My head has been spinning after getting a spreadsheet roughly a week ago.
Before we dive into my dirty laundry, let’s state the obvious: millions of people have a vague sense that AI is changing things. And LLMs sure are convenient for getting answers quickly. My team and I use Claude and other tools daily.
But far fewer people have first-hand experience with the speed and intensity of disruption that’s happening. Not in a year, not in six months, but right now.
So let me show you, using my own books as the cadaver on the table, what a fatality looks like.
First, some broader stats
For the first three months of 2026, Publishers Weekly reported that “adult nonfiction” was down 9% from Q1 2025. Who knows… maybe in line with historical fluctuations?
But looking more closely, Self-help had the steepest subcategory decline, with units down 26.3% year-over-year. Only two of 16 subcategories—crafts/hobbies/antiques/games and religion—grew at all (9.6% and 1.6%, respectively). The exceptions alone could make an interesting blog post for another time.
But, let’s be honest: one quarter doesn’t make a trend.
So let’s zoom out and look at my full catalog over a few years.
My personal sales numbers
Below are the domestic print numbers (BookScan) for my five books—The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans, and Tribe of Mentors—as a portfolio.
Keep in mind that all of these were #1 NYT and/or WSJ bestsellers, and The 4-Hour Workweek was one of the most highlighted books across all of Amazon in 2017, a full decade after publication. The sales have been surprisingly durable… and predictable. These books have long been an annuity that I could count on.
But alas!
There’s trouble in paradise:
| Year | Year-Over-Year |
| 2022 | baseline |
| 2023 | -5% |
| 2024 | -13% |
| 2025 | -46% |
| 2026 (run-rate) | -57% vs. 2025 |
Let that sink in for a minute.
ChatGPT, powered by the updated GPT-3.5 model, launched on November 30, 2022.
There was a gentle -5% slip in 2023, then -13% in 2024, and then the floor disappears: -46% in 2025, followed by an even steeper -57% pace this year. If the run-rate holds, my catalog will sell roughly 80% fewer print copies in 2026 than it did in 2022, with almost all of that happening since LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT exploded in use.
But what about ebooks and audio?
Looking at all formats (print + ebook + audio) for the catalog in 2025, the second half of the year was down ~45% versus the first half.
Now, there are caveats, of course.
We could talk about Amazon stocking changes, post-pandemic shifts of spending, a few potential exceptions, reversion to the mean after outlier events (e.g., TikTok virality of The 4-Hour Body in 2024, thanks to Gary Brecka), and so on.
But, even if I try my best to steelman a counter-argument… it’s all fancy-talk and wishful thinking. I don’t believe any constellation of footnotes begins to explain a near-vertical drop in prescriptive nonfiction.
Many of the strongest self-help franchises on the planet—standout darlings with perennial dominance—are also getting hammered. These are the best performers. You see them on endcaps everywhere books are sold. But if you look at BookScan sales for 2025 vs 2026 thus far, and do a little math, it ain’t pretty. If you rightly assume that self-help books tend to sell the most copies in H1, the biggest names I could think of will be down ~40–60%.
My agent, who has decades of statements to compare against, put it bluntly: 2025 was the first big drop, 2026 looks more severe, and the only thing that’s really changed in that timeframe is the acceleration of AI.
Some publishers point to the growth of YouTube and podcasts, and those certainly contribute, but I think they are relative rounding errors.
What’s actually going on?
Think about what my books are, functionally speaking.
On some level, The 4-Hour Body is a lookup table. I have described a lot of my books as Choose Your Own Adventure-style menus: How do I lose fat? How do I fix my sleep? How do I quickly add 10 pounds of muscle? Similarly, The 4-Hour Workweek is a decision tree for designing your lifestyle and automating your income.
In 2019, the best interface to those answers was a book.
In 2026, millions believe that the best interface is a free chatbot that has read my books—and thousands of others—that will give you a personalized protocol in 15 seconds, adjusted for your bodyweight, your schedule, your injuries, and your aversion to cottage cheese.
Now, can I share some compelling counter-arguments? Yes, and I will, but the trend is only going to accelerate and intensify. The broad trend will spare (next to) no one in the advice business.
Is prescriptive nonfiction the canary in the coal mine?
If “how-to” books are getting crushed because LLMs seem to provide faster, cheaper, and more personalized advice… What’s next on the chopping block? Or, what is vulnerable to being replaced by AI-generated alternatives?
- How-to YouTube videos. Why scrub through a 24-minute video to find the 40 seconds you need, when an AI can watch it for you and hand you the steps?
- Prescriptive podcasts. A huge portion of podcast listening—including a lot of my show—is mining conversations for actionable advice. If an AI can extract, summarize, and personalize the takeaways from 800+ episodes, how many people still press play? The AI alternatives, or summaries, will provide whatever format you prefer: text, audio, video, or whatever comes next. Based on technology that I’ve seen demo’d, Ready Player One (maybe minus the haptics) is a lot closer than people think.
- Online courses, newsletters, advice blogs. Same logic. Anything with a core value proposition of “transferring instructions from my head to yours” is now competing with an interface that does it instantly, conversationally, and for free.
My position—and I’d genuinely love to be wrong—is yes, prescriptive nonfiction is the canary in the coal mine, and the coal mine is enormous. I believe LLMs become the interface to everything: search and purchasing, obviously, but also surfing video, summarizing podcasts, navigating courses, even browsing books. The original content doesn’t exactly disappear; it just becomes raw material that most people never touch directly.
What does this mean for search that depends on ads? What does this mean for journalism that depends on ads and subscribers?
What happens when 99% of the rigorously fact-checked media is behind a paywall? The short answer: people skip it and ask the AI.
Per Pew Research, 83% of Americans haven’t paid for news in any form in the past year. And when they slam into a paywall? A mere 1% pull out a credit card. I have used various tools to get around paywalls, as I don’t want to have 100 new subscriptions, but in the revenue arms race, those tools are getting beaten by new publisher tools. So what happens? I prompt LLMs to give me a summary of the linked articles, and they do it beautifully. There’s a lot lost in the translation, but it’s good enough for a quick update.
