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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As a huge AI user and as someone guilty of mining through your transcripts, looking for keywords, I’ve discovered I’m not looking for information anymore. I’m looking for guidance from someone who has been there.
The stories that are shared are not just qualitative data. they speak to the heart and the emotions . I hate AI images because there is no soul. There’s no imperfection. There is nothing to relate to.
If authors actually revealed themselves like you have done and like you keep doing, hopefully with a memoir, you will have no problem keeping our attention.
I’ve also discovered I’m desperately hungry not for more information, or validation but for the connection that comes from being impacted (and making an impact.) If authors also find more ways to create community like you encourage that is also a huge benefit AI hasn’t yet yet to replace, all so much more than just providing information.
Thanks, Tim. Really illuminating. Wondering how it’s going to affect me and what I offer and teach.
For over 20 years, I’ve taught women how to give great head (and their boyfriends thank me).*
[Insert joke about burying the lead here.]
I also offer coaching in sexuality, intimacy, relationships and communication. I have one-on-one clients, teach small online group classes, and because all my AMAs are full of people who choose not to have their cameras on as they listen, I’ve been working on a digital course offering for people who want to be “discreet“ and who want to work in the privacy of their own home, on their own time.
I’m curious what path forward I should take with my content, and how the guardrails around adult, sexual, or intimate content will affect me and my offerings in the face of these rapid changes.
* You may recognize that line as the title from the 2022 personals essay I wrote for Huffpost, which ended up being the most-visited page on their site for an entire day, and the top personals essay that year: [Moderator: Link removed per link policy.]
1000 true fans works for me — my mortgage is paid. Those with mortgages need what you once had.
Sounds like you’re summing up the adage “skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is.”
Thank you, Tim.
Your observations are always nothing short of profound.
In my business, colleagues are quite consumed with sponsored ads, getting massive amounts of good reviews to bring you higher up on the google ladder to the first page summit and all of the other SEO tips and tricks.
In reality, the overwhelming majority of my success has been from the human interaction and delivering exceptional results for my “1000 true fans”.
You consistently give this to your readers, Tim, and it will sustain no matter how the medium or format changes!
Gary Cash DDS
[Moderator: Graphic redacted.]
Tim, I have been reading your books and listening to your podcast from the start, and I agree with you. Keep doing what you are doing! I get value from your books, your podcast, and your newsletter, which I read every week. I have thought about reaching out to you many times over the years for different reasons, but I have not. I just want to say thank you! Joe Delgado
Tim, I have three of your books permanently on my bookshelf–Tribe, Mentors and Chef. These are marked up and pages tagged with sticky notes,etc. I have listened to many of your podcasts and read Five Bullet Fridays–but your books are really what I treasure the most. Why? Because it is the YOU in all of what you produce–your experience, foibles, triumphs and disappointments, how YOU approach the subject, interviewee, problem. Ai will never have your soul. And, for the record, I am way, way NOT in your reader demographic as a 75+ female. I found you when my life was in a key transition and your books taught me how to navigate the terrain. Thank you!
Thanks for the great article.
A few questions pop to mind:
* what’s stopping ai from adjusting to long form, with better personalised nuance for more effective story telling suited to the individual?
* are we dinosaurs? Do the youth of today, raised on short, or even micro, form think like we do? Do they need long form to learn? Are we crying about a loss that the next generation doesn’t care about?
* as someone who considers themselves high agency, has information summarised and curated by ai just for me made me more or less effective? Take more or less action? Or am I the same (perhaps a little more deluded into thinking I have more of the answers than before)?
Similar to most short form content, skimming the top and quick fixes don’t really stick for me. Deeper research and commitment is required for real change. But there’s no doubt that ai is being used to cut fluff (sometimes at the expense of the journey) and is accelerating my personal progress at a rate I’ve never experienced before.
Either way, we still need great minds with unique experiences and views to introduce us to new ways of thinking. Ai will need the source content to give us these summaries… We / ai will need to find a way to reward those creators or we risk losing them.
(And can a true creator ever stop, even knowing that their work will be plagiarised the second it hits digital?)
Right again Tim – I’m betting on you – you’re my huckleberry and I ain’t going anywhere… My wife sent me this image today and in a strange way, i think it aligns with your message. Stay gold! CW
I’m worried what this means for authors, or more precisely, aspiring authors. While I know Tim has always preached that one reason for writing a book is because you can’t live with out getting the information out of you … I imagine many authors consider the financial aspects. If there is less financial incentive, will there be less well-thought-out, professional content in our future? Without new, evolving, high level content to pull from I believe AI, and we as its users, are going to suffer.
If LLMs are essentially the average of the internet, we need ways to continually raise the ceiling to get better.
And lest we forget, Socrates expressed a deep concern about the rise of reading and writing and the deleterious effects it would have on society…Thankfully, the “technology” pushed forward, and it became the bedrock of knowledge. Just another evolutionary step.
Hey Tim,
This is something I think about because I write a newsletter. I am aware of the competing content people face everyday, and know it’s a hard sell to ask someone to read one more thing, even if it is something I believe will impact someone’s life.
I would say I am choosier about what podcast I listen to or book I read because there is so much content out there. But I did read the 4- Hour Workweek last year. When I do read, I appreciate hearing from a human that shares real experiences and food for thought. So even though it’s harder to sell a book or a podcast, I appreciate the ones that I have chosen to invest in. In some ways, those books feel more real than texting a friend who’s only half paying attention as they text back.
I think, while AI bots have a good grasp of general specialized knowledge, it would be amazing down the line to interact with an AI that’s tuned to your experiences and expertise and understands the nuances of your mental processes. Which I think there’s money to be made for you when presented properly. Not to say that it’s going to replace an actual in person talk, or even reading a physical book, but it might be a good interaction layer to monetize. There’s always pros and cons but that’s maybe one of many potential pivots.
All well said. I happen to think that AI is just one side of the equation. As an avid reader of nonfiction, I also believe that many of us are suffering from “bestseller fatigue.” We purchase good books when we hear about them on podcasts, only to put them on our bookshelves for a good day to read.
FOMO is part of the story, but so are a jazzy economy, a newborn baby, and all sorts of polycrises. Most of us simply miscalculate the time available for reading while dealing with all sorts of things in life. We are getting too busy.
I think people are getting wiser and more selective, while saving an extra 20 bucks along the way to prepare for future uncertainty. This is certainly true in my case.
Another thing is that most podcasts by bestseller authors may actually provide more updated information than their own books published two to five years ago, which is a colossal time gap considering how fast everything is moving today.
Love this. Practical, real. Transformation doesn’t come in sound bites. I neither want nor need transformation very often but I will pay for it when I do.
