Right now we say community, we mean a place, an app, somewhere you go to communicate and interact with other fans of this particular author or this series or whatever that might be. But I think it's going to have to get more loosely defined to include lots of other types of person to person interaction and things. Because of the two things that we just touched on with community.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. I do also think that just to be very clear, this is not exclusive to the publishing industry or the author community –

Matt: No, not at all. 

Lauren: – or anything like that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: People are still, you know, we had this whole we had an hour long roundtable discussion about this at Momentum earlier this year, where it was just everybody—and everybody in the room was a content creator or content entrepreneur in some way, but in a variety of different industries. And it was universally acknowledged that there is a lack of community space. Like, nobody had a solution to this. 

Matt: Platforms. 

Lauren: It was all just–yes. It was all just everybody being like, I don't know what the solution is, but I want to find one. So I think that we're going to see a lot more of that conversation ongoing in the next year, and a lot more people trying to explore different solutions –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – for how to solve that problem.

Matt: It's funny because as much as I dislike Meta and especially Facebook –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – and Mark Zuckerberg, they had the corner on the market for the longest time with Facebook groups. 

Lauren: I–Yeah.

Matt: And like everything else they do, they ruined it. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: And that's why a lot of these others were able to kind of come up from the bottom. And again, I don't think they'll ever be one solution, like a universal one. It’d be great. But I do think, you know, over time you will see a lot of the other ones dropping off. And the big, big ones that have figured it out, they'll stick around. And maybe it will get easier to be a member of certain, you know, multiple communities that have apps and or spaces that work really well. But I don't know.

Lauren: Yeah, I think we'll just have to wait and see. 

[26:35] - Matt Predicts: More traditional publishers will adopt Direct Sales solutions

Lauren: Alright. What else ya got? What's your third one?

Matt: My number three, surprise, surprise, has to do with direct sales. 

Lauren: Whoa. 

Matt: That's right. But I'm a little more focused on publishers and businesses. But I think direct sales will continue to grow in adoption amongst authors and publishers, because the tools are going to get better, and retail platform sales are getting worse. We've heard a lot of feedback this year from publishers and publishing companies that sales from Amazon have dropped. They've declined. Sales from some of the other retail platforms have declined. In most of the genres and areas that they sell books in. Obviously there's a few key genres and areas where sales are still holding pretty strong on several retailers and in several areas. But, you know, I think direct sales affords the opportunity to be able to do some of the things that you can't. We just talked about building connections with readers and audiences. Direct sales allows you a different way to do that. As a publisher, I don't know that I'm super stoked to jump into building a community around one of my authors. It sounds like a nightmare, right? And it probably is, although a lot of them have done it in one way or another. And some have been successful, most have not. But direct sales does afford me the opportunity as a publisher to build an email list. And now I've got an email list of all people who have spent money on this author's title or titles. It's a very direct two way communication, but it's still a form of community where now I have a much easier way to go out and pre-sell new titles from this author. I have a much easier way to communicate to this author's fans, and in a way that I, as the publisher, have control over. Publishers historically, in the past, have not had a whole lot of control over a lot of things. They kind of get a bad rap, to a degree, and we've perpetuated that some, and probably always will. But they're just one part in a chain. If anybody has the true power or did over a lot of things, it was the distributors and the retailers, that sales component. But I think publishers are going to start embracing more and more. Some are already doing it and some do it well. Abrams Books does some direct sales from their site. They do it pretty well. I don't think they do it for all their titles by any means. But, you know, a lot of backlist or deep backlist stuff. Some new titles, front list, preorders, things like that. There's other publishers that are experimenting with it. But combining print-on-demand models with direct sales, whether that's through direct APIs or Shopify integrations or things like that, they're going to gain so much by way of that direct audience connection. They're going to see double digit increases in their profit margins per title. When you switch over to a direct sales print-on-demand model, especially for either deep backlist or out of print, that's huge. Double digits. In terms of margin they’re so razor thin in the book industry for everybody, whether you're a distributor, a retailer, publisher, the author, the printer, everybody in that supply chain has razor thin margins that they're fighting to gain even half of a percentage point on. Half of a percentage point on margin, on profit margin. It's tough. So anytime you can gain a full percentage point, multiple or even double digit percentage points, like that's an opportunity you want to jump at. So when you look at what direct sales affords you, when that's implemented properly, especially with a print-on-demand model, there's just no arguing with that. And they're seeing, you know, the ability to cut down on some of the warehouse space. We talked about some of those labor and resource intensive processes that come with, again, holding on to 20,000 copies of a book in a warehouse and having to record the obsolescence and deal with returns and things like that. So, I think direct sales will obviously continue, just like AI it is one of the biggest conversation points at any author, publisher or reader event we go to–mostly author and publisher, but–I think we're going to see a lot more of the benefits being displayed in the data in 2026.