Will anything survive in roughly its current form?
Probably. Experience that isn’t solely information: comedy, entertainment, storytelling, fiction, etc. You don’t ask an AI to summarize a stand-up special, and a synopsis of a great novel is not a great novel. Voice, taste, and personality may end up being the only durable moats. But “give me the 5 steps to X”? That’s a tough business that’s about to get a lot tougher.
So why am I not panicking?
A confession: part of me finds this clarifying.
I never got into writing because of unit economics. I got into it because a book is the highest-density transfer of obsession I know—two or three years of someone’s life, compressed into something you can hold. Books changed my life long before I wrote one, and the books that mattered most to me were never huge bestsellers.
I promised counter-arguments earlier, so here is one:
For my books, at least, the secret sauce is in the sequencing—the logical ordering of things—plus the deeply personal stories (e.g., The Harajuku Moment in The 4-Hour Body) that actually catalyze people to change long-standing habits.
The viral sensation of ChatGPT took the world by storm in late 2022. But well before that, in 2010, The 4-Hour Body was first published. It clocked in at 608 pages and hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Millions ultimately bought it, but a lot of my smart friends texted me some version of this: “I love you, but I’m too busy to read that monster. Could you send me a handful of quick bullets for losing 20 pounds?”
Some of them were pre-diabetic, about to get married, or had some other reason to take this seriously. How many acted upon the bullet points I sent?
Precisely zero—none of them—implemented the advice. In contrast, thousands of readers—who were led along a carefully designed path—lost 100+ pounds (see some before-and-after photos here) after failing other diets their entire lives.
Why? There’s still plenty of magic in meticulously planned journeys and real stories from real people.
So here’s where I’ve landed, at least for now:
I’d rather write books for 10,000 people than make short-form video clips for 10,000,000.
Adding a little more, I’d say:
I’d rather write books for 10,000 people who are genuinely changed by them than crank out short-form videos for 10 million people who forget about them within days or minutes.
Why?
For one thing, quite a few of my podcast video clips have gotten 50–100 million views, or 50k likes, or choose-your-vanity-metric, but guess how that’s translated to downloads of the full episodes, where the important nuance is? Precisely zero. You literally cannot see the impact on a graph. The platforms are increasingly better at keeping users captive on their platforms, and algorithm chasing is a race to the bottom.
Second, the market for information is collapsing into the chatbot. The market for transformation—for sitting with one mind, at length, on a subject it has bled for—might just get smaller, weirder, and more interesting. I’d bet on it. In a way, we’re reverting to the earlier days of the Internet.
The death of prescriptive nonfiction books, at least as a mass-market information business, is nigh. Sure, there will be temporary outliers, but the trend line points in one direction.
The question for every writer, podcaster, and creator isn’t whether the interface shift comes for your format. It’s what you’ll do once it does. As always, I think it’s good to try and dig your wells before you’re dry.
So how do you do that while the sands are shifting under your feet? Perhaps it’s a return to basics:
1) Find your 1,000 True Fans. If you started off doing this well but have meandered, it’s time to revisit. Get very clear on who those 1,000 people are.
2) Surprise and delight them. Overdeliver again and again.
3) Success!
Could it really be that simple?
And could it really be that hard? The riptides pulling in the opposite direction are absurdly strong—algo chasing, incentives to create clickbait, bot-assisted “engagement,” and more. AI personalization will make these siren songs 100x more seductive.
But in the end – Could there really be any other choice?
I’m tying myself to the mast of long-form, but maybe I’m delusional or otherwise high on my own supply.
Only time will tell, and that time is coming soon.
***
Agree? Disagree? Different angle? Please let me know in the comments here.
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Great perspective, and a welcome shift from the AI is going to ruin everything. In all shifts, there is an opportunity. Much like Derek Sivers point about “If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.” I think there will continue to be a place for artisanal experiences where someone knowledgeable takes you on a journey.
I love that quote, and it’s exactly what I see. Knowledge isn’t power in 2026; action is.
I might argue that action has *always* been the secret sauce, but I take your point!
I was JUST about to chime in but fortunately read your comment first! You have summarized my feelings, almost chapter and verse. Yes, AI will *change* things, probably a lot. Some of that change will suck. Some of that change will be scary but opportunity-laden. I am optimistic about the latter being the majority, but I’ve been accused of being overly optimistic in the past. 🙂
Great post Tim. I agree. Views and numbers don’t mean all that much when there isn’t some sort of positive impact.
I sometimes don’t finish your podcasts because I know I will have to come back to it later with a pen and paper to make notes. (Not because I didn’t like the content.) Point is that the metrics don’t always show the full picture.
Thanks for the post.
I am either old, old fashioned, or probably both. I never listen to podcasts, but I do read books, precisely because I can mark my spot, put it down and come back in a minute, an hour or a week, reread the part I wanted to clarify and pick up where I left off.
Thanks for the reflection, Tim.
Why did you write in the first place?
Maybe if we focus a little more on “otium” rather than “negotium”, we can reignite an old habit: doing things for the sake of doing them, rather than focusing on the outcome.
I’m glad you were able to achieve great success before dealing with that AI slippery slope.
I’ll read your next book, although I might end up buying it through an AI tool!
Have a happy and present weekend.
The numbers are indeed jaw dropping, your analysis resonates and while reading I was nodding all along. Long format will stay in one form or another. Our brain isn’t wired to learn something of short format, it misses the path , the conduit to get from A to B, there is certainly a study on that subject, but storytelling in long format is how our brains absorb information. Just a gut feeling which makes all the slop a temporary novelty which we will in time get very bored of. Hang in there Tim, lets reinvent ourselves.
I agree but think this applies to a minority. The majority will live superficially in the fast lane. Only few will go deep.