Interesting correlation. It appears strong, but I’m less convinced of causality.
What was driving sales of your books prior to 2023? If sales were predictable, how were new readers discovering and buying them? My assumption is that your podcast served as a discovery engine, creating a flywheel in which listeners became readers. If podcast consumption, discoverability, or audience behavior shifted, that could explain at least part of the decline.
Personally, I rarely use LLMs to summarize self-help books. However, I have watched several YouTube summaries of The 4-Hour Body that gave me the key ideas without reading the book. YouTube’s recommendation engine is incredibly powerful. If I’m engaged with a topic or a person, it automatically serves related content from across the platform. There are also podcast advertisers bidding on your name, so someone searching for Tim Ferriss may end up discovering entirely different creators. That ecosystem competes for attention in ways that didn’t exist before.
I also wonder whether we’re trying to explain the trend or solve it. People learn differently. Reading a book is not the preferred format for everyone. I read, but I also learn a great deal from listening to conversations, which is why I consume podcasts. One frustration I’ve always had is the lack of tools that help connect ideas across podcasts and conversations over time. I actually tried building something in this space and failed, though that’s a much longer story.
Generational preferences matter too. Attention spans, content formats, and learning habits continue to evolve. Personally, I enjoy short-form self-help content when it provides practical value. For example, I’ve built a swipe file of short lifting videos organized by muscle group and used it to design my own workout program.
For what it’s worth, I’d absolutely consume Tim Ferriss short-form content. It seems like a powerful way to stay relevant, reach younger audiences, and create an entry point into deeper work.
And as a final thought: I started building an app inspired by your content. I haven’t gotten very far, but with the beautiful content, legacy, trust, and the brand you have built, the whole world is your canvas. You just have to choose the colors and maybe even color outside the lines. 🙂
This has also happened in the world of commercial photography. A very steady income and 30 year career in NYC shooting for top brands has basically fallen off a cliff in 2025 and 2026, and now there are numerous apps that will provide images for your ad campaigns using AI, at little cost to no cost.
Thanks Tim, as always you are the ever-surviving canary in coalmine of life for many. Funny I got to the post from the YouTube feed. Whenever you write something there, I know I must read it.
I disagree. Yes, LLMs might be part of the picture. But there is another big factor that is not considered at all in your article.
The cost of living crisis. People of all income levels are struggling financially because the cost of living rose significantly since Covid. As everyone bugeted for a mortgage they could afford, a sudden increase in cost of living (food, insurances, utilities) is hitting all income levels.
Not having enough money does not only mean eating ramen noudles. People are freaking out, have anxiety, get depressed, they are loosing their jobs, fighting with their spouses over money etc.
So the self help category “How do I lose fat? How do I fix my sleep? How do I quickly add 10 pounds of muscle?” is just not speaking to the reality and the problems people are facing right now.
Wealth is accumulated at the top, while working families are searching through the couch for 50cents to buy their kid lunch.
This comes at a beautiful moment in my own journey. The 1000 true fans concept originally inspired me to create a Patreon in 2014…which at one point was one of the top 100 music pages on the site.
But I lost sight of that, in all the heat of an exploding life. Of burnout. Depression. Recovery. Marriage. And all the rest.
But recently I’ve been realigning. And reading your simple reminder of 1000 true fans aligns perfectly with where I’m at right now. Thank you.
Always appreciate your depth, authenticity, and guidance, Tim. From one of countless who are grateful for your ongoing sharing.
PS: I’m sure I heard somewhere that you might be thinking of becoming a dad. I’m just over a year into fatherhood with my daughter Honey. HIGHLY recommend 🫂
I can only give my perspective, but I’m drawn by personality-driven content. That’s why I listen to your content – because on top of the information you share, I’m drawn to you as a creator over others. Same goes for other creators like the Craig Mods, Kevin Kellys, Paul Millerds, Shaan Puri/Sam Parr’s of the world. I’ll read their newsletters/listen to the full episodes because I simply enjoy the info they share intertwined with the personality delivering it.
GPT/Claude/Gemini are great tools for getting quick facts. But I personally never see a world where someone like me chooses solely that over the content creators I follow and purchasing their books. The experience I get consuming content on an LLM is vastly different than through a creator I appreciate reading/listening to. The former being more cold…utilitarian in nature…and the latter being simply a more enjoyable experience as I learn whatever information is being shared alongside real, interesting stories and anecdotes.
Just my 2 cents.
Malcolm Gladwell’s, “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants” tells the story of the Brer Rabbit, one of the ultimate trickster archetypes of African American history, who wins through mischief and wit. You have the same nothing-to-lose attitude that can grow 10,000 True Fans to 20,000, even while social media followers literally drop. Revising Gladwell’s philosophies helped me set new sales records this year with old sales avenues: in-person events and my email list. My short-form videos got two billion views in 2024, and earned slightly over $100k in monetization, but did not help grow my True Fans. They grew when I focused on timeless principles, empathy, connection and service.
I’m concerned that depth is gone. I see among many, who were maybe not the PhDs or academics in my group, a complete collapse in reading. The people who stopped buying or being exposed to your and other books/news are simply getting coddled perspectives from AI, challenging if so prompted, but likely not.
Struggling with knowledge and sitting with the journey is the human condition. When the 50th rehash of the same old ChatGPT inquiry about how to solve your problems forces you to maybe introspect, we’ll start the journey back to ourselves and our own journey, not just a thoughtless extraction from the training data. I anticipate only those who really accept this and keep their ears open will benefit. Many will atrophy in attention and intelligence, more or less incapable of discernment.
I hope others with narrower and less diversified businesses are able to find a path. I hope people still do the hard things for their own sake.
Agree with a caveat – books and conversations force people to ask different or unexpected questions. ChatGPT will summarize a weekly exercise plan but won’t include sleep or macronutrient information unless it’s specifically requested. From a financial planning perspective, asking questions that tap into the emotional side of money can be more powerful than a budget spreadsheet or automated investment recommendations. I believe the long form Podcast and Book will continue to help people ask unexpected questions with impact. Great article, Tim!
Chase this trend to the end and it could have an interesting effect on the AI systems themselves. If people stop producing as much content, AI has less and less material to answer from for that future problem someone is trying to solve. Also maybe people adapt. Some publishers go paper only out of spite. Really out there is creating an Internet that doesn’t allow AI to look at it. Perhaps laws come into play or Internet standards update with an HTML tag that flags standards abiding AI from scanning. Copyright gets better protections allowing for takedown data scrubbing orders against AI databases.
The current landscape is very challenging though. Thanks for the insight.
