Book marketing is a measurable part of an author’s business: surveys track weekly promotion time, newsletter use, advertising budgets, campaign evaluation, and income outcomes. The figures below span surveys conducted or reported from 2024 through mid-2026, alongside clearly dated historical benchmarks from the Authors Guild.
Contents
- Author time and marketing workload
- Newsletters and reader-list building
- Advertising budgets and platform reach
- What authors advertise and measure
- Tactics, effectiveness, and spending
- Publishing models and income outcomes
Author time and marketing workload
Marketing time varies substantially by an author’s employment situation and monthly gross revenue. In BookBub’s 2025 survey, 72% of authors who work full-time outside their author business spent five or fewer hours per week on marketing. By contrast, 62% of full-time authors spent six or more hours per week marketing their books. These groups describe different working arrangements, so their percentages should not be treated as a direct apples-to-apples comparison. (BookBub, “What Does a Writer Actually Do?”)
Revenue is also associated with heavier marketing schedules in that survey. More than 70% of authors grossing at least $10,000 per month spent six or more hours per week on marketing, and 34% spent more than 10 hours weekly. Among authors earning under $10,000 per month, about 40% spent six or more hours per week marketing. The figures describe association, not proof that extra marketing time caused higher revenue. (BookBub, “What Does a Writer Actually Do?”)
The weekly cadence of specific activities was lower than the overall time commitment. Fewer than 20% of authors reported doing advance-review-copy or review outreach weekly. Fewer than 20% also reported holding live or virtual events weekly, and fewer than 20% reported doing public-relations or media outreach weekly. In other words, a substantial marketing workload does not necessarily mean repeating every tactic each week. (BookBub, “What Does a Writer Actually Do?”)
Authors who spent more than six hours per week marketing reported content creation, email marketing, and social-media management at rates 20 percentage points higher than lighter marketers. The survey therefore points to a difference in the breadth of recurring work, not only the number of hours on a clock. (BookBub, “What Does a Writer Actually Do?”)
An older Authors Guild benchmark provides historical context. Authors in the 2018 survey reported an average of 7.5 hours per week marketing and promoting their books. The survey said weekly marketing time had risen 14% over the prior five years, comparing 2012 with 2017 survey years. These are legacy findings and are not presented as a current measurement. (Authors Guild, “Six Takeaways from the Authors Guild 2018 Author Income Survey”)
Newsletters and reader-list building
Email lists are one of the clearest differences between author groups in the supplied survey results. In Written Word Media’s mid-2026 survey, 58% of growing indie authors actively used an author newsletter, compared with 43% of all respondents. Newsletter swaps showed a similar gap: 27% of growing indie authors participated, compared with 17% overall. (Written Word Media, “2026 Mid-Year Author Survey”)
Newsletter use also rose across the survey’s author-growth tiers. It increased from 39% among starting-out authors to 73% among authors in the “got traction” tier. Amazon Ads usage rose from 18% in the starting-out group to 59% in the got-traction group. These figures show how adoption differed by tier; they do not establish whether the tactic itself produced the tier’s result. (Written Word Media, “2026 Mid-Year Author Survey”)
The 2025 Written Word Media author survey reported a large income difference between published authors with and without an email list. Authors with an email list earned a median of $300 per month, versus $15 for published authors without a list. Because these are medians from survey groups, they should not be read as a guaranteed return from creating a list. (Written Word Media, “2025 Author Survey Results”)
Newsletter effectiveness ratings also varied by earnings. Authors earning more than $10,000 per month rated their own newsletter’s effectiveness 4.3 out of 5. Authors earning $100 or less per month rated newsletters about 2.7 out of 5. These are self-reported assessments, not standardized campaign experiments. (Written Word Media, “2025 Author Survey Results”)
Paid social advertising can support list building as well as direct promotion. In a 2026 survey, 20% of authors using Meta Ads said they used them to drive newsletter sign-ups. Among authors who might hire help but had not yet outsourced, 90% said marketing was the category where they wanted help. Authors who had outsourced work reported email marketing at least 10 percentage points more often than authors working solo. (BookBub, “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads”) (BookBub, “What Does a Writer Actually Do?”)