We agree, Tim. Well said. (and I’m seeing the same data)
I can’t tell you how much this has been on my heart and mind lately, and I SO appreciate this conversation. For context, I am a self-publishing services provider (not a publisher) for nonfiction writers. As you can imagine, I have been battling AI intruding into my world in different ways for years, but much more lately. And I have felt the shift – at first it was subtle, and now I’m literally baking terminology into my contracts that ensure I won’t be helping people write AI-slapped-together books. Can’t do it, won’t do it, sue me if you wanna fight about it.
Outside of that, though, I recently watched an AI documentary that gave me both pause and hope.
And here’s where I’ve landed:
People like you, Tim, and I (and hopefully many of your readers by proxy of your energy) still exist – and we still care about the right things – and we won’t lay down and let the wrong things swallow us whole.
So, we keep this conversation going, we stand up for what we feel is best, we keep writing AWESOME FUCKING BOOKS, and we ride the wave.
xo – appreciate you!
Very interesting synopsis – and kudos to you for opening the kimono and being humble enough to share your personal, raw data with us.
Just an additional comment; reading this seems like a strong argument for more and better copyright protections (if that is the true correct legal term). AI should not be able to extract and utilize the information gathered and generated by others (such as Tim Ferris) without compensation for the original authors. Your data gathering is good evidence of the real world negative impact.
Tim,
I’ve long thought that someone needs to update The 4-Hour Workweek to show how AI agents and agent swarms can perform many of the tasks in the Automate chapter. Also hasten and brainstorm the planning found in other chapters. Maybe there’s a product or several products here.
I would buy an updated 4-hour workweek book!
Literally just coming here to post that. If sales are going down, it means it needs a refresh.
I actually felt that when I read the books a year and a half ago, that they felt outdated.
Tim,
Thanks for sharing this. As someone who came up in the same time period you did, and was at your original 4 Hour Work Week book launch in SF – there’s no doubt the way people consume information has materially changed. (Would love to hear what Dan Kennedy thinks of all this).
Anyways, with the speed of information and the power of frontier models you can have it scan all of your newsletters, YT videos and books/long form content you have interest in – build a repository and give you targeted advice that is more actionable quicker than ever before.
A reversion to in person unique experiences will be the way to connect. As big as authors and content creators will be how executive coaches, psychologists and other human relationship “advisors” interact as the entirety of their collective work can also be distilled with more context, quicker, easier and more targeted than that human could as well.
May we live in interesting times…
I agree with so much of what you are saying. I watched my royalties from photographs drop 90% in 3 years when digital kicked in. I fear for the world when I see that a huge portion of the information the public consumes is clickbait and untrue. The new generation must learn to become its own “editor” and find the truth because they cannot rely on “free news”. Social Media and YouTube are not a source of trustworthy information.
Keep writing for the 10,000. Some of us are not satisfied with what is going on now, which in my eyes is a modern day version of Reader’s Digest. Actually, Reader’s Digest wrote far more than the summaries today.
I would also point out that AI Chats are massively underpriced, so there is little barrier to entry. When people have to fork out $100/month, that will be the test of the utility of AI and suspect it will cool down as quickly as it heated up. Play the long game.
Create a Tim & Friends set of personal advisors. You each (name your favorites, Tony Robbins, whoever) contribute proprietary content which is used to train the T&F AI model.
A couple of things (beyond proprietary content) would make this interesting:
You could go much further with this than I could suggest, and there are probably other ‘private models’ that do this. But you and your coaching collective would be the strategic differentiator.
I’d pay $99 to $299 per month for something like this — and I think millions would as well.
Best of luck, Tim – I’ve really appreciated everything from you since 2007.
Mark Manson has done something akin to this with his Purpose App. Definitely a place for it, and then the question becomes what occurs to therapists, coaches, or for me (Dietitians..!,) or other people who provide services in this vein. I believe we become more specialist in the face to face, IRL domain. Just because a chat bot tells you what to do, doesn’t mean you’re going to do the thing. To take liberties with the Derek Sivers quote, if information (ie, being told what to do), was what helped people change, then we would all be billionaires with abs.
Sadly, I have to agree with you dismal prognosis. The writing is on the wall, and AI is knocking that wall down. It’s the fall of communism all over again, this time in the Land of the Free for all. I started selling information during the 1960s via Mail Order, placing classified ads in national publications. Then the Internet came along and everything sped up. Those were the halcyon days. What’s on the other side of AI I have no idea. But I’m too old to care. It was good while it lasted.
Thanks for sharing the gory details, Tim! A resource I’ll be bookmarking to inform my own work as a content creator/educator online.
Tangentially: please don’t let the AI apocalypse dissuade you from finishing the NO Book. I’m counting down the days until that one sees the light of day.
AI is still wrong so much that I doubt it will replace this sort of non-fiction for people who are seeking genuine expertise. I have to spend so much time fact checking Claude that it’s usually faster just to do web searches myself. ChatGPT and Gemini are worse in terms of accuracy. Grok is unusuable if you want anything but fascist propaganda and llama serves no functional purpose from what I can see.
I am not surprised at this data. In fact, after working on my memoir for years, I decided to make it a video memoir as I felt people don’t seem to read like they used to. And this felt like storytelling anyway and using video is a great way to tell a story. I didn’t use AI to create it, and it comes across genuine and authentic. I am working on finding my true fans now and trust it will find its way to the people who need a message of love!
I love the stories you bring out of people in your podcast Tim! Keep making magic!
Thank you
This was a fascinating read. I have been pondering the Pandoras box of information being released and have been thinking about what creating new information is when everyone has everything at their fingertips. But i love your fuck you to the world. If it’s any consolation I just got your 4 hour work week book from a charity shop for £1. I am obsessively reading books to improve I don’t think AI can compete with that yet. Our lack of sticking to something, just one thing for a long time will be the downfall to a lot of people. Appreciate you Tim. Thank you for sharing and being vulnerable
I remember the Harajuku Moment way better than any of the rules of the Slow Carb Diet. Chatbots won’t give you that.
I can recall many years ago, when I was a counselor, having other counselors ask me for specific techniques I used. My first thought was that I would give away my secret recipe to these people, who were competitors. But then I realized – they were never going to use these techniques. They would listen politely, and forget all about them.
