Friday, December 31, 2021

2022 Publishing Predictions – Indies Take Center Stage

Welcome to my annual publishing predictions where I reflect upon the state of the indie nation and make predictions for the year ahead.

Also, don't miss today's companion post, my annual Smashwords Year in Review and Preview for 2022.

How has the pandemic changed the publishing landscape?  What does a post pandemic world look like for indie authors and publishers?  How has the pandemic changed readers’ relationship with books?  I’ll explore these and other questions as we look ahead to 2022.

As I prepare to press publish on the last day of 2021, Covid infections are hitting record levels.  A New York Times headline from yesterday screams, “Meltdown!” as Omicron infections surge to record levels, causing temporary staffing shortages across multiple sectors of the economy.

Equally concerning, deep rifts have formed during the pandemic over the nature of reality.  These disagreements have strained relationships with friends and family, and amplified social and political divides.  It seems everyone is feeling some measure of anger, fear, hurt and resentment.  

Yet amid this chaos and conflict, I see reasons for optimism.  Evidence is mounting that the Omicron variant causes less severe infection.  And early research out of South Africa this week found that the antibodies created by the body’s immune response to Omicron may confer partial protection against prior, more deadly variants.  If further data confirms these findings, it means we’re much closer to the end of this pandemic than the beginning.

The State of the Indie Nation

It’s impossible to separate the state of the indie nation from the state of humanity.

Unless you’re a maker of vaccines, respirators, or caskets, it’s difficult to find a silver lining in the biologic, psychologic and economic trauma that has been Covid.  

You’re an author and publisher, but you’re a human first.  This experience has affected you, too.

Those of us who survived this pandemic will live out the rest of our lives in the shadow of its memory.  All of us will carry some level of anger, anxiety, resentment, and sorrow we’ll need to overcome before we can feel normal again.  Any one of these distinct emotions can be debilitating all by itself.  In combination, the path to emotional recovery is even steeper.

Herein lies the opportunity for indie authors.

One common quality I observe in fellow authors is the ability to feel deeply.  Authors and publishers are an extension of humanity’s nervous system.  We help humanity see, feel, and understand.  Many of you are empaths.  Empathic sensitivity is a superpower for writers.  It can also be your kryptonite when you take on others’ pain as your own.  Now you will tap into both.

Millions of readers turned to books to help them cope with this pandemic.  Your books provided readers comfort when they needed comfort, companionship when they were lonely, distraction when they needed distraction, and a smile when they needed a smile.

Your work has always been important.  In the year ahead, your work becomes even more important.

Between now and the time this pandemic finally sputters to a close, humanity will re-emerge from its collective bunkers, eager to reconnect with the world but feeling wounded and disoriented from their experience.  

Humanity is in need of healing. People will look to books to assist their spiritual and emotional recovery.  They will need books that give them hope and inspiration.  They will need books that help make sense of the world.  Books that help them feel normal again.

You are the creator of books.  You have a critically important role to play in the healing to come.

Now on to the predictions.


Mark Coker's 2022 Publishing Predictions

Book consumption remains robust – As we enter the third year of the pandemic, millions of readers have become re-habituated to the joys of reading.  Habits are difficult to break.  After two years of spending more time reading and less time outside the home engaged in other activities, the habit of reading will stick as life returns to a new normal.  Both print and digital (ebooks and audiobooks) formats will see solid sales in 2022.

Books become more important than ever – During the pandemic, readers found much-needed comfort, distraction, recreation, and value in books.  Books are a healthy salve to numb the feelings of isolation and anxiety during pandemic life.  Your readers after the pandemic might be the same readers as before the pandemic, but what they need from your books may change in subtle but important ways.

Books that heal will sell well in 2022 - Healing will be a major underlying theme of 2022.  After two-plus years of pandemic living, every human with a pulse will be working through some form of post-traumatic stress.  Books that bolster emotional well-being will be in higher demand.  I’m not just talking about non-fiction self-help about overcoming grief, or books on spirituality.  Fiction is a powerful vehicle for healing too, and it doesn’t matter if you write sci-fi, thrillers, romance, or erotica.  Put yourself in the shoes of the emotionally wounded.  Imagine the stories that will inspire or give hope and understanding to those who’ve suffered through the emotional trauma of the pandemic.  Give your characters these same challenges, and light the path for them to overcome these challenges (or not!).  Make it real.  For ideas to incorporate into your stories, you can burrow into your readers’ psyches by studying the science behind grieving and PTSD, and the recovery options for each.

