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If you’re just finding the blog and/or missed the first five trends I wrote about that are in Written Word Media’s blog post, you can find that post here: Written Word Media’s 2025 Publishing Trends: Part One. And if you want to read Written Word Media’s blog post yourself, you can find it here: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/the-top-10-publishing-trends-for-2025/

Let’s jump right in to the trends.

Trend number six: Trad and Indie Converge in Due Course
We already see this happening in different ways, so I would imagine this will keep going. Publishers snapping up indies who are doing well to exploit the audiences they’ve already built, trad authors publishing titles on the side themselves, the Big Five using print on demand technology. Publishing is getting mixed up more than it ever has been, and that won’t stop as authors and publishers alike look for the best ways to find an audience, save money on printing and distribution, and keep as many royalties as they can.

I think what this means for indies is that as long as you put out a good book that has a good cover and has been edited, it’s not going to matter if you published the book yourself. The stigma that used to come from self-publishing is gone. Trad authors who publish on the side to either add extra books to their publishing schedule or publish books that their agent didn’t sell, or whatever the reason is, they have a loyal audience who buys all their books and it doesn’t matter if it was trad-pubbed or not. Indies don’t have that convenience of an already-made audience, so that’s one thing we have to take upon ourselves, but everything else is pretty much the same, especially when we read every day about a traditionally published book that needs more editing. If you want to read about traditional publishers using print-on-demand equipment, Jane Friedman wrote a blog post about it and you can read it here: https://janefriedman.com/dont-demonize-print-on-demand/

Trend number seven: AI Tools Become More Mainstream
I think anyone who really believes this isn’t tapped into the way a lot of authors feel. I get that being on Threads and seeing the hate AI evokes isn’t an accurate sampling of authors everywhere, but just knowing that there is a portion of authors out there who won’t use AI no matter what makes this prediction shaky at best.

As I discussed in my blog post about KC Crowne, I do understand that Al can be used for different things. WWM’s article also talked about non-fiction uses, such as “social media posting, to advertising, email, sales fulfillment, or tax management” and I think if authors start embracing Al in bigger numbers, that will be all they’ll use it for, because, here’s the thing. Writers actually like to write. We want to plot our stories, we want to come up with backstories, we want to delve into our characters’ feelings and emotions so we can evoke those feelings and emotions in our readers. If we turn to Al for any part of that creative process, why are we writing then? Like with KC wanting to relate to her readers, how can she do that when she won’t take the time to get to know her own characters and write her own work?

People who predict the controversy of using AI will go away don’t have their fingers on the pulse of what a lot of authors feel. We also want people to get paid for their work, which is why I would never ask Al to create a picture for me. Almost every single thing you want can be found on a stock photo site, and if you can’t find it there, hire an artist, and maybe she’ll be able to pay her internet bill with the fee you’re paying her.

Readers may not care if you use AI to write, or to make your books’ covers, or to make Facebook ads as long as their enjoyment of a book they read isn’t impacted. Which means that whether you use AI or not, your main goal when writing and packaging your book should be to deliver a good product that will keep readers coming back for more.

Trend number eight: AI Unlocks Licensing and IP Innovation
I think this trend will only work for the authors who can pay to do it correctly. A long time ago on Twitter I saw someone who said she was using AI to translate her English language books to German and then she was publishing them. She wasn’t using a German-speaking real live human to double-check Al’s work, and I think that is a big mistake. Al doesn’t understand nuance and context, and there’s a reason why the phrase “lost in translation” exists. But, paying a proofreader, any kind, costs money, and using AI is supposed to help us get around that, right? So yeah, she might have had more IP in her hands, but God only knows what she was selling her German readers. Maybe it isn’t that bad, but who’s going to know unless she starts getting bad reviews? By then, it’s too late.

AI narration is getting better and better every day, but I haven’t heard anything recently about the quality of KDP’s audiobook program. It made waves when it first came out, many authors cursing it to the depths of hell, others embracing it as an affordable way to finally have their books in audio format. When I found out that duo narration, preferred when writing dual POVs, wasn’t available, I lost interest in it anyway. I’ve always figured audiobooks will be out of my reach as I can’t afford production, and I kind of left it there. Considering a determined reader can figure out how to have a book read to them on their device, it may not matter much. If AI narration is getting better, so is text-to-voice and the experience for a reader that’s not too picky will be just fine.

