Authors, Welcome to the Human Preference Economy
The economy is moving toward everything we're already building
There’s a shift in the broader economy in a direction authors should know about. First, it will make you happy. Because, secondly, it’s headed toward what authors who are building businesses around their books are already doing.
It’s called the human preference economy.
And some futurists think it’s the most likely scenario in the decades ahead: a parallel, “human preference” economy growing alongside an AI-dominated one.
What It Is
The human preference economy is the growing, measurable market preference for things made by, delivered by, and experienced with other humans; that is, authenticity, experience, and meaning as economic differentiators. People pay more for such things (your books, products, services, events), seek them out deliberately, choose them over cheaper, automated, cyberspace alternatives, and remain loyal to them longer.
Don’t interpret this as all about nostalgia, whimsy, irony, whatever—some version of electing vinyl over CDs, your granny’s china contrasting with your mid-century modern dining set.
We can consider it a rational market response—real choosing, real preferences—to a world flooded with algorithmic content, AI-generated everything, and transactions devoid of human interaction. The more artificial commerce in the digital and auto-produced landscape becomes, the more human connection and creativity stand as a stark, valuable alternative.
Perhaps you’re already starting to see how your author work and business fits into this picture?
Three Pillars—And Why Authors Are Already in This Space
Authenticity. Your own voice. Your personal perspectives. Stories spun from the depths of your being. Real expertise earned through customized study and real experience at the cellular level.
AI can generate serviceable content in seconds. Human authorship is not its counterpart just because it was crafted from an embodied brain in hours, days, weeks, and months. It’s because a specific human—you, the one and only—created it. Your shifting lenses, personal interpretations and pictures of the world, your biases and artistic slants, the ways you combine and re-deliver words and ideas are not replicable. That’s a premium product.
Authors have always traded in authenticity. In a human preference economy, think of it as an explicit economic advantage.
Experience. Experience economy was first coined in 1998, posited as what came after agrarian, industrial, and service economies, and it will maintain a key place in a human preference economy. It’s the fact that people have been increasingly paying for experiences over products—for things they participate in, attend, remember, and share rather than things they passively consume, forget, and leave for landfill.
This means your author events, workshops, readings, tours, book club gatherings, and in-person connections aren’t simply marketing moves to sell more books. These plays and offerings in the experience economy are part of a strategic business model.
Every event you host, every partnership you build with a local business, every in-person interaction you create around your books is what this parallel human preference economy is looking for.
Meaning. Humans are meaning-making and meaning-seeking creatures. In the end, we cannot help but seek work, relationships, purchases, and activities that hold significance for us.
Books, by their nature, create meaning, invite meaning-making, and provoke meaning-making thoughts, reflections, and behaviors. Authors who understand this and build work, communities, and businesses around shared values, questions, interests, and experiences are activating the meaning pillar of the human preference economy.
Basically, your author-book cottage industry, built around your passions, personality, imagination, and expertise, summons and dispenses meaning in ways that corporate and AI factories can’t.
That’s a sustainable competitive advantage.
A Micro-Entrepreneur Moment
The same conditions driving the human preference economy are fueling an explosion of micro-entrepreneurs—individuals building small, personal, human-scale businesses around their specific skills, knowledge, creativity, and communities.
Authors building businesses around their books are a natural, almost inevitable expression of this moment. The human scale of an author enterprise meets the moment. The personal relationship between author and reader meets the moment. The specific, local, community-rooted nature of what you’re building meets the authenticity-first, experience-driven, and meaning-making components of the human preference economy.
The entire economy isn’t moving toward a colossal AI-driven blob. It’s bifurcating—and one of those branches is moving directly toward things smaller, more human, more creative, more meaningful. Toward us as authors.
We Already Have a Head Start
Here’s what’s encouraging—and I mean this specifically for authors who’ve already started building an author business of any size or scope:
You’re ahead.
Others may still be figuring out what the human preference economy means for their work (if they’re even aware of the concept and its existence), but you’ve been building direct reader relationships through events and email lists. You’ve been creating experiences that people pay for and remember. You’ve been developing your voice and a body of work that carries and generates meaning for others. You’ve been experimenting—I hope—with some of the 17 types of author income that help build a sustainable business model.
This means you’re already building the kind of small, human-centric enterprise that this economic subdivision rewards.
Don’t think of your emerging cottage industry as a consolation prize in a landscape where winning has become too hard. Think of it as getting a jump on things in the growing human preference economy. Don’t think of it as a fallback (though I do promote author businesses as an important form of defensive entrepreneurship), but as a strategic position in the human-centered track of the future.
Stop panicking and start recognizing and reaping the rewards of what you have to offer the world.
A Note on Worry
Authors can worry and rage a lot about AI competitors, evil-adjacent algorithms, platform legerdemain, and keeping up with a frenzy of trends, pivots, and possibilities.
Some of that worry is reasonable. VUCAville is real and publishing is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
But just remember the futurists who think that the most likely future response to AI domination is the rise of the resistance: a parallel-track economy favoring human-specific advantages.
What do you have, what can you build, that isn’t threatened by automation and the recombinatorial sputter of LLMs?
This is your value.
Tell Us in the Comments
Where do you see authenticity, experience, and meaning already showing up in your author business? What such elements can you nurture and highlight for your sustainable business advantage? What is still to be recognized and leveraged?
Build the Human-Scale Business This Economy Is Already Rewarding
You have a head start in the human preference economy—but a head start only matters if you keep building deliberately. My Author’s Business Accelerator is designed for published authors ready to strengthen their authenticity, expand their experience offerings, and deepen the meaning they’re creating for readers, all while building the sustainable income streams that turn a head start into a real advantage. In 8 sessions (with a flexible schedule to work around your life), we’ll identify where your author business is already strong, where it needs shoring up, and how to build the kind of small, human-centered enterprise that no algorithm can replicate. Not group coaching or generic advice—it’s a strategic partnership built around your specific voice, your specific readers, and your specific path forward. Learn more about the Business Accelerator.
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100%. I just did my first author booth a couple months ago and I had so many extended conversations with folks about the personal, emotional sides of my stories.