Advertising budgets and platform reach
The 2026 BookBub advertising survey found that at least 51% of surveyed authors used display advertising weekly as part of their core marketing strategy. Spending among weekly book advertisers was substantial: 40% spent more than $1,000 per month on ads, while 55% spent more than $500 per month. Across all marketing channels, two-thirds of authors who advertised weekly spent more than $500 per month. (BookBub, “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads”)
Authors generally viewed the major platforms as capable of delivering reach, though the measures differ. Eighty-two percent agreed that Meta Ads can reach a large audience of readers. Seventy-six percent agreed that Amazon Ads allow them to reach many readers. Facebook had more than 3 billion monthly active users when the survey article was updated; that is a platform figure reported in 2026, not a count of book-buying users. (BookBub, “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads”)
Ease of campaign use was rated positively for BookBub Ads. Eighty-four percent of surveyed authors agreed that setting up a BookBub Ads campaign was easy, and 77% found the results easy to understand. Ease of setup and clarity of reporting are operational measures; they do not equal profitability. (BookBub, “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads”)
| Advertising measure | Survey result | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly display-ad use | At least 51% | 2026 survey |
| Weekly advertisers spending over $500 monthly on ads | 55% | 2026 survey |
| Weekly advertisers spending over $1,000 monthly on ads | 40% | 2026 survey |
| Weekly advertisers spending over $500 across all marketing | Two-thirds | 2026 survey |
Distribution strategy appears to shape some advertising choices. Authors using wide ebook distribution were more than twice as likely to advertise a permafree book as authors whose catalogs were entirely in Kindle Unlimited. This is a relative comparison from the survey, not a quantified estimate of the underlying groups’ absolute rates. (BookBub, “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads”)
What authors advertise and measure
The surveyed advertising population was heavily self-publishing oriented: 98% self-published some or all of their books. Thirty-seven percent used wide ebook distribution, while 35% had all of their books exclusive to Amazon. The categories may overlap with other publishing arrangements, so they should not be added together. (BookBub, “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads”)
Permafree books were a notable advertising subject: 35% of surveyed authors used ads to promote one. Fewer than 20% used ads to promote their own stores or direct book sales. The difference suggests that ads in this survey were more often connected to a book-discovery or retailer strategy than to direct storefront acquisition, but the survey does not explain each author’s reason. (BookBub, “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads”)
Sales volume was the most common success measure. Sixty-seven percent of surveyed advertisers judged ad success by the sales volume generated, and 62% considered cost per click important when evaluating ads. These measures can answer different questions: sales volume describes output, while cost per click describes an efficiency signal. Neither figure alone reports profit. (BookBub, “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads”)
Catalog size was also connected with advertising frequency. Thirty-five percent of surveyed advertisers had published between 21 and 50 books. In BookBub’s 2025 author survey, authors with 50 or more books reported using display advertising regularly at a rate of almost 60%. Authors grossing at least $10,000 per month were twice as likely as lower-grossing authors to conduct marketing analysis weekly and nearly twice as likely to run display ads. (BookBub, “BookBub vs. Amazon vs. Facebook Ads”) (BookBub, “What Does a Writer Actually Do?”)
Tactics, effectiveness, and spending
In Written Word Media’s 2025 author survey, BookBub Deals received an average effectiveness rating of 3.5 out of 5. Promo sites received 3.4 out of 5, and author newsletters received 3.3 out of 5. These are average author ratings, so they measure perceived effectiveness rather than a common return-on-investment calculation. (Written Word Media, “2025 Author Survey Results”)
The 2024 Indie Author Survey reported that 23.6% of authors identified in-person events as an overrated marketing tactic. That result captures an opinion about a tactic, not the share of authors who use events or the sales generated by them. (Written Word Media, “2024 Indie Author Survey Results”)
The Authors Guild’s 2023 survey reported different average 2022 book-marketing spending by racial group. White authors reported average spending of $7,658, while Black authors reported $3,182. These are averages for the 2022 measurement year and should not be interpreted as individual spending targets or as evidence of why the difference occurred. (Authors Guild, “Key Takeaways from the Authors Guild’s 2023 Author Income Survey”)
Publishing models and income outcomes
Mid-2026 business sentiment was mixed among indie-author survey respondents. Twenty-three percent said their business was growing, 22% said it was holding steady, and 30% said it was declining. Separately, 51% expected their income to grow over the following 12 months. Business status and forward expectation are different measures, so these percentages should not be combined into a single outlook score. (Written Word Media, “2026 Mid-Year Author Survey”)
The Authors Guild reported that median 2022 book income for full-time authors was $10,000. The median was $12,800 for full-time self-published authors. Among full-time self-published authors publishing since at least 2018, median book income was $24,000 in 2022, compared with $13,700 in 2018. These are dated income measurements, not forecasts. (Authors Guild, “Key Takeaways from the Authors Guild’s 2023 Author Income Survey”)
Genre differences were substantial in the same 2022 survey. Full-time romance and romantic-suspense authors reported median book income of $31,725, while full-time mystery, thriller, and suspense authors reported $10,000. Genre medians describe survey groups and do not predict an individual author’s results. (Authors Guild, “Key Takeaways from the Authors Guild’s 2023 Author Income Survey”)
Historical Authors Guild results show why marketing time should not be treated as a guaranteed income lever. In the 2018 survey, only 21% of full-time published authors derived 100% of their individual income from book-related income. Only 8% of all published authors reported a significant increase in book-related income despite increased marketing time. Those findings refer to the 2017 survey year and are legacy facts, not independently verified current benchmarks. (Authors Guild, “Six Takeaways from the Authors Guild 2018 Author Income Survey”)