I think the bottom line on AI and IP is that yeah, Al can help you put together translations and audio books and art for special editions, but it’s up to you to make sure the quality is there (no one wants to see a model who has six fingers on each hand and has three legs). Al can make mistakes, (just look at Grammarly and how often they recommend commas you don’t need) and going without a human to check and make sure what he’s doing is okay is a risk I wouldn’t want to take with my audience. Listen, I’ve edited for authors who have trusted Grammarly, and it’s harder to edit a manuscript like that than if they would have just handed me a rough draft. Grammarly and other editing software is not perfect so always use with caution.

You might end up with a lot of IP if you use AI to get ahead, but if it’s trash, it’s not worth much.

Trend number nine: Audiobook Accessibility Expands in 2025
We already talked about this a bit, but it will be up to authors who want to use AI narration and readers who want to listen to it. When it comes to AI, it isn’t just about availability and quality, it’s also about what you feel is best for you, your book business, and audience. Not everyone wants to support AI. Maybe we want to support true voice actors who depend on their jobs to make a living. Maybe readers would also like to support humans. Once you put out enough audio books, you’ll find an audience who will support either (or maybe even both). Maybe you’ll find a system where you hire narrators for full-length books but use AI for novellas, or maybe you write only shorts and AI is good enough for your needs. As access expands, it doesn’t mean authors will use it. And if authors us it, it doesn’t mean readers want to listen to it. So while this trend is true, it will expand, because why wouldn’t it, authors can choose not to create with it and readers can choose not to consume it.

Trend number ten: POD Goes Mainstream
We talked a little bit about this already, and it didn’t even occur to me that I’ve purchased a book from a trad author and her paperback book came printed by KDP (there was the time, date, and location stamp in the back). I was wondering what the heck and if she’d been dropped by her publisher and had gotten her rights back. It makes sense for publishers to use POD as it takes up less space than keeping stock and they don’t have to worry about titles going out of print. But as Drew Broussard in Jane’s blog post I linked to above says, there’s just a little lesser quality with a POD print than a book that came from a print run. You’re not going to get the embossed letters or fancy textures, you even run the risk of getting the wrong book between the covers, so I’m guessing that publishers will decide which title will get the POD treatment based on how big the audience still is and how old the book is.

This also could be why it takes so dang long to get author copies. Obviously the more authors who depend on POD the busier the equipment is, and that means planning ahead months if you need to order author copies. Especially since the more authors who use the equipment the more taxed they are and you don’t know if your books will come in good condition and you need to put in a replacement order.

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Everyone says don’t write to trends, write the book you want to write because trends change too quickly to keep up. That’s not true, and Billionaire romance is proof of that. Everyone said that was a trend, that “mommy porn” was a passing phase, but it’s going on fifteen years since EL James published her Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and Billionaire romance is still one of the top selling romance subgenres, though lately Mafia is giving it a run for its money. Trends take a long time to actually lose favor with readers, even if it feels like it happens overnight. These trends WWM talked about won’t fade because that’s just the direction publishing is going right now. AI won’t go away because too many people find value in using it, even if practices like using it to write or narrate books some find too abhorrent to do.

2025 will be like all the others, authors writing good books and trying to get them seen to build an audience of their 1000 true fans. Sometimes I think the publishing industry is glutted with too many books, but then I remember that readers can read a book a day and demand probably matches supply, even if we look at the thousands of books published every month and it doesn’t feel like it. Personally, I don’t think ramping your publishing schedule will help any. If someone doesn’t know you’ve written a book, they wont know you’ve written two. Being that the top marketing advice right now is to write the next book, advice I have passed along and believe in, I think we should still be writing with intent, trying to level up our craft each time we write, always trying to write a book better than our last.

The fact is, it’s difficult finding an audience, but the trick now is to not give up. Do what you have to do to stay interested and engaged and not lose heart. I’ve started to enjoy working on LOSS AND DAMAGES again, and I get excited talking about the next book I’m going to write. I like thinking about the future and the books I want to write, having material planned for well into 2027. I don’t know what life has in store for me, but I’m pretty sure writing is more than a passing trend.

Take care of yourselves this year, and in the meantime, I’ll you next week!