Top Author Trends in 2026: Part 1

Ferol Vernon (00:00)

So I think it’s gonna be an interesting race to see, do these small,

nimble, innovative companies, but who have a lot less resources, are they going to win the day and be the sort of indie author tool of choice? Or are the retailers going to get there first, who are obviously way better resourced, they have lot more deeper pockets, but they’re also slower, more bureaucratic, typically slower to innovate. And so I think it’s going to be really interesting race to

Ferol Vernon (00:24)

Ferol Vernon (00:34)

Hello and welcome to the Written Word Media Pod. I am Ferol here with Ricci as always. And Ricci it’s December. It’s the end of the year. It’s cold. The hot cocoa is flowing. And the most important thing is I just got my Spotify wrapped and all of my apps have copied the Spotify wrapped. It’s telling me all about my last year, what I listened to, regardless of how embarrassing it is.

But I feel like Spotify wrapped is like now the official beginning or unofficial beginning of trend season, right? Everybody’s looking at the year behind them, looking forward to the year ahead. We’re all just thinking about making New Year’s resolutions, but maybe not for a few more weeks. And we’re looking forward. And today, that’s exactly what we’re here to talk about, is 2026 trends in publishing. And Ricci, what do you think about next year?

Ricci (01:21)

Yeah, that’s so true, Ferol. I feel you on that. I also got my Spotify wrapped and the big point of contention this year that everyone seems to be comparing is what is your Spotify age? Because I think that was a new metric that they rolled out. So every conversation I have around Spotify wrapped is how old were you? And I was young, I was 21. So I’m loving this. I love sharing my age on my Spotify.

Ferol Vernon (01:34)

Yeah.

Ha

Ha ha ha.

Ricci (01:46)

because they think that I am a ⁓ spring chicken who’s hip and cool. So it’s great.

Ferol Vernon (01:52)

Yeah, so if you want to feel younger, just listen to younger music so that when December rolls around, you get a nice little present from Spotify.

Ricci (02:00)

But yes, it is definitely trends season. My email feed and all the other places that I get my information is filled with predictions for 2026, what is upcoming. And I love predictions. I think it’s really fun to just kind of think and dream and fast forward out into imagining what it’s going to be like a year from now at the end of 2026.

and talking specifically today about what it might look like for authors.

Ferol Vernon (02:30)

Yeah. And I think, you one of things that’s really fun about this season for us is every year we reach out to people in the industry, right? So we reach out to other companies that are serving authors and it’s full of wonderful, interesting people. And we get, we say, Hey, what do you think the trends are? So we’ve kind of got, know, what you and I think the trends are going to be. And we’ve talked about that and what we’re reading and we’re looking at, and we’re hearing from customers. But we also have a lot of interesting insight from smart folks around the industry.

And so we’ve collated all this stuff and like that’s the basis for the, this pod today is not just our opinions, although it will be heavy with those. but we have the opinions of others and we have some really interesting points that I think we can discuss. And it’s a really nice time of year to, you know, both reflect, but then like you said, kind of, it’s also fun to think about what the future holds.

Ricci (03:17)

Yeah. And it’s really cool and generous of so many people in the industry to actually respond to our email in early December when it is such a busy time of year. But we’ve got a bunch of answers coming in or ideas and thoughts. The other place where we draw inspiration is I love to zoom out. So listening to a lot of pods that have got nothing to do with the publishing industry at all, and just thinking about what are the broader trends that are happening in the world, in society, and then how is that going to impact the author experience?

We got a little bit of everything today.

Ferol Vernon (03:48)

Yeah. And just to that point, there’s so much input into this. know, we’re, we have, really decided after distilling all this information down, there’s, there’s really five big themes for next year. And we’re to go through some of those today. and we might save a few for later to see how we do, but the, those five themes, really thought like that and captures what some of our predictions are for next year what we think is going to happen in the future. Ricci talk to us about, about theme number one.

Ricci (04:15)

Well, before we jump into theme number one, this is different. So we have done a trends piece for many a year. I haven’t looked back, but probably at least five, six, seven years running. And usually we distill down into the top 10 trends for authors in the coming year. This year was different because there are a lot of trends. They’re probably a little more than 10, but they do fall very distinctly into these themes or this kind of thematic experience, which I thought was cool.

