The Future of Book Publishing - A Look at 2026 and Beyond

Sa. Hello and welcome. I keep forgetting to put on their trailer. We have this cool little trailer that's supposed to play before we go live. And I keep forgetting. So you just keep getting the 30 second countdown video, but one of these days we'll get it right. All right, today we're talking about the publishing landscape 20, 26 and beyond. So it's definitely going to touch on AI. It's going to touch on some of the things that are happening today and what I think that means for indie authors in the future. Efren's in the house. Hello, Efren. Welcome. And so if you are tuning in, Jack's here too. So be sure to say hello. If you're new, even if you're watching the replay, say hello. There's prizes for participation and it's a lot more fun when you engage and don't lurk. So Daniella is saying hello as well. Welcome, welcome. And Gary, it's great to see you here. All right, so I'm going to dive right in, but please comment as you're watching. Let me know what you're thinking, what questions you have. But it is an exciting time to be an author. I'm pretty. I mean, I've always been excited about self publishing and the potential and possibilities, but with all the things that are happening with technology, I really think that we're in for a wild ride in the next few years. And ultimately this is something I've been talking about for a while. But as more and more technology develops for us as indie authors to use, I believe the value of a traditional publisher goes down even more. And we're already seeing that in some of the latest income reports. And I did do a video. Sorry, Angela, I didn't know I was going to talk about this, but I did do a video, I think, at the end of December that was really recapping one of the reports that came out on the financials of writing a book. And it talked about how traditionally published authors are making less and self publishing authors are making more. And it talked a lot about kind of the business strategies behind it. But some of the stats that I've seen are the median income of traditionally published authors has declined steadily over the last 15 years. And, uh, and really there's very few authors, traditional or self published, that are just making money from book sales alone. Right. That is just not the way of the world these days. That is one part of their income. But indie authors, they're earning more. There's. They've seen a 53% increase and that compares to traditional authors where their, their author earnings are down to minimum wage levels and indie authors are just seeing it increase going up and up and up. And so that YouTube video that Angela has probably already dropped in, I don't see it yet, but it's probably coming or she's frantically looking for it. She can't find it. It was, I think it's like the business of business book. I don't remember exactly. I think it was in December I released it might have been in January. It was on the business of being an author or that real do authors make money? It was something like that and it was recapping a report. So she'll look for it if she can't find it, I'll find it after and put it in the description afterwards. But, but ultimately I've been experimenting with Grok. AI. Yes, I'm going to talk about AI. I'm going to talk about Grok a little bit and Claude and chatgpt as well, because they are all changing the landscape as well. So. So the income disparity, and I think some of this is because some traditionally published authors kind of expect the publisher is going to make them the money, right? I think it's a bit of a mindset difference when and not, and I'm generalizing right, because this is obviously we're talking lots and lots of authors, but in a generalized sense, a lot of people who go traditional are really expecting that they show up, write a good book, and the publisher does the rest. Whereas a lot of people who end up being indie authors, they know nothing's going to happen unless they make it happen. And that reality really is true for both categories of author. But that mindset difference is, is I think what ultimately is creating this income disparity where indie authors are starting to earn more and more and traditionally published authors are earning less and less. And by the way, it's harder to make money if you're not getting an advance. As a traditionally published author, you're earning like roughly a dollar at best per book sold, whereas an indie author is going to earn somewhere between 4 to 6 or $7 per book sold. That's a huge difference in the volume of books you have to sell to make the same income and is significant. Plus, the indie author can make money from the content in their book in so many other ways that a traditionally published author can't. So right there you set yourself up for a lot more. But again, you know, the hustle and the need for hustle is real. But it's real in both cases. And really this is kind of where Jack was going with, you know, playing with Grok and some of these other tools. AI tools have enhanced everything that we can do as authors. And ProWritingAid just recently announced a manuscript assessment tool. This is only for fiction authors and it's only for fiction authors. But I mean, they'll come, it'll come to nonfiction as well. But ultimately what we're seeing is the ability to do so much more with technology. And I do not believe that you can use enough AI tools to replace a human editor. I just do not believe that that is possible. There's too much stuff that comes from A.I. that just isn't. It's not well thought out. It's missing some of the logic, it's missing some of the emotion, you know, and you can prompt the heck out of things and still not get it to that point, but you can revise and improve things so that when you take it to an editor, you're not handing them a hunk of junk. You're handing them something that has some good structure. It's been thought, it's been thought through. And now the editor's job is a lighter lift, which ultimately means it's going to go faster and cost you less. So it's powerful in that regard. And then you know, the ability to, you know, not only edit and ideate and all of those things, the ability to now, you know, even you can create covers with AI. I