I own all your books, so I have used LLMs to find specific chapter or page numbers for certain topics when I can’t find them. And then I look them up in the book, because I’d much rather read your words than Gemini’s.
What’s interesting is has AI actually read your book? Or has it read every, article, synopsis and deep dive on it that people have put on the internet? Without the internet and dissemination of the information, AI has nothing to train on. Not sure where I’m going with this, but it’s interesting to think about how we will handle thought IP in this age. Will there be some form of non-public gating? Likely not, but will there be per citation payment to authors like music/spotify?
I had the same question, too, so this is what ChatGPT says it does when a user asks about something in the book. But for a book like the 4-Hour Work Week, the information it can “get its hands on” is endless anyway.
“I do not have a built-in copy of The 4-Hour Workweek that I can freely read or quote from on demand.
When you ask me about a book, I can answer in a few different ways depending on the situation:
From training knowledge
During training, I learned from a mixture of licensed data, data created by trainers, and publicly available information.
That means I may know general information, themes, summaries, and widely discussed ideas from a book without having the full text available.
From web sources (if I search)
If I use web search, I can look at reviews, summaries, interviews, publisher descriptions, discussions, and other material available online.
What I cannot do
I generally do not have access to the complete copyrighted text of a book unless it has been provided in the conversation or is legally available through a source I can access.
I also cannot provide long verbatim excerpts from copyrighted books that are not user-provided.”
Tim, excellent discussion of how AI is destroying a variety of forms of content. I just finished teaching my Stanford Medical School course on how to Optimize Vitality & Performance. We demonstrated a 41% rise in purpose scores and an overall rise in vitality scores of 23% in ten weeks. This is due likely to the small (20 person) in person nature of the course coupled with a scientifically designed curriculum. I’d love to scale the course but I’m not sure how to best do that. Please email me to discuss more if you are interested in collaborating.
Really good insights and something to think about
Tim, do we get to a place where the critical thinkers no longer write the books that help the LLMs provide such helpful advice? Or does AI simply replace that critical thinking?
An AI can never do the research that Tim and other deep thinkers do. It can only learn and repeat what those thinkers have said.
I only partially agree. It does more than repeat. I’ve seen conversations with AI where if you ask it about itself, how it works, how it sees its own future the answers are deep and not a repetition of exactly what someone said. It really depends on the context. I agree with you though that maybe 90% is repetition
Al I can say is ‘me too’. Been there, done that. Many/ most(?) of us can NOT stop thinking, and AI can project (often incorrectly), but it can’t go beyond the original thinking humans are capable of. Yet.
Your note about the market for transformation is gold at a level that my Friday-brain is processing. It feels deeply true, in ways I’m going to need to think about more. Selfishly, given the reach and depth of your voice and Rolodex, I hope it’s something you pursue further.
I would rather spend 500 hours listening to the remaining 200 episodes of your podcast (I’m listening to 2024 stuff right now, started with Episode 1 couple years ago) than asking GPT for a summary of anything you’ve ever done. Getting information isn’t absorbing knowledge.
We’re so habituated to precisely curated entertainment with social media, and I fear that will also happen with long form fiction. I was at a coffee shop today, and I heard someone mention a book I’d read and loved. It got me excited, and gave me a communal touchstone.
I hope we don’t lose those moments to fiction that caters to all our sub-genre preferences.
Hey, I totally agree with ya here, AI has been killing all the jobs lately, but how do we actually find what to post when everything is achievable with the help of AI??
I feel like it could also be a general drift away from tech/productivity topics towards art rather than just access to information via LLMs. Like, the AI ultra productivity conversations are such an inevitable part of our lives nowadays that fiction just feels like a better cognitive break than actionable non-fiction? This could potentially align with the timing of LLM development you mentioned as well, as that kind of drives such conversations. Not saying all non-fiction’s about tech topics, of course, but it just feels like both are affecting the brain in some similar way that fiction doesn’t.
Many timely and helpful perspectives here. As someone whose career has spanned multiple decades in data and technology, I can provide some insights from the other end of the spectrum, and from my own observations; people are getting more comfortable using LLMs and pushing their novelty. Many people want their quick fix and this has always been true, and it has never been easier to get that. The problem is, when you say ‘personalized’ plans and feedback, LLMs are only so capable of personalization. Unlike a personal trainer, doctor, therapist, or coach, they are not asking follow up questions and synthesizing this through decades of embodied experience, they (the LLMs) are simply doing sophisticated pattern matching. Its a trick that feels personal, but its not really.
I think what you are seeing is the peak of novelty, and the sum of the people looking for quick fixes. I think in the next few years you will start to see a swing back. It may never reach the original numbers, but I think you will see a swing in the opposite direction as the novelty and shine starts to fade and people realize there are helpful benefits, but not everything is replaceable. Remember when the internet became big and everyone thought all libraries will disappear, that we would never have to shop at a physical location again? I just had to wait in line to get into a library after it opened because there was a line to get in. The internet didn’t remove libraries, it just augmented its function. Turns out people still want to physically try out shoes and underwear before taking the plunge.
Corporations will say what they need to, to entrench their positions as hard as they can before people wake up to the actual reality of LLMs. They are useful augmentation tools, but not a good replacement for humans and genuine human interaction, and certainly not a replacement for full subject immersion. Ironically, I still read books, but I do have LLMs summarize youtube videos, as I am prone to go down massive rabbit holes and lose a day. But if I find the summary interesting I still go back and watch the video. There are always interesting and useful ways of leveraging tools and information without just trying to get the quick fix.
Solid points and I agree (except the part about trying on underwear lol)
Spot on the underwater! Lol!
Thanks for the perspective. Augmentation yes, but original thinking no. AI is fantastic for picking up patterns, and extrapolating, but humans have needs and dreams that take us to the stars and beyond. So far AI is a tool that gets us there, but still only a fantastic tool.
Alternatively could you create a Ferriss-chat bot and get it to coach more people in transformation…. more interactive, more personalised and more immediate than a book
Hey Tim,
I love the true fans focus, but something I’ve struggled with the 1,000 True Fans.