Indies will publish tomorrow’s post-pandemic classics – With over 150,000 writers in the Smashwords stable, I’m confident many of you have the talent to pull this off.  You’re a first person witness to a once-in-a-century calamity.  You have a unique perspective.  When tragedies strike, writers rise to the occasion to help us make sense of it all, or at the minimum, to record for posterity what life was like during this time.  From this trove of writing fodder will emerge new classics that future historians will label as the definitive accounts of this period of the Great Covid Pandemic.  You’re living history, now take the challenge to write it.  Write that classic in your genre and you’ll be the writer readers read long after we’re all gone.  How’s that for immortality?

More book buying shifts online – During the pandemic, the shift to ecommerce accelerated.  More consumers shifted more of their consumption from physical retail to online across multiple categories of products, ranging from groceries to automobiles to books.  Many of those customers will continue transitioning more purchasing to online.  This bodes well for indie authors, since your books have democratized access to the virtual shelves of online retailers and library ebook platforms.  This then will further level the playing field between indie publishers and traditional publishers by negating the brick and mortar retail advantage that is now the primary domain of large publishers.  

More authors embrace print on demand – With print on demand (POD), your book is printed after the customer orders it.  POD offers myriad advantages to authors, publishers and readers.  For authors and publishers, single-copy prints and small print runs are economical.  POD eliminates the need to pay for and carry unsold inventory, and your book never goes out of print.  By offering your book in print as well as digital, you increase the accessibility and desirability of your book to readers who prefer print, or who want to purchase both.  Indie authors have historically made print publishing a secondary priority to ebooks.  POD’s setup expenses, which for most indies involves additional investment in graphic design and interior book design, do make the current state of the art in POD more costly than the low-cost and simplicity of ebook publishing, but this is changing as the technology improves.  With more book buying shifting online, POD makes more sense for indies than ever, especially considering that 75% of book sales by dollar volume go to print.  

Auto-narrated audiobooks – At Smashwords, we’re big fans of audiobooks, which is why we formed our partnership with Findaway three years ago to handle audiobook production and distribution for our authors.  Yet the cost of professional audiobook production is still out of reach for most indies.  Even bestselling indies find it cost-prohibitive to invest the thousands of dollars it takes to produce a professional audiobook.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could click a button to convert your ebook into an audiobook?  That day is not far away.  Auto-narrated books have been around for a while.  The Daisy Consortium, which oversees the epub standard, has done a lot of great work over the years on what they call “talking books,” drawing upon Daisy’s roots as an organization committed to making books more accessible for the vision impaired.  Yet their synthetic voices are still first-generation, not much better than Stephen Hawking’s synthetic voice.  Now the second generation is coming.  Thanks to artificial intelligence advancements in text-to-speech technology, it’s now possible to create more natural sounding audiobook experiences for customers at a fraction of the cost – for free, actually.  In December 2020, Google previewed what they call, “Auto-narrated audiobooks,” a free solution that allows ebook authors to convert their ebook into an audiobook.  Authors can select from a range of different narration voices and styles.  It’ll be interesting to see if other major ebook retailers follow Google’s lead.  While Google’s technology isn’t perfect, it’s still quite impressive (listen to samples here).  And because it’s all based on rapidly-improving technology, we can expect the quality you hear now will improve dramatically in the next few years.  

By the end of 2022, most writers conferences resume – Writers conferences provide an essential service to authors.  Conferences are where writers learn essential best practices, make industry connections, and find community with fellow members of their author tribe.  With most conferences canceled or on hiatus the last two years, it’s created a knowledge void, especially among newer indies who are still learning the ropes.  It created a void of community as well.  Writers need other writers.  By the latter half of 2022, more writers will feel safe enough to mix and mingle in large crowds, thereby allowing more conferences to resume normal operation.

Scribd goes public in 2022 – In July 2021, Bloomberg News broke a story claiming Scribd was planning a billion-dollar initial public offering for as early as late 2021.  That didn’t happen, and I have no inside knowledge as to the timing of a potential IPO.  However, I do have insight into Scribd’s historical sales volume for Smashwords’ books.  For years here on the blog and elsewhere I have celebrated their impressive growth.  I’m excited about this potential IPO, not just for what it means for our well-deserving friends at Scribd, but also for what it means for our authors.  By going public, Scribd will amass a war chest of cash to invest in their business to the benefit of indie authors.  Readers who’ve read my prior analysis on Scribd’s subscription model vs. others know that Scribd’s model is more author-friendly.  Good luck, Scribd!