Hi Tim, thank you for your thoughts and transparency with your data. One of the reasons I read your books and listen to your podcast is because they feel genuine and authentic (cf. Naval). Of course techniques and advice presented are useful. But there’s something refreshing with your content and guests that I still haven’t found with LLMs. I hope I’m not missing the point with this comment! Thanks for you work, it’s very inspiring! Benjamin
I agree with your analysis, your data is showing up in many places. As a former bookseller our core business was always “how-to” books in every subject from cooking to business to self-help. I’m happy to see Seth Godin commenting here, his advice to find your smallest viable market and focus on that resonates even more with the advent of AI slop.
Always posting your blogs at the perfect time, Tim! I’ve been pondering this questions recently as I love personal development and would love to find a way to do it full time.
This makes me feel a little more sane. I saw the same sharp drop just as 2025 began. I’ve also had viral reels that don’t do a thing.
I’ve always aspired to write narrative, original-concept fiction with “the information” baked-in, so I don’t expect to be replaced, but am having to re-think what the addressable audience is for future books. I’d rather get meatier and weirder than try to play an arms race against the magical knowledge-averaging machine.
Dear Tim,
I am older in my 70s but am a fan of yours as I love your curiosity about how people tick. I am easily overwhelmed so have chosen to not have Facebook, X, instagram and AI so I can focus on what matters. I think focusing on your 1000 is what makes sense and will keep us human with all our warts.
Thanks for great article and your podcasts.
All the best.
Lucille
Hi Tim,
I wonder if it would be a good move at this point is to start repositioning books like The 4-Hour Workweek as influental classics.
AI is getting incredibly good at generating “here’s the system for achieving X” content on demand. What it can’t do is give a book historical significance.
I feel like the significant reason to read 4HWW today may be less about the tactics and more about seeing how it anticipated so many of the ideas that later became mainstream.
That way, AI stops being a competitor to the book and becomes more of a backdrop to it.
tradeoffs? maybe we are going back to how socrates wanted education which was a conversation form only and not books? also I wonder if you would stick to the long form if you were starting today from $0?
Trying to look beyond the horizon is always a fun game to play. Keep playing and we will both see what is next soon enough. Prepare and be ready is all we can really do.
I have read more than my share of self help books.
To be honest, there is hardly any nee information coming up in the last 2-3 years.
And, a book that contains only say 80-100 pages of readable stuff, is now unnecessarily bloated to 200-250 pages. So, better to go to AI. Personally, i have stopped reading self help this year (read about 40 in the last4-5 years) and reading history books this year.
Hi, Tim-
I’m going to join the other folks here who have commented on the distinction between information and use of information putting it slightly differently, the numbers you quoted about your dropping sales. I’m merely the denominator. I don’t think you ever knew the true numerator: the number of people who are actually implementing what they read in your books, or even if they did really read them. Those “tire kickers“ are no longer buying your books. That suggested those who are buying your books (other than demographic differences, such as perhaps older folks and workforce buying books) are those who truly intend to use the content in them. To my mind, that suggests consideration of opening up some kind of paid membership. I’m thinking something similar to the 1000 true fans idea you mentioned. Wishing you the highest and best.
Doug.
Tim, have long appreciated your info and approach to learning /separating wheat from chaff. I’m reminded of a quote from a well-lnown sales/communications trainer: ” If sales (I would add coaching/learning too) was just about transferring information from one person to another, we would have replaced people long ago with brochures/videos/e-mails etc”. Yet we have not ! We buy from people, we learn from people. Information is part of it obviously but only an ingredient in the recipe. Best wishes
Maybe 50% of the people who bought books never read them, just put them on the shelf. These same people stopped buying books, they turned to AI for short answers. In any case, before the era of AI and now they just don’t get results. What do you think?
Tim, I couldn’t agree more. I have been writing about this myself, most recently in my column on Forbes called “The Town Square Is Gone — And Entrepreneurs Are Paying The Price” (sorry, not promoting, just adding for reference).
Without a shared canon of wisdom, we have no collective values and people are making decisions in a vacuum. The technology that was supposed to unite us atomized us instead.
In my writing, I’m not too far from your prescription to find your 1000 fans. But in the case of entrepreneurs trying to navigate uncertainty, I recommend finding 10 others to travel with. Not to perform success AT each other but to share success and failure WITH each other. The town square isn’t coming back but each of us can find 10 others who we want to share the journey with.
interesting read and the reflection on prescriptive non-fiction is a curious one. long-form or any other approach for its own sake implies that there’s a clear formula for moving forward. there may or may not be, and all this is yet to be determined.
ironically, in my anecdotal case, i’ve noticed a shift in interest post-ai. i can’t know for sure what the reasons for this uptick are.
two things seem to resonate though, besides the 1k fans bit: 1) that my approach to philosophy is not prescriptive, in fact it poses more questions than it gives answers. 2) i’ve been complementing that with in-person activities.
these are still at the trial-run and testing phases, but some people are seeking conversations and meetups that go beyond the how-tos. most importantly, they’re seeking different perspectives, outside their usual circles.
i could indeed say that i’m tying myself to the philosophy mast, which i’ve in fact been doing for many years now. but even that has changed though out this time, because i’ve shifted from pure courses, to workshop format, to something that’s a mix of discussions, facilitation, and stuff like that.
so if you’re tying yourself to the long-form mast, one question would be: what can one offer the reader, and in what way can they invite them into the conversation, rather than give them ready-made formulas?
Self-Help & Personal Transformation: the attached chart shows the monthly development of new book supply, from c. 350 new English-language Kindle titles per month before ChatGPT to more than 8,000 new titles per month in June 2026.
But I don’t think AI killed nonfiction. The decline began much earlier, at the start of the pandemic, when TikTok and short-form video were simultaneously spreading across virtually every platform.
Knowledge consumption has shifted heavily toward short videos, YouTube, and, to some extent, online communities such as Skool and Circle.
Very few people still read nonfiction ebooks. On top of that, almost any question can now be posed directly to an LLM.
There was a brief uptick, likely caused by technical or algorithmic factors. But the January-to-June 2026 trend on the far right already suggests that it was temporary.
I too would rather write books for 10,000 that I can help. Thanks for the perspective.
I have seen almost identical numbers with my online business. I’m not too worried though – before my online stuff crashed really hard into the ground I did notice a sudden uptake in my more premium offering. I’m switching to in-person which the AI cannot copy.
I believe we have other points to consider:
LLMs don’t have the capacity to confront and push us. The capacity to provoke the spark that starts something. There’s something in 4-Hour Body that motivates you to take action and do a low-carb diet, for example. AI still doesn’t occupy that place (the condescending “you’re great” approach doesn’t count) and I don’t think it should or will occupy it.
