How Authors are Growing in 2026 (Mid-Year Survey Results)

Ferol Vernon (00:18.158)

Hello, authors, and welcome to the Written Word Media Podcast. I am Ferol here as always with Ricci. And today’s episode, we’re recording at the beginning of summer. So at least for us here in the US, it’s the last week of school. everybody’s got summer fever. Nobody’s studying, at least not in our household. And and we’re prepping for you know a warm, a warm summer season.

Ricci (00:39.638)

Mm-hmm.

Ricci (00:47.03)

Yeah, it feels good to be almost there. our kids are off for the summer and they’re at the age where we don’t have to plan a million camps anymore. They kinda roam and do a little bit of part time work and just enjoy the summer. Sometimes I’m a little jealous of them. but we’re in that phase where like we’re not quite there yet, so I’m excited to get there. we’re actually headed to the beach in a couple of weeks, so that’ll be a great way to kick off the season.

Ferol Vernon (01:11.714)

Yeah, and I’m I’m preparing to be out for a while because I’m actually gonna be in London at the SPS conference. So I’ll get to see a lot of you authors there, hopefully. and I’m really excited about that trip. But it’s sort of, you know, preparing for the end of school, preparing to be gone on a business trip, you know, prepared to be gone on the at the beach. So there’s a lot going on in everybody’s life here in the beginning or end of summer.

Ricci (01:34.391)

All the things, all the things. But all wonderful things. Yeah.

Ferol Vernon (01:36.278)

All the things. Wonderful things. But today’s episode, you know, keeping on that theme of summer, summer is kind of at least for us, like halfway through the year. And so something that we like to do at Written Word Media is we like to really take the temperature of the author community and figure out what’s going on with them so that we can, you know, talk to you all about about trends that we’re seeing. And we do an annual survey every year. Usually it’s towards the end of the year. It’s a very comprehensive, it’s a long survey, it’s got a lot of data. We actually did two podcasts on that earlier.

If you want to check that out. But in the middle of the year, we do our mid-year author survey to kind of it’s a little bit shorter, but and it’s a little bit more focused on vibes than hard data. but we like to do that to make sure we can kind of see, hey, what’s changing? What are people talking about? And today’s episode, we’re gonna be going through that mid-year survey and giving you our learnings. And Ricci, I know you did a lot of data analysis and research, even though it’s not quite as comprehensive as our annual survey. but I’m excited to dig in.

For some of those trends that we found.

Ricci (02:38.497)

Yeah, if you guys haven’t figured out by now, I love data. I’m the data person at Written Word Media. And yeah, so the survey was ten questions, took you know less than three, four minutes to complete because there weren’t a ton of data questions, a lot of kind of multiple choice. we got almost six hundred responses, which is amazing. as usual, you know, in terms of like how is the data skewed?

Ferol Vernon (02:59.991)

Right.

Ricci (03:05.719)

This did go out to our audience, so it’s skewed in favor of indie authors who are working on their author business. 

Ferol Vernon (03:19.243)

Yeah, and just to give you a sense, you know, we always do our surveys. All the data is self-reported. So as Ricci mentioned, it’s SKUs indie author centric. but all the data that you know we ask authors who are an honest bunch and they give us their opinions about what they’re seeing. but just like to give that caveat before we get into the data analysis so people aren’t you know, poking us on the details.

Ricci (03:43.734)

Yeah, and so we’re gonna report back on pretty much everything today. We’ll also have a blog post if you want to dig more into the data where we kind of slice and dice it different ways. So go and check that out as well. but the the as Ferol alluded to, the survey really focused on sentiment, like how are authors feeling midway through 2026? so the three sentiment questions were

How would how are you feeling about your author business right now on a scale of one to five? Is your business growing, stable, declining? 

And do you expect your author income to grow in the next 12 months? Yes, no, or not sure. So those were the three sentiment questions. And then we also asked questions around what is working right now, what isn’t working right now. And then there was an open-ended question at the end where authors could just kind of write in anything that they wanted to tell us, and that was really valuable as well. So let’s do it, Ferol. Why don’t we dive in with some of the headline takeaways from the survey?

