LEVEL UP - I've been seeing a few multicast (usually just male and female narrator) indie audiobooks available. The LitRPG people are leading the way in the indie space here. So my first prediction is that more narrators will team up to start offering this service, which in turn will bleed into the market and change listener expectations. Already there are people who don't like single narrator audiobooks. Level up is my first prediction for this year - more services available for audiobooks.
AMS - Amazon want our royalties and f*ck everything else. So just like how being in KU gets you a rank book, being in AMS will be next. A "buy" from an ad will boost rank more than an organic buy. Prices will keep going up until you start hearing people say "a rule of thumb is to expect to spend 1/4 to 1/3 of your gross royalties on AMS advertising".
Competitors - Apple, GooglePlay, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords: no real change here. Audiobooks is where I think the next royalty battleground is but unfortunately the two big players, Apple and GooglePlay, have their eye significantly off the ball. Amazon is taking 60% of the Audible money and paying out 40% with a confusing royalty structure. Apple possibly may come stomping back in to this area because the iPhone money fountain is slowing due to saturation and they'll be looking for other areas to make money in.
Split-test cover and blurb on Amazon sale pages - I think Amazon will level up again and start offering you the ability to upload two covers, two blurbs, two sets of keywords and to split-test the f*ck out of it.
KU banhammer - I can see it coming down on a few big names. I'm thinking particularly of a group of LitRPG authors who keep demanding 100 review before they write their next title. They have the facebook pages pushing for reviews, the explicit sex scenes that Amazon doesn't like and they're ranking high in the store and thus attracting attention. Some haven't learned the lessons from MSE or Cipriano and will be banned.
High volume Author teams - there are already author teams publishing under a single name to hit volume and keep rank. Level up again is going to see more of these teams appearing. They'll be releasing a book every two weeks minimum. They'll be tightly focused write-to-market names that will be like a machine. They'll come out of nowhere, will keep everything super secret, publish forty or fifty books and then vanish. Only a small number will continue and their catalogs will grow rapidly, until we're seeing author names with 100+ titles and still releasing books at least every month.
More courses like Mark Dawson's will come out. A flood a flood!
Write-all-at-once, publish all at once authors will start to appear - we have rapid release already and people dropping three books before going for the rest once-a-month. I think we're going to see a few mass drop authors. They'll write five or seven or nine books ahead of time and publish all at once in an effort to hit those algorithms.
More indie publishers - like the author teams, we'll see some indie authors realize they're better at hiring people, directing stories to be written, making covers etc than they are at writing their own books. Or they'll see it's more profitable at least. These people will be successful on their own, at least enough they know what they're doing but instead of pairing up with another author (which involves a lot of risk and trust) they'll go the corporate route, hire writers to write to brief and publish rapidly. Just like Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and so on, we'll see a flood of series come out under an author name, tightly focused on a genre.
Licensing level up - with the rise of author teams, indie publishers we'll also see more people spat out of traditional publishing (editors, publishers, authors, designers) and a lot of these people will be bringing licensing knowledge with them. The next Paw Patrol is out there somewhere but hasn't been found yet, or exploited. So I think this year we're going to see a real focus on businesses scraping through Indie world looking for things to license for film, toys, kids and so on. With that, we're going to see more author businesses created specifically for that market. You'll see some kids titles come out in eBook form that will have an app as well and a whole bunch of art assets already made so it's easy to sell. For teen and adult, you'll see quick release titles, great covers, audio done fast and then this pitched to licensing businesses for further development. Someone will make the next Avatar Airbender this way, the next Paw Patrol. Within three years a title that started in eBook will have a toy in Walmart, a video game and more.
Adaptations - following on from licensing, we're going to see authors exploring video games and apps. It will be like audiobook development - the rich go first then everyone else. There are app developers out there looking to work. There are single developers and teams looking to make games. Some titles are suited for adaptation to games and apps. I think the first to go will be kids, because you can make simple games, like platformers using existing art assets. I see app teams and game teams starting to offer services to authors.
Graphic novels - we'll see more of these appear as indie authors seek to break into TV. Walking Dead was a graphic novel first before TV. Scott Pilgrim before it became a movie. We'll see illustrators who will pair up with authors to serialize their novels in graphic novel format. We'll probably see shorts first and the rich going first. Sci-fi, thrillers, zombies, etc will start off the movement. Like audiobooks it will develop an ecosystem so you can say "x pages for y dollars".
Never Trad - the midlist trad authors will continue to break free, fight for their rights back and keep killing trad publishing. But we'll also see more never trad authors - those who in the past would have been trad but now are laughing all the way to the bank with indie. I've seen a bunch of "hybrid" authors who I think are still snared by the dream of traditional publishing. They grew up with dreams and make not so great financial decisions to get into a trad bookshop. But as time goes on I think we'll see more teenagers becoming adults who grew up with eBooks, who read on phones and whatever other device they have. They don't have this emotional blindspot and so when they succeed, they won't publish "hybrid" and make various complicated excuses for why they did, like I see happening a bit now.
