PublishDrive's Market Intelligence Report 2026

Independent publishing is no longer a single-platform story. Growth is happening across formats, regions, business models, and contributor types simultaneously.

The PublishDrive Market Intelligence Report 2026 analyzes aggregated sales data from across our global distribution network to reveal how the market is actually behaving today.

This is not opinion.

It is performance data.

What You'll Discover Inside

Real sales data revealing how scale, acceleration, and diversification intersect.

Print revenue grew 75%.
Audiobook units increased 31%.
Ebook value expanded 24%.
See how format dynamics are shifting and where monetization is strongest.

The US, UK, Germany, Canada, and Australia anchor scale.
But markets like Spain, Italy, and regional alliances such as Tolino show triple-digit acceleration.
Understand where growth is structural and where it is emerging.

Amazon and Amazon Print account for 77% of total sales value in our ecosystem.
Yet meaningful growth is happening outside Amazon across retail, library, and subscription channels.
Learn what diversification actually looks like in practice.

Fiction still dominates at 64% of sales.
Mystery & Detective grew 126%.
Non-fiction expanded 47%.
Discover which categories are accelerating and why.

AI-narrated titles are scaling rapidly.
Human-narrated audiobooks continue to outperform AI-narrated, but the gap is closing.
See how technology is reshaping production and monetization.

 

Why This Report Matters

The market has reached an inflection point. Diversification is real. Democratization is accelerating. Infrastructure determines who scales efficiently.

If you are an author, publisher, or industry professional trying to decide where to invest time, production, or marketing effort, this report gives you structural clarity.