Ferol Vernon (04:58.752)

Yeah, and just, you know, one quick thing. The the open ended questions are always really exciting for me because that’s where people kind of say what they’re saying that we didn’t think to ask. And there’s some really interesting tidbits about AI and about the algorithms that we’ll talk to towards the end of the episode. So stay tuned for that. But Ricci, yeah, why don’t you give us what what the big as as resident data person, what was the big data that jumped out to you, or maybe like the top two or three points from the survey?

Ricci (05:22.838)

Yeah, so of the six hundred responses or almost six hundred responders, nearly half of the authors reported that their business is either holding its ground or growing so far in 2026. And that breakdown was 23% reported that their business was growing and 22% were holding steady. So half kind of in a good spot. about 29%, so let’s just round it up and say a third of authors reported a declining business.

And this was actually most pronounced for authors who were making around $2,500 to $10,000 per year, kind of the got traction authors. And in a minute I’ll I’ll kind of break down the four buckets of authors. there was a question where authors could self-identify as which bucket they might fall into. so half of authors reporting steady or growing, 30% reporting declining.

and the rest, which was about twenty percent, were still evaluating and most of those were in the starting out phase of their author business. So it makes sense that they, you know, couldn’t really say where where they were just yet. And then the other high level takeaway, yeah.

Ferol Vernon (06:34.463)

Ricci, but before we go, can I just clarify one thing? Cause I think w we said about a third of those authors have a declining business. And you said that bucket is making about twenty five hundred to ten thousand per month or per year? Per month. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, it’s okay.

Ricci (06:46.987)

Per month, per month, sorry, I probably misspoke. Yes, yeah, yeah, per month. and then the other big data takeaway was that despite some of the turbulence in the market, 50% of the respondents, or half of their authors, expect their income to grow in the next 12 months. And generally the further up the income ladder the authors were, the more bullish they felt about what’s ahead. so half of indie authors report their business is holding steady or growing. Half of them are also very bullish about the next 12 months and expect their business to continue to grow. a third of authors reporting a declining business and mostly in the GOT traction bucket and 20% still evaluating most of them in the starting out bucket.

Ferol Vernon (07:42.634)

Yeah, that’s great. I think, you know, it’s it’s very easy to when you’re sort of in the world consuming news media, talking to people, to sort of absorb some negativity that’s going on. But I there there was a lot of optimism in the survey, both in the open ended responses and the data shows that. So I thought that was really cool to see that like, yeah, there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on, but authors are, you know, generally pretty optimistic.

Ricci (08:07.496)

I agree. And you know, I think I was surprised as well, because there there is a sentiment of doom and gloom if you’re in a lot of the forums. And then to see the actual data come back and see that half of authors are actually doing pretty well and are really optimistic was very heartening. And I think something that if there’s only one thing you take away from this pod is that the world is not imploding and you can still make it as as an author or publisher, even though there are definitely some headwinds.

Ferol Vernon (08:13.181)

Totally.

Ferol Vernon (08:30.33)

Yeah.

Ricci (08:36.99)

There are people who are figuring it out and what we’ll talk about a little bit more today is for the people who are thriving, what are they doing and what are some things that maybe you can try if you’re in the that segment of authors where you’re seeing a decline or your business d isn’t feeling as robust as it used to.

Ferol Vernon (08:55.22)

Yeah, look, there’s my segue right there into the into the next section, right? So yeah, right. Well there we can go. So one of the interesting things, like Ricci said, that we want to do is say, hey, okay, this optimistic group, the the group that’s got their business growing, what are they doing differently? Or how did they answer these questions a little bit differently? And I thought the the writing volume question for me stood out sort of right away. and you know, the I’ll let data Ricci speak to the data in a minute, but the

Ricci (08:59.687)

We’re getting banner at this, Ferol.

Ferol Vernon (09:25.021)

The sort of punchline is like the people who are optimistic and their business is growing, they’re writing more. They’re actually like accelerating words on the page more so than they did before.

Ricci (09:36.615)

Yeah, exactly. So you know, we asked a question about what are you currently doing, where are you leaning in, what are you investing in. and so this bucket of authors who are s optimistic, who are growing, who are holding steady, they’re spending significantly more time on writing than the authors who are seeing a decline or who are feeling more pessimistic about their businesses. 