don't recommend that you do your AI, your cover is your single most powerful marketing tool. And I can tell you I have yet to see an AI generated cover that I think is outstanding. There's, they're, they, they just look so AI generated and, and they're not, they miss the touches that a true cover designer puts into it. But you know, that said, we do have tools now that for simple layouts. You can produce a simple layout for a book with some of these tools. But what I'm most excited about for authors is translation. You know, the AI powered translation tools are just, they're breaking down language barriers really, really quickly, allowing you to reach global audiences that you never ever could reach. Before the AI content personalization being discovered, Alexa, Alexa was just announced and I haven't, I don't know if it's actually available yet because I haven't seen any announcement. As soon as it comes out, I'm going to test it. But Alexa, and sorry for anybody that has the device, I will from now on refer to a, the A device in Your house, they're now powered or going to be powered by Claude. So this a device, the A plus service that they're offering is now powered by Claude. Which means when I say, hey, listen, I'm looking for a book to read, I can now start to. And you know, previously the recommendations were, meh, right. They're going to give you the best sellers. Like, you know, it really wasn't that great. But what you're going to see, if you've already asked Claude, if you lose Claude or even ChatGPT. I've been playing with this too. Listen, based on the last 10 books that I've read, here's. Here they are. What would you say would be the next best read for me if I'm looking to, you know, continue this trend or I want to veer a little bit into this territory. Right. So whether you like fiction, nonfiction, whatever it is, or you're trying to learn something new now, the power of that for people to get recommendations is going to be incredibly powerful. And, and we're already seeing this as a company from the people who are reaching out to work with us. The fastest growing segment. What do you guys think? Where is, where is our fastest growing source of people who come to book launchers.com and fill out an application to work with us? What do you think is the source of the fastest growing segment of. We'll call them. Of leads coming to our company? What is it? All right, we've got Keela TV here. Reba Parker's in the house. Scotland Scorpion. I'm just seeing. I'm just waiting for an answer. So I'm just checking out while everybody's here. Efren says, I strangely love that AI cannot write your book for you, but it can help speed up our vomit traps. Absolutely. Fallen Hellscape. Hello. Welcome. Glad to see you here. Chatgpt. There you go, Reba. Way to go. That is exactly it. So from our sources of people coming to work with us at Book Launchers, our fastest growing source, it's not our biggest source. YouTube is still by far our biggest source, but our fastest growing source is ChatGPT. So that just tells me, a, we're doing something right because ChatGPT is recommending us, but B, it's telling me that how people are searching for things, they're looking for that more personal, personalized recommendation, which is what they're getting from those AI algorithms. Right. And so this, to me is incredibly exciting as an author, because if I am creating good quality content with a very clear audience and I am focused on exactly who this book is for and why they're going to want to read it. Guess what is going to start showing up in those algorithms? Because gone are the need, you know, to top the Amazon algorithm or the bestseller lists. Because that's not what this is going to focus on. This is going to focus on the exact thing that is right for me to read next. And I'm going to get much more personalized recommendations which as an author should excite you because the more you know your audience, the more you speak to them in terms that they're looking for, the more you're going to be found by those people. It is a really, really cool thing. And so I think, you know, continuing on with all of these kind of trends, what I'm excited about besides, you know, changing discoverability, because the discoverability to date has favored a little bit of gaming the system and it has also favored, you know, definitely people who have been published by the big traditional publishers. We've already seen that shifting, you know, with people not buying in bookstores, they're buying online, you know, that starts to diminish the, you know, the value of a traditional publisher. Because you know, I don't have to have the shelf space to get in to get those sales. I don't have to have those traditional paths to find my audience anymore. But additionally, the greater financial potential, right, you already can, can earn more as a self published author because you can sell your rights, you make more per copy sold, you have a lot more flexibility with how you are using and selling the intellectual property that you have created. But now you also have more tools, right, so you can translate it. Oh, and the other thing I did in to get to is the audiobook production. You know, audiobook production to date has been really expensive. You know, it's, it's just, it's very, very cost prohibitive to produce and not prohibitive, but it's very, very costly. And for many authors it's prohibitive to produce an audiobook that meets the audible standards. And now the recent announcement that I was like, I actually texted effort. I'm like, hey now, no more excuses buddy. Get, let's get your book into an audiobook. Because 11Labs has partnered with Spotify or Spotify has partnered with 11Labs. Now 11Labs is the platform that I have used to clone my voice and produce an audiobook and produce a whole bunch of other content. And 11 Labs is even better at it than when I did the video. But Angela can hopefully find the 11 labs, you know, clone Your produce an audiobook with your clone voice or something like that video that I did. And it's even simpler now to produce to clone your voice. And it's the quality output is even better than it was when I did this video. And now you can distribute your book through Spotify. So you can clone your voice, produce