It’s nice to mix things up and do a little differently. So we have five major themes that we think will dominate 2026 for authors. And then within those themes, there are two to four trends that speak to the broader theme itself. So drum roll, there we go. The first major theme of 2026 is trust. And more specifically, we think that trust

Ferol Vernon (04:42)

Totally.

Ricci (05:10)

is going to be the new currency.

Ferol Vernon (05:12)

Yeah, this is really big. so we did a pod a few weeks ago about scams, right? And that was like, you know, that was getting so bad. We did like a whole pod just around these scams and like what was happening to authors. And I think what you’re going to see is when we say trust is the new currency, these scams have gotten so good. And there’s so many other sort of nefarious players that have gotten really good at sort of faking out identity that you’re really going to have to.

double down on trust, right? That means names and brands that you’ve heard of, that you have some connection with beyond simply being on just on their email list. And I think that’s going to be a huge trend for next year is like, how are you building trust with your readers, right? So for authors, how are you building trust with your readers? But I think it extends really to everything that you do. How do you build trust in your brand, right? And, you know, there’s a lot of little tactics that authors can use to do that. But I think thematically, that is something they’re going to have to focus effort on next year.

Ricci (06:00)

Yeah.

Yeah, so I think, you know, scams are one of the big issues here and Authors Guild, think, says, you know, fraudulent and scam complaints are up almost 100 % since 2023. So, and as you said, we did a part about that. I think the second piece of this, which is a little more counterintuitive, is that there are going to be a lot of new legitimate services that come into play in 2026 that are serving authors.

Ferol Vernon (06:18)

crazy.

Ricci (06:33)

And these will be real people and real companies that because of AI and what you can do with AI are able to spin up a company very quickly. But just as quickly, I think many of these new companies will also disappear because it’s not as easy as it looks sometimes. And so the second piece of this is you may not be dealing with a company that’s a scam per se, but you may be dealing with a company that doesn’t have a long runway or very little funding.

Ferol Vernon (06:59)

Sure.

Ricci (07:01)

or a company that thinks they have a great idea, spins up, and then six months later has to go under. And so trying to figure out who are the new services and companies to bet on. And I think companies who do have longevity and who have been in the space for a while will have some competitive advantage here.

Ferol Vernon (07:19)

Yeah, and I think one of the other things that we’re seeing is the importance of reputation, right? And how important your author reputation is for delivering content and stories, which is what has always been important. But now, what is your stories about your stories? What is your newsletter? How does that look? What do people think of you? And are you on brand? And staying on brand is going to continue to be really, really important for authors.

And I think these new upstart companies that you’re talking about, branding is gonna be one of the most important things, because they’re gonna have to build their reputation from scratch in an environment where authors, and rightly so, are a little cautious about trusting a new company, a new brand, a new logo on their credit card statement. And I think that’s gonna be a really important thing to watch.

Ricci (08:04)

Yeah and on that point you know what does will want to be very careful about who they lend their brand to because there many authors who are customers of ours who are wonderful and amazing and a built incredible reputations that other authors trust and you my guess is there will be a lot of new companies coming to you saying hey we’d love you to endorse this would love to pay you to be a spokesperson and really thinking long and hard and doing your research on who you want to land lend your.

trust and your brand reputation to in this new world.

Ferol Vernon (08:36)

Yeah, I think, know, a really common tactic that we’ve heard from authors who are trying to build mailing lists, which is something we obviously think is really important, is newsletter swaps, right? And so I think, and there’s always been a little bit of tension there between like, your list is bigger than my list or my list is bigger than your list kind of thing. And that sort of works itself out in the way social dynamics typically do. But I think now even more important than like how big is that list is going to be like, what kind of trust level do you have with your readers? And

I think also people sort of lending their trust to another author and doing a swap, that they’re gonna have to be a little more thoughtful about that. Because it’s not just authors whose hackles are up, it’s readers too, right? Readers are trying to think, okay, hey, what’s going on here? And so I think sort of newsletter swapping is in some ways a little bit of a trust swap. And I think that’s gonna be something authors have to sort of pay a little bit more attention to than they did in years past.

Ricci (09:26)

Yeah, on the flip side, it’s super effective. So when you do create a circle of trust and or if you are in a circle of authors that you do trust, being able to band together and share your trust and reputation across your newsletters is super powerful.