Ricci (10:08.837)

And and when you look at their responses in the open-ended question, one of the things that came up again and again is that volume is one level that they can control and that they were leaning on it hard, right? So they’re things that are beyond control, whether it’s algorithmic changes or whatever else is going on. but these authors said, Hey, I can control how much volume I output, I can control how many books I want to publish this year, and so that’s what I’m doing. I’m leaning into an area of my business where

Ferol Vernon (10:19.431)

Right.

Ricci (10:38.077)

where I do have control and that’s where I’m spending more of my time. And I thought that was y very insightful of those authors to recognize that. And I also think emotionally and psychologically it feels a lot more empowering to be able to work on something that you can control. Because at the end of the day if you write another book, you always do have that book. It’s not something that feels like it’s being you know built on certain sand or something that you don’t have anything to show for the work you put in. You will always have that book. You will always have that output.

Ferol Vernon (10:59.742)

Right.

Ferol Vernon (11:08.445)

Yeah, exactly. And I think when we talk to authors in person, we also or on the phone, we you know, they have sometimes not every book hits all the time. And so sometimes even if you’ve written, you know, five books or whatever, it’s like writing that next book is, as Ricci said, an asset that you have. And even if it’s not making you money now, it could make you money later. Right. And so like I think that was so such a like optimistic message. Hey, I can control writing, so I’m gonna write. And like you’re writers, that’s awesome, right?

And I think, you know, we we here at Written Word Media, we help you market, right? We don’t help you write. And I thought the the marketing takeaways were also very interesting, specifically around author newsletters.

Ricci (11:52.541)

Yeah, so in this group of optimistic authors, their author newsletter was a priority, not an afterthought. And I feel like we’ve you know we bang this drum almost every episode because your author email list is something that you fully control, just like the books that you publish. Like you will always have those email addresses, you will always be able to reach out to those readers who have expressed an interest in your work.

Ferol Vernon (12:03.584)

Ha ha

Ricci (12:21.649)

And so in this group of optimistic authors, their newsletter was something that they continued to invest in. It was something they were actively using at a much higher rate than kind of the overall percentage of authors who were using newsletters. And they were also doing a much higher percentage of newsletter swaps. They were already focusing on building their own audience.

and spending less time thinking about like platforms and algorithms and once again leaning into what they could control.

Ferol Vernon (12:53.86)

and I think if you haven’t listened to our our newsletter episodes earlier, like check those out because like Ricci said we bang this drum a lot, but it’s really important for you to have your own mailing list. Email is still a great channel and it’s an owned channel.

Ricci (13:06.79)

Yeah, and on that front, I just wanna I I I actually did a a presentation at Incr for IncrisCon over the weekend and this is a little aside, but I was talking about building email lists because I always talk about that no matter what the presentation, and I mentioned to the authors that we have subscriber surge giveaways so we actually can help you build your list. And most authors didn’t know that. So I just wanna reiterate here 

Ferol Vernon (13:14.918)

right.

Ricci (13:36.188)

That although we’re known mostly for our promo sites and promo stacking, because we so firmly believe that having an author newsletter and building your own audience is important, we do have a product for you which is called Subscriber Surge Giveaways, where you basically enter, you you pick a title to be entered into a giveaway, we do all of the marketing, and you can add 300 to 600 subscribers to your list over a two-month period. So it’s a very easy, sustainable way to slowly grow your list.

There’s no l heavy lift on your end. You don’t ha you’re giving away literally just one copy of your book. so go check that out if you hear us talking about this and you’re like, but how? How do I build my list? We can help you with that.

Ferol Vernon (14:17.423)

Yeah. I think we can help you with that. There’s also like, you know, and and we like to, you know, think we do a really good job at helping authors with this, but there’s lots of other ways to grow your mailing list. And, you know, we encourage you to do all of them. because that, like we said, that’s like one of your your primary channels. And I think, you know, as we talk about our products, like which, you know, are you do have to pay for, you know, the paid marketing spent was also an interesting outcome from the survey. And I think sometimes you

You hear people say things aren’t working or are working. I thought was really interesting is to say like the optimistic authors or successful successful authors are spending more on paid marketing that are actually like continuing to to operate on these paid channels.