your audiobook and distribute it through Spotify with Findaway voices. There's a link from the Spotify announcement that came out last week and I think Angela will put it in the chat and then I'll put it in the description below for anyone watching the replay. Now this is exciting because you're not just choosing a digitally narrated voice, you're cloning your own voice so it's still your voice in their head. It doesn't sound precisely like you do, but honestly, the way some of these audiobook narrators get edited, it doesn't sound precisely like you. Anyways, example I just finished Buy back your time from Dan Martell and what he did was interesting with this audiobook he narrated the chapters and then kind of did a Dan Solomon, Ben Hardy, and David Goggins has done this too. In between each chapter he had commentary, right? Which was cool. But one of the things that I didn't like about it was the quality difference. And the sound of his voice was so different. It almost sounded like a different person doing the commentary than the person doing the narration. And then some of the edits inside of that book were jarring too because they edited some of the words and it was like a totally different I think he used the same mic as he did for the commentary that he did for that versus the one he did for the audiobook. Side note, but that's to say that don't worry about the fact that your cloned voice doesn't sound a hundred percent like you. The audiobook editing process changes the sound of your voice anyways to the point where, like I said, in this case I it almost sounded like a completely different person because of the quality difference between the commentary and the audiobook recording. So now there is no excuse for any author with 120,000 word book or bigger to not put out an audio book that can be listened to, at least on Spotify. And Efren's asking do you trust the 11 labs intonation quality? It is so, so much better. Like I said, I did a recent video that's coming out soon. It's not edited yet on I had it produce some video clips from content and it did a great job. So yeah, let me Test it. The only way to know Efren is to go ahead and test it. But it is 10 times better than what I produced last year. They've come so long and they have a specific audiobook output and I would break it up into chunks still and edit it together a little bit versus like uploading a gigantic chapter and having it produce that gigantic chapter. I would chunk it out and then put it together. You know, still a little bit of work, but it's going to beat, you know, not having. It's going to be better than not having an audiobook and it's going to be better than paying a professional editor to put it all together. So. Okay, that was a lot already. You can tell I'm excited about this now. Next thing up, let's see here my next notes. Sorry. And I just opened my wrong. I got. I got distracted and I opened the wrong thing. Okay, I touched on this already. But voice cloning AI tools for manuscript development like the ProWritingAid Dibli Create has their writing assistant Kip. They have some great article production pieces inside of their system. What this means again is the humans are not replaced. But if I'm an editor, I'm going to be wanting to be the best possible editor ever. Because what AI is doing is eliminating the mediocre to average kind of people. You don't need an average to mediocre editor because you've got AI to fill that role for you. So authors that maybe previously would have hired multiple editors at a very high rate, now maybe they're only hiring one or two editors and they're not having to pay a really high rate because they've already gone through quite a rigorous process. So this means you're streamlining the process. You know, the editing process can take six months or longer when you're producing a really, really good quality book with these AI tools that can be, like I said, faster. And it does enhance the potential for quality. I am still not advocating you get AI to write your book. I don't care how many people say they've written a really great book with AI. I still, I have yet to see one that I read that was produced, you know, by AI that I go, wow, this is great. And I see a lot of books, for the most part, I'm seeing, you know, AI helps the ideation, the organization, the structure, and it helps feedback. But I'm still not seeing it as a great writing partner that it is not replacing again, it's replacing average to mediocre writers 100%. You do not need to hire an average to mediocre writer to assist you with your book. But does it replace a great ghostwriter? No, it doesn't. Does it replace a great developmental editor? Not as far as I've seen yet. But does it replace a mediocre one? Absolutely. So again, this is where I get excited because the people who are going to be worth investing and working with are the people who are going to be great. They're also going to be more strategic. They're going to be looking at your project and going, okay, what are you trying to do with this project? Not just, okay, I know Chicago Manual of Style, and I'm going to make your book compliant. They're going to be working with you to be strategic partners in helping you create a great book. Because that's where the value is going to be added to the whole process, is really working together in that whole strategic process. All right, so what else do we have here? Oh, yes. So I think the next piece is. We're already seeing this. And so this is kind of looking at 20, 26 and beyond. And so right now I think we're on the cus. Cusp of a lot of these tools getting adopted and really implementing it. And as a company, you know, we feel the pressure, we feel the changes because we're a service organization and we help you write, publish and promote a book. And we're seeing more and more manuscripts come to us and people say, it's ready. And I asked them what their editing process was and they've used AI and then you look at it and you're like, well, you know, it's a fairly clean manuscript, but it's really not a great read. Right. So we're going back and we're, we're helping them turn it into a great read. Which is why I'm saying, you know, that human that's involved in that process of really bringing a book from okay