Spotify enters ebook market – File this under long-shots.  In November, Spotify entered the audiobook market in a big way by acquiring Smashwords partner Findaway, citing, among other things, the work they do with indie authors.  One of Findaway’s missions is to offer a more author-friendly alternative to Amazon’s Audible, which has come under fire in recent years for their treatment of indie authors. With Spotify making a commitment to bring audiobooks to their nearly 200 million paid subscribers, they’re one simple step away from entering ebooks too, if they choose.  Spotify’s current focus is audio.  If they do enter the ebook market (they’d be smart to acquire Scribd, which would make them an overnight force in ebooks), it will reconfigure the power balance in the market.  Such an entry would make the book content of indie authors more valuable than ever, since lower cost indie ebooks are what make the subscription model viable.  As an indie author, you want your work to be recognized as valuable, because your value gives you leverage to grow and protect your publishing business.  

Subscription takes more market share from single-copy sales – File this one under things that are already happening, but will pick up steam in 2022.  Just as print, audio, and ebook are three great consumption formats for books, subscription is a great consumption method alongside single-copy purchases.  In the long run, I think subscription will become the most popular consumption method among power-readers, much in the same way streaming media services such as Netflix have supplanted DVD purchases and rentals.

Indie content is king in 2022 – Any retailer or subscription service that wants to be competitive in the ebook market faces the same challenge:  how to lower the cost they pay for ebooks so they can offer more reading pleasure to their customers at less cost.  Since indie ebooks are priced much lower than traditionally published ebooks, it means indie ebooks will continue to be of high strategic value to every retailer, especially to the subscription services.  Every major retailer or subscription service has strong incentive to forge closer relationships with indie authors.


That’s it for my 2022 predictions.  I hope these predictions stir your imagination and give you productive ideas for your publishing business in 2022.  What are your predictions?  Please share in the comments below.

On behalf of the entire team at Smashwords, we wish you, your family, and everyone in our indie community the best of health, happiness, and prosperity in the year ahead.  

Summary of Prior Publishing Prediction Posts by Mark Coker

2021 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2020)
2020 Publishing Predictions
(Published December 31, 2019)
2019 Publishing Predictions
(Published December 31, 2018)
2018 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2017)
2017 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2016)
2016 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2015)
2015 Publishing Predictions (Published December 31, 2014)
2014 Publishing Predictions (Published December 30, 2013)
and Huffington Post (Published January 7, 2014)
2013 Publishing Predictions (Published Dec 21, 2012)
2011 Predictions at GalleyCat (Published Dec 28, 2010)
10-Year Predictions at GalleyCat (Published Jan 4, 2010)




Smashwords 2021 End of Year Review and 2022 Preview

Welcome to my 2021 Smashwords year in review and 2022 preview.  

Wow.  Our 14th year of business operation.  Thank you Smashwords authors, publishers, readers, and channel partners!

Don't miss my annual companion post, 2022 Publishing Predictions – Indies Take Center Stage.

As I mentioned in my predictions post today, 2021 was another good year to be an indie publisher, due in part to pandemic-inspired changes to reading habits.  The higher sales levels many authors experienced in 2020 continued into 2021, and will likely continue into 2022 for the reasons I outline in the other post. 

What have we been up to at Smashwords in 2021?  Here are some highlights, as well as some broad stroke hints of where we’re focused for 2022.

Smashwords 2021 Milestones

Books published – We now publish 590,200 books; up 6.0% from 556,800 books at the end of 2020.

Words published – We now publish 20.8 billion words, up 1.1 billion from 19.7 billion a year ago; representing a 5.5% increase.

Authors served – We’re now serving 160,568 authors and publishers; up 4.2% from 154,100 a year ago.

Smashwords Presales - Our patent-pending Smashwords Presales feature, which we launched in December 2019, continues to gain traction with early adopters.  The number of presale events we hosted increased 25% in 2021 compared to the full year of 2020, and dollar sales volume increased 49%.  This growth is off of a relatively small base, but I like the direction things are headed and look forward to growing this further in 2022.  Thank you Smashwords authors for your feedback on those automated surveys we send you each time you set up and complete your presale event.  Your feedback will guide future development.

Smashwords Store – Even though it’s a small portion of our business, our store recorded its fifth consecutive year of increased sales.  Thank you authors and customers!