Lauren: I think there's also a lot of wasted opportunity for remarketing within traditional publishers –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – that aren't using direct sales. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Not just remarketing in the sense of like, hey, this author that you've already purchased from, they have a new book out, in case you didn't know it. Like, that's a great opportunity. But also if there's something like you bought this book earlier this year and you really liked it, we have a new book coming out by a debut author that –

Matt: Has a very similar style –

Lauren: – is very similar. 

Matt: – or, yeah. 

Lauren: And we're using as –

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: We're using this other book that you bought as a comp title for this one. We think you're going to love this one. But I think also, especially in not just fiction but nonfiction, there's a lot of…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: – ways to put out, hey, you buy this annual, you buy this calendar every year, you buy this almanac every year, you buy this planner every year. Letting you know it’s out now. Or like there's a new edition of this, this book that you bought previously. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: There's a sequel to it now, whatever. There's a lot of opportunity there that gets wasted when they're using third-party retailers. And I think that –

Matt: It’s, it’s – 

Lauren: – traditional publishers accepting direct sales – 

Matt: It's missed opportunity. 

Lauren: Yes. Yes.  

Matt: Yeah. Now. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: It can be wasted too if they don't if they grasp it –

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: – and then don't utilize it properly. But it's missed opportunity that's a bigger, I think, problem. Like. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: It's one thing to grasp the opportunity and then fail at it, which would be a wasted opportunity. But it's a whole nother thing to not even have that opportunity, because you're not implementing the tools, right? 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: So it is a missed opportunity, which I think is worse. And I think you're right. And it's not just about like you said. Oh, you know, a specific author and just only talking to them about that specific author. But, you know, if I'm a publishing house and we're going to have a big booth at BookCon and we're going to five authors signing, or whatever, like I'm going to be hitting my entire email list. I don't care which author you signed up to get emails from, but if I've got you on my email list and we're going to have a booth at BookCon, we want to get as many readers as we can to our booth. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Again, a great opportunity to make sure that your BookCon is successful –

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: – that your booth does really well. Right? That your authors have lines out the door of the Javits Center to get their books signed. So, missed opportunities. Yeah, absolutely. And whether or not they waste them later, that's on them. But a missed opportunity I think is worse. And you're right.

Lauren: Fair. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Absolutely.

[32:17] - Lauren Predicts: More casual creators will start monetizing their content with POD books

Matt: What's your third and final?

Lauren: Oh, okay.

Matt: Did you have more than three? Did I just – 

Lauren: Well, so I did.

Matt: Did I just box you in?

Lauren: I did have more than three, but I also one of them was the first one that we talked about with traditional publishers doing more –

Matt: Print, yeah.

Lauren: – hybrid POD, stuff like that. 

Matt: Gotcha. 

Lauren: I think I am going to end with a slightly baseless prediction, but I'm going to make it anyway. I think that we are going to see an uptick in people that are using print-on-demand as a way to monetize their content next year. Whether it's because people want a passive revenue stream and a side hustle, or because people are tired of the corporate workforce, corporate workforce and want to get out of it–that's hard to say. Why is it so hard to say? 

Matt: I don’t know. 

Lauren: Corporate workforce? Regardless, I think that there are going to be a variety of different motivating factors that are going to have casual creators, hobbyists, etc. start actually monetizing, creating some kind of small business content entrepreneur business, brand, whatever in general, but also specifically using books.

Matt: Yeah. So the keyword there's uptick, right?

Lauren: Yes. Because it's always–obviously that's something that's already happening. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: But I think that we're going to see a spike in that in the next six to twelve months.

Matt: Yeah, I mean since 2021, print-on-demand as a whole, as a, as a model, as a market. Let's say print-on-demand books, not all of print-on-demand as a whole, sorry. Since 2021 has definitely been trending up every year, month over month, year over year. We as a, as a brand, as a company, this year alone, we're up 20% roughly, right? And have been trending up as well since 2020ish. Because of that, the accessibility of print-on-demand in such a way that does allow you or empowers you to monetize your content. Combine that with a lot of the tools, some of that we've talked about today, some that we've talked about in the past. Yeah, it's just not there's no longer a huge barrier to entry when it comes to monetizing your content. And the fact that if you play your cards right, discoverability can be very easy to find your niche group of fans. Or I won't even say fans, just people, right? Like, you know, I joke sometimes about there's got to be a group somewhere that meets fairly regularly, and their whole thing is like going to Disney World dressed like a goth and eating churros.