to great, you know, that human is still needed, but they got to this phase, you know, without having to spend as much money or as much time. So we're seeing it and we're kind of adapting our processes to kind of work with people in these various, various capacities. And then on the content marketing side, the ability, you know, as Jack, I think it was, was saying he's playing with Grok and he's asking questions. You know, the ideation side is huge. The research I've mentioned, perplexity AI. You know, Grok has been a great thought partner. I haven't used Claude as much Lately, but it apparently has had an update recently. But I've really, I've really taken to talking to Chatty on my phone. The Sora, the SORA system and just talking to Chatty and getting, you know, having conversations back and forth I found to be really, really powerful. And then it gives you the transcript after what you've talked about. So you know, for me that's been a really, really strong, you know, kind of thought partner and ideation partner. Okay, so where, where are we today? Well, we are already moving really quickly to this direct to reader platform. Right. You know, with TikTok authors are selling direct to readers, you know, and a lot of authors are realizing that they need to have a direct sale platform because you know, Amazon accounts get shut down. There can be all kinds of other issues. Price squeezes, la of control, you know, loss of loss of accounts and issues that you know, just can be mind boggling and baffling, but they happen. And so you know, there's systems like Patreon, there's, you know, now substacks getting quite big or it's been big for a while. We use Book Funnel, we use Shopify, we use Book Vault. You know, there's later press, which is really cool as well. They'll, if you send them somebody to buy your book, you know, they, they don't charge any fees. If they send somebody and they buy your book from, from their place, they take a fee for, for that sale, but you wouldn't have got that sale otherwise. So it's pretty cool. There's more and more platforms, more and more options for readers to make more money per book sold and sell direct to readers, get the contact information, you know, and be more in control of their platform and their destiny. And print on demand and the options for printers is also increasing. You know, we've talked about Print Nation here, another one that I have not tested yet. But they're working really hard to appeal to, you know, the direct sales author. They do a lot with TikTok authors is AccuTrack, I think it was AccuTrack. I'll be testing them and doing a video on them. Probably by the time I get to it, it'll probably be end of April, early May. But you know, they are, what I like about them over Book Vault is they're going to print and warehouse a small number of your copies so they can ship out quickly. My biggest complaint with Book Vault remains that they are slow to ship. Right. So if you order any of my books you can go to self publishandsucceed.com or juliebrod.com and you find my books and you buy them. That's through our Shopify Book Vault platform. You will see that it takes seven business days, eight business days for that book to get in your hands, which is kind of long when you're competing with Amazon and some of these other platforms where they can have it tomorrow. So what I like about what AccuTrack is doing, and I hope I've got that name right, is they have them warehouse, so they're shipping out the same day the order comes in, which creates a much better customer experience. And the pricing is not any different than Book Vault. And they have some other print options too. So if you have a workbook, you can pair that workbook with your book and sell it that way. So there's some cool flexibility there. So I'm going to test them out and see and I will, will definitely be reporting back. So hopefully you're subscribed to the channel, so you can catch that or you can get on our newsletter@book launchers.com forward slash newsletter. Ultimately, what this means is going forward, you know, and this is, this has been the case, I think, forever. But building your platform, building that connection with your readers is vital. And then building out this capability so that you're able to sell direct to your readers, I think it is really, really important. And again, the big thing I'm always talking about is, is when you become an author, you have started a business. You know, you might think it's a hobby, you might think it's a legacy project, but if you want to succeed, you have to embrace the fact that you now own a business, you have a book business, you, you are an author. You are an author that has a business and you have to focus on community building and building out that platform that you control. Because, yeah, it's great to say you've got 100,000 followers on Instagram, but at any day now, Instagram may not be a platform that anybody uses. Right. You know, I always, I always go to how many people jumped on Clubhouse and thought it was going to be the next big thing. How many people thought Threads was going to be all over the place? I mean, Threads is still around, but it didn't blow up the way people thought. So things come and go. MySpace is gone, Friendster is gone. You know, there's. TikTok could be gone, right? It's still, it's still on the potential shopping block. So there's, there's no control that you have over those things. But if you have an email list, you control that. It's really, really, you know, it's really, really important. So that's where we are today. And I think where we're going in the future, the tools and the ability for you to do it is just going to get easier and easier and you'll have more tools available for you to do whatever it is that you want to create and whatever you want to produce. So that's really, really exciting. On the marketing side, I think that it is still marketing a book is still the hardest part of being an author. And I know there's companies like us that are working really hard to build tools, resources and support for authors to help make that journey a little bit easier. So we are actually rolling out into our beta test of our author launch kit. So we have been building book marketing software for nonfiction