Ferol Vernon (09:28)

Super effective.

Totally. And I think, you know, one of the other things that I think next year is really going to bring under this sort of trust theme is this human label, right? The certification, this authority trend. we’ve, talked, we actually had created by humans on the pod, which was a service that tries to help you navigate AI rights. There’s also a certification service out of the UK called, you know, books by people.

⁓ which literally I think their logo is like a fingerprint. And like, think you’re going to see a lot of these companies that are trying to figure out how to certify trust, right? And whether that book was created by AI or was created by a person or what level of those things. and I think it’s, too early to tell how successful some of those initiatives are going to be, but I do think we’re going to continue seeing people, companies and authors themselves. Try to figure out how to indicate, Hey, I’m trustworthy. Here’s the.

the provenance or the, how this story was created. And I think it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

Ricci (10:39)

Yeah, and I think what’s important to note here is building trust with a reader doesn’t mean that you’re not using AI as part of your process. Storygraph did a survey very recently of their readers and what they found is that almost half of their readers assume that there’s some AI involvement in the books unless they’re told otherwise, but 70 % of those readers said they feel more connected to

Ferol Vernon (10:56)

Wow.

Ricci (11:03)

A creator and author when they disclose the process so you can do something like. You know you you obviously are a human your human author you’re connecting through your email and everything else but at the end end of your back matter or when you’re writing post about your credit process you can say something like written by me edited by two humans and one very polite robot right so as long as you’re disclosing that you are using maybe a help or technology in some part of the process.

Ferol Vernon (11:07)

Interesting.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ricci (11:33)

I think readers are very accepting of that, but I do think they want to know who they’re dealing with, who’s behind the book that they’re reading. And I do think these kind of verification services, like Books by People, and I think there’ll be others that spring up, will become a pretty big trend that’ll grow into next year and the year after.

Ferol Vernon (11:41)

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, you we like to look at other industries, you know, when we’re starting to like, happened somewhere else and how is that going to work in publishing? I think, you know, food is an example where some of these things have stuck, right? So you think, Hey, the organic label, that means something to people. They want to see it or they don’t want to see it. And then, you know, now it’s like, is it regeneratively farmed? Is it ethically sourced? Like some of these labels, some of them have stuck some of them not. I think it’ll be interesting to see which ones really take. And, know, in, in music.

I was in music for a long time. And what you saw is that essentially the only sort of verification that came up was the sort of parental advisory or not. It was kind of like the rating, right? That’s what the consumer cared about knowing before they got the product. And I think it’ll be really interesting to see where readers settle, you know, what some things they may not care about or some things they may already assume, like you said, according to that survey, that they are already, you know, I assume that AI is being used.

It’s like, assume fertilizers are being used on my apple, right? Or whatever it is. But then when you find out it’s not, that changes the way you feel about the product. And so I think there will be certain aspects of the book that readers will care about and then be certain aspects that they won’t. I think the industry next year will be really interesting to see which one of those plays out. But I think absolutely the certification process will take off.

Ricci (12:51)

Right?

That’s actually a pretty good segue into the final trend within the trust bucket, which is this idea of fracturing, right? So what you’re saying is, some consumers, some readers may care about where the AI is used. Some may not. They may care about other things. And we do think that next year we’re going to see more fracturing within the author community, specifically around the pro versus anti AI camps. And so we’ve already seen some of this in 2025.

Ferol Vernon (13:36)

Yeah.

Ricci (13:40)

where they’re potentially Discord or Facebook groups of authors where they outright ban any discussion of AI or AI tools or their authors who have been in communities for many years where they felt there was a level of trust and then they maybe mentioned something around AI and they were thrown out or banned from the group. And so in 2026, I think this fracturing will continue and authors will end up being in more discreet camps and we’ll have to find

communities and groups and tribes that they can trust where they are aligned on what they believe the best creative process, creative and publishing process is for them.