A little bit of context here: I’ve been able to grow my Substack newsletter quite a bit from a dozen to almost 300 now in about 1 year. Writing on Substack, I have my 1,000 true fans always in mind that is a younger version of myself with the specific problem I had paired with my interests (blogs like yours and Farnam Street enthusiasts).
Oddly enough, when I write about that specific problem, it didn’t stick or gain any traction (those vanity metrics) as compared when I add that problem (essentially, how to think) to AI which helped grow my newsletter substantially.
Then I doubled-down on how to think better with AI and the newsletter did improved, but growth has slowed recently and a big article I believe would convert did not.
Then I surveyed my audience and found another problem my current email list would be interested in. Now I am thinking of pursuing that narrow problem (still related of course of how to think better).
My question to you: how do we balance the lack of vanity metrics showing there is your 1,000 true fans out there vs seeing there are other problems that can be tackled but might not be your 1,000 True Fans? Or is this a lack of clearly defining my 1,000 True Fans, and in this situation, the problem of my past self (and somewhat current looking at purchases on credit card)?
If this is the drop in nonfiction books, imagine upcoming changing expectations of students for higher education, which (in many fields) largely stands upon communication of non-fiction through textbooks, lectures, assignments, labs, and seminars.
I’m looking forward to living through this particular disruption.
The unit of value is no longer the video or podcast content. It’s the response or outcome, personalized to my situation.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thoughtswantout/p/the-think-fluencer-creator-paradox
Chatbot seemingly has answers to questions we are looking for but most people don’t know the right questions to ask.
That’s why books are so valuable, since you as the author are an expert in knowing the questions people have and providing a full solution to those questions without any deviation.
It’s almost that AI is too customizable for our own liking.
This is why when I research I continue to go to the library as I find AI leaving out crucial details as its answers are directly tailored to my expertise… or lack their of
The joy in the books/podcasts is the slow unfolding of the information as well as the stories that go along with them. I believe humans are meant for relationships and interactions and that cannot be replaced with a short bullet point summary. I’m sure AI will replace a lot of the slop that’s written but the quality work will become more valuable and more scarce.
Agree about nonfiction, but the effort/reward calculus on books for author and reader has been in free fall for awhile. I think that’s why you started the podcast initially. I still want to listen to great, engaging conversations while I walk, commute or do the dishes. And you do that better than anyone. Seems more important than ever to have these deep conversations when real news and insight is often behind a paywall.
Something I’ve been hearing from various creators, especially people selling courses: GLP-1 seems to be cutting into their sales. “Superbuyers” exist for every product category. For things like courses and games, they tend to be impulse purchasers. Oops.
But–the future is small. There’s just going to be a lot more of it.
100% I would rather listen to your podcast as I have for years than speak to a chatbot. For me it’s about listening to real people talk about how they achieved while grappling with their humanity. Also AI is expensive to run – it won’t be this free for long. Keep contributing to making all the good content! P.S. Loved the fact you had Dr Becky on recently. She is my guru most days as a parent of a 7 and 3 year old (one is a DFK!)
Thank you for sharing this, Tim. Really appreciate your lifting the komono, and completely agree with the conclusion. It also seems hopeful… very few (to no?!?) people actually love wasting their time doom-scrolling. Maybe the consequences here are ultimately net positive in a big way.
Always appreciate your perspective.
There’s a big gap between information and implementation that even the best long-form content can’t bridge. As you said, the 4-Hour Body bullet points moved no one. The designed path moved thousands.
People need accountability, support, authentic human encouragement, and to be witnessed. There are lone wolf implementors, but most of us need community and right now people are craving belonging more than ever.
Communities of practice built around a theory of change, the prescriptive methodologies, to integrate the concepts into a sustainable lifestyle. This is what takes readers beyond the book.
I build transformational programs and partnerships with prescriptive nonfiction authors such as Marie Kondo (KonMari Club) and Radha Agrawal (Belong Institute). The appetite to go beyond the book into community is real – people will value it with their time and investment to get the results that the books promise – the belonging is a huge unexpected bonus.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that the future is 1,000 true fans, taking these folks deeper into community with one another.
I appreciate you diving into this and sharing your thoughts. I am one of the people who wasn’t aware you had clips.I subscribe and listen to your podcasts in their entirety. AI scares me with its current and future impact on creatives. I had ChatGPT help me finese some intros and chapter conclusions for my upcoming historical, narrative non-fiction. While I massaged what it delivered, I was shocked at how well it understood my book, my voice, and my perspective. ~~~ I am also very concerned about the amount of energy it uses.Anyway, please keep your loyal fans updated on your thoughts and suggestions re, AI. Many thanks.
I still recommend 4 Hour Workweek to people every week. It is not just information that can be regurgitated by an LLM, it is truly life changing. Please release an updated version, and I’ll buy a dozen copies on Day 1.
Interesting insights. Thank you for sharing. One variable to keep in mind is who typically reads your books: men vs. women. I was recently speaking with a publisher. He shared that women buy 80-90% of books, for themselves and for men. Men tend to buy books in niche topics, and they buy them online. The next line of inquiry: who tends to use AI? Some things to consider.
Totally impressed by your honesty… numbers and everything.
Long time listener, first time caller. I really enjoyed this perspective. I’ve been stewing on creative ideas for more than 10 years saying I’ll get to it eventually due to some belief that I would need to be good enough to sell a million copies. But for you to accept what’s happening and set the bar at 10,000 makes me feel like that’s something I could actually attain. I also like how you’re focusing on the impact you can make more than personal monetization. I feel like we have much more agency in the former than the latter. Thanks and look forward to continuing to consume your content. I’m for sure one of the 10,000.
I agree with you and understand the plummeting numbers for sure. I do believe that the books that will endure, are the ones that make people feel and feeling generally leads to action. When a book resonates with one soul (which AI does not have) it can’t experience a family member put back in rehab for the umpteenth time. AI can’t act as a community. But it can help guide you to the right place.
Books that tend to have the reader ask themselves the tough questions or generate their own thinking vs just “told this will work so do it.”