Ricci (15:01.851)

Yeah, so Op Optimistic Authors were spending more on paid specifically on Amazon ads and meta ads. again, I was surprised at the Amazon ads because I’ve heard anecdotally from authors it’s not working for them anymore, even though we haven’t seen that decline on our end when we run ads for authors. and then meta is still working for authors. This one was not surprising. You know, we use meta a lot to grow our reader audience and we haven’t seen any kind of significant decline.

Ferol Vernon (15:12.496)

Yeah, me too.

Ricci (15:30.342)

so the optimistic authors seem to have been able to figure out one or both of these platforms and continue to invest in them as a way to then drive revenue growth for their titles and for their business.

Ferol Vernon (15:44.016)

Yeah. And I think that’s something that we see all the time is it’s like, you know, we we always used to talk about publish and pray when you like would publish and just hope for the best. And like, you know, we know that doesn’t work. and sometimes, you know, you don’t like hearing that, hey, you have to advertise, you have to promote, but you do, and we all know that. and that that came through loud and clear in the survey.

Ricci (16:03.802)

Yes, it did. the other finding, and and there are basically five findings here for the what what’s working for optimistic authors, and we’ll recap these at the end. the fourth finding was that the optimistic authors were focusing on box sets, translations, and audio as their top strategic bets. So there was a question around like where are you, you know, investing. these authors were doing mostly human audiobook, not AI. They were doing

Ferol Vernon (16:32.463)

Yeah, I thought that was super interesting.

Ricci (16:34.01)

Which I thought was really interesting. So, really investing in high quality audio production. they were doing box sets, which but a little bit of this is chicken and egg. You have to have to have enough titles to be able to box set together. so that only works, you know, if you actually have a volume of titles where that makes sense. And then translations was a really big one, and translations is where AI is being used. So AI is enabling translations to translations to be done a lot.

More cheaply is what these authors said. But once again, when you look at where their focus is, these are catalogue monetization plays, right? So these these authors are figuring out how to extract more value from the books that they already have, from the assets that they already have, in addition to writing more books. And that makes then the two work together, because if you write a book and you figure out how to get it to generate a ton of revenue.

then it makes even more sense to write the next book because you know you can get that to generate a ton of revenue as well.

Ferol Vernon (17:37.081)

Yeah. And the I you know, just to touch on audio and translation for a moment, because we’re seeing a lot a heavy increase in audio and translations. And that’s, you know, largely due to some of the AI technologies that are making it more cost effective to translate or more cost effective to record an audio. but I thought that what was so interesting is while we’re seeing a huge surge in sort of AI narrated audiobooks, this group was actually investing in human narrated audiobooks. So I thought that was really like sort of

You know, it was like, huh, that was surprising to me. so I think, you know, it’s kind of cool and interesting that, you know, that is still still a top track for for the successful author.

Ricci (18:18.469)

Yeah, for sure. And on that note, which was this is the last point about what optimistic authors are doing, is they’re using AI as a tool and not really fearing it as a threat. So when you we talked specifically about AI narration, they were using AI narration way more heavily than the general population. and a lot of them mentioned using AI specifically as a workflow asset and tool, helping them for, you know, ad campaign designs, cover art.

We already talked about translation. and it’s not that they didn’t mention AI flooding the market and some concerns around AI slop, but their attitude was more like AI can help me with my workflow, AI can help me become more efficient, in a way that, you know, in the group that was kind of more pessimistic, saw AI as an existential threat and and perhaps wasn’t utilizing it at all for phys philosophical reasons.

Ferol Vernon (19:02.798)

It was upbeat.

Ricci (19:18.28)

So those those were the five takeaways of like what these optimistic authors are doing. I do want to note that the optimistic author group cut across all four segments of authors. So let’s just take a minute because I don’t want people to walk away and say, the optimistic authors are all in the top tier of authors, they’re making $10,000 or more a month, and they have an advantage that I don’t have. That was not the case at all.

So within the the survey we asked authors what their current status was, and there were four buckets, just starting out, which was 500 or less per month, building momentum, which was 500 to 2500 dollars per month in income, got traction, which was 2500 to 10000 per month in income, and then living the dream, which was 10000 or more per month in income.

So the optimistic group cut across all four of these segments, all four of these author statuses. So no matter where you are in your author journey.