authors and Efren, you're on my list. We are just waiting for one last little thing to go into place and then we're going to be reaching out to our beta users. If you are interested in being one of the first to get access to our book marketing software, all you have to do is make sure you're on our email list@book launchers.com newsletter and we'll be probably, we're March, probably early April. We'll be sending out a special offer to be in the pre launch user group and we'll be excited to share that with you. But there'll be other tools. There's already a few other ones. Nobody's doing quite what we've done as far as building our entire nonfiction marketing process into a piece of software where we not only provide strategy, there's tactics and helping you execute some of the tactics all within the software. But there's lots of tools already coming out for social media marketing, for writing blog posts. Canva is awesome for creating some of the content tools, you know, generating some promotional materials and again going back to using tools like ChatGPT and Grok and Claude for generating at least first drafts or even generating ideas of what you can do and you know, drafting those first rounds of content. And so you know, these, this is just the beginning and there's already so many cool things coming up that I think are going to completely change and evolve this landscape for everyone. And it's, you know, marketing I think will remain one of the challenges forever for authors. But you know, these things where AI is changing our ability to find exactly what we're looking for as far as our next, you know, the Next thing we want to read or consume and our next kind of person we want to learn from. It's also going to make it easier for us to as authors to produce the content that helps get us out there and also even do the outreach and get in front of other people's audiences. Now with all this in mind, and I'm going to open it up to questions and conversation here in a second. There's cautions and the thing that is we've already seen and has already impacted us for the last year is the AI generated books are flooding these platforms and it raises concerns about quality and authenticity and it has made their bots, you know, overly cautious and overly sensitive to anything that doesn't fit perfectly in their guidelines. AI voice cloning scams, they're just going to continue to rise, you know, and I think, you know, I'd hate to be some of the famous voices out there because they're going to, they're going to face it a lot more than us average Joes and Jills, but, but it's just going to continue. You got to be very wary. You know, it's one thing we have, we've developed a secret code so that, you know, if I, if, if, if somebody calls my, my family and says they're me, if they don't use the secret code, they know it's not me. And it's funny just to kind of think that you have to take cautions like that, but my voice is easily cloned because I'm everywhere, right? You could easily clone it. And, and so that has ramifications on the other side. So I think being aware of things like that from a personal and a professional level is important and it's just going to increase. But the other thing of this is the social media algorithm changes. We're already seeing it, Amazon's algorithm changes. You know, It's a continuous. YouTube just updated their algorithm and how content, and this includes books is discovered and promoted. This is constantly evolving. And so with all of that in mind, I think there's never been, it's never been more important to put out your absolute best possible work. Because how do you stand out in a sea of low quality work? You be the absolute best. You be the shining star with the most amazing cover, the best thought out title. You appeal to a very specific audience with a very specific thing. And you be human, right? You show evidence of your humanity, right? Do not have a social media page that is just pictures of AI generated content. You need evidence of your humanity. And because I Think that how do you stand out in 2026, 2027, 2028? You be more human than everyone else with the best quality content that is thought out. It's not just something AI can produce. Like, how do I write a book in 70 days? Tell me now. Well, guess what? Claude can tell you that. Grok can tell you that. Perplexity. AI can tell you that. ChatGPT can tell you that. Everybody can tell you in 70 days. What they can't tell you is the emotional roller coaster you're going to go through. They're not going to tell you the strategy of this book aligning for your aspect. They're not going to think about the pitfalls all the time. Like all of these things, the own personal experience that I've gone through, or that Efren's gone through, or that Jack's gone through as they've written their book, those humanity side of things that their hopes and dreams and the things that happened that they wished hadn't, and the things that happened that they never could have expected, but they were better than they expected. That is so, so important to bring to the table. And then last is it's never ever been more important to build that community. So this is why I'm always, you know, gonna be here for you guys, creating content, saying hello, thanking you for being here. Because if you don't have a community, if you don't have people paying attention, supporting you, commenting and supporting each other, then it's. It's just another AI thing, right? And so that's why these communities are so important. And that's why building a platform and building an audience, engaging with them, and again, showing your human side, having them show you their human side and creating those connections, you know, that is how you stand out in this marketplace of AI generated materials, you know, today. But it's just going to become even more and more important. So that's my thoughts on 2026 and beyond. What did I miss? Let's chat about it. I can't wait to see what your perspectives are and what you guys are playing with. All right. Security codes are good even if you're not cloned. Scammers are everywhere. That's so true. Good to see you here, kj. I'm just trying to catch up. Angela, what do we have for questions or comments that we should talk about?