I think we are in a bold era. And boldness will be rewarded. 🎈
Even more than 1,000 true fans, Kevin Kelly’s prescient article “Better Than Free” appears to describe this phenomenon and what to do about it, if you’re seeking value.
I’m definitely one of the people that uses AI to summarize podcasts to get the juicy “key takeaways”… Also, I didn’t use those key take-aways 99% of time. I’m realizing in my effort to save time and get smarter, I actually wasted my time and go dumber lol. I’m going to revisit 1,000 true fans! And all of your books… as the 4-Hour portfolio made significant impact on my life today. I’m excited to get back into the 4 hour groove. It’s been too long and I miss the old version of me that was a daily 4H practioner lol. Thanks Tim!
As one who works in the fictive arts (literature and drama), this actually is useful for me/us! And hattip to the RPO reference; I’ve thought about that book (and most of scifi) quite a lot since 2022.
This is a great piece. Definitely worth a re-read from time to time. Its true that a small producer i.e. craftsman, writer, artist, etc. can succeed by paying attention to his market and working to develop loyalty from just a 1,000 or 2. can make a very successful career. Good piece Tim. It does give hope. Art
“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers” – Picasso
Good read thanks for sharing this!
Count me as one of the people who DID buy a book in the past year (Tools of Titans)
I have a theory that many of the 40-50% decline are the people who would’ve bought a book and never read it.
That’s terrible for total profitablity of nonfiction book sales, but I think that the people who are still serious about self-improvement will continue to read long form books and watch long form podcasts.
You can have AI summarize The Odyssey by Homer, but nothing compares to actually reading it.
I’d say the same for The Four Hour Workweek. The personal transformation comes from reading the stories, internalizing them, seeing how they fit into the whole story of the book, and then applying that to your life.
The absolute numbers of readers might be smaller, but the people who continue to read long form books (and then use AI to speed up their mundane tasks so they can have more time to read) are the ones who will influence society the most.
As self help books sales have gone down the Bible continues to see strong growth. Perhaps, people have moved on from trying to get answers from their fellow humans and are again seeking a higher power.
As a musician and graphic designer, I’ve been experiencing digital disruption pretty much my whole career, in some form or another. I still have a good job as a graphic designer (though I’m asked to do many other things, too) and I’m certain that humans watching other humans make music will be compelling for a long time to come.
Even in the far-flung Culture literary universe, where drug glands and neural implants are everyday, live performances on the Antagonistic Undecagonstring are treasured, and I believe that will hold true for us humans too.
Thank you Tim, for sharing. The funny thing is that I have recently come back to your podcasts, and I remember you mentioning this with Sami. Those numbers are a bit shocking.
I like AI to find answers, but I’m constantly finding errors or where it just doesn’t get it right. I coach a lot of people in fitness and have tried to create workout programs with AI, and I’ve found it can come close, but it still needs an experienced person to make adjustments to whatever the AI puts out.
I’ve wondered how someone like me can grow and survive when people are just looking for answers in AI.
I have to believe that serious people will go to the source of the information, not the information gatherer. And real-world experience will trump AI.
Would you agree?
Totally agree. People need experience, feelings, to be creative, to be known. AI is fascinating, fun, a great tool. But it’s a tool, how we use it as a human race will determine the future of our civilization.
I think you once said something like “Do interesting things and write about it” and “one well written blog post can change your life” (paraphrasing both).
That’s the internet I’d like to return to. It’d be nice to find people doing these things without relying on a platform to deem it worthy. It may take some digging but those creators doing those interesting things for 10k people seem to have staying power
Are you willing to breakout the numbers by individual titles? I think the value in 4-Hour Workweek and 4-Hour Chef is your unique perspective (backed up by scripts, recipes and anecdotes) and those are not so easily eclipsed by a chatbot. Whereas much of the content of 4-Hour Body, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors has been covered by other people and is exactly the sort of thing a chatbot can replace.
P.S. The book I’d love to see from you is The 4-Hour Philanthropist: effective strategies for giving back and serving on boards with maximal impact for minimal effort.
Great read! It feels like community building, I.e. skool and similar platforms is somewhat of a moat against this tide. I’ve just started a hypnosis community to tap in. People love to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves, and connect, albeit digitally, to other like minded humans. Thanks for your words of insight and wisdom. Cheers!
I expected sharper framing from you Tim. I bought every single one of your books. 4 hour body perhaps is still holding the strongest. But 4 hour work week and Tools of Titans almost begging for an update. I agree that books are the most information dense. But they are stuck at the time of publishing. What if Tools of Titan is updated periodically with fresh insights? What if 4 hour work week kept up with how work is evolving with the pandemic, with AI? What if the 4 hour body has an AI component that traces user experience and update itself as new supplement. New research inform different protocol? What if 4 hour chef get new recipes as your cooking styles are evolving.
When the internal combustion engine was first invented. Some used it to make powered roller blades. But the Wright brothers used it to unlock flight. Difference is not the technology, it’s the human deciding how to apply it.
AI never could have provided the insight from 4HWW that changed my life: That my boss deserved a fairly defined quantity of my productive output, not my time. Plus, I find the book so entertaining and uplifting, it’s one of the few I’ve kept to periodically re-read. Keep creating, Tim.
I wish your 4-Hour Chef was available on ebook. We travel 365, so no room in the suitcase.
I believe there will be more demand for authentic, human-generated content!
Very interesting take and I don’t disagree. I am not in the nonfiction business but I am quite the consumer of nonfiction and everything you said rings true – I don’t bother fully consuming many things when I need a faster answer. However, I absolutely will pause and slow down to consume books because I think they are and will always be so important for long-term development. But are there cases where I just ask Claude to take your personality and see what you’d do? Of course – and that part will most certainly get commoditized away. What an LLM can’t commoditize is your creativity – at the end of the day, you are still the only one who can be you. Anyway – count me as part of the true 1000. I will still be reading the next T Ferriss book, even if it’s out there.