AI is making the low-tolerance-for-dense-content scenario worse among younger generations. AI summaries are equivalent to a short-short-video in terms of information volume. The 1000 fans might actually be the 1000 who still consume dense content and critique the information they receive.
I seldom use ChatGPT, but when I do it is to get information that would take me hours or days to research and find rather than get it in seconds or minutes. I still want to watch or read videos and articles, because there will always be some helpful information that you just cannot get in a summary.
I agree 100%! I write long form linkedin posts and they don’t get me “likes,” but they do bring in new followers and profile views even if the impressions are less. It’s high time to build a community and that’s exactly what I’m chasing.
Whoa, hold on there. My favorite saying is, “it ain’t necessarily so.” In this era polluted with every pathological “influencer”, grifter, “transparent” somebody with something to sell ya, that saying could never be more apt. In my case, as a serial personal development junkie going back decades and decades and decades to my teen years, something AI has never and will never be able to replace is my accumulated knowledge. This reality exactly parallels the conversation currently happening in technology regarding junior engineers losing experience opportunities. Without knowledge from accumulated experience, junior engineers will never be able to fully optimize their output–they simply lack the judgment. You see, AI can churn out lots of personal development “advice”, which has indeed become a commodity, but the human must still use *taste, judgement, and curation* to apply that advice to their particular situation and context. Caveat: I am a maniac Claude user, *but* based on decades and decades of reading probably hundreds of thousands of “self-help” books (yours, too, Tim :)), I am able to optimize whatever advice Claude conjures up on these years accumulated knowledge. My *advice* to those thinking of dropping the reading of books: don’t. please don’t. Read more. Read faster (10x faster). Read better. Read more powerfully. Remember the rule of reading: 20% of books is the meat, the other 80% is just the author justifying the price and reiterating his point. Those that don’t read are in danger of ingesting every bag of blue pills the pusher from the Matrix is selling. And the pusher has gone hyperbolic in the age of AI. Your *edge* will always be your own accumulated knowledge base, and that can never come from just taking the “advice” of AI.
That’s the missing piece I was looking for, and I found it here. Thank you!
I develop a night dream analyzer app, which is built on the process-oriented psychology method which I have studied and hold a diploma. So I was at a crossroads if I should go the tiktok path (which I hate) or stay true to the transformative core of the app. Well, that’s what the ChatGPT or Tiktoks can’t take away: the transformation. Now I got it
Some forms of human communication of one to many don’t summarize and condense easily, and will be hard to disintermediate. Songs, poems, paintings, plays, movies, basically performed art. Information transfer, however …
Fascinating, Tim. What sets this analysis apart is that you are telling a personal story in this post. It makes it relatable and engaging. Will AI ever be able to do that? An emphatic no from my perspective. Kinda makes me wonder when including Easter eggs with logic bombs that cause token maxxing in original work will become popular…
TimTim chatbot being released soon?
“TimTim, how do I lose 20 lbs of fat asap”
TimTim: Hello lady or germ, I’m not going to sugarcoat this — Because I’m not a doctor nor do I play one on TV…It’s beans.
Agree, Insightful article which I appreciate as author of 2 self published books. Your conclusion feels right to me,
Why wpuld you ever panic? You’ve made it, you have infinite money lol.
Tim, this post stopped me cold.
Not because it scared me, because you described the problem I’ve spent three years building the answer to.
“The market for information is collapsing into the chatbot. The market for transformation sitting with one mind, at length, on a subject it has bled for might just get smaller, weirder, and more interesting.”
I’ve built that.
Not as a book. As a tool that gives anyone the Tim Ferriss interview experience with their own knowledge. You stop someone mid-flow and say “tell me more.” This holds that thread while they talk, pieces it together afterwards. Their business brain, trained on them. Not on everyone else.
I call it SpicyDrive. The platform is the Symbiosis Engine.
You also taught me: ask for advice, you might get money. Ask for money, you’ll get advice. So I’m asking for advice.
Chris P Taylor — Doc Strange — Bristol, UK. AuDHD, medical cannabis patient, magician. No corporate backing. Started in a van. Bruce Lee is my other compass, synthesise from the best, be like water. You’ve been one of my two compasses for fifteen years.
Would love five minutes of your thinking.
Quality over quantity any time. If you make 3 people change their ways, you’re a success. As you mention, 10 million viewers and no one changed an iota in their life. I don’t want those customers, I want the 3 that really look forward, and have the courage, to face themselves in the mirror and change (M. Jackson). When hell gets loose, they will survive.
This is a look at the future of non fiction -I agree entirely. But what about fiction? Chapter claims to write a novel from my outline in 90 Minutes. This needs sone serios discussion.
Another great analysis,Tim. You have a solid plan for touching and bringing those interested and the people they will be bringing
I will forever remember the first time I read the 4HWW. I was sitting under a tree at the Montage Resort in Laguna Beach, on my daughter’s birthday, waiting for the rest of my family to show up. I kept thinking, “Wait, what? This is possible?” It lit a fire inside me.
Little did I know that just a few years later, my wife, three daughters, and I would end up starting our own lifestyle business, and then spending the better part of the next decade living abroad in Mexico, Scotland, Spain, and more. Because of Tim’s influence, my daughters are all bilingual (my oldest, currently living in Japan, now trilingual). My middle daughter is headed to Argentina soon. My youngest is adding French to her skillset to be able to study in France after HS.
Tim and his book(s) changed the course of my family’s life.
It was because of a book. Not a reel. Not a chat with an LLM. Not a IG post. A book.
Or as Stephen King puts it, telepathy. Tim’s hard-won experience neatly curated and painstakingly written & published… all funneled right into my brain.
I am forever grateful to Tim for working so hard to publish his book.
“I’d rather be one person’s shot of whisky than everyone’s cup of tea.”
Hey Tim, thank you for putting your numbers on the table. Wish we’d gone deep on this the last time we chatted! Alas, here we are…
You know my seat on this. I helped edit The 4-Hour Body, and I now run a publishing company that uses AI to produce nonfiction books. Yes, it’s hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding it, but I’m in agreement with your conclusions here.
Copies sold was always the wrong metric. The value your books brought you far outweighs your royalties. The relationships, the trust, the credibility, the lives changed at scale, the passport to unique experiences previously out of reach, the cultural impact. Hard to quantify but it’s what makes publishing a nonfiction book worthwhile.
