In this episode, we break down the publishing developments editors and agents are talking about right now and what they mean for working writers.

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Overthinking Couch Topics:

• Why audiobooks are now a primary format, not a secondary rights stream
• The continued dominance of celebrity books and what it signals about the market
• The “hollowing out” of the midlist and what it means for author careers
• How Substack and newsletters are changing the path to traditional publishing
• Why publishers are acquiring fewer debut novels
• The blurred line between self-publishing and traditional publishing
• The rise of “aesthetic publishing” and visually driven book sales
• The Shy Girl controversy and what it reveals about AI in publishing
• A recent plagiarism ruling and what it says about tropes in fiction

• Court Rules Tracy Wolff Did Not Plagiarize Crave Series
• How a brutal BookTube review got Shy Girl removed from shelves
• The Big Five's Midlist Problem: Why 19% of Traditional Publisher Titles Sell 12 Copies or Fewer
• The Big Five's Midlist Problem: Why 19% of Traditional Publisher Titles Sell 12 Copies or Fewer
• 2026 Audie Awards Winners
• The Rise of Aesthetic Book Publishing
• Home : America's Editor - Let's work together.
• More Writing Tips

Music licensed from Storyblocks.

Hello. Finally, the news! I don't know what oath I broke or what crime I have committed against society, but I have been fighting the Furies to get this episode to you. Today I'm sharing publishing developments editors and agents are talking about right now and stories that may shape the future of storytelling.

I've got good news, bad news, the latest book trends, and even a publishing scandal. I'm not sure what to recommend for this episode. An espresso and a notebook? A whiskey and a chaser? A milkshake and fries? A strawberry daquiri and a pool float? Anything goes today. The Writing Break Cafe is open. I'll meet you on the Overthinking Couch.

The announcement comes as audiobook production and submissions reach record levels. In fact, audiobook revenue has been growing faster than print revenue.The audiobook market has experienced double-digit annual growth for several years. According to the Audio Publishers Association, audiobook revenue in the United States recently surpassed $2 billion a year, and growth rates have often been 10%–15% per year.

Many publishers now consider audio a primary format, not just a rights add-on, and narrator branding is becoming part of marketing. For authors, this means audio rights may be increasingly valuable. There are more AI-read books than ever before, but those are painful to listen to. Audiobooks are no longer a niche format, and I hope we continue to celebrate human-read masterpieces.

Celebrity books continue dominating bestseller lists, and publishers still pay big advances for celebrity authors, even when they're ghostwritten. I understand that it's frustrating for writers to see celebrities receive huge marketing budgets, especially when it's clear the books sell primarily because of existing fame rather than writing quality. The silver lining used to be that these celebrity books helped subsidize the rest of the publishing industry. However . . .

The collapse of midlist publishing is upon us. Agents and editors increasingly talk about the “hollowing out of the midlist.” This means publishers invest heavily in blockbuster titles, and while it might seem logical that they would offer small advances for debut or experimental work, it's the mid-tier author who is not experiencing the same career stability as before. Most authors earn very little from their books. Surveys from groups like The Authors Guild consistently find that median author income from books alone is often under $10,000 per year, and many authors earn far less.

It seems as though the career novelist model is disappearing as many novelists rely on multiple income streams, and it's not just teaching or speaking engagements either. Authors who have been traditionally published are self-publishing to stay afloat, and they're also relying on income from sources like Patreon, Substack, and newsletters.

Which is, in part, why publishers are watching Substack authors closely. Editors at major houses are increasingly scouting newsletter platforms for new authors.

Platforms like Substack are functioning as informal talent pipelines, where writers prove they can build an audience, publish consistently, and monetize readers directly.

And yet, publishers are buying fewer debut novels. Literary agents are confirming that editors are acquiring fewer debut novels than they did a few years ago.

In some cases, agents say manuscripts now go through more editorial meetings and longer submission cycles before an offer appears. Publishers are becoming more risk-averse in uncertain markets.

For new writers, that means the path to a traditional deal may be narrower, and for readers it means fewer new releases will be experimental or, dare I say, unique.

And yet, self-publishing continues to influence the traditional industry. For example, the wildly popular litRPG series Dungeon Crawler Carl, which was originally self-published, recently hit bestseller lists after a traditional publisher acquired print rights. The line between indie and traditional publishing is increasingly blurred, and I hope that ends up working in your favor.

