5 Trends That Will Define Indie Publishing in 2027 — And the One That Cost Me $1,700
The Alliance of Independent Authors named four trends they think will shape indie publishing in 2027. I had already paid $1,700 to learn one of them the hard way.
So this is not a trends list. It is four trends and then my actual decision on each: what I am doing, what I am ignoring, and where I lost money finding out.
Where I could find the original data behind a number I went and got it, and it is on screen. One of ALLi’s figures I could not verify independently, so I left it out.
SOURCES
ALLi, "What 2026 Might Tell Us About Indie Publishing in 2027" https://selfpublishingadvice.org/what-2026-might-tell-us-about-indie-publishing-in-2027/
ALLi’s own video, "Indie Publishing Trends: What You Need to Know for 2027" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud-0m2CNJnU
Audio Publishers Association — US audiobook sales $2.43bn in 2025, up 9% https://www.audiopub.org/surveys
Coverage: https://www.infodocket.com/2026/06/05/audio-publishers-association-reports-audiobook-sales-jump-9-to-2-43-billion/
TikTok Newsroom — 50m+ books and €800m across Europe in 2025; Germany alone 28m books / €482m https://newsroom.tiktok.com/booktok-community-50-million-books
Kickstarter — 2m+ backers have pledged $200m+ to publishing projects https://www.kickstarter.com/articles/more-than-2-million-backers-have-pledged-200-million-to-publishing-projects______FOLLOW ME ON SUBSTACK: https://diaryofanauthor.substack.comMY BOOKS:📙 A New Chapter by the Canal https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/255267123-a-new-chapter-by-the-canal 📓 Library of Eternity https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/245897025-library-of-eternity📘 The 66-Day Writing Challenge: Build a Sustainable Writing Habit with Daily Prompts https://a.co/d/8rAAeng🎧 Flykten - ljudbok https://www.storytel.com/se/books/flykten-2255091📔 Essäer om skrivande och vardagsflykt https://amzn.eu/d/0eUeZSLTMy name is Natalie Forslind, I am a writing coach, author, and Growth Markter who teaches writers how to become more productive and market themselves online.🚀 Publisher Rocket – My favorite keyword research tool for authors (affiliate): https://publisherrocket.cartknox.com/buy-rocket?aff=539Some of the links in this description are affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting the channel!✨Timestamps ✨
00:00 The one that cost me $1,700
01:24 Trend one — direct sales
09:12 Trend two — audio
13:13 Trend three — BookTok
15:08 Trend four — special editions
18:36 Trend five — How readers find books
20:12 Recap
24 Oct 2026
I’ve Written Every Day for 1,323 Days — What the First 500 Didn’t Teach Me
1,323 consecutive days of writing. Two years ago I made a video about hitting 500 — and some of what I said then I do not believe any more.
This is the honest version: what I actually do, which two books built it, and the parts that nearly broke it.
Atomic Habits gave me the showing up. 5,000 Words Per Hour gave me what to do once I was there. They are different problems and almost nobody separates them.
And the part I did not expect — I ghostwrite books for other people on deadline, and it turns out I run exactly the same system for my own. There is no professional mode. There is just the checklist.
Sign up to my substack: https://diaryofanauthor.substack.com/
00:00 Introduction
01:34 How to define writing every day
04:24 What Atomic Habits gave me
15:41 What 5,000 Words per Hour taught me
19:34 My writing process
17 Oct 2026
16 Things I’d Do Differently If I Published My First Book Today
I've spent somewhere around $6,000 publishing my books. If I started over tomorrow I'd spend less than half of that and end up with more readers — not because I found a trick, but because I did almost all of it in the wrong order.
This is that order. Everything from before you write a word through to what I'd skip entirely. Where a claim is backed by data I'll show you the data — I went through five author income surveys, about 11,400 responses between them. Where it's just my opinion, I'll say so.
SOURCES
Written Word Media 2026 Mid-Year Survey (582 authors) https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/2026-mid-year-indie-author-survey/
Written Word Media 2025 Indie Author Survey (1,346 responses) https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/2025-indie-author-survey-results-insights-into-self-publishing-for-authors/
Authors Guild 2023 Author Income Survey (5,699 authors) https://authorsguild.org/news/key-takeaways-from-2023-author-income-survey/
ALLi Self-Publishing Facts https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/facts/
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
02:13 Before I wrote a word
08:25 Writing the first one
13:36 Where the money actually goes
19:26 Publishing and finding readers
26:56 What I'd skip entirely
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