THE NOVEL IS DEAD. FICTION WRITERS FACE EXTINCTION. Get ready. This is going to hurt. Making up words for a living faces three challenges that it will not be able to overcome, and anyone calling themselves a fulltime author might need a side gig very soon. This isn't exaggeration, and I am pretty upset. Here are three points that prove we're charging downhill (and maybe what authors can do to hang on...) 1. READERSHIP IS DWINDLING In the US, fiction reading has steadily declined 3% per year since 2003 despite a population increase of more than 60 million people. The older generation--who are the largest percentage of the population that read for leisure--is dying at a rate of three million people per year. The younger generation isn't reading as much fiction as their parents, who aren't reading as much fiction as their parents. The number of bookstores that sell new fiction is declining, and the number of big box stores that sell fiction are seeing their paperback racks get smaller, or disappear completely. This trend cannot be reversed, unless a zombie virus hits and we can resurrect 25 million Boomers. And Borders. I miss Borders and Waldenbooks a lot. 2. AI BOOKS ARE JUST GETTING STARTED A week ago, the buzz was about an author who allegedly used AI to write her horror novel, which was acquired by a large publisher, Hachette. Hachette later cancelled the book release after an internal investigation. Everyone is talking about the ethics of using AI to write, but they are missing the elephant in the room: AI wrote well enough to land a major publishing deal. LLMs illegally trained on over 500k professionally written books (including 80 of mine), and now AI can is so good it can fool publishers. Anyone can now use AI to write books and pump out dozens a year in the style of bestselling authors. Between 2023 and 2024 there was a 3.5% increase in the number of self-published books according to Bowker ISBNs, with the overall total being 2,545,885. Between 2024 and 2025 there was a 38.7% increase, raising the total to 3,529,980. Do ya think maybe that's AI-related? And ya think that number will get higher or lower? Ya scared yet? 3. NEW TECHNOLOGY IS MONOPOLIZING LEISURE TIME You're reading this post on X. Why isn't your nose buried in a novel right now? Sure, maybe you have a Kindle app on your cell. Or maybe you curl up at night with a paperback. But you surely know people are using their free time differently than they were in 2005. I used to go to the park, or go on public transportation, and see people reading. Now I see cell phones everywhere. Maybe some are reading fiction, but most are on social media, texting, streaming, shopping, surfing. Less than 5% are reading fiction. Beyond cell phones we have PC and console gaming, streaming professional and amateur media, being online; all things that take up leisure time that used to be spent devouring novels. Attention spans since 2004 have more than halved. It is difficult to get people to read a five minute X post. Getting them to read a 10 hour novel is becoming impossible. In 2012, 64% of parents read to their children. That number is now 41%. I could keep spouting more statistics, but I am officially freaking out. How about you? WHO WILL SURVIVE? We're in a shrinking market that is about to be annihilated by AI. The demand is going way down, and the supply is going way up. You don't have to be an economist to know what this means. Authors with large book releases by big publishers, authors who have huge followings, and authors who have movie/TV tie-ins will be able to make a living. Occasional "Next Big Thing" authors will go viral and sell tons of books. You can try to become one of those, but it won't be easy. Getting enough sales to pay a few bills is very hard and rare. Selling a million books in a year is becoming next to impossible. WHAT CAN WRITERS DO? Let me preface this part by saying: I don't like any of the points I'm going to make. But I'm trying to be as realistic as possible, even though it kills me. DIVERSIFY You can make money as a writer in other ways, not just through book sales. You can build your social media following and monetize it. You can try to gain the attention of Hollywood. I haven't tried Wattpad, Substack, or Patreon, but other authors seem to be using these with some degree of success. You can invent some new way for fiction to become relevant in an increasingly indifferent world. I know that you didn't become a fiction writer to devote your time to any of the above. And let's be brutally honest; doing any of these things is just as difficult as succeeding as a novelist. But I'm spitballing here because we are screwed. FIGURE OUT ADVERTISING I've posted and blogged about my experience with ads, and how my noble and expensive efforts have at best broke even. But many authors claim they have used ads to make money, and ads are ubiquitous, so maybe there is something there. It's a gamble, and a time suck, but it may help bail out a sinking ship. I know you probably dreamed of being a novelist, but had no aspirations to become an advertiser. I hear you, and I agree. But this leads me to the uncomfortable realization that survival may depend on going to the Dark Side and... EMBRACING AI If you are a pro writer, you have huge advantages over some newbie AI prompter. You should already understand story, characterization, rising action, conflict, and good writing. You can let some kids flood the market with AI slop, or you can start putting out work that is AI-assisted and less sloppy. I don't do this. I can't see myself doing this. I hate this. But it makes sense, doesn't it? Does anyone else see an alternative? CONCLUSION I don't want to think of myself as a buggy whip manufacturer in 1908, the year Henry Ford rolled out the Model T. But the parallel exists. Fiction writing could go the way of the horse and buggy. This is scary. And I have no good answers. It was a pretty good run, though...