Ferol Vernon (14:21)

Yeah, that’s really interesting. And I think we’ve heard that a lot about, there’s, you know, I’ve talked to authors in person and they say, I was like, do you use AI? And, you know, it’s a pretty innocuous question and it’s really interesting to hear the answers. Some of them say, yes, obviously some of them say no, but the most interesting answer that I hear sometimes is like, well, I’m afraid to, right? And I was like, what, what do you mean by that? And it’s exactly the dynamic that you said where they might be curious about AI.

but they don’t use it because they don’t want to be ostracized from these communities. And it’s just a really interesting dynamic. And I think the fracturing that you said, it really points to that. And I’ve had in-person interactions where I’ve just been totally taken aback by how somebody was like, well, I’ll never use it, but not because I’m not interested in it or I don’t believe in it, but because I’m worried about getting kicked out of a group or kicked out of a community.

Ricci (15:10)

Yeah. And I think it’s interesting to us because we see AI as very similar to, you know, a wide verse exclusive. It’s just a choice, right? It’s, don’t think it’s, ⁓ from a value-based right or wrong or ethically right or wrong. Some authors want to be wide. Some orders, what authors would like to be exclusive. And there’s always been a tension between those different camps. but they were able to coexist to some degree. AI is much more emotional for authors.

Ferol Vernon (15:19)

Yeah.

Yep.

Ricci (15:38)

⁓ and it feels more like a value based decision versus a kind of pragmatic, business type decision. So I do think these, it’s almost like the ecosystem is going to reorganize reorganize around what the underlying values might be between, you know, the pro versus anti AI camps.

Ferol Vernon (15:40)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and that’s a good segue into sort of theme two, right? So theme one was trust and theme two that we heard from everybody that we talked to ⁓ in person over email, reading is that AI is inescapable, right? And I’d like to say, you know, for those Trekkies out there, resistance is futile. And I think, you know, for the pro AI camp, you know, there’s all these cool tools out there that they’re using, right? Or not using, there’s people that are comfortable using it they think it’s okay and they’ve…

worked it into their process. And for the anti-AI camp, I think what’s really interesting is I think it’s going to become increasingly hard for them to remove AI from their sort of supply chain of tools. So for example, if a author is against AI, which, and you mentioned we don’t, we think every author gets to make their own choice. But if you are against AI and you’re using, for example, Shopify to sell direct, like one of Shopify’s chief mandates is to use AI. So you are indirectly by using a tool,

using AI, right? And that’s going to happen if you’re running ads on Facebook or Amazon, like those are all AI driven algorithms these days. And we’ll get to that more in a minute, but I think it’s going to become increasingly hard for that community to remove AI from everything that they’re doing. And I can see it going one of two ways. I can see it sort of them slowly getting smaller and smaller and smaller where that camp doesn’t exist. But I think there’s an equally good chance that that community continues down sort of this purist route.

And, I don’t know if we’re going to see typewriters again, but like, you know, maybe they really do think about doing this and like, uh, you know, there’s, we’ve like, you’ve seen this in other industries where people really try to, know, eat really clean food or, you know, make sure their clothes were manufactured in certain places. And I think it’ll be very interesting to see how it plays out.

Ricci (17:38)

Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, it’s really cool when you have a camp of people who are very committed to something, you also get very innovative and creative solutions that can come out out of that. So going back to your organic, know, some people are like, only want to eat organic. It takes a lot of effort to do that, right, to escape like the what the mainstream supply chain is. But then, you know, people who do that.

Ferol Vernon (17:43)

Totally.

Yeah.

Ricci (17:59)

You live and have very interesting stories and come up with really interesting solutions. So that’ll be an interesting trend to watch as we head into 2026.

Ferol Vernon (18:07)

Yeah, absolutely. think, you know, continuing under the theme of AI, one of the other things that’s going to be really, really cool and really interesting to see is this sort of unlocking of formats. So before there was this barrier, and mostly it was around cost and effort, right, to getting a story that you’d written down in words, typically in ebook, into other formats, right? And print on demand came and that was pretty accessible for the most part. But like audio was still really…

expensive. Like you had to get a person to sit in a room for six, seven, eight hours to read your book. And with AI, I think you’re going to see audio as part of launch or shortly after launch instead of that being months and months after translation, same thing. Other countries are all of a sudden going to become much more easily accessible, creating these special editions. So I think what you’re going to see is in largely the independent author community,

AI is gonna unlock all these formats for them, make it cost effective, and we’re gonna see them playing in a lot more markets than we used to.