We do have a question that came in from Reba. Let me show it. And we also haven't given away a prize yet. Just to put that bug in your ear.

Yeah, yeah. I'll do that. Thank you. So does AI capture your intellectual property, meaning they can reuse it at their will? So read the terms and conditions of whatever platform you are using before you upload to them. You know, we use when we, when I'm uploading and when we're using things, we are using paid accounts that are. It specifically says, like in the ChatGPT account, it specifically says right there at all times, this material will not be used to train AI. Right. So make sure that whatever platform you're using is, you know, you, you're familiar with the terms and conditions. My own personal kind of way I operate is if something is confidential and I wouldn't want it out there in the world for whatever reason, I'm not going to put it, I'm not going to input it into AI. That's just me and kind of my fail safe. But read the terms and conditions of whatever platform you're using. All right, I'll do one quick prize right now. Let's see Share screen. Let's attempt to Share screen. Let's see what happens. All right, so this random name picker is missing. Last week's. Yeah, last week's. This one didn't have last week. So we're only going to do one this week and we'll make it up to you guys next time. But here we are. So I will pop on over. So every Tuesday and Friday when a video comes out, we will enter your name in for some prizes. Right now, I think we're just giving books away. We are stocking back up on some of our swag, but we've been trying to clean out Angela's closet to make room for future swag. So we have been giving away books because she has lots and lots of books. Stella. I don't know if Stella has won recently or if Stella was here today. Ah, I don't want to answer any questions today. Thank you. But Stella Golf, thank you for your comments, likes and shares and email Angela@teambookcontrous.com and let her know what prize you'd like. I think she's got some of Dale Roberts books. If you've gotten all of mine, I think she's got some of Dale Roberts books, but she can let you know what she has. And then where are we? Here we are. So let's just see all of you folks that are here today. You'll get another shot at this. So if you haven't commented yet, this is your chance to put your name in the draw. And today's winner Is Angela. You can mail yourself whatever prize you would like. We'll draw again. And survive the hunt. Congratulations. All right, so you can email angelaeamooklaunchers.com and let her know if you want self promotion, succeed, self publish and succeed, or I don't know which two of Dale's books you have, but you can let them know that as well.

