Episode
The Free Lunch Is Ending: Three Publishing Stories Worth Your Attention
- Podcast
- The Difficulty
- Published
- May 14, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 817
- Processing state
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Summary
If you're an indie writer paying attention to what's happening in publishing right now — this week was a tell. Three stories landed inside seven days. Each one pointed at the same answer.Episode 5 of The Difficulty — the first publishing-news episode in the new "How" lane. This week:— Audible's ACX royalty model is being discontinued. Authors must enroll in the new pooled, consumption-based model by year-end. Brandon Sanderson called this out back in 2024; Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur is openly skeptical. Same playbook Spotify ran for music and KU ran for ebooks. Now it's audiobooks.— Publishing.com hit with a $1.5M FTC settlement — alleged misleading income claims and undisclosed incentivized testimonials. The publishing industry is being told publicly that some of the loudest "publish-your-book-and-get-rich" programs were misleading. Personal aside: I came close to laying out $6K to one of these a few years back. I'm glad I didn't.— Inkers Con runs May 30 – June 12 ($250, fully online). Working authors learning from each other in real time. Worth knowing about even if you don't go.The throughline: in a week where platforms got less predictable AND shady programs got FTC'd, the answer was the same answer indie writers have been circling for a decade. Direct audience. Real community. Owned email list. Less platform dependency.I share what I'm doing about it in real time — including how the Goodreads giveaway for Iris Blackwood pulled nearly 3,000 entrants, and the moment I almost didn't release Iris #1 as an ebook (and what changed my mind).—GO DEEPERFriday's Working Publisher Substack post extends this episode with sources and analysis:→ chadprevost.substack.com — search "The Free Lunch Is Ending"—CHAPTERSThree stories, same answerAudible's royalty pivotPublishing.co…