Ricci (19:09)

Yeah. Yeah. And so kind of a way to sum that up is, know, human narration is, still be a premium, I think, but just having audio or having other languages is going to become the expectation, not something that sets a book apart. Whereas right now, as you said, it takes a ton of investment to be able to distribute in multiple languages or to get audio done. And statistically,

Ferol Vernon (19:24)

Right.

Ricci (19:35)

I find a way voices said, you know, their audio book production, their AI audio production, audio book production was up five X in 2025 costs are dropping significantly. And a lot of these platforms have the AI narration built in. So you basically just, you know, just like when you go to KDP and you, upload your manuscript and you say, Hey, I want it in ebook and I want it in paperback. You now can just click a button and say, Hey, I want this in audio too.

Ferol Vernon (19:42)

Yeah, crazy.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think it’s gonna be really, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s gonna be really interesting to see, you know, the retailers have this, you know, they have, like we said, print built in, they’re starting to have audio built in. Like I know Amazon’s got a product and I Google does, I imagine Apple does as well. But like, there are lots of startups doing narration, right? There’s lots of startups doing translation.

Ricci (20:02)

And eventually I wanted in Spanish and French and all of these languages.

Ferol Vernon (20:23)

So I think it’s gonna be an interesting race to see, do these small,

nimble, innovative companies, but who have a lot less resources, are they going to win the day and be the sort of indie author tool of choice? Or are the retailers going to get there first, who are obviously way better resourced, they have lot more deeper pockets, but they’re also slower, more bureaucratic, typically slower to innovate. And so I think it’s going to be really interesting race to see.

I think my prediction is that the smaller, more nimble companies are going to win.

win this day that’s specializing in these things is going to be what makes it. But we will see how that race plays out.

Ricci (20:59)

Yeah, for sure. So under this theme of, know, AI is inescapable, the two more trends within here, the one is just the proliferation of content, right? So AI does make it easier to write and publish a book and we are going to see more competition, just more of more, which continues to make discovery and standing out challenging.

Ferol Vernon (21:09)

Yeah.

Ricci (21:22)

You know, this is not a new problem. So the one thing I would say to authors here is like, it sounds scary, but it’s not scary. Like every year since we’ve been in this business, it’s always been more books. Oh my gosh, there more books. How am going to get my book to stand out amongst all these other books? And yes, there will be more books and yes, discovery is still going to be hard. You know, the noise floor will continue to rise. But that is unfortunately just part and parcel of being a creator in the 21st century.

Ferol Vernon (21:30)

More books.

Yeah. And I think, two things are going to happen. One, you hear a lot of people say like, ⁓ this flood of, ⁓ you know, low quality books and there’s some less charitable terms that people use for that dynamic that I won’t say, but I think, you know, that is going to happen. There’s going to be a lot more content, like you said, more competition and more competition often breeds creativity. Right. So I think what we’ve seen in this industry time and time again, is that you have a bunch of interesting, motivated, creative people and they figure things out. So I think.

The industry will figure out how to deal with this. And I think the other thing, and just to take sort of the positive spin on the flood of content is, we will see a few gems come up out of that flood, right? And we will see some people, you know, maybe who are dyslexic or who just couldn’t actually do the writing themselves before, be able to tell a story that weren’t, that couldn’t tell it before with these new tools. And so I think we will see a couple interesting viewpoints, maybe from folks that the community hasn’t heard from before.

⁓ that will be able to get their content out there. So I do think while yes, there’s going to be a flood of content, some of it is going to be low quality. Those things are all absolutely true. We also might see some interesting new voices emerge from this.

Ricci (23:01)

Yeah, I also think it’s going to provide new opportunities for partnership amongst authors, not authors who are using AI and writing for the first time, but being able to kind of create worlds where multiple authors can write into now becomes a lot easier. then, you know, issuing more books within those worlds. Um, it’s almost like the 2.0 of, of Anderle’s model back in the day, right. Which was done in a much more manual way. Um, so.

Ferol Vernon (23:13)

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Ricci (23:29)

As with everything, and we’re entrepreneurs, we’re generally optimistic. There is going to be dark clouds, but also silver linings to each of these trends. The last trend within this bucket, and then we’ll move away from AI, is the algorithm volatility on platforms. This one is, think, top of mind right now because there has been a lot of what I would call algorithmic turmoil.

Ferol Vernon (23:33)

course.