Yeah. So I have the first two of Dale's series. It's the self publishing for new authors and then advanced self publishing for authors. And then of course, I have Julie's books, which is self promote and succeed, self publish and succeed. And then I might have. I may have to double check, but I believe I still have a couple of Nick Hutcheson's book, which is Rising.

Yeah, great.

I don't have very many of that one, though. And we're getting lower on some of Dale's books, but I still have plenty, so feel free if you're interested. One of those. I'll definitely double check my. My filled closet. So.

And if you're hoping for swag, you'll have to come back in probably by the end of March. We'll have swag again, I think certainly by the deep dive, which, by the way, the deep dive is happening on March. The. Where are we? March 15th. And this, this one is. What is the topic for this particular deep dive? I'm not doing that one. Is that the distribution deep dive or is it pre sales? It might be pre sales.

It's, I believe, pre sales because it's with Sarah. We're giving a month off.

Yes. So it is the importance of pre sales for your book marketing. So that's going to be a great subject. So that's happening on Saturday, March 15th at 10:00am Pacific. And if you want to make sure that you don't miss any of our live streams and you want to just, you know, further your experience in the community, definitely join our free school community that we have. And I have completely lost where I've lost my screen, so I don't know where. There we are. It's like I can't find us. Here is the link to join the school community. I think Angela just dropped it in there, too. All right, so anybody else have questions?

I don't have any cues. Let me see. No. Rebus was the only one that I had. You answered some of Efren's, so, yeah, that was. Those were the only questions I hit, Dean. Unless someone wants to sneak one in there real quick.

All right. I don't. I don't Mind a minute to take one from.

I'll let you figure that out. That handle out.

Clinic. I don't know. I'm not sure how to say your name, but what is the future of memoirs in 2026? Well, my crystal ball broke, so I don't know exactly. But I do believe, you know, memoirs are the hardest book category to sell. So that's the bad news, right? Like, it is very hard. And the reason it's difficult is because you're up against the latest celebrity memoirs and the latest, you know, political leader memoirs and all of those kind of things. So you have to find a way to stand out in that marketplace with your story. So one of the things I always tell our authors, and I think this doesn't change in the future, is that the book might be about you, but it's not for you. So you really have to hone in on who you're writing for and why they're going to care about your story over the other famous person's story in that category. And that's where really kind of honing in on a very specific experience for a specific reader type really makes it stand out. But what else is the future of memoirs? You know, I don't. I don't really know. But I do get excited about the personalized discoverability, because now I can go, you know, where it's very difficult on Amazon to get granular, maybe I really want to find out, is there anybody else that grew up in a motel on the side of a highway and they've written the story about it, right? Because, you know, if you don't know, I grew up in a town of a thousand people in rural Alberta, and my parents owned a motel, and I grew up on the side of the highway. My neighbors were the RCMP station and a gas station, and in the backyard was farmland. I grew up. The wheat field was behind me. So very unique experience. So let's say, you know, I could search, you know, life in a motel. I might find something. But if I really want to get granular now, I can go on A plus. You know, I said the A L E X A name. Plus they have this new Powered by Claude search facility to recommend books, to recommend products, all of those kind of things. That gets me really excited for memoir writers. But again, you have to be really clear on the story you're telling and who it's for to really hone in on, you know, what, you know, who you're marketing to and why they're going to want to pay attention to Your book. And again, the need to have a place, platform, build your audience is, is still going to be the case. You know, that's growing. That's not going away. All right, next question. This is a very general question. What's the best way to market your books? You know, the best way I can answer that is, is get self promote and succeed. So self promote, self promote and succeed dot com, that's where you can go to buy it direct. Or you can download the audiobook for free@self promoteandsucceed.com audio. Angela will probably drop the links in there for you. But marketing your books is really general, right? Like, that's. First thing I would do is make sure I've got good reviews and my metadata is dialed in. Then I'm going to look around and go, who has my readers in their audience? And how can I add value to that particular audience and put myself in my book in front of that audience? But there's ebook promotions, there's Amazon ads, There's, you know, the list of things you can do is rather endless. You know, another kind of resource or tool or support if you're, if you've written a nonfiction book, is our Author Business Accelerator. So we've got a group, it's a paid group. It's $150 a month. But we have. That's actually in 18 minutes, I'm going to be hanging up this and going on to hold office hours, talking about podcast interviews and getting yourself on podcasts and leveraging those podcast interviews for more interviews, more exposure and book sales in our Author Business Accelerator. But you can go, you could join that@authorbusinessaccelerator.com and get support and training and tools and, you know, get. I'd be able to ask myself and my marketing team questions and kind of hone in on what specifically would help you. All right, next one. I saw another question pop up. If you write 99% of your book but utilize some AI tools, will it help self publishing efforts? So you just have to disclose that you're AI assisted. You know, if you're, if your book is 99% you generated, then you're AI assisted, not AI generated. And that's an important distinction when it comes to your, you know, Amazon and Ingram and all those platforms because, you know, everybody is pretty much AI assisted in some capacity these days. It's certainly getting to that point. But generating your, you know, one of the things that is very problematic is generating your coverage with AI. You know, there's all kinds of unresolved issues around copyright and different things with the covers. So, you know, I would strongly recommend against an AI generated cover. But you know, the other things you can still publish if you've been. If you've used AI to assist you or even generate you. You can still publish. But, you know, there's no, there's nothing wrong with AI assisted. English with. Jason, I don't understand the question. What about English for professions? I published 30 books from nurse to CEOs. Sorry, I'm not. I don't know what that means. I need more information. Randy's a children's that I have for right now.