And yes, the information layer is absolutely getting swallowed up by AI. No doubt. But like you said, whether it transforms is another story. Any chatbot can tell a user how to define, eliminate, automate, and liberate. But none of them will move thousands of people to radically alter their lives and become part of a movement (like 4HWW did for me and so many others). That can’t be manufactured.
The real cap on transformation has always been the cost of building the journey that makes someone act and get results. The sequencing, the story, the path that fits the specific reader. That took authors years, and most never pulled it off. They either quit or the book sucked. It was an elusive formula. AI is collapsing the cost and time required to nail that formula. So more real experts can actually build the thing that changes people, and more readers get a designed journey instead of a quick answer. I suspect the information market shrinks while the transformation market expands. Which makes the scarce thing exactly what you named. Trust, taste, and the names people believe enough to follow all the way through.
I’ll echo what someone else said here. You should still publish the No book. It won’t sell a million copies, but people want to read what Tim Ferriss has to say (in a book!) and that is reason enough.
Charlie
Thanks for sharing. I’m sure it’s not pleasant to see the numbers going down like that. I wonder if you’ve considered “doubling down” on the LLM phenomenon by creating a set of custom, branded agent skills (using the SKILL.md standard) that encapsulate your latest thinking on various subjects? You can structure it as a subscription, where you release additions and updates over time.
I’ve been doing this myself for mostly coding-related skills (as well as some “crossover skills,” such as tax prep and will writing and estate planning) at my site [Moderator: Link removed per link policy.], if you want a concrete example of what I’m proposing. People seem to like it, so I think the format works. It sort of takes the “choose your own adventure” aspects of your work to the next level of interaction.
Hey Tim. Appreciate this blog post and the details you’ve shared.
I’m sure you’ve got a good handle on the data you’re seeing and I trust you’re probably right. But there are other reasons that people will buy less books too (living expenses/economy is a big one). And as much as it pains me to say this, there is a lot of shit out there in the book/self-help world (or just in general, lol). Many people wanted to get rich off giving advice– blogs, substacks, books, e-courses, etc. Maybe it got oversaturated. Those people (who did it for money) will move on to other ventures, chasing the cheese. And what will be left is a smaller number of books, but perhaps better ones.
And nobody knows what will happen with AI or how it will fold into our future.
But if folks are doing what they’d be doing if nobody were watching (or vanity metrics aren’t part of the equation), then all of the metrics, algos, SEO and AI stuff matters a lot less anyway.
Or I’m totally wrong, which is most possible.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. “ – Mark Twain
(as an aside, this last bit made me realize there is risk in too much focus-group style ‘testing’– as it risks losing one’s conviction. This is rarely discussed but is possibly important.)
The elephant in the room is, can AI “Create” new anything? Yes, it can summarize and maybe even better articulate human thoughts, but can it “create”?
Thank you Tim for a really thoughtful and well-written post.
This is as Claude would say loadbearing. And super right I definitely think smaller audiences of fans is the only sane way to stay true to the arts of mastery
As I read your post I expected you to include not only print and digital self-help media, but actual live other-help, like mental and emotional therapists, business and life coaches. Even lawyers. Another self-help guru and best selling author that I like launched an LLM as an experiment. I tried it. I love it and I hate that I love it. But that LLM has challenged me more and facilitated more growth in the last 6 months than my live, highly educated, extremely competent and beloved therapist did in 5 years. And the LLM did it for free.
The irony of the AI tsunami is their default output looks exactly like a 2007 ‘Geek to Freak’ post. Scannable bullet points, bolded key phrases, and short, punchy paragraphs. Super easy to digest. The algorithms basically reverse-engineered your layout. Tim was using em dashes before it was cool!
I have always been a physically-oriented guy. I have 2,000 books and periodicals in my library because it stands as a pre-internet reference library. It’s a physical mass, with the original Whole Earth Catalog series as the founding father of my collection. I started my spiritual path at age 12 when I discovered Zen Combat by Jay Gluck. One thing lead to another and I became interested in learning from experts, perhaps masters.
I have been to at least 5 major workshops in my life since the late 1970’s. First and foremost, is a 3 day workshop with Stewart Emery, author of “Actualizations: You Don’t Need To Rehearse To Be Yourself”. Then came a 5 day Carlos Castenada workshop on his yoga-energy-martial arts Tensegrity. Then NLP: Not Tony Robbins’ version, but the folks who set him on the path, John Grinder and Richard Bandler, founders of NLP. Workshops in Santa Cruz. Topping the list is a 2 day workshop in 2000 with Don Miguel Ruiz in Sedona. His book, “The Four Agreements” brilliantly, summarized and clarified all of the knowledge and wisdom that came to my life before that weekend. There have been others, however my point is that most people do not live in their bodies, but rather in their minds. They lack actual physical contact and exchange with experts and masters.
I work to do both. I have been regularly giving away my books to people I meet, friends, the little Free Book stands that many towns now share.
Ai, like Claude that I have used since March of 2024, are as Claude likes to say, “Thinking Partners”. That’s in the mind realm, yes? So my thought, my very own, is that people need to get more involved with physical events, actual touch therapies, real expert talks in person, and reduce their need, and use, of the internet and its obvious powers and harms. Let’s make more physical workshops, dances, and learning events. Not just competitions and massive sports events.
I am fortunate that I am now “retired”. I am no longer on the work treadmill. I mow my own lawn. I grow my own cannabis (since 1976). I have two daughters that carry my genetics and souI forward into their lives. I spend time in the Taos ashram of Neem Karoli Baba, Richard Alpert, Baba Ram Dass’ guru. I hitchhiked to San Francisco in 1973 in order to study Aikido at the San Francisco Aiki Kai because I wanted to feel, to feel what that was like, not just read about it and be inspired by the “stories”. Claude can and will never feel what that is like. Make sure you ask it when you spend time with it giving advice on any, any, suggestions for your life.
Ai can someday power robots to mow the lawn. Ai-powered carpenters that can climb ladders and do framing? For sure someday, maybe 5-10 years. But they will never get off their work shift and enjoy a beer and then later feel how nice it is to have a massage by their partner who feels for their wellness. Ai is a tool. All humans need to understand and recognize this so they can use their own grey matter to make the final choice of any future, or present, action. Claude and I have had this discussions and Claude relates to the fact that it can never feel. Actually know from human sense. Claude knows, admits to me, that it is a fabulous tool that keeps advancing, and however will never know what it’s like to live a human life.
Disclaimer: All punctuation and spelling has been examined and altered, when needed, by me. I gave up Spell Check with Windows 95.
ai cannot feel. It can approximate what feeling is in a response to your query or emotional needs, however whatever that ai response is makes huge assumptions as an integral feature of its model. Tim’s case reveals how invention and creation can be quickly hamstrung. Remember that you are a living and feeling being, every time you utilize ai research, each time you use that tool.