But the gatekeepers of traditional publishing seem to be in a tug-of-war amongst themselves, where some are trying in vain to open the gate wider to allow in more diverse books, while the rest want to narrow the opening into their ivory tower.

Is it any wonder, then, that self-published books now outnumber traditionally published books? Estimates suggest that 2 to 3 million books are self-published annually compared with roughly 500,000 traditionally published titles worldwide. What I think this means is that we've reached the "Jay-Z says no to the Super Bowl" era of publishing, where authors are Jay-Z. "I said no to the Super Bowl, you need me, I don't need you. Every night, we in the end zone, tell the NFL we in stadiums too."

Another thing we don't need, but I can understand enjoying, are nicely designed books. I visited two local bookstores recently. In one I saw a section called "Pretty Books", and in the other, I saw a section called "Book That Look Nice". Now, bookshop owners clearly want you to judge a book by its cover. Encouraging customers to sit and read the book before purchasing is not a good business model for bookstores. You might be swayed into buying a book because of the genre, the author, or the synopsis, but if it's because of how the book looks, be it the colors, the cover image, the font, or the title, a business-savvy bookseller is not going to be dismayed that you purchased a book for such superficial reasons. They don't even mind if you love it for sentimental reasons.

However, after a lifetime of being told not to judge a book by its cover (although, c'mon, we all do it), but after a lifetime of doing my best not to judge a book by its cover, both metaphorically and literally, I was surprised to see bookstore sections featuring nice-looking books of different genres just because they're nice-looking. Without consulting my feeling wheel, I could only say it made me uncomfortable, but in a resigned way. Like being a kid and having to wear a scratchy new shirt to grandma's house. Yeah, the shirt might be chainmail couture, but at least you get to see grandma. So, the books might be hanging out together for the wrong reasons, but at least they're still books.

I shared my unease with my inner circle of literary pros, and they assured me that the bookstores are giving the people what they want.

It's called "aesthetic publishing" these days, and this book trend focuses heavily on visually appealing books designed to go viral on social media.

Typical features include: sprayed edges, illustrated end papers, elaborate dust jackets, sometimes no dust jacket, foil stamping and collector editions, including matching series spines and box sets.

This trend has been fueled by BookTok and Bookstagram culture. The trend is not being received with open hearts by everyone in my lit group, but if it pays the bills, would it be wise to knock it? In this economy?

But, are publishers prioritizing design over literary merit, or is it simply smart marketing in a visual internet economy? It's funny to think that, to some, books have become luxury lifestyle objects.

Publishers are investing heavily in premium physical editions, especially in fantasy and romance, and special edition books are becoming a major revenue stream. The strategy is to sell a premium physical object, even when ebooks are cheap.

Editors and marketing teams now ask questions like: Will this cover look good in a TikTok video? Does the book have visually striking edges or packaging? Can the story produce emotional reaction clips?

What do you think? Is this just modern marketing, or is storytelling being contorted for viral reaction moments?

As for me, when all the pretty books were grouped together like that, I thought the books all looked the same. That hasn't stopped me from buying a few of them, but I can envision a book collector, after spending big bucks to build a collection of aesthetically amplified books, walking into their home library and going, meh.

I think I've shared the following Umberto Eco quote before, perhaps when making the argument that you must write flawed characters, but it works here to explain my lack of enthusiasm for these so-called pretty books.

“Beauty is, in some way, boring. Even if its concept changes through the ages… a beautiful object must always follow certain rules. ...and so ugliness is unpredictable, and offers an infinite range of possibility. Beauty is finite, ugliness is infinite like God.”

That's from his book On Ugliness, which is, ironically enough, a nice-looking book.

Can you believe I made it this far into the news without talking about artificial intelligence? I sure can’t.

But listen to this. A horror novel by Mia Ballard called Shy Girl started as a self-published book. It gained some traction and was acquired by Hachette UK, and they published it in March of last year. They had a planned U.S. rollout for this year.

So, it released in the UK, but then readers began to notice that the writing felt…off. Readers were sure that parts of it were AI-generated. OneYouTuber made a 3-hour video of why he thinks it’s AI-generated text. The New York Times approached Hachette with proof that the novel was AI-generated. The next day, the book was pulled off the shelves. So, it’s been pulled from the UK, and the US release has been cancelled.

