Publishing Is Changing Fast. These 6 Trends Decide Who Wins in 2026

At the start of 2025, I made 7 predictions about publishing. Some of them crushed pretty hard. I briefly wondered if I was a psychic. And one, well, that brought me back to reality. But that's the fun of watching an industry transform in real time. You're just kind of reading the signals and maybe not guessing, but taking an educated guess. Now I'm looking at the signals for 2026. They're clear. Some of them are moving fast. And for authors who are paying attention, they are full of opportunity. So if you want to seize the amazing opportunities that are in store for us in 2026, well, this video is for you. Hi, I'm Julie Broad, founder of Book Launchers and your host here at BookLaunchers.tv. Book Launchers is your first choice for all things related to writing and publishing and promoting nonfiction books. Today I'm going to give you 6 trends that I see for publishing in 2026, and I'm going to start by telling you what I missed and what I hit in my predictions for 2025. This is the 2025 video. I will link it at the end in case you want to watch the whole thing, but in the video I shared predictions like AI-assisted writing and creation, Yep, nailed it. Even many of the authors who swore they would never use AI slowly crossed over. AI is maybe not for everyone still, but it is not a fad or a trend. It's here to stay. And as I've been saying for almost 3 years now, being the one that knows how to use the tools to be more effective and efficient sets you ahead of those who do not. And a lot of people started to buy into that this year. And the tools got better. Tools like Dibley Create got shockingly good, and ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini have leveled up at a pace nobody predicted. Well, maybe not nobody. Gartner reported that by 2026, 30% of all search queries will be done by AI agents instead of humans. And AI is already doing a lot of the research for authors, so you can bet authors are using it to create, even if some of them are not yet admitting it. And well, the people not using it, they are starting to be in the minority. All right, the second prediction I had last year was data-driven decisions. Right again. More authors finally recognized that they're running a business. And the shift grew massively. The Written Word Media survey, their 2025 survey, confirmed that high-earning authors rely heavily on data and direct sales and their newsletter insights in order to make a lot more money. Data is now the competitive advantage, not a nice-to-have. And this is also where self-publishing authors have a massive edge over other authors. Third prediction: bestseller status. My prediction was that it was going to become fairly meaningless, and this was close. I heard much less chatter about Amazon bestseller lists and even the USA Today bestseller. And so the shine has faded because I think more people know that Getting on a list is a game and you can play it if you want, but it's not as much about selling the most books as it is about playing the best game. The fourth prediction was video becoming required. You know, video didn't become as required as I thought it would. It's still an edge and when it hits, woo, it's fire. Our client Jonathan Stanley, one TikTok video, one moment, and his entire author career leveled up and changed. And TikTok-driven book sales are very real. Cercana BookScan reported that BookTok continues to drive 50 to 600% sales bumps for certain releases. It's rocket fuel if it hits, but plenty of authors are and were succeeding without it. Number 5, audiobooks and voice cloning. Oh, this was beyond true. Audiobooks continue to gain strength and voice cloning and tech matured dramatically and distribution options expanded a lot. And for nonfiction authors with long books, well, it saves thousands of dollars and weeks in a studio. And Spotify continued pushing audiobook innovation as well, including personalized chapter recaps that rolled out near the end of 2025. This trend is not slowing down, and it's still part of my 2026 predictions. Number 6 was book talk staying strong, which was true, especially in fiction, but nonfiction began to see some breakthroughs. Number 7, AI discoverability. Well, bang on with this one. This prediction aged beautifully. Perplexity, an AI search platform, is now pulling over 100 million monthly visits, which tells you everything you need to know about how people are finding information now. Readers aren't searching for books anymore. AI is searching for them. And readers may not even be asking specifically for books. They're asking for answers to questions, and books may be part of those answers. Which brings us to 2026 and the 6 publishing trends that are going to define the year. Trend number 1, are you surprised? AI discoverability takes over. Questions replace keywords. Traditional SEO is fading and AI search discovery, whatever you want to call it. Readers are asking their favorite tool a question and that is going to conduct multiple searches, evaluate the best answers, synthesize it, and produce and answer, which means in 2026, authors must optimize their book for the questions their reader is asking, not the keywords they used to type in Amazon. Amazon is already behaving more like a recommendation engine than a keyword engine. This is the biggest discoverability shift in, well, I think a decade. All right, trend number 2, books become experiences, not just products. Books, they're starting to talk back. We're seeing ElevenLabs interactive audiobooks where listeners can ask questions while they're listening to the book. Spotify