Are you overwhelmed by the amount of book marketing you seem to have to do? There are countless ways to promote a book — but you don’t need to do all of them to drive sales. Instead, focusing on tactics that reach the right readers with the right message at the right time will let you spend less money (and time!) and sell more copies.

Being an author isn’t just about writing anymore. Authors — both independently and traditionally published — have to wear a lot of hats: writer, marketer, administrator, content creator, personnel manager, and operations manager, among others. With so many roles to juggle, how do they balance the time it takes to actually write books with the business of reaching readers? What do writers do on a daily and weekly basis?

BookBub surveyed more than 500 authors in the BookBub audience to ask about how they actually spend their time — see what they had to say.

Your author newsletter is a crucial tool for building a strong, direct connection with readers, even before your first book is out. But it’s a good idea to think strategically about encouraging readers to sign up. When we get so many emails already, many of us ask ourselves: What’s in it for me?

If you’ve used Google or other search engines lately, you’ve probably noticed that the results, and the way books and authors appear in them, are changing. Searches no longer return just a long list of links — they include rich data, FAQs, AI summaries, and other new answer formats.

These changes are both a challenge and an opportunity — authors who adapt and earn placement in the new, richer results stand to sell more books and grow their audience. Meanwhile, authors who don’t adjust could see declines in their search-driven traffic and sales.

What do you need to do to make sure you benefit from these changes?

This article aims to answer that question by looking at the key ways search is changing, and the steps you can take to prepare.

Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) have developed rapidly in the last few years, and now represent one of the most controversial topics in the publishing world. We regularly survey our partners to understand how they’re using different platforms and technology and to share those insights with our audience, and we recently did the same for AI. We heard from over 1,200 authors who told us how they’re currently thinking about AI in relation to their work.

Display advertising can be an incredibly effective way to reach new readers and sell more books. But you only have a couple of seconds once a reader sees your ad to capture their attention — which is why your ad needs a compelling hook that will catch their eye and get them to click.

We’ve gathered 14 ideas for hooks you can use in your ad images and examples from advertisers who used them well — which of these hooks can you use in your own ads?

Think about the last time you read a book you didn’t want to end. That longing for more is a significant part of the appeal of reading. A series allows readers to spend more time in a world they’ve grown to love, with characters they’ve become attached to. It’s like catching up with old friends. There’s comfort in returning to a familiar setting, and excitement in seeing how characters evolve over time.

Whether you’re looking to grow your author platform, fine-tune your advertising campaigns, try new marketing strategies, or make the most of BookBub’s tools, these top posts are packed with insights to help you achieve your goals.

You’ve written a book and now you needed a marketing plan. Launching books is like making first impressions: You only get one shot at it, so how would I make sure I got it right? Below are some of the paths I followed to get me to my final destination: a successful book launch.

Now that I’ve been using Canva for about a decade, I teach other authors how to use the tool on my Canva Tips for Authors YouTube channel. In this post, I’ll share my best tips on using Canva to create book marketing materials. The tool has a lot to offer, but I hope this gives you a good introduction to the kinds of content you can create.