Surviving AI, Algorithms, and Market Challenges in 2026

So here we are in 2026, and if you're a writer right now, you probably feel like you're standing in the middle of a battlefield where everyone's shouting different things and nobody's quite sure who the enemy is. Today I’m launching a monthly blog series on writing in 2026. Each month I’ll explore what writers are really facing: the challenges, the opportunities, and the messy reality of it all. For January, we’re starting with the foundations. We’ll look at where we are, why everything seems so loud and confusing, and how to stay grounded when the world around you is unstable.

THE AI CONVERSATION

Let's start with the obvious: writers are fighting against AI. And I mean really fighting. In 2025, over 70 authors including Dennis Lehane, Gregory Maguire, and Lauren Groff released an open letter to major publishers, and within 24 hours, over 1,100 people signed the petition. The message was clear: don't publish books written by machines.

And unsurprisingly these conversations have gotten intense; leading some writing communities to ban AI discussions entirely because they became too toxic. The conversations devolved into name-calling and accusations, so moderators just shut it down completely. Others have dedicated spaces just for talking about it, trying to keep the debate contained so it doesn't bleed out everywhere else. And then you've got writers leaving communities altogether because they can't deal with the constant bickering.

Between July 2023 and November 2024, the number of subreddits with AI rules more than doubled. The subreddit r/WritingPrompts posted a clear rule: you are not allowed to use AI in this subreddit, you will be banned. Period. No discussion. But whether that rule is in place or not, moderators are dealing with three major concerns. Decreasing content quality, disrupted social dynamics, and the fact that AI content is incredibly difficult to police. One moderator called AI content "the most threatening concern" because it's often hard to detect and very disruptive to how these communities actually function.

I understand the difficulties of this personally as the owner of an AI-free press. There isn’t just one clean step to run a work through to determine whether it was penned by human hands or silicone chips.

That said, if you're looking for an AI-free writing community, I want to mention The Order of the Written Word, which is my AI-free writing challenge and Discord space. When you build something from the ground up with that as the core principle, it's considerably easier to manage. There's no retrofitting rules or trying to convince people who've been doing things one way to suddenly do them differently. And frankly, it's not as messy as Reddit. The community knows what it signed up for.

But even in AI-free spaces, writers have been asking for something more. Something they can show readers and publishers. That's why the Authors Guild launched a "Human Authored" certification in January 2025, specifically so writers could prove their books came from actual human brains and not algorithms. And honestly? I was relieved when they did. I'd been thinking about creating something similar through The Stygian Society, but I really didn't need another thing on my plate. So when the Guild stepped up, I thought, thank god someone with more resources than me is handling this.

But think about that for a second. We now need certification to prove we wrote our own books. That's where we are. That's how flooded the market has become with AI-generated content that readers and publishers need a badge to know a human actually sat down and wrote the thing.

And it's not because writers are paranoid. Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing processes about 1.4 million self-published titles annually. Nobody knows exactly how many of those are AI-generated, but if you've browsed new releases lately, you've probably noticed something's off. Generic titles, nearly identical covers, writing that sounds flat and robotic. Writers are watching their work get buried under an avalanche of content pumped out in hours instead of months or years.

WHEN WRITING IS YOUR DAY JOB

Now, in spaces like mine where I talk a lot about fiction writing, often to writers who have not reached the career level yet, this conversation looks different than it does for people doing commercial writing work. But I've also been a copywriter, and on that side of things, it's been incredibly impactful.

If you're a technical writer or a copywriter, you've probably watched your industry collapse in real time. Over the last two years, I personally watched clients bleed away. They brushed off the need for a copywriter and replaced my work with clearly terrible AI-generated writing. And they didn't care that it was bad. It was cheap, it was fast, and that was enough.

My company fought for me with many clients. They really did. But eventually we just had to pivot. I'm now a Sales Operations Coordinator, which is actually pretty exciting. But that pivot was necessary because recent Statistics Canada research shows that about 60% of Canadian workers are in jobs highly exposed to AI-related transformation, including both tasks that AI can perform and tasks where AI complements the work. For people in knowledge-intensive, cognitive roles, AI is reshaping how jobs are done, and many have had to adapt to new tools, workflows, or even shift their career paths entirely.

But even for creative writers, for novelists and essayists and the people writing books for the love of it, there's pressure about what level of AI is okay to use. Where do you draw that line? Should you touch it at all? Is it okay for brainstorming? For generating prompts? For outlining? What about research or formatting?

A Stanford study found that 41% of AI implementation falls into 'unwanted or impossible' territory. Companies are automating tasks like creative writing that workers actually want to keep. Workers generally prefer AI to handle repetitive or low-value tasks while keeping human oversight for more complex work, but these preferences are often ignored. But for writers trying to navigate this on their own terms, the question becomes: where's your line?

