Writing Things: Industry Changes Coming In 2026

If you’re a self-published author, you most likely use Amazon KDP and Ingram Spark, among other publishing companies, to print and distribute your books. Ingram Spark allows you to sell on many online retailers like Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Target, etc. And, depending on your popularity among readers, such retailers may even hold copies of your books. Ingram Spark also allows libraries to purchase your books for their collections.

Recently, Ingram Spark has decided to raise their prices once again on printing costs. This changes the royalties that authors make off of the books. This past weekend, I logged in to their handy calculator to check my prices and see if I could still stay above water with what my prices were.

My paperbacks would lose about $0.20 per book, but I was still making a royalty. (We will get into said royalties in a moment.)

My hardcovers, however… that’s a different story.

For my second book, United We Fall, if I left it at $22.99, a pretty reasonable price for a hardcover of that size, my royalty would be…

drumroll

$0.01.

A penny.

The truth is, my royalties are a couple of dollars when sold through Ingram Spark. I think my highest royalty on one of my books is almost $3.

This is why a lot of self-published authors do, unfortunately, stick with Amazon.

And while there is a lot of bad to be said about Amazon, from the author side of things, their process has always been very straightforward. It’s been simple to publish through them. Obviously, this isn’t always a good thing with how many people are willing to publish unedited, first draft books with zero formatting and a litany of errors.

But there is also a lot of GOOD, hardworking authors who publish great works.

Now, Amazon has created quite a stir between readers and authors thanks to their new policy with DRM aka Digital Rights Management.

Before, the DRM box on the author side was always checked, and always grayed out. You couldn’t touch it. It protected your work from being downloaded by people to distribute. This was supposed to help prevent piracy, at least in some ways. Piracy will always happen, which sucks for a lot of authors.

(Sidenote: if you’re a reader who has no issue reading pirated books or thinks piracy is okay just because you want to read something but you don’t want to support an author, literally go get a library card. You can keep reading books by authors you don’t want to support by going to the library. Piracy is never okay. And if this statement bothers you, please unsubscribe and leave my page. I will never support piracy. If you are willing to hear the truth about what it does to authors, then stick around and get educated on the topic.)

My book, The Dreams Between Us, was pirated alongside a huge catalog of popular and lesser known¹ books to be used to train AI. Don’t worry, the AI rant will be coming in another post.

Piracy allowed this to happen, which then sent me to take my book off of Kindle Unlimited. At the time, KU was bringing in a steady amount of royalties for me. But the moment Amazon finds your book elsewhere when you’re enrolled in KU, they will shut you down. As in, they take down your entire account without notice. But if my book is pirated, how is it my fault that it was found somewhere else on the internet?

Back to the topic of DRM, authors now get to choose whether to enroll in DRM, which prevents people from downloading their books and sending them elsewhere. Obviously, piracy still happens. There are probably workarounds. But it does protect the author and makes it harder.

With the choice of not enrolling, readers who purchase the book get to download the EPUB or a PDF file of the book. The claim is so they can put it on their wide array of devices.

Maybe part of the popularity among readers of this decision is the increase in wanting to live more analog. To own physical copies of things, or to truly own even the digital.

But here’s my issue, and the issue a lot of authors are having with this. We don’t get a say in who downloads the book. Sure, the rules are supposed to be if someone has paid for it already. But what about the authors who make their books free or very cheap for a short sale time? Now the book can be “purchased” for free or cheap and be downloaded and distributed.

This is going to impact a lot of authors.

Which is why the authors are not all a fan of this idea. Readers, however, are excited by this. Whether their intentions are good or not, this is not a positive update for authors.

All this is going to do is create a further divide among readers and authors. It’s going to make piracy easier.

For everyone who is saying, “Well I have the book on my kindle, but I want it on my Kobo/other e-reader.”

If you truly support the author, why are you against buying the book again for that reader/tablet? And if it’s not just an e-reader, most devices and phones can download the kindle app. And once you’re signed in, you can read whatever books are available to you on your kindle. There are a lot of workarounds to having books on multiple devices. (I won’t even get into the overconsumption behavior having multiple devices that carry the same function is. To each their own.)

I personally will keep my DRM box checked. I know this is somewhat becoming a topic among readers and authors. Readers want the ability to download the books in PDF. Authors don’t like what Amazon is doing. We’re also fighting for our lives with Ingram.

It’s a hot mess. I’ve honestly sat here this past weekend, trying to make sense of these things that have been decided. And setting my book prices to raise a little so I can at least make $1.75 off my hardcovers. (If you want a hardcover of any of my books, now is the time before January 2nd and the 16th.)

I want to be a full-time writer one day. I want this to be my life. I want to be able to get away from the 9-5 rush and do the things I love. Not for the money, but for the fulfilment it brings. But it’s so hard to feel fulfilled when the industry feels like it’s working against you.

I will not give up, though. I will keep writing the words that matter to me. I will keep talking about the things I’m passionate about.

If you disagree with me, let me know why— respectfully— in the comments below. I’m always curious to hear outside opinions. Let’s start an open dialogue on DRM and publishing.

And if this is your first time reading one of my posts, hi! I usually write diary like posts and am much more whimsical. But I felt moved to give a little rant today.

Back to my regularly scheduled 2010s core blog style.

Until next time,

1. by lesser known, I don’t mean lesser known than my book. I mean smaller authors, such as myself, who don’t make a lot of sales.