Smashwords Highlights for 2021

Series promotion – In February, we added a new email alert that allows customers of the Smashwords Store to be notified when a new book is published into a series they’ve previously expressed interest in (purchasing an earlier book of the series, or by adding one or more books in that series to their Wishlist in their Smashwords Library).

Sales reporting – In March, we introduced weekly email alerts to inform authors and publishers about new sales reports from the retailers.  In October, based on author feedback, we updated the emails to link to a pre-sorted version of our Sales & Payments Report page, making it easy to identify the recent sales.  Also in October, we updated the sales reports to display the country location (anonymized to protect customer privacy, of course!) of Smashwords Store customers, when known.

More book categories – Throughout the year, we added many more book subcategory options for romance and erotica authors.  The new subcategories increase discoverability.

Faster deliveries to OverDrive – At Smashwords, we often deliver you book updates to retailers and library partners within minutes of you making an update, assuming the channel partner is able to accept updates at such frequency.  In March, following OverDrive’s green light, we moved from a once-weekly delivery schedule to one per day.

New tutorial videos – In the last quarter of this year, we began rolling out new tutorial videos to make the tools and capabilities of the Smashwords Store and publishing platform more accessible to authors and customers.  For an example, check out the tutorial you'll find within your Dashboard's Series Manager tool (labeled “tutorial” over to the right).  More tutorials are planned for 2022.

More control over series pages – One of the neat things about publishing a series at Smashwords is that we create a dedicated sales page for your series in the Smashwords Store.  In October, we updated the series pages so authors and publishers can control the default sort order of how their titles are displayed to customers.  For example, if the series books can be read in any order, some authors may choose to list their newest book first.  This feature was suggested by a Smashwords author.  Keep those suggestions coming!

New upload interface – After almost 14 years with the same single-page upload form for publishing ebooks, in October we began beta testing an all-new upload interface.  It adopts a more modern, multi-step approach.  It’s more intuitive, and it integrates ISBN assignment into the publishing process so you don’t need to do that as a second step after you publish.  Most exciting to us is what’s beneath the surface.  The new publishing interface’s back end is completely redesigned, and sets the foundation for us to add additional cool features in the future.  The new interface is now live and available to everyone.  We will maintain access to the original classic interface for a period of time so Smashwords authors and publishers have time to  transition their customary workflow to the new interface.

What’s Coming in 2022

Preorders coming to the Smashwords Store – This is big news for us, and this here is my first public disclosure of it.  As most Smashwords authors and publishers know, we’ve been huge advocates of preorders as an essential best practice ever since we introduced the option back in 2013.  Books that are listed first as preorders sell significantly more copies!  Yet we never had the ability to accept preorder orders from customers at the Smashwords Store.  That will change in 2022.  We’re aiming for a Q2 launch.  If we complete the project earlier we’ll certainly try to get it to you sooner.

eBook Publishing - On the ebook publishing side of things, we’ll continue to direct our energy toward initiatives we believe will yield our authors and publishers the greatest gains in terms of sales opportunity, time-savings, and ease of use. 

Distribution - On the distribution side of our business, we’re always looking for opportunities to help our retail and library partners sell more of your books.  We’re also always looking for opportunities to expand your distribution.

Smashwords Store - We're planning to make the store more store-like.  Right now the Smashwords website serves as the front end to both a publishing platform and a store.  We know this is confusing to customers of the store – the people who buy books – so we’re planning to streamline the experience in 2022.  

Surprises - Surprises are fun, so we'll have a big surprise or two planned for 2022.

 

Thank you Smashwords authors, publishers, readers, retailers, libraries, and industry friends for your continued trust, support, and partnership.  It’s our sincere honor to work with you.

Happy New Year!

Saturday, December 11, 2021

Smashwords End of Year Sale Kicks off December 17

The fifth annual Smashwords End of Year Sale starts this Friday, December 17, running through January 1.  For these last two weeks of the year, tens of thousands of indie ebooks will be priced at exclusive discounts of 25%, 50%, 75%, and even free.

Smashwords authors and publishers can enroll their tiles from the home page or go directly to https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/sitewidePromos 

Entire catalogs can be opted in at once.

Starting December 17, readers will find the sale prominently promoted at the top of the Smashwords home page, from which they can enter an entire section of our store dedicated to participating titles.

These sales are always a lot of fun.  It's the time of year we see customers' virtual shopping carts filled to the brim with dozens, sometimes even hundreds of new books as they try new authors and stock up on their favorites.

Thank you Smashwords customers for supporting the hard work of Smashwords authors and publishers.  Happy holidays everyone.