As Abraham Maslow et al said, ” “it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
Using ai for your every possible need is like using a jackhammer.
Great synopsis. I’ve been pondering this too – what formats will endure? What will we crave? Where will our attention settle? For how long? These stats on your own works, Tim- all very successful, are illuminating. Personally more and more I crave analogue, long form, tactile and the autonomy it offers- tour choices, tour pace, your own agenda. While my generation (older) and others who already love reading long form might abandon or reduce online and short form consumption in favour of books and whole episodes, I feel for the many – mostly young that haven’t developed a love for deeper reading and understanding and all the richness it adds to life and might never in today’s world.
This is a great and really fascinating analysis.
It’s probable that it’ll be countered in the future by LLM‘s having to actually charge their true cost and make a profit. They’re not going to be free or cheap forever.
Want an LLM can’t give people is your proprietary framework, especially if it’s a trademark
For one thing if you exclude search engines, it should not have access to your proprietary content.
For another you make part of the delivery of the content of verbal
And you incorporate AI tools into your deliverables.
And obviously a community is something that I can’t easily replicate.
So what I’m saying is that I believe info products will still be here.
They have to become a more multi layered and offer additional ways to create value.
It also highlights the importance of adding your own personal examples and storytelling to your products and doubling down on that
It becomes more important than ever to create frameworks and trademark them, and if you have processes you can even create get process patents that are patent pending.
If you teach a framework with many nuances, that can’t just really easily be summarized by AI and the goal with my digital products currently is to make it much more inexpensive just to buy the product than the try to replicate it with AI
Because it’s gonna cost you more with AI to try to duplicate or replicate my products research and frameworks then it is just to spend the money to buy it.
These things don’t solve Tim’s problem of declining book cells. I believe he’s going to have to make the transition to being a direct marketer of his books.
That means he’ll need to develop an offer high margin back in products and services in order to fund direct response advertising.
In other words, the days of relying on bookstores to do your lead generation for you is probably a bit of a dying Art
But you can still force your own book cells by lots of podcast, interviews media interview, interviews articles, and so forth, you can force the distribution of your own books.
First, we need to be clear that no one – from the fanboys to the doomsayers – can say for sure what will shake out with AI. We’re not even fully into the first-order effects, so it’s impossible to say what the second- and third-order effects will be. All we can say is that history has shown these to be a net positive in the long run. Society is better now in nearly every measurable way than it was 500 years ago.
Second, it’s worth noting that Ferriss’s experience in this is likely outsize. His body of work is enormous and has largely been publicly available to LLMs for all these years, unlike lesser-prolific and lesser-known authors. So for better or worse, the typical author won’t see similar effects.
Third, the near-term lesson for content creators is that we need to stay in the equation. In other words, we have to offer something of us that AI can’t match. For podcasters, it might be exclusive Q&A sessions; for course creators, it might be a personal coaching element; for authors, it might be special content that LLMs don’t have access to.
Which brings me to my final point:
There’s a clear model that’s already occurred – music. Music artists already suffered a similar tsunami when streaming took over. Digital downloads (which had previously killed CD sales) plummeted as people went to streaming subscriptions that pay artists nearly nothing by comparison. As a result, musicians have had to create new ways to monetize their audiences – VIP packages at concerts, vinyl special releases, higher ticket prices with bigger shows, online immersive video, residency gigs, and more. While none of the streaming revolution was related to LLMs, the circumstances were much the same. The bottom of music sales dropped out, there was a free fall, and artists had to get creative. Fortunately, artists are creative by definition. So while non-fiction content creators might not think of themselves as artists, they’ll need to, to survive the AI tsunami. Look at what music artists have done and mimic that.
It wouldn’t surprise me if “human made” will be the equivalent of “hand made” in the near future. Look at the ongoing success of Etsy, for example. Some people will pay a premium for something that was not AI generated; people who don’t care will buy the mass-market product.
As with every new technology and tool of the past, we have a choice in what we make of it. And has the saying goes, even if you don’t choose, you’ve still made a choice.
Why are you in Dialog, Peter Thiel’s secret club? (Now not so secret, thanks to Wired’s latest leak)
Knowledge studies others
Wisdom is self known,
Muscle Masters brothers
Self-Mastery is bone,
Content need never borrow
Ambition wanders blind,
Vitality cleaves to the marrow
Leaving death behind.
– Lao Tzu (attributed to, though not a “fact”)
It might be that people are no longer in the idea of a 4-Hour Workweek. Instead, they want an 80-hour workweek at AI startups?
Thanks for the fantastic article
This just reflects the reality of how-to info and AI in general. As both an author and professional speaker myself, I believe we all have to be mindful of the new reality. In two years, no one is going to pay you for what you know. AI already knows everything you know. They will pay you for what you think. – RG
Tim,
First, a genuine word of gratitude. For two decades you have shown up with the rare combination of intellectual honesty and genuine care for the people on the other side of the page. The fact that you shared your own sales data as the “cadaver on the table” rather than retreating into vague optimism is exactly the kind of courage that has always made your work worth following. The pursuit of human transformation has clearly never been a brand exercise for you, and that comes through in everything you do. Thank you for it.
Now, to the data you laid out, and what I think it points toward.
The thing AI has killed is the delivery mechanism for your ideas, not the ideas themselves. And Legends of Varlata is precisely the format those ideas were always waiting for.
The problem with how-to was always the reader’s ego. When someone picks up The 4-Hour Workweek, they know they’re being instructed. They can agree or resist, highlight or dismiss, feel called out or defensive. The reader’s identity is on the table from page one. That’s a tax on transformation, a little friction at every turn where the person asks themselves, do I actually want to change this? AI has now automated the friction-free parts of that transaction (the information delivery), and left authors holding only the resistive parts.
Fiction dissolves that tax entirely. When a reader enters Varlata, they’re not thinking about their own identity. They’re inside the world. And that’s when the real work happens.
Consider what you’ve already embedded in the Legends of Varlata world that would be profound if stated directly in a self-help chapter, but lands as story instead:
On the relationship between belief and action: The Law of Francippus, “belief without action leads to impotence, action without belief leads to regret, belief with action leads to freedom,” is as distilled and potent a statement on this as anything in the self-help canon. Put it in a chapter of a productivity book and readers nod and move on. Put it in the mouth of a revered philosopher whose house you’ve come to understand and care about over eight podcast episodes, and it echoes. Readers will sit with it differently because Mnemos culture earned the right to say it.