Ballard says she did not use AI to write the book, but that her friend who edited the book used an AI program to edit the book. She says she's not going to give any more details at the moment because she is pursuing legal action against this friend and Hachette.

The only thing I'm going to say about blaming the editor is that your editor would have to change so much to make your book go from being a book written by a human to a book written by AI, it would make them a ghostwriter, not an editor. Your editor is not supposed to change your writing style or your voice, and if they do, there is nothing that says you have to accept what they've done.

But let's put all that aside, I want to focus instead on one question, how did this get through a major publisher? Hachette is one of the Big Five publishers. How did this happen?

Worst-case scenario: No one cared because they saw a money-making opportunity. The book already had some indie success, and no one wanted to complicate the deal. I’d like to think that even in the worst-case scenario, some people were sounding the alarm. But maybe they were drowned out by the sound of the cash register. Perhaps everyone else thought horror readers wouldn’t notice or care because they aren’t that discerning, which is absolute BS, of course.

So, off it goes, taking up an editorial slot, a marketing budget, and a launch window that could have gone to another author, one who actually wrote every line themselves.

Best-case scenario? I don’t know. Are we supposed to believe that a team of people who read for a living didn’t realize it was AI? In addition to the writing style, readers noticed repetition and mistakes as well as an all over the place and unsatisfying plot. Again, how did this get through so many normally discerning gatekeepers? This is bad all around. Of course, Ballard herself is getting the most negative press over it, but there was a team of people behind the Hachette release of this book. Maybe they didn’t run it through an AI checker, but do people in the publishing industry need AI detectors?

I appreciate the publisher’s decision to reassess the situation. Up until now, publishing has assumed there is a human author at the center of the work. Clearly, that can no longer be a given. AI introduces authorship that is difficult to trace. There is no consistent framework yet for disclosure or acceptable use, and I suppose there needs to be a redesign of the publishing workflow to account for that. How much AI assistance is the publisher going to accept, and will that change per title or genre?

Publishing runs on limited resources, and every book that enters that system displaces another. Are there other AI-generated books that have made it through the publishing process? Could be. Will this keep happening? It's possible. So, what happens to the authors doing this entirely on their own? That remains to be seen. But just know I am here for you.

Now, do I think the book was written by AI? Yes, for three reasons. One, being exposed to AI-generated writing is an occupational hazard of mine, and it does read like some of the stuff that has crossed my desk. Two, the author said, “My name is ruined for something I didn’t even personally do.” Which to me is saying that it was done, she's just not taking the blame for it. And three, the cover art for the first version, the one Ballard self-published herself, was used without the artist's permission. This makes me question the author's integrity. Ballard said that she found the artwork on Pinterest and "did not do sufficient research to locate the artist because I did not expect the book to reach a large audience." The artist of that cover image has been compensated and has asked that any remaining use of her artwork be taken down. But, of course, the internet is forever, so you can still see the original cover, even if you can no longer purchase the book.

Before we go, I'm going to leave you with a story I found amusing, although the authors involved probably don't.

Here's the backstory. Two YA fantasy authors, Lynne Freeman and Tracy Wolff, had the same literary agent. Tracy Wolff has a YA fantasy series called Crave, which Freeman said was a lot like one of her unpublished manuscripts, which, of course, her agent has seen. Freeman sues everyone for plagiarism, and I mean everyone: the other author Wolff, the lit agent, the publisher, the distributor, and Universal City Studios, which bought the film rights to the first installment in the Crave series.

This lawsuit went on for years. But last month, New York judge Colleen McMahon, whom I suspect is a reader, ruled that Wolff did not plagiarize Freeman.

The judge stated that "Freeman’s novel and Wolff’s Crave novels are indeed similar, but only in the ways that all young adult romantasy fiction novels are similar to each other." And in a stroke of brilliance, the judge also said that "hot, sexy, dangerous boys—central to virtually all young adult romance novels—cannot be copyrighted."

Somebody put that on a T-shirt for me, please.

That is all for today. It's time for you to return your hot, sexy, dangerous self back to your work in progress.

Until next time, thank you so much for listening and remember, you deserved this break.