now has personalized chapter recaps, so you always know where you left off. And Cineye's adaptive reading experiences that adjust content to your behavior. Yeah, this is cool. Imagine a reader who pauses your audiobook and says, "Okay, wait, explain that part again. Okay, copy and paste that and put that in my notes." Well, that is happening. And that's not sci-fi, that is 2026. Books are not static anymore. They are becoming dynamic experiences. So what experience are you creating for your reader? Trend number— not that. Trend number 3, the human edge. Community is everything. As AI content floods the world, trust is becoming scarce. Watch a great video on social media and you'll find yourself wondering, was that AI or not? And rightly so. Edelman's Trust Barometer shows that trust in institutions and platforms is dropping, but trust in real people continues to climb. Readers want to know who is human and who isn't, who is real, who are they learning from? You don't need to be an influencer. You don't need to livestream your breakfast, but you do need to show up enough as you that readers feel connected to you. In my view, Community is now a foundation of discoverability, and I also think it makes you very defensible. We are laser-focused on this at Book Launchers. We have our Author Lab community on Skool. You can find it by going to booklaunchers.com/skool, S-K-O-O-L, and we are, for the first time since 2019, hosting a live event. And if it goes well, you can expect us to host a lot more. But if you want it to go well so we have more, join us in Las Vegas in March. You can get your ticket at Authorsempireworkshop.com. All right, trend number— goodness gracious— trend number 4, authors become creator businesses. 2026 is the year authors stop thinking book is launch and start thinking author business launch and author business building. Your book is part of that, but then there's the community, your course, your talk, your licensing, consulting, maybe even serialized content, and a whole lot of media appearances. I mean, Substack doubled its active writers in a single year. Kajabi reports that creators, including authors, are launching digital products at record rates. In other words, the author is not behind the book anymore. The book is at the center, the core. It's the intellectual property that is the heart of what you're building, and there are spokes coming out around the book, and the author is the brand and a core part of that. Trend 5, direct sales and data ownership. I mean, this is similar to last year, but Shopify reported a surge, 40% growth in creator-led storefronts. Platforms like BookFunnel and Payhip also shared major spikes in authors selling ebooks and audiobooks directly. And I get it. Direct sales give authors the highest potential profit, complete control, and most importantly, their consumer data. And the Written Word Media 2025 survey confirmed that high-earning indie authors rely heavily on their own channels and benefit from that data because they can make better decisions and connect directly with their readers. In 2026, if you don't own your data, you can't run your business effectively. All right, my final trend, trend number 6. Author IP becomes an asset. Okay, it's always been an asset, but authors are no longer seeing it as a book. They are seeing it as building an intellectual property ecosystem. Companies like Sinai, Delphi, HeyGen, they let authors turn their books into bots, interactive tools, serialized digital assets. We're turning things into apps now so their readers can interact with them. I mean, Hollywood continues using books as its number one source of creative IP. And creator education platforms like Skillshare and MasterClass consistently report strong demand for nonfiction experts. Your book, it's not the final product. Your book is the first product in a universe of assets. I mean, that's a big part of what we're talking about here on booklaunchers.tv and at our Author Empire Workshop. Which I do hope to see you there. Now, what do these trends mean for authors in 2026? I see this as the really, really good news. You don't have to master every trend. You don't need to chase every platform, and you definitely don't need to be a full-time content machine. In fact, thanks to AI tools like our very own Author Launch Kit, creating great content has gotten easier, and knowing where to put it and who to reach out to Well, it's all there at a click of a few buttons. Publishing in 2026 rewards authors who show up as real humans that can't count on their fingers like me. Not that. Goodness gracious. They build trust. They understand their reader. They think like business owners, which means they have their data and they use it to make decisions. They position their book for AI-driven discoverability and embrace interactivity instead of fearing it. And of course, they're treating their book as the beginning of their IP, not the end. AI is replacing things that are mediocre, so you can't be average. But honestly, you weren't aiming for average anyways, right? This is your moment. If you're entering 2026 excited and maybe a little overwhelmed, well, me too. Let's talk about it in the comments. We're in this together. And the more authors know they aren't alone in their excitement, fear, and overwhelm, the easier it all is. We're going to navigate this shift together here at Book Launchers. We're going to get deeper than ever to help you thrive. All right, so which of these 6 trends matters the most for you and your book this year? And if you want support applying them, well, join our community over at booklaunchers.com/school. I'll see you there.