Recent years have seen authors focus their efforts on wide distribution and audiobooks. As a result, eBooks and audiobooks are on track to grow this year. But 2025 is telling a different story as authors move toward retaining more control of their brand, getting closer to their readers, and improving their margins. Selling direct and rejuvenating the backlist are two tactics authors are increasingly spending their precious time on.
Direct sales are shifting from an experiment to a a full-blown system. A recent survey cited by PublishDrive shows more than 80% of indie authors now run their own websites with direct sales in mind. Yet fewer than 30% are actually selling ebooks or print directly from that site. That gap is shrinking but it’s still surprising. It implies authors have been settling for a simple landing page. But when authors own the checkout they own pricing, bundling, offers, and data. Consequently, average revenue per reader can go up while platform dependency goes down. Email lists, membership tiers, and pixels become real assets rather than neglected afterthoughts.
The backlist is an untapped asset that’s getting more attention. In a saturated market, older books are underpriced, especially when packaging and positioning are outdated. The 2025 trend is:
- Refresh metadata so it matches current search demand
- Redesign covers for genre fit
- Relaunch with revised hooks
Data (and experience) shows that small conversion lifts across many titles compound. One sharp cover update can still repay the effort across a series.
What does this shift signal? Our hope is it leads to more author leverage. Revenue can become more diversified because marketplace sales are paired with author-owned channels. Publishers do not have to see this as a threat. There is room for flexible partnerships with clearer data sharing, shorter rights windows, and collaborative relaunches that respect author control.
If you want a practical starting point, keep it simple.
- Stand up a clean store on Shopify, WooCommerce, or Payhip and sell EPUB, PDF, and audio where possible with a clear DRM policy.
- Build a simple funnel: a lead magnet tied to your strongest series, a welcome sequence that pitches book one and a bundle, and a one-click upsell to audio or an annotated edition.
- Refresh the backlist in small batches. For each title, map keywords to real reader search phrases, align the cover with top-selling comps in your genre/category and rewrite the description to front-load the hook, the stakes, and the promise in 150-200 words.
- Relaunch with intent. Run a limited-time price promo, arrange a newsletter swap with adjacent authors, and A/B test the old versus new cover, optimizing for click-through and read-through rather than chasing the cheapest clicks.
- Measure only what matters. On your store, track conversion rate, average order value, refunds, and email opt-ins. On retailers, watch click-through rate, sample-to-buy, and series read-through. For the backlist, compare each title’s 30-day baseline to its 30-day post-refresh. Log every test. Keep the feedback loop short.
The bottom line is straightforward. Direct sales plus backlist revitalization can be a compounding strategy. You keep control, increase margins, and extract more value from assets you already own. Start with one storefront, one funnel, and one five-book refresh cycle. Your readers are out there. Build a system that brings them to you.
Source: Kinga Jentetics, Market Trends and Updates You Need to Know in July 2025