Some writers won't touch it at all. Others use it for administrative tasks, marketing, data organization. And then there's the guilt and the judgment. If you admit you use AI for anything, are you betraying the craft? If you don't use it, are you making your life harder than it needs to be?

Right now, a lot of writers feel like that line is being drawn for them. By the market. By publishers. By the flood of AI-generated content making it harder for human work to be seen. And that's where the real tension lives.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE

AI dominates the conversation. It's loud, it's scary, and it sucks all the oxygen out of the room. But while everyone's fighting about ChatGPT writing novels, there are other massive problems crushing writers that barely get mentioned.

Let me tell you about platform instability.

In 2025, organic discoverability on Amazon basically died. More than 70% of Amazon sellers now use Amazon Ads to drive visibility, up from roughly 40% five years ago. Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display placements now dominate above-the-fold results for many high-intent searches. What does that mean for writers? It means if your ads stop running and sales drop, organic visibility is no longer enough.

Amazon launched Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands for authors in January 2025, letting authors run ads the same way brands advertise products. Sounds great, right? Except now you're competing in an ad ecosystem where success requires constant spend, data analysis, and understanding metrics like ACoS, ROAS, and TACoS. You're not just a writer anymore. You're a marketer who needs to learn ad dashboards.

And social media? Forget it. Organic reach is functionally gone. Algorithms throttle links and long-form promotion. Platforms deprioritise you overnight with no explanation. Authors are told to "build a platform," but no platform is stable long enough to actually build on.

The contradiction, is that you need visibility to sell books. But visibility now requires spending money you haven't made yet. And the platforms you're spending on can change the rules whenever they want.

Then there's reader trust, which is collapsing.

Readers are overwhelmed. They're skeptical. Reviews on platforms like Goodreads or Amazon can be skewed by hype, author fandom, or even coordinated campaigns. Goodreads users posted 26 million reviews and 300 million ratings in one recent year, with quality and honesty varying widely. Five-star ratings get handed out like candy. Bestseller tags feel meaningless. Readers don't know what to believe anymore.

For new writers, this creates an impossible situation. You need bold marketing to stand out. But bold marketing triggers skepticism. Your cover, your blurb, your entire brand gets scrutinised harder than ever. And readers abandon books faster, sample more, commit less.

Discovery now relies more on parasocial trust than the book itself. Readers want to know you as a person before they'll risk their time on your work. Which circles back to platform instability. You're building that trust on platforms that could implode tomorrow.

And if these looming issues aren't enough, we still have the classics. Market saturation. Financial uncertainty. The pressure to be a marketer, designer, analyst, and business owner all at once. Distribution challenges. Metadata optimization. Learning curves that never end.

But those are evergreen problems. What makes 2026 different is instability. Unstable platforms. Unstable trust. Unstable attention. Writers are navigating a system where the rules keep changing and nobody's sure what will work six months from now.

AI gets all the headlines. But the broader story for writers in 2026 is trying to build a career on ground that won't stop moving

HOW 2026 FEELS DIFFERENT AND WHY THE PRESSURE IS SO HIGH

Every generation of writers has lived through industry changes.

The printing press. Paperbacks. E-books. Self-publishing. Online retail. Social media.

Each change caused anxiety. Each change sparked predictions about the death of writing. And each time, the industry adjusted.

Self-publishing is a good example. When it became widely accessible, traditional publishing warned of a flood of low-quality work. That flood did arrive. And then something else happened. Readers adapted. Filters formed. Entire careers were built outside traditional publishing. The system stabilised over time.

But what writers are dealing with in 2026 does not feel like a single change. It feels like several pressure points moving at once.

AI is part of that pressure. Text generation tools now produce work that looks convincingly human. They replicate tone, structure, and familiar storytelling patterns. That alone has raised serious questions about authorship and originality. It has also raised legal questions about how these systems were trained and whose work was used.

By 2025, more than 65 copyright lawsuits against AI companies were active in U.S. federal courts. One major case resulted in a reported settlement of over a billion dollars after a judge ruled that millions of books may have been downloaded without authorization. Authors are no longer debating hypotheticals. They are confronting the possibility that their published work was absorbed into systems they never agreed to support.

Publishers are unsettled as well. Industry conferences in 2025 showed wide disagreement over AI translation, AI narration, and machine-generated manuscripts. Some publishers rejected the quality outright. Others acknowledged strong demand for content and ongoing pressure to produce more with fewer resources. No shared standard has emerged. Policies change quickly, sometimes quietly, and often without clarity for writers.

Distribution and discovery systems have developed in ways writers have never seen before. In the era of paperbacks or even early e-books, readers still found new books through stores, libraries, or trusted recommendations. Organic discovery existed, and quality work had a chance to rise on its own. In 2026, online marketplaces favour paid visibility. Advertising placements dominate search results. Organic discovery is unpredictable. Social platforms limit external links and amplify short-form content, so building an audience requires constant attention to algorithms and ad performance.