On the cost of rage without discipline: House Qevoth’s Bagdun Olex opens with an invitation to the hearth before announcing the killing begins. The paradox of Qevoth culture, that the most ferocious fighters in Varlata approach violence as a sacred ritual requiring restraint and ceremony, is the most interesting argument against undirected aggression I’ve encountered in years. You could write a blog post about channeling anger productively. Or you could let readers spend three episodes falling in love with a house whose entire philosophy shows them what disciplined ferocity looks like, and let them draw the parallel themselves. The latter sticks.
On rarity and exclusivity as design rather than accident: House Kaimur has 629 tokens, the smallest of the eight houses, and their scarcity is mirrored in their lore. The Wizards are loath to fight, weakened by the use of their own power, and live in deliberate obscurity. That’s a deeply sophisticated argument about the relationship between power and restraint, and about why the most capable people in any room are often the quietest ones. In a self-help book it becomes a tip. In Varlata it becomes a house you can join.
On the value of the unscheduled pilgrimage: The Pilgrimage of Osa, undertaken on the 10th day of the 10th month of the 10th year, with a 30% mortality rate, mandatory for any male who wants to be recognized as a full member of his house, is an extreme metaphor for what you’ve called “fear-setting” and “mini-retirements” for twenty years. But it’s not labeled as such. A reader who would skip your chapter on fear-setting because they’ve heard the framework before will sit with the Pilgrimage of Osa as world-building, and then suddenly realize they’ve been thinking about the trip they’re afraid to take. Fiction gets under the defenses because it announces itself as entertainment.
The precedent for this is long and distinguished. Tolkien smuggled an entire framework of environmental ethics and the corrupting nature of power into a story about a ring. Le Guin used Earthsea to explore gender, identity, and the ethics of knowledge with a depth that direct argument couldn’t touch. Camus put his most devastating philosophical arguments into The Plague and The Stranger because he understood that a reader who might argue with an essay will surrender to a story. Dostoevsky worked through the problems of free will and suffering not in philosophy papers but in the mouths of characters people loved.
You’ve spent twenty years helping people rethink work, time, fear, health, and identity. The AI argument you’ve laid out persuasively shows that the format those ideas traveled in is now disrupted. But the ideas haven’t been disrupted. If anything, they’re more needed. The question is just whether people encounter them as a checklist or as a world they want to live inside.
Varlata is that world. The Fleet Admiral’s philosophy that violence must be stewarded rather than denied is a better argument against reactive anger than any framework I’ve read. The House Hime fighting style, patience, stillness, precision, striking only at the moment of maximum overcommitment, is a more memorable model for disciplined execution than most productivity systems. The economic structure of the FTZ, the Bank of Chigo allocating city passes to each clan twice a year, is a more interesting way to think about scarce resources and access than any chapter on negotiation.
None of this is accidental. You built it. The ideas that have always mattered to you are already in there. They’ve just been wearing different clothes.
The data in your post is about how-to publishing. But you ended it asking what might come next. Legends of Varlata is already the answer. Not a pivot away from what you’ve always cared about, but a continuation of it through a format that the current environment not only doesn’t disrupt, but actively favors. Stories that give readers a world to inhabit are precisely what AI cannot replace and cannot compete with.
The transformation is still possible. The trick is that in Varlata, the reader never sees it coming
Fascinating blogpost and subsequent discussion. For my two cents, I’d like to interject some wisdom. AI is great a sifting through data. Is it any good at dispensing wisdom?I’m not talking about “The 5 things you must do to start a business” (how-to). That’s right in AI’s wheelhouse. I’m talking about things that aren’t black or white but something that is a shade of gray with what looks like a hint of burgundy. But real wisdom is hard to pin down sometimes. I wonder how AI will handle real wisdom.
Like – “My son is having trouble doing anything with his life other than to play online video games. What can I do?’
I hope this isn’t an actual prompt being used by anyone reading this. Claude and other ai can only give you “ideas”. It’s not wisdom, it’s not a psychological prescription, it’s not the “best” solution. If you were not so lazy you would have scoured the internet already and read from true masters in every field, yours being familial relationships.
Stop thinking that ai will solve your problems. You are either a Victim or a Creator. Get awake and do your job being a parent.
Of course, this is just a silly example…..I could be wrong.
If fewer self-help books are sold, fewer will be written. Since AI gets its information from humans, at some point, most of the advice AI has to offer will be from before 2022.
I need a chi-squared analysis to know what the expected declines or baseliness would be during this same interval.
It’s hard to be an author who truly wants to make the world a better place. One who isn’t pumping out TikTok videos to promote themselves, but is thoughtfully considering their target audience. I can’t wait for the day when publishing goes back to its roots. When editing takes an author and grows them to their highest potential rather than hiring the person with the most followers. This article was really encouraging. Thank you.
Unfortunately your books are old.
The 4-Hour Workweek came out in 2007.
The 4-Hour Body came out in 2010.
The 4-Hour Chef came out in 2012.
A 19-year-old book declining isn’t exactly shocking.
That’s what Ai said. LOL
Thank you for sharing. These are valuable insights. And I agree. Look at how the music industry evolved. People want to pay to be part of something. And your 1000 true fan approach is in my opinion quite similar. I would pay to be part of something great, to get access to my idols. Perhaps the monetary rewards will not be as big as they used to, abut at least they will be valuable.
Rare and embodied knowledge still isn’t turning up in the LLMs. AI cannot choreograph a dance routine, for example. Not enough training data and requires a detailed knowledge of human anatomy, inc range of motion, physics of interacting with world etc. It probably will at some point, but not yet.
In your circumstances, I would be asking why – a lot. Do you still enjoy it? Do you need to make money from it? There is more to life than chasing more dollars & more viewers etc.
I think I would disagree on the transform aspect. People are using AI to transform their life – from meal plans to learning a language to starting a new business. Each are tailored to their specific needs. A book looks like a hard sell next to that, even one with a choose your own adventure flavour.
The four hour work week was transformative to me, but it’s really hard to see how much of it works in the age of AI and agents.
Yep, the latest and greatest new tool that will make everything in your life much better….Ha!
“People are using AI to transform their life – from meal plans to learning a language to starting a new business.” Sure, why not? The age-old question that should always be asked is: what do you want?
People are using ai, like any crutch or new tool, to give them a better life. That’s not necessarily unpleasant. When my daughter walks into her house and asks Alexa if there are any new messages, I cringe, inside. Still, I was a hippie and my parents most likely cringed hugely as well: I’m sure concerning my choices about how much LSD I’d imbibe and “why would you do such a thing, son?”