These are five things that you could consider focusing on to help grow your business in 2026. And they were writing more, focusing on your newsletter, investing in paid marketing, Facebook or Amazon, looking at box sets, translations, and audio if you do have a catalog, and then utilizing AI as an efficiency and workflow tool and helping you get more value out of the titles that you have.

Ferol Vernon (22:20.557)

Totally agree. And I think one of the things that we saw in the survey that was interesting, and this is a question that we get all the time. So it bears, you know, bears talking about is sort of this KDP versus exclusive versus wide debate. And something that we found was like it was kind of split down the middle. So like the whether or not you’re wide or exclusive really had no bearing on this kind of optimism feeling or this success feeling, that is essentially split down the middle about about half half of exclusive and wide authors.

And I think that’s like really interesting because, you know, you can be successful with either path. And the dirt the survey really showed that, right? Like we saw it in the actual data. And that’s something that we always say because, you know, for us, it’s like it’s just an author choice. but it was good to see the numbers bear it out.

Ricci (23:08.416)

Yeah, within that optimistic group, 46%were exclusive and 47% were wide. So it was quite literally this was not a statistically significant variable. And so you can choose either of those paths and still be an author who’s optimistic, who’s growing, whose business is doing well. So I wouldn’t spend too much time stressing about that. You know, pick one avenue, go for it, and then focus on the other five things that we talked about.

Ferol Vernon (23:13.954)

It’s like, yeah.

Ferol Vernon (23:31.349)

Elaine.

Ferol Vernon (23:35.701)

Yeah. And one of the things that I always find, you know, most interesting about these surveys, the data is super interesting, but then there’s the open-ended questions. And the open-ended questions are a little bit of like a window into what people are feeling and what they’re thinking beyond just what we had the foresight to ask. And so I thought something that was really interesting when we looked at these open-ended questions. And what I what I thought to do is is look at the full survey, end of year survey that we did last year, and then look at the mid-year survey and say, hey, like what are some

Things that are different in these open-ended questions. What are some of the themes? And I thought one of the really interesting things is that the algorithm changes have become a much more prevalent conversation in this mid-year survey. So at the end of last year, people were not talking so much about the the Amazon A10 algorithm or really any algorithms. And in this survey, that was very top of mind for like a a it was a very strong pattern for authors about something that they’re that they’re looking at, learning.

And and trying to figure out.

Ricci (24:37.568)

yes, for sure. And I think this is where some of the pessimism is coming from because there are definitely authors who had a business that was working and it was running smoothly and everything was, you know, almost on autopilot and it was great. And then we there’s one quote here where an author said, as it pertains to the algorithm, it came out of the blue.

And as I already had a specific strategy, I couldn’t pivot as quickly as I wanted. And you there were a lot of authors who said everything was working and then the the the algorithm shifted and I saw my sales and revenue decline pretty much overnight. And because there was no warning and it happened so quickly, it’s it is fairly traumatic to have something like that happen.

So there were authors who were in that bucket, and then even the authors whose businesses are growing or holding steady definitely mentioned the algorithm and said, Hey, you know, navigating the change in the algorithm as best as I can. And so we do have a pod all about the ATN algorithm if you want to go listen. We also one of the big takeaways from that we learned from about the algorithm change is that you want to have more sustained sales activity.

on your Amazon page, you want to send highly qualified external traffic to that page. And we’ve actually introduced longer duration promo stacks to help support authors with this. So you can run a five day, a seven day or ten day stack so that you can get this more prolonged traffic and conversion data into Amazon which will which seems to be working better than some of the tactics that authors were were using before.

Ferol Vernon (26:27.775)

Yeah. And I think, you know, we always try to help authors react to these kinds of changes. So, you know, that’s a product update that we did. The pod is, you know, try to tries to unpack it for y’all. but I think this was just so clear that like and and change is so frustrating. Like so I I totally feel the authors like when you read their responses, you’re like, Man, yeah, that sucks. Like I have feel for you. cause to have a nice business that’s going along and then have something disrupted is

Ricci (26:31.284)

Okay.

