The End Of An Era For Books?

Welcome to the August 2026 edition of...
What I'm Into, What I'm Up To
#70

What I'm up to...

I'm sitting on my friend's back patio in Orlando, Florida. It's a balmy 88℉, somewhat overcast skies, and the air is very still and—surprise, surprise—humid.

My weather app says there is a heat advisory today, as there has been every day we've been here. Apparently there is a heat dome involving sand from the Sahara blowing across the sea.

But despite being in Florida in that window of time between about May through maybe late September or early October when it's generally best to stay in air conditioning from sunup to sundown, we have had an incredibly relaxing trip so far—swimming pools, catching up on movies and shows (more on those later) with one of our closest friends, good food, and a little fishing (not so much my thing, but my kids love to go fishing with my in-laws, for whom fishing is the gold standard of relaxation).

I finished the rough draft of my new story just before we left and I decided to work on absolutely nothing while we're here, other than this email.

What I'm thinking about...

Hugh Howey was one of the first breakout stars and poster children of the indie author revolution that began with the advent of Amazon's self-publishing tools: KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), CreateSpace, and ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange).

Recently Hugh wrote a blog post on his site called 'The End of an Era,' which postulates that around 2014 to around 2024 was the golden era of self-publishing, when it was easy enough most people could self-publish a book if they really wanted to, but still hard enough that most people did not. Good for readers, good for authors.

Now we are entering an era of AI-assisted and, eventually, AI-generated books which will make human-crafted books less and less relevant and more and more of a marginal interest for people who are really into that kind of stuff. Like the artisanal broom shop we visited in Vancouver earlier this year—super cool, but expensive and impractical to most regular people.

I like Hugh Howey and I've gotten a lot out of his blog posts on writing and publishing over the years. I don't know if Hugh is right or wrong about the golden age of indie books coming to an end, and I don't have a rebuttal or anything like that.

But I do have my own experience of cowriting a book with an LLM which I've just gone through this year. I wrote about the process a couple months ago, so I won't elaborate too much, but here are a few points I can make that are true for me as of August, 2026 (who knows whether these points will stay true or for how long)...

1. I've had a lot of fun collaborating on this book with an LLM. It still feels like work but it also feels a little bit like magic.
2. For better or worse, this forthcoming book would in no way be the same story if I had written it fully on my own or if the LLM had written it fully on its own. It is a unique hybridized creation coming from me and what I like to call the sum of all human art and knowledge which no one else could duplicate even if they tried.
3. Other than writing and editing and rewriting and re-editing, there will still be work to do to get the book published and in front of actual readers. This will change, for sure, but for now there is still a barrier between a finished, ready-to-publish book and its potential readers.
4. Reading is, and always has been, a solo endeavor. As has writing, for most authors. But when you are reading what someone else has written, and which you know other people have read, there is a sense of connection in that. I think most readers will still want connection, so I don't see custom, one-off books gaining a lot of traction. But I could totally be wrong.
5. I'm thinking books created by publishers using AI writers and committees and focus groups will be kind of like manufacturing boy bands. Lots of fun, super catchy lyrics, and a huge fanbase, but not many people want to listen to boy band music the rest of their lives. In that case it would be about the brand, like James Patterson novels which are not actually written by James Patterson.

What I'm Into...

• Slow Productivity by Cal Newport is a really interesting book about focusing on fewer, better things to spend your working hours on. Still reading, but it seems like an important message for these frantic times.
• Ted Lasso Season 4 is coming on strong. It was the show everyone needed during Covid but still fun now and still teaching lessons about mental health and interpersonal relationships and human growth while being super funny, at least for people of my particular generation and context.
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day was great. Wendy wants to watch it again. It did a great job of tying in crossover characters without taking away from the movie, which seems like a hard trick to pull off.
• The Odyssey was a little less great, but still good. I like these kinds of historical adventure movies but I've never loved the story of The Odyssey because of its episodic nature, if that makes sense. I would like to watch it again when it's out on streaming and see how it stands up to a second viewing. Also, crazy that this movie and Spider-Man shared three actors and two of them spent similar amounts of onscreen time hanging out and talking to each other in completely different roles.

I also wrote a bunch of stuff about watching all four Matrix movies recently, but I'll post that separately because this update was getting out of hand. Thanks for reading!