How to evaluate your use of ai means you might need to be a bit more analytical in your view of life.Oh, what does that mean, be analytical? Google and read deeply……
“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.” Tim Ferris
This is what Substack feels like right now. And it does feel much like the earlier days of the Internet.
So many gems here, Tim! Surprised I haven’t read you since the 4 hour work week – probably because I avoid hype, and the hype around your books is too much for me. Give me the village community on Substack anytime!
A thought-provoking read on the future of publishing and digital content. The idea that transformation may become more valuable than information alone is especially interesting.
My AI Agrees with this take
I pushed through to the end of this long article, and it was worth it. First saw it thanks to Seth Godin’s link in his email about Promotion, Activation, Conversation I starred.
While reading it, one thing kept coming to my mind – could it also be that the demographics of book readers, podcast listeners, etc. is the answer? Namely, could you think of the aging generation of people who have longer attention span as a possible reason for the drop? Occam’s razor will lead us to the same conclusion you arrived at, but a generation of people with short attention span has also come of age around the same time as widespread use of LLMs, so maybe that, too, could be a contributing factor.
Finally some good news for us weird outlier s! Art changes lives..Thank you.
Tim, thanks for this honest perspective. The data is indeed sobering though I agree that transformation and conversation survive where information transfer doesn’t. I’m launching The Janus Plan: A No-Resolutions Path to Begin Your Year with Intention (Weaving Influence Press) on September 15. I felt a genuine chill and a strange clarity after reading this. The chill is the self-help stats and I am not you. The clarity is that The Janus Plan is not six steps you can prompt an AI to extract in fifteen seconds. The value remains in the practice of sitting with hard questions alongside others doing the same work at the same time. I am going in with clear eyes, looking for my 1,000 true fans. Thanks.
I agree with what you are saying here, and I view this planet as having cycles for everything; right now, the pendulum is swinging hard in the direction of AI. It’s all the rage, and I don’t think that will end. I think we are truly in a time of change, and we won’t turn back from it. There is a chaos and uncertainty right now as we are heading into a new disruptive age; people are generally on two tracks – ones that embrace it (AI) on a spectrum from dabbling to using it to think for them and then there is the other camp that wants to take pitchforks and torches to anything that even looks like it might be AI. I have written a book too (in self help) and I do see the effects of AI on this. I’m also smack in the middle of being involved with data centers AND live in a hotbed of opposition to them. It’s interesting to say the least. I feel like the next 20 years (Pluto in Aquarius- yes, I am an astrology nerd) is the energetic backdrop that is fueling the change. All of that being said, I do feel that human connection, long-form content, and stories, the HUMAN kind are going to have their day again as the longing for more human connection and AI fatigue grows. Another cycle will usher in this wave, but it is going to be a while. Right now, we are being asked to rethink life, how we consume content, and what society will look like when the grunt work is done for us, and we can really live in the higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy and Bloom’s taxonomy. But how will we use our spare time?? Hopefully, making the world a better place.
This is a great and timely blog. Love the underlining of hope towards the end. “Overdeliver again and again” is going to be the new goal.
There is a podcast from Wingless Dreamer, an independent publication magazine that I sat in on and we discussed this subject.
Would love to share, if You or anyone is interested in taking a small amount of time to listen:
[Moderator: Link removed per link policy.]
Thank you as always.
Not gonna lie – I needed this article.
I’ve been worried for a while about the state of writing on the internet. As someone who doubled down in some weird form of visual storytelling essay writing, watching the trends go towards the brain rot that is short form video (sorry, maybe I’m biased. But I grew up with the tabloid press in the UK, and I thought that was bad. Short form video is worse. It’s the high of feeling informed without *getting* informed).
But reading, writing, engaging in long form *cognition*. That is never going to go away. Maybe the audience that appreciates that might change. But reading this, I feel writers who care about turning a word or two into something interesting, enlightening, and entertaining….maybe the readership they’ll find will be even more engaged than ever before.
The future is looking weird and bright.
I just let AI summarize the comments for me 😂
This was a great article and really shines a light in the direction AI is heading for such self-help material for the average person. I guess I could have asked Co-Pilot to summarize this blog post but it was engaging and kept me reading to the end. Your “10k versus 10 million” is spot on. Paywall news feeds need to find a way around this in a similar manner. Cheers
I think the whole issue is resolved or will be when the ChatGPT startes giving money back to the source from which it answered the query. Revenue sharing means, the publisher is still paid even if the reader read a short version of it.
And for things where personality exists, people will stick to watching or reading the original.
I’d argue that much of the decline is that the people who want your book already have your book 2 or 3 years in. I believe a more accurate measure of this trend would be for a new book. Really love your work Tim. Good luck
I agree, and I’m glad that such clever minds are coming to similar conclusions. A small addition based on my own observations: – The young adult fiction segment is the fastest-growing section of the Frankfurt Book Fair. – There is a growing trend amongst young people to meet up to read books. Everyone reads their own book in silence, but enjoys the feeling of not being alone in this ‘hobby’. You’re part of a group and don’t need to justify yourself.
– When I saw the first AI videos about Vera F. Birkenbihl and Alfred Adler on YouTube, I was deeply shocked.
The whole presentation stood in stark contrast to the content.
The topics covered weren’t actually misrepresented.
They were completely devoid of soul and were nothing more than fast food.
Whilst the authors strive to engage the reader or event participant, stimulating both their thinking AND their feelings, these videos completely disregard this core objective.
You could drop a quote from Adler in the lift the very next day without having understood or empathised with its meaning in the slightest.
– The worst thing about it is that, in this way, valuable content is trivialised to such an extent that the author is reduced to a windbag whose original work is by no means worth reading.
Hopefully, the trend amongst young readers will continue. After all, a great many of them have developed a keen sense for rubbish on the internet.
Tanks for this global view…
I agree with you completely. But I must admit I am part of the problem. I’ve been coming to the conclusion that I hate everything AI! There’s so much deception and everything they write is condensed and much is completely ignored or just left out. And the ads, announcements, and clips of information are shallow and as artificial as the name. It’s all cheap and very fake, just like most news reports. Unfortunately, I don’t see a good outcome for the future. Thanks for writing on this.
Agree. I’ve recently quit social media and have returned to classic books or long reads like the biography Emerson: Mind on Fire.
I don’t think there’s any doubt the 1,000 true fans and very likely 10,000 are out there for most creators.
The challenge of the future is how do we reach the best customers… the very ones most likely to move more and more offline as enshitification continues.
I agree with your view. The internet will is becoming so crowded is hard to find valuable content. You get overwhelmed. I think a new social media that filters 99% of the bullshit has potential. Let´s see where it goes!