Jason, if you want to provide a little bit more context, please feel free to do so. I did post both of the links in the chat for Self, Promote and Succeed, including the free audio version that Julie mentioned as well. And then David Henderson put a nice little comment saying get the book because all the answers are in there. Thanks for the shout out, David.

Thanks. Well, David also hangs out with Julie the Book Bot all the time. So Julie the Book Bot inside of our Author Business Accelerator. And the bot will also be inside of our Author Launch Kit software that we're releasing. And the bot provides really, really great insights and feedback too. Okay, I'm going to do one more draw here. Oops, I just stopped sharing. Instead of sharing oops, let me hit the right button. I meant to click to find the winner and I exited. So one moment. Okay, now we've got. Now we're. Now we're getting it done. So don't click Stop sharing. Click drag in. There we go. And Fallen Hellscape. Congratulations for winning today. Thanks for being here. So what you need to do is email angelaeamooklaunchers.com let her know which book you would like or if you don't, if you didn't catch the choices. She can email you back with that and then she'll need your mailing address so she can ship you that book. She does not know where to find you without a mailing address.

I don't even want to attempt to try to find you without your address.

Exactly, exactly. So it said English for nurses, English for marketing professionals, specific dialogues for practicing speaking. Okay, there's still not a question with that.

So yeah, I'm wondering if it's like how to market to those specific niches which if that's the case, we just did a live.

What was that two lives ago that.

Talked about keyword research? That might be a good.

Yes, that would be a great one. So if you want to drop the link to that live stream. We'll throw that in there. And I think that would be a really, really great fit. And then I'll see David on the ABA call in 14 minutes. And anybody else who wants to join you can go to authorbusinessaccelerator.com and you can join in on our code call and future calls as well. But thank you for being here. Our next session in two weeks is a special session with. This is the one with Evan Gao, I believe, from Story Origin, so I won't be here. Sarah will be on that, as will Angela. And we have the creator of storyorigin, which is one of my favorite platforms for managing beta readers and ARCs advanced reader copies. They also have some really good newsletter swap tools, just a really, really great tool for book marketing. So tune back here in two weeks for that session. And of course, the session on the Deep Dive, which we mentioned as well. And if you want the calendar of all that, make sure you're inside our school group, which is free. So thank you so much for you being here and Efren's looking forward to the 11 Labs video that'll be out, I don't know, three weeks or so. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Angela. Bye.