Yeah.

Ricci (23:54)

On both amazon and meta for those who are running paid ads and. Part of the reason for this is that these companies are handing. Over the reins of the algorithm to a i and you know what it used to be just using the example of google and seo was that there is an algorithm and what people broadly call an algorithm but especially just a bunch of like deterministic factors to say.

Why, what should I show to each person who’s surfing this particular page or my website? And back in the day, there did used to be a team that would say, Hey, let’s just use SEO as an example. They would say, Hey, we’re going to roll out, you know, a change to the Google algorithm and we’re going to turn the volume up on backlinks and we’re going to turn the volume down on keywords. And then that would roll out and everybody would freak out and then the dust would settle.

Ferol Vernon (24:44)

You

Ricci (24:47)

What’s happening today is that the entire algorithm is being handed over to AI without a team saying, turn this up and turn this down and just say, hey, AI, you’re smart. You figure it out. And for the most part, AI does a very good job. over the past year costs on Meta actually did come down. Meta started doing a lot better as they moved the algorithm to AI. And they took away a lot of the targeting.

specifics that you could do on your own. The problem with AI is that it still does hallucinate and it still does sometimes overemphasize the wrong data. So as an example, when we were doing the survey data, I took like an open-ended answer, put it into AI and I said, hey, tell me what the top themes were. And when some theme came out and I was like, that’s bizarre. And then I said to the AI, how many people wrote that out of 1300? And it said one person wrote that theme.

So it’s not a theme, right? If you’d given that to a person, they would have probably not have included that. And so that’s what’s happening on these platforms. Sometimes the AI overemphasizes the wrong thing. That’s based on a sample of one or a very small sample of N and it creates havoc. So you see these really wild swings and a lot more volatility in the performance of the platforms that are being used. And I think that’s here to stay. Unfortunately, I think that will continue.

Ferol Vernon (25:44)

Right.

Yeah.

Ricci (26:10)

to happen and probably happen across many other platforms, not just Meta and Amazon next year.

Ferol Vernon (26:16)

Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, the thing that, that used to happen is when there was a deterministic algorithm, it was very difficult to reverse engineer it, but it wasn’t impossible. Right. And you had these SEO consultants, these people that were really smart and they were really good and they would test a million things and they would kind of figure out like, okay, you know, for the next few months, we’re pretty sure this, you know, XYZ is going to work and that’s all gone. Right. Because the AI, like you said, it’s not deterministic. It’s a little bit of a black box. It can hallucinate. It can weight things wrong.

And then sort of the benefit is it learns from its mistakes really fast and then plays your ads, but you can get really unexpected behaviors. And I think what we’re going to have to be careful of in the community is like, is this a trend or is this something that happened to you? Right. And we’ll, we’ll have to kind of watch that. But I think, like you said, algorithm volatility with AI is here to stay. And if you just look at, you know, Meta and Amazon and where they’re spending, like you just look at their financial statements.

is very clear that they’re not gonna go back. The AI is here to stay. AI is gonna be controlling the serving algorithms and that everybody needs to get used to that because they’re not spending this many billions of dollars to throw it away.

Ricci (27:25)

Yeah, I think the big takeaway for authors here is like, it’s almost impossible to kind of game the algorithm, which is what people used to try and do. So optimizing for the algorithm, that’s just something you should take off your to do list and don’t worry about it, right? So seed control, know that there’s going to be volatility, things are going to go up and down, it’ll come back around, but you can take all of that energy used to expand there and direct it somewhere else.

Ferol Vernon (27:31)

That’s right.

All right. I’m going to move us on from AI and move us onto theme three. ⁓ and this was a really interesting one. know it’s something that you and I both care a lot about and are very interested in. And that is experience, right? And books as this driver for connection, right? And I think that’s really an interesting thing. And I think, you know, I’ll let you, you’re the one that found this like amazing things. I’ll let you talk about it, but the Virbo thing I thought was just a really good.

sort of point to illustrate what we’re seeing thematically across a lot of different sources.