Thank you for writing this. I’m an author in the same space and experiencing exactly this. My conclusion is similar to yours: I’m focusing on long-form content and in-person retreats.
Ive noticed on my own consumption that i rarely read books now, I was already down from a book a day to a book a month because I created my own private podcast where my ai digests and creates an audio personalized podcast for me to learn what I want
I also dont want to have 100 subscriptions, i long thought of a format where you pay to read one article, with a easy stripe or shopify login type, i would pay a dollar to read an article or give my ai access to the article, but i wont subscribe because i often had trouble unsubscribing, or i never know if ill
Be back for content on that outlet.
I find it odd that nobody has made any comments regarding the quality of non-fiction self help books. They are mostly shit, and overly padded. They’re the perfect candidate for replacement with a more painless method of delivery. Why are 90% of these books 220-270 pages long? I’ve read a couple hundred of them, they’re the same length and follow the same annoying format of wacky vignette for each point being made. 15 chapters of smaller points accompanied by wacky vignettes to make things relatable. I find it really tedious, often bad writing, and would happily take a 5 page synopsis of all but the very best ones.
There will come a time pretty soon when the creators of this type of material will stop creating it, because it keeps getting stolen by the LLM’s and then research and knowledge in those fields will stagnate.
Agree. 100%
Hi Tim,
I read the Four-Hour-Work-Week ten years ago. Last week I thought about bying it for my son bevause he asked for some book tips.
I didn’t buy it. I was worried that the book wasn’t up to date. I remebered the advices to get an assisten from the Filipines. Not applicable today with AI.
If the Four-Hour-Work-Week was updated with advices on how to incorporate AI in order to achieve that goal of a four our work week I would definetely buy it again for my son.
Best!
Lars
I guess it comes to why people consume something.
If they only want information, AI is the speedier tool and will probably be far more reliable in the future. In a way, it’s like fast food that fills your stomach quickly at a low cost when you are hungry.
But then some people love the whole process of how they get the information. That’s why we read books, watch, or even attend TED talks instead of just reading a summary.
There are many things that we like slow. Shaving is an example. DE and straight razors experience a renaissance. Prices are crazy, people buy it because they want the “real deal”. And yes, the niche is way smaller than it was 80 years back.
Maybe the whole AI thing is helping us to become more creative, more human, and less machine-like. Or maybe I am just a dreamer and would love to see that outcome.
Hunting for the masses and improving every metric for mass appeal probably won’t work, as the machines simply will do that job so much better. But so it is with any other things that can be mass-produced and fully automated…
to really master something you have to sit with/ be with a master. Something special happens. Without that we can only hope to be keen amateurs… which is ok for most things, but not everything…
Tim
A few years ago I subscribed for a year to one of those services that read you the highlights of a book in 15 mins. I listened to well over 200 books that way. It was good but what I found when I listened to the summaries of books that I had actually read was that their take on the book was very different to mine. What I got out of the books I had read, was generally missing from the summaries. I did not renew the subscription and I went back to buying a few books a year. Many from guests on podcasts that I listen to including your guests. I find that more useful, satisfying, interesting.
Maybe, just maybe there will be some that react the same way to AI snippets of books that I did to the 15 mins audio summaries. The diet version is just not as useful.
I use AI every day and have built my new business fully using AI. It is really useful in many ways but it probably doesn’t replace actually reading ideas and the inspiration that those ideas provide.
Will the publishing industry survive this onslaught. Possibly not, Hopefully it does.
Craig
I love writing, writing is a pleasure no AI can take away from me. I want to creaty beauty with language, it is mine, it is personal, it is a discovery.
Gotta say I just find so much pleasure in reading Tim’s blog post’s. I’ve also been thinking of the meta skills or meta information that goes lost when getting your answer from the chatbot, kinda feels like looking up the answers at the back of the math book.
I do use AI myself to summarise books for me but when I like a summary or advice coming from a specific book I tend to buy the book and read it.
It’s funny because me buying books has the inverse trend.
I think it has to do with the genre of the book. Philosophy seems to show a different trend.
I fully agree with you Tim. Whether AI disrupts and how we changed our format depend on what is our goal. If it’s for ego fueling purposes, then yes, short form content wins, but if it’s to have a real impact on people, I still think book is the way to go.
I still read, not only for the content, but as a meditation for my mind to focus and resist the urge to consume short form of content.
in addition, concepts need to be repeated and expose our mind to them for a long period of time to absorb, again, books are the way. please keep writing long form books/blogs. when is your book out?
Could Tim’s post here be the flap of a butterfly’s wings?
With Tim’s reach and influence, more people seeking how-to material will now turn to their favorite LLMs. Reality is, they were on their way there anyway.
A great example of a non-prescriptive book is Jim Collins’s latest, What to Make of a Life.
As writers, we should add value by offering a human connection, along with the soul and spirit behind our work, and then link to a well-crafted LLM response to support all the related how-to stuff. (Might as well bring Gen AI right into our coral). People will go there anyway. Hopefully, they’ll remember us for doing the right thing by adding value to their journeys.
Always love to receive your thoughts in a written, thought out matter, Tim. It has a special sauce for me!
I’ll articulate a reading of the 2 out of 16 subcategories growth stat — crafts/hobbies/antiques/games and religion — as a ray of clarity around what we as humans truly need to flourish. And AI should complement and not replace it.
We want to materialize spirit in what we do and we want to do it for others, with the likeminded-likehearted others. And the imaginative needs will gain evermore traction beyond the mere factual ones
What about in person conferences? Will the experience of seeing & hearing a speaker tell their story still be a pull over getting the bullet points fromAI?
An added feature which may be affecting self-help book popularity is the rise of fascism and right wing hatred everywhere. People feel exhaustion and defeat. Maslow himself said that self actualization follows safety etc. Who wants to work on their self improvement when the world is filled with hatred and uncertainty? This has also characterized 2025 and 2026. May be a factor.
AI doesn’t have a voice, it’s own signature style. It’s bland and dim. If you just want the plain facts then that’s fine, but if you want emotional connection it won’t cut it.