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: Like, and – but that's a thing.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Like they have a club built around–like, there is somebody for everybody. So yes, being able to use a print-on-demand model to monetize your content. Especially if you're now learning how to do the work to find your audience, there is virtually no barrier to entry there. It's just your time, right? Like, find the audience, build the product, get it into market, connect the two, rinse and repeat. It's a model that doesn't really require hardly any money up front. Unless of course, you're paying, you know, an editor or designer. Which PSA, you should. But nonetheless, that's also something that can be done relatively inexpensively these days. So yeah, I think you're right. I think the uptick will actually be very noticeable. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And not everybody shares their data. We're happy to share ours and we'll certainly share ours next year. But I bet you're right about that. I bet uptick is probably an understatement. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. But I think you're right. I think, I think if we, let's say six months from now, we talk about the trend of POD for new users coming into the ecosystem. Yeah, I bet it's more than an uptick.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And hey, if you want any advice on how to do that, you should go check out Matt’s new book. I'll plug it if you won't.

Matt: Honestly, I keep forgetting about it.

Lauren: I know, that's fair.

[35:57] - Bonus Predictions

Lauren: Well, I'm actually going to use that as a jumping point to make some fun predictions –

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: – for next year. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: So feel free to join in. And that–my first one is going to be I think you're going to write and publish another book next year. 

Matt: Me? 

Lauren: Yep. I think you got bit by the bug with that first one. And I think you're going to have another one by the end of 2026.

Matt: We'll see. I also anticipate a busier year for myself in 2026.

Lauren: That's fair.

Matt: So I don't know. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: I like that idea. And you're right, I have already–I've got a list of things that I wanted to write about. That list has existed for a little while, but it definitely got larger after finally publishing this book. It does boil down to time.

Lauren: Yeah. No, I get that. 

Matt: And I’m, I'm historically terrible with time management.

Lauren: Same.

Matt: Everybody that works with me has that same reaction you just had. But I don't know. We'll see. I agree, that's why I keep pushing you though. I think if you finally would just publish one of these things you're working on, oh…the world's in trouble. 

Lauren: Well, that's another one of my predictions, is that I will finally finish my EPCOT passport. That I've been working on since April, and is a grand total of 48 pages long, so it should not have taken me nine months. But here we are. I will finish it in 2026, come hell or high water.

Matt: I think you will too.

Lauren: I will.

Matt: I don't know if I have any fun ones.

Lauren: No?

Matt: For 2026. I don't know. I'm not a planner. I'm not a person that really puts pressure on myself for things like that. But if I think beyond myself for 2026, fun predictions…oh no, actually one for myself is I am going to go to Disney parks at least four to five times next year.

Lauren: I like it.

Matt: Yeah. I did not go nearly enough this year. 

Lauren: I know. 

Matt: And it shows. I've been a very grumpy bear all year.

Lauren: We had almost this exact conversation last year. 

Matt: Did we? 

Lauren: We did. 

Matt: Shit. 

Lauren: We both said, I know it was towards the end of it might have been in the, the recap episode. We both said it's been too long. Didn't go enough. That's why I've been so grumpy. Got to go more next year. And I will say that me and my annual pass absolutely did. I will be there on Saturday, I’m going – 

Matt: May that’s what I need to do.  

Lauren: I'm going this weekend.

Matt: Maybe I need to buy an annual pass, and then I'll feel like I have to go more often to get value out of the pass. That's probably a good play. Maybe I'll look into that.

Lauren: Well, one of my plans for 2026 is that I will be doing a very nerdy study on whether or not I'm getting the most value possible from my annual pass, like whether or not it is worth it. So my original plan with getting it was that year one was going to be just like, just to have it, just to see what happens. And now for year two, I want to actually go through and genuinely keep track of like…every time I use it, what the cost would have been to get into the park that day, every time I use it and, and save money when I get the discount on whatever I'm buying, like how much money did I save? And add all that up at the end of the year and say, is this worth the annual investment? Is this something that I should keep doing every year, or was it a two year experiment that I should spend that money on something else in the future?

Matt: Now, do you have the nonresident version or the resident version?