Ricci (28:22)

Yeah, so I think in general in 2025, we kind of saw the rise of reader communities meeting up in person. There were these silent book clubs, people meeting in person at indie bookstores, readers just coming together. But then I was looking at Verbo’s trends that they have on their website and they listed seven trends for the year. And one of their trends was readaways, which I always get excited.

when any macro trend includes books. I was very delighted to see this. let me, I’m just gonna read what it says. It says, readaways are shaping up to be the next big chapter in travel as trips get lit with 91 % of travelers saying they’re interested in taking a trip centered around reading, relaxation and quality time with loved ones. Mentions of reading related terms in verbal guest reviews has surged 285 % year over year.

Ferol Vernon (28:51)

Yeah, it’s awesome.

Ricci (29:17)

and searches for book retreats and book club retreat ideas are up 100 % and 275 % respectively on Pinterest. Book enthusiastic groups are heading to serene destinations, making vacation rentals the perfect setting. And then underneath it, they actually have read away vacation rentals for book lovers. And there’s a whole bunch of these delightful vacation places, which I want to go to all of them.

Ferol Vernon (29:41)

that we may or may not have booked. Yeah.

Ricci (29:44)

but

one of them is there’s one in Austin, Texas called novel retreat. And the image is of this beautiful reading room with a library of books surrounding the room. There’s one in Columbus, Ohio called the book house number 43. And so I just think this is amazing and really cool. And I think it’s very on point and on trend because people are craving connection, I think desperately and reading and books are

a accessible excuse for people to get together, right? Like who doesn’t, well, maybe I shouldn’t say who doesn’t love to read, but if you love to read, it’s a very easy indicator for you finding your tribe, right? So I think the growth of these book clubs, the growth of reader experiences specifically will be hopefully, and I do think a major trend in 2026.

Ferol Vernon (30:35)

Yeah, and I think, you know, something I’ve experienced personally, also talking to a lot of folks that are in book clubs, is like your book club really used to be a few people getting together often on a weeknight. You know, some of them like, we have a wine, like a wine club with a reading problem or whatever. And that is like kind of, you know, it was a nice touch point. was once a month, something like that. And I think what we’ve seen is a deepening of that connection.

Right? And so now book clubs are looking like they’re having holiday parties, right? They’re having these getaways. And I think that’s really cool, but I think what it really proves is that reading is such an important thing that it can connect people, right? And it has this position in our society that we’ve always thought, you know, storytelling is important. People gather around the fire to tell stories. And now it’s just, it’s the same dynamic, but they’re using books. And I think it’s just really cool.

And we’re excited to watch this trend grow, not only sort of the reading travel destination, but I think also the depth of book clubs and reading that plays in people’s lives.

Ricci (31:39)

Yeah, think the other thing that’s really interesting here is that the bar is very low. So this provides a incredible opportunity for authors to bring readers together and connect with them. But I think sometimes that’s very intimidating because an author thinks, well, what am I going to say? Where am I going to, what’s the location going to be? How am I going to actually create this experience? And if you look at the silent book club movement, which for those of you who don’t know, the silent book club is

⁓ I think it actually, I mean, I know it has chapters, but silent book club is a movement where people meet in a location, they bring their own book and they all just read in the same location together, but nobody talks. And so the silent book club had about 180 chapters in 2022 and now has over 500 chapters in like multiple countries. Right. And I think like the hashtag silent book club has like tens of millions of views on tech talk.

Ferol Vernon (32:28)

amazing.

Ricci (32:35)

So what I think this shows us for authors is that you don’t have to do that much to bring your readers and your fan base together. You can literally say on the last Thursday of every month, I’m having a tea and hot chocolate zoom, come and join me and you can get together for 30 minutes and chat about a theme or not chat or just have it be an AMA, ask me anything. But I think people are craving connection.

in these low lift ways. And it’s a really incredible opportunity for authors as we head into the New Year.

Ferol Vernon (33:10)

Yeah, we see this sort of in our own business. This year we ran a few workshops to help authors with branding. We started talking about at beginning of show how important the author brand is gonna be and so we started doing some workshops. And we spent a lot of time developing the educational curriculum. It a four hour workshop. We spent a ton of time getting it right, being very thoughtful about what to ask and what to do. And it got really good reviews from the authors that took, we ran it twice, both times we got great reviews.

But I think the most surprising thing is in the feedback form afterwards, we asked a few different questions like how was it for you? One of the most surprising things for me was how many people said, you know, it was really nice to just be in another room with other authors and get to sort of know them a little bit. And these were people that had never met. They were on Zoom together for a few hours. There was some time for interaction, but that wasn’t what we intended to do. We intended for it to be, you know, like a course, but like it was a learning experience.