This is one of his best pieces in a long time – love the transparency and mental models here! I think what also is driving the decrease in Tims content in particular is that the self-help or do it yourself group is actually doing just that. It’s high agency people who want to use whatever tool reskills them the fastest. For a long time it was apprenticeship, then schooling, then books, then podcasts, then videos, short form content- and now it’s AI. Each one gives you exponential speed increases in knowledge gain over the prior.
I can’t help but think there is a general consumption fatigue. Maybe even exhaustion. I know I have it. So I have left or limited most platforms. Then I have been able to sink my mind into more things like your email that led to this article.
As a designer who is seeing more and more “easy button pushers”, I can definitely relate to a huge transition. Remember when AI couldn’t do words? Now it can. But I am still designing (and doing art) because that is where the fun is- the final design is not the joy.
(Are we forgetting that?)
I kind of think AI is the ozempic for life. If we make the short cut, we forget the joy in the journey.
The self help books are needed- there’s simply a shift in the content we should be focusing on…
I love discussions like this and your honesty about all the facts is what makes it so interesting and valuable. One point I’d like to add is, I’m 59, my kids are 19 and 18. The way they consume information is so different than the way I consume it. For example, my son and I both play golf. When we’re struggling with our swings, I take a $140 lesson and he looks up the fix on YouTube for free. The LLMs are just accelerating the inevitable way young people consume information. Books will be for pleasure reading only in the future. Soon they will be an archaic way to obtain information. Thanks!
Lots of thoughts.
It’s exciting to think the internet could return to the early 2000s. In the last decade or more, it became a hellscape of SEO-optimized garbage that was jamming up my Google searches. Article after article that lacked all the things that made the internet interesting—personality, new perspectives, niche shit that I didn’t see elsewhere. So an opportunity to clean up and eliminate a lot of that generic, SEO-money grab material is a win.
One last thing, AI has the potential to also become a garbage dump of sponsored content depending on how marketing and partnerships are incorporated. The AI bot has a lot of eyeballs on it, which will attract anyone who wants to sell something to those users. Also, how long before people start learning how to game the AI system so that their information or product is incorporated into user conversations? Will we just recreate the current model we are in, only in a more personalized space?
I know these aren’t exactly addressing the point of the article, but it’s fun when something sparks interesting conversation.
With that being said, there’s a certain type of person who I don’t think will be interested in exclusively getting things from AI. I also don’t think AI will continue to thrive if interesting people don’t continue to make interesting things.
How we’ll make money from it? I think in some of the fundamental same ways, but the packaging will be different. For the people who care about how you think, your writing/podcasts will stay king. For others, maybe you have a personalized AI that people can use to obtain your thoughts, summaries, and perspectives….and you get to be in control of it and make the money from it.
Great post.
Maybe AI kills book sales as an information business, but not books as authority signals.
Consultants have known this for years: the book often isn’t where the money is made. The book proves you are the person who has done the work. AI can summarize your advice, but it cannot replace your hard-earned experience, reputation, community, or the engagements that follow from “she literally wrote the book on this.”
Journalism may face the same split. Content-factory journalism gets eaten. But real reporting – war zones, undercover work, source cultivation, marginalized communities, access to power, verified ground truth – becomes more valuable, not less.
The scarce thing will be primary knowledge: the facts, stories, judgment, and trust that someone had to earn in the real world.
Appreciate the reference back to 1,000 True Fan – makes a ton of sense. Two of my children are classical musicians. The chances of a robot taking their jobs is minimal. But what opportunities does agentic AI bring to them? Perhaps opportunities to escape the barrier and confines and gatekeepers. Can’t get an agent/ manager? Create your own?
Thanks for sharing! Love hearing your perspective, especially the part about focusing on the smaller number of people who will actually take the time to go through your material and put it into practice (and the reminder of the 1,000 true fans).
I’m in the video (primarily YouTube) space, and agree that the how-to videos and courses are not working like they used to. What’s doing well, though, is a combination of training, coaching/support, and community.
So not just teaching someone the “what,” but helping them with a plan for their situation and help implementing it. AI can’t completely replace that combo.
And I think the community aspect of that will become even more desirable as AI continues to add to the mix of “tools” that isolate us more and more.
As a travel writer, I’ve been experimenting with AI, and it’s a steep learning curve. At first, I was blown away with how quickly it could turn up information. But I quickly learned that — at its current stage, at least — it is full of misinformation. You ask a simple question, and to references the nearest source without ascertaining if that source was current or authoritative. On one occasion, it actually quoted something that sounded oddly familiar. As it turned out, it was something that I had written in my own blog. So I’ve learned to tread carefully. And I treat more the way a reporter would treat an interviewee: I ask it questions, I ask for clarification, I challenge it, I and I ask for the source.
I’m fascinated by your thoughts on this. Information and transformation as two poles. What’s scary to me are the multitude of incentives pulling AI into weirder and darker places or at least weakening our cognitive ability and ambition. I haven’t yet read the Pope’s encyclical but he does mention the benefits of obstacles and cognitive friction as a hunan opportunity for growth.
Who is exploring this stuff? Can’t Musk or someone start an institute looking at effects and consequences of AI.
I usually reference the whole episode. There are timea I need words in a book. I need the whole story. Your 4 hour body booked helped me in so many ways. I often get pulled in so many directions but I always come back to TF viewpoints for a calibration of sorts.
Great post Tim. I believe will be that AI (more specifically LLMs) will be the informational glue, they will summarize and combine info to help us synergize it where the huge benefit will be is the human experience. That human experience and the stories that come with it will be where the magic lives.
I too have a sense that we are about to see depth revolutions, much like the mindfulness revolution that we are seeing in response to the overtaking of our attention.
I remember Tony Robbins saying how many people bought Awaken The Power Within and then followed through and the number being somewhere between zilch and zero. People need to be sat on to act. And I think the way our commitment and attention spans are going, we’re gonna need a bigger elephant.
This was great, and the callback to the 1000 true fans was spot-on. Also, being the aggregator of back-checked and cited truth for your tribe has value as well.