Lauren: No, I have the nonresident version. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Despite the fact that I now have technically both of my parents as Florida State residents.

Matt: Yeah, but I think that adds a nice twist to it.

Lauren: Yes, I do too.

Matt: So, yeah.

Lauren: Which because absolutely, obviously I think that if you live in the state of Florida, it's absolutely worth – 

Matt: Oh yeah. 

Lauren: – the expense. 

Matt: That’s a no brainer. 

Lauren: But as somebody who's living a ten hour drive away…

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Is it still worth the expense? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Cause it's not cheap. So…

Matt: No it’s not. 

Lauren: No it's not, but yeah. That’ll be…more time at Disney for both of us. Why not.

Matt: Yeah. Why not? 

Lauren: Why not? 

Matt: I don't really think I have any other stuff that I would want to go on record as saying. I do think, however, though–I almost put this in my three and I hesitated. I'll put it out there now, but I think we're already seeing an undercurrent of a lot of indie published writers and authors and, and creators getting traditional publishing contracts. A lot more than you ever did in the past. I think you're definitely going to see more of that next year. But I also think you're going to see a lot of the opposite. So we're already also seeing traditionally published authors trying self-publishing or jumping completely to self-publishing. I think you're going to see more of that too. Especially as the ones who negotiated their contracts years ago, who maybe didn't get the benefit of what's going on right now and have the ability to, to manage some of their own rights and or things like limited editions or direct sales, or coming to end of life on their contract and jumping ship. But I also think, you know, it's going to work both ways. I think as traditional publishers, like we said, get more accommodating of these types of things and, you know, even start taking a lot of sales and distribution under their own control, where their profit margins get bigger so they can afford to give authors a little more flexibility, you will start to see more and more people who had indie published, who have built a big audience. The traditional publishing house goes great book, big audience, let's get them. And they'll go –

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: – and, you know, they’ll negotiate better contracts. So I think we're going to see a much larger two way return there between traditional publishing and indie publishing next year. But I didn't necessarily want to put that in there on the record as one of my top three, but.

Lauren: Well, it's okay. We’ll add it as a bonus. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Because I think that's a very good one. Yeah.

[41:17] - Wrap Up

Matt: All right. So who's cleaning all this confetti up?

Lauren: You.

Matt: Me?

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Why?

Lauren: It was your idea.

Matt: It was my idea. But it was a good idea.

Lauren: No, I'll clean it up. After lunch though.

Matt: Do we have a vacuum here in the office?

Lauren: Not, not one that's good enough to clean this up. I think we need a rake.

Matt: Oh, yeah. I could have brought my rake in if I had known this was going on. 

Lauren: Oh, what a shame.

Matt: Oh, I have a blower, a battery-powered blower. We could just blow it all out there – 

Lauren: Perfect. 

Matt: – outside of the studio into, like –

Lauren: No.

Matt: – in the customer support team's work area.

Lauren: Rest assured, I will get this cleaned up. Don't you worry. 

Matt: I’ll help you. 

Lauren: I will get it cleaned up before we record our next episode.

Matt: I'll help you. 

Lauren: – for 2026. 

Matt: But I need to eat first. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So let's go find lunch. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Thank you for listening. Thank you for hanging out with us. Not just for this hour, but also for this whole year. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: It's been a good year. 

Matt: Yup. 

Lauren: It's been a good 100 episodes. 

Matt: It has. 

Lauren: And I am super excited to see what happens from 101 on. That's my last prediction. I think that we're going to hit some really cool milestone next year. And I don't know what it's going to be. Like, I think something is going to happen in 2026 that's going to be like, whoa. We hit a listener goal, or we hit like a download goal or something. Like, I feel like something is going to happen in 2026 that we're going to go, whoa, that's pretty cool.

Matt: Well, just so Lauren's not disappointed, everybody go out there and tell your friends about our podcast. 

Lauren: Yeah, please do. 

Matt: Give us a review.

Lauren: Like and subscribe.

Matt: Help her hit whatever this mysterious…

Lauren: I’ll noodle on it. 

Matt: – thing is going to be. 

Lauren: And maybe in our first episode of the next year, I will 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Let you know what goal I'm setting.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: So in the meantime, have a great holiday season. Have a great rest of the year. Thanks for joining us, and we'll be back next year. 

Matt: Yep. Later

Lauren: With more new episodes. See ya.

[Closing Credits]

Matt: Lauren’s a liar. Soundcheck.

Lauren: Rude.