Ferol Vernon (26:54.525)

Is tough. And so, you know, we we’re here to support y’all as as best we can. and I thought, you know, moving on from the algorithm conversation, something that didn’t change that I thought was pretty interesting, and we mentioned newsletters and how often we talk about having your own newsletter is important, but you know, from the survey last year and the mid-year survey, that actually had not changed, right? So authors who are successful are still focusing on their newsletter.

and sort of the sentiments around that of like, Hey, yeah, my newsletter’s still a priority for me were just as strong. That signal was just as strong as it was at the end of last year.

Ricci (27:32.82)

newsletter still really important, still an asset that seems to be doing really, really well for authors. and then the last theme from the open-ended questions was related to AI.

Ferol Vernon (27:44.416)

So we

Yeah, why don’t you do and then I can talk about it.

Ricci (28:04.913)

So in the end of year survey, AI was kind of a little bit of background noise, it was definitely there. But in the mid year survey, I would say AI took center stage. and the responses were actually very varied. So this is a controversial topic among authors. but I think what was most interesting was that was kind of the split in sentiment based on

Ferol Vernon (28:20.414)

Yes.

Ricci (28:33.236)

the author status, like where authors were in their journey. So the authors who were starting out really saw AI as an existential threat. that AI was, you know, 100% negative, it was flooding the market, it made discovery really tough. there was just a very kind of depressing doom and gloom quality to those responses. The authors who were

building momentum and had some traction, were kind of in the middle. They saw AI as a threat, but also potentially as a tool. And so those, you know, mid-tier authors have started using AI for ad creatives, for covers, but they are still very frustrated by the AI generated competition that is making the market more challenging.

And then the final group was the Living the Dream group. and they were mostly positive around AI. they really saw AI as a key to leverage and opportunity. And so there was a lot of positive sentiment. Probably the only place there was positive sentiment were in these very top earners seeing AI as a level for translations, narrations, workflow efficiency,

They still dislike the competitive effects, but you know, they were probably the only positive group with the sentiment of like AI is creating opportunities everywhere. And so this was one place where the the sentiment was markedly different across the different groupings of author depending on their stage within the author gen w within the author journey, which makes a ton of sense.

Ferol Vernon (30:20.723)

Yeah. And I think, you know, we see this. This is, you know, one of the one of the surprising things I think that we see is when authors diverge in opinion. And this is definitely one of those places. And so I thought that was really an interesting finding. And something that, you know, I always like to say is, you know, there are good reasons to be pessimistic. Right. So that we’re talking about authors who are pessimistic and optimistic. There’s good reasons out there to be pessimistic. Things are changing, things are hard, there’s all this stuff, but there’s also good reasons to be optimistic, right? There’s i i there’s like a lot of cool things happening.

There’s a lot of new tools that didn’t exist before. And so I think, you know, authors have a choice. You know, you can be optimistic, you can be pessimistic. You’re not forced into making that decision. And I think choosing optimism, I think is a is a way to sort of make everything feel a little easier and and move forward.

Ricci (31:07.966)

Yeah, I literally have a quote on my wall because I like to write things down for inspiration that I’m looking at right now. And the quote is, it’s better to be optimistic and wrong than to be pessimistic and right. And so I’m just gonna leave that with you there. Yep, because you know, when you think about your day-to-day existence and minute to minute, you know, it just feels a lot better to be optimistic. It’s better to have that kind of mindset where you think that things are going to go well.

Ferol Vernon (31:21.512)

Yeah, I love that.

Ricci (31:37.664)

even if it doesn’t turn out that way, rather than to go through minute by minute in a state of, you know, pessimism and frustration and anger. And so, of course, this is a personal choice for everybody, but I think the data bears out that there is reason for optimism halfway through twenty twenty six, that there are a lot of authors, right? Half of authors who are still doing really well with their author business. and

Ferol Vernon (31:52.862)

Absolutely.

Ricci (32:05.032)

hopefully we were able to highlight some of the tactics that they’re using that may be helpful to you if you’re not quite in that situation yet.

Ferol Vernon (32:16.798)

Yeah. And I think that’s that’s a great place for us to end. I think, you know, no notes, Ricci. Perfect message to end the pod on. so thank you all for listening. Look out for more information from the mid-year survey, which like Ricci said will be coming in your email. and that’s it. That’s the pod. Go write something, authors. We’ll see you next time.