Reader behaviour has also changed. In previous decades, bestseller lists, reviews, and word-of-mouth carried weight. Now trust is harder to earn. Ratings and tags are inconsistent. Readers sample widely and abandon books quickly. They expect personal connection with authors before committing time or money.

For new writers, the combination of unstable platforms, high marketing demands, and evolving reader expectations makes 2026 feel fundamentally different. Careers are built on systems that change without warning, and visibility depends on both technical skill and social presence in ways that were unnecessary in earlier publishing eras.

All of this plays out against a backdrop of exhaustion. Burnout rates across creative industries climbed sharply in 2025. Writers are asked to manage their creative skill level, promotion, branding, analytics, community, and income instability at the same time. Writing itself still demands focus, patience, and emotional stamina.

That combination explains why everything feels louder. Conversations are sharper. Online spaces are fracturing. Moderation is becoming stricter. Nuance struggles to survive in systems built to reward reaction and speed.

The defining feature of writing in 2026 is instability.

STAYING GROUNDED

So what do you actually do with all of this? How do you stay grounded and find some peace amidst all this chatter and change?

1. Clarify your values.

Decide what human creativity means to you. Write it down. When someone asks why you don’t just use AI to write faster, you need a clear, honest answer. Your values become a compass in a chaotic environment.

2. Focus on craft.

Double down on what makes your work uniquely yours. AI can generate words, but it cannot replicate a distinct voice, lived experience, emotional depth, or original insight. Your skill is your advantage. Spend time honing it. Take workshops, read deeply, experiment with forms. Invest in yourself as a creator, not just in output.

3. Build real connections.

Not follower counts. Actual relationships with writers, editors, and readers who value your work. Use online spaces as a funnel to offline engagement:

• Attend local writing groups, readings, or literary festivals.

• Host workshops, salons, or small reading circles.

• Create book clubs or critique circles in your city.

Offline connections are more resilient than online algorithms. They build trust, opportunities, and audiences in ways social media alone cannot.

4. Document your process. 

People will increasingly value transparency and authenticity. Show the work behind your work:

• Share drafts, revisions, and notes.

• Talk about your creative choices and challenges.

• If you use AI for research or formatting, be open about it.

This builds credibility and gives readers and collaborators a reason to invest in your voice.

5. Protect yourself legally.

Copyright and fair use are evolving rapidly. Lawsuits over AI training datasets and intellectual property are ongoing. You do not need to be a lawyer, but you do need awareness:

• Track the legal developments relevant to your genre.

• Keep records of your original work and publication dates.

• If unsure, consult professional organizations or legal advisors.

6. Manage your online time.

Digital overload is real. 62% of people report recurring burnout from constant notifications and social media. Nearly half say their browser distracts as often as it helps. Avoid endless scrolling or debates that drain your energy. Focus online only when it serves offline goals or strengthens your abilities as an author.

7. Diversify visibility beyond algorithms.

When it comes to social media, instability is baked in. Paid visibility dominates, and organic reach can vanish overnight. Reduce dependence on any single platform:

• Maintain an email list or newsletter tied to your offline work.

• Host in-person events or readings.

• Use online tools to funnel audiences to spaces you control.

Your goal is not social media popularity. It is a stable foundation that supports your writing life.

8. Nurture resilience and perspective.

The broader cultural moment is intense, but creative careers always require stamina. Past technological and social developments, from photography to digital art, show that human creativity adapts. Authentic, thoughtful work persists.

• Set boundaries around conversations that do not serve you.

• Schedule regular writing time and breaks.

• Maintain hobbies, friendships, and routines outside of writing.

These steps help you operate clearly, consistently, and sustainably, even when platforms, reader behaviour, and markets feel unpredictable.

TAKEAWAY

As a writer you may want certainty right now. But the thing is, nobody can give you that. The legal battles continue. Technology continues to change. The market remains unstable.

You do not need certainty to move forward. You need clarity about your own values and goals. You need to know what you stand for and what you will not compromise on. You need to understand which tools serve your work and which ones make it harder.

A broader cultural moment is unfolding. Many historians and commentators describe it as a new renaissance of creativity. Periods of major technological change often highlight human imagination, emotional expression, and originality. As machines automate routine work and digital fatigue spreads, human creativity becomes more visible and more valued.

Some thinkers suggest that this moment parallels the original Renaissance. Art, literature, and culture flourish when people are forced to reconsider what humans can contribute that machines cannot. Today, audiences and institutions are paying attention to work that reflects human choice, effort, and insight.

The pressures you feel now may be part of a larger realignment. As routine work is automated and attention becomes fragmented, what humans create, imagine, and think matters more. Authenticity, intention, and personal expression are in demand.

Do not try to pick a side in someone else’s conflict. Stay true to what makes your work matter. Human connection, emotional truth, and creative effort are what readers seek.

That is what readers value. That is what lasts. This moment can shine a spotlight on human creativity. That is what writers have the opportunity to offer.