Information, inspiration and interviews on writing, self-publishing, book marketing and making a living with your writing. If you need help with writing your book, or you want to learn how to navigate the new world of publishing and book marketing, then join Joanna Penn and her guests every Monday. Also covers the business of being a writer and how to make money with your books.
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Trends For Authors And Creative Goal Setting 2019
Happy New Year! I love January. I am filled with energy at the possibilities ahead and look forward to creating, learning and sharing along the way as we head into 2019!
In this article and podcast episode, I’ll look at some of the trends that I think will be important for authors in 2019 and then outline my own creative goals. I hope you will add your goals in the comments so we can keep each other accountable as the year progresses.
Trends for authors in 2019
(1) Audio and voice technology
I’ve been talking about this for a while, but things will really start to shift in 2019.
Audiobooks continue to be the fastest growing segment in publishing, and if you haven’t signed away your audiobook rights, then definitely consider exploiting them yourself. Options for working with professional narrators include ACX, as well as Findaway Voices and Author’s Republic.
Amazon’s Alexa will continue to expand into multiple devices, which means more people will be interacting with the internet and their content by voice. Google Home and Google Duplex are the other main voice technologies, with Siri on Apple devices like the Apple Watch.
This shift towards searching and buying through voice means that voice search and discoverability will become ever more important. Natural language transcripts of podcast interviews will help, as people speak differently than they write.
There’s also evidence that the voice search uses Google snippets so making sure you have short answers to commonly asked questions may maximise search on your author website.
I've been podcasting for 10 years and most of my books are already in audio format, but I am going much further and audio will be my major focus in 2019. I'll be interviewing experts on this topic on the podcast. I'll also be getting all my backlist into audio, starting another podcast around my fiction themes, and building my own ‘voice brand' by moving into more audiobook narration myself. I've been doing voice training in recent months and am looking forward to developing a new way of storytelling and sharing my words.
In terms of audiobook publishing, I will be moving out of exclusive ACX and into a wider model. I'm excited about the possibilities for Kobo Writing Life direct audio and also Findaway Voices access to Storytel, which seems to be the major company that is challenging Audible on the global audiobook scene.
(2) Indies will expand print market share
Indie authors have become expert at publishing and marketing ebooks, but as well as audiobooks above, 2019 will see further expansion into print.
KDP Print makes it easier to advertise print books on Amazon, Draft2Digital have expanded into print production, and IngramSpark makes it easier than ever for indies to reach bookstores,