Ricci (34:02)

Right, it was a learning experience and most of it was

learning, but just being in the same room and learning together felt like a connection point for all the authors in a room.

Ferol Vernon (34:11)

Yeah, and it was such a sharp pattern. That was like the first thing that we talked. We’re like, whoa, we didn’t expect that. And I think you’ll see that, know, why authors certainly want connection with each other. You know, readers are people too, and they want the same thing. And so I think, you know, like you said, authors can really benefit from this by understanding that, you know, even in like a very quick zoom, like you can give your readers the connection they want, and that will improve trust, you know, probably help with sales.

⁓ And you’ll be helping some people with a connection problem in a world where we’ve gotten increasingly disconnected.

Ricci (34:45)

Yeah. So yeah, experience, small experiences like that, larger experiences like the Verbo actually going on a book retreat or to a book themed vacation rental. And then I think the last point here under experience are around special editions, special edition books and collectible books, because it very much falls within the same category, right? Like getting a book that’s special edition.

Ferol Vernon (34:53)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Ricci (35:10)

⁓ that you can hold in your hand is something that’s very much experiential.

Ferol Vernon (35:15)

Yeah, like for anybody that hasn’t seen these like they’re beautiful and like there’s a bunch of different vendors that are doing it and they’re all doing a pretty good job. Obviously it varies from vendor to vendor but like seeing these things are awesome like the sprayed edges where like you know the edge of the book is designed of foil covers or like the inset like full color illustrations like you know even books that I maybe not want to read I kind of want to have right there they’re just so neat.

And I think that experience, that specialness that comes with owning a product is only going to increase because that’s a way of deepening a connection with an author is by having something special from them. And these products, they really fit the bill.

Ricci (35:58)

Yeah, I mean, they feel like art. They are art. And then they become part of the reader space. So that’s experiential, but they also become part of the identity of the reader as a fan of that author themselves. And so, you know, it’s very much akin to kind of sports fandom. Our son is kind of crazy about basketball. And we recently went to ⁓ a Celtics game and it was incredible. You know, just being in a stadium with

tens of thousands of people, the energy that is in there. But then as everyone’s filing in and out of the stadium, they’re all stopping at the store and buying the Celtics t-shirts or the swag or the hat or whatever else, because it’s a way to take that experience with them and make it part of their environment. And I think special editions or author swag, even if it’s as simple as stickers that have the quotes of your most popular characters, that is something that adds to the experience for the reader.

And because it’s so much easier to actually create and distribute these products, I think that will continue to be a trend as we head into next year.

Ferol Vernon (37:02)

Yeah. And, you know, we obviously are fans of these things, in you can’t tell. But, you know, we’re very excited to see sort of what new innovations happen with the addition of the book. And as a sort of fantasy sci-fi reader myself, I’m pretty excited about what we’re going to see with maps and all these other cool things that are part big parts of these books. So we’ll stay tuned to see how that that plays out in 2026. So, Ricci, I’m going to stop us because we’ve gone on a long time here and we still have so much more to talk about.

But we have five trends and maybe one bonus that we talked about for the year. And we’ve talked about three of them. Themes, that’s right.

Ricci (37:39)

Well, we have five, we have five themes. I

don’t know how many trends yet. We haven’t, we’ll have to tally up the list at the end of the next part. I think it’s going be more than 10 this year, somewhere between 10 and 15 trends within five major themes.

Ferol Vernon (37:45)

Yeah, after we’re done, there’s so many. But we, yeah.

within five major themes of which we’ve done three tonight. So we’ll do another pod with the rest of the themes and the rest of the trends that we have for 2026. But that is gonna wrap it up for us for this week.

Ricci (38:09)

Yeah, and if you’re, you you can’t wait to see what the other trends are. By the time this part drops, the blog article where we share all the trends will be up at writtenwordmedia.com and you just click on the learn blog post and you’ll be able to see all the trends listed there. But we do hope you’ll join us for part two, which will drop in a couple of weeks.

Ferol Vernon (38:31)

Awesome. All right. So stay tuned for that blog post and for part two of our 2026 trends. And we will talk to you all later authors.