Where has the book publishing world been in 2025? Where is it likely to go in 2026? And how can authors – whether indie or traditionally published – gain visibility with the best audiences for their particular work? It’s time for an annual marketing review, and the planning we must do each year.

Anyone who’s an author these days has to think about marketing. Back in ancient days when I was a young writer trying to understand the publishing industry, publishing companies operated differently from the way they do now. I got to see that process vicariously through my brother-in-law Warren C. Norwood.

At that time (in the 1980s – yes, I’m older than dirt), a popular author’s publisher sent them on a book tour. They arranged media interviews for them and paid to send them to different cities. Warren drove to many of the places his publisher sent him in a brand-new red Dodge Ram pickup truck he bought using his advance for The Windhover Tapes (originally envisioned as a duology, it later morphed into a 4-book series).

It was a different world from today, for sure!

A Look Back at 2025

If the past is prologue, the place to start an annual marketing review is with a look back at the year that just ended. In my case, I not only look at the track record of Weird Sisters Publishing itself. I also believe it’s good to get an overview of the wider world of book publishing in the past year.

My facts and figures for this post come from a New York Times article, Dragons, Sex, and The Bible: What Drove the Book Business This Year, by Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter.

According to Harris and Alter, 2025 was a strong year for genre books, especially romantasy and romance (with or without “spice” – that is, the sexy parts). They also pointed to a thriller series that sold well. Another winner? The Bible (which, to be fair, also includes a fair bit of sex and violence, as well as more spiritual bits). Harris and Alter attribute the rise of the “Good Book” to “some Americans’ growing interest in faith and spirituality.”

But, again as they point out, newcomers and “smaller books” also did well when they resonated with a certain niche group of readers – more on that in a bit.

What About Format?

Despite the stubborn belief among some independently published authors that “ebooks are where it’s at,” roughly 75% of books sold were paper copies. Overall, readers persistently continue to prefer “the dead trees version” of books by a substantial margin. Ebooks actually were down overall, from a high of 17% in 2016 to more like 11% nine years later in 2025.

Meanwhile, audiobooks held steady (by the numbers, the rest of the market equates to about 14%, although the article didn’t specify a percentage). Harris and Alter point out the very encouraging fact that audiobooks have a tendency not to replace print or ebook sales, but to be an add-on, along with a print (or e-) book. This allows readers to enjoy the story, even while commuting or doing other chores.

This is a significant change from the proportions I found for my 2024 post about publishing in late 2023-early 2024, Thoughts About Publishing Trends. Two years ago the data source I found rather optimistically pegged ebook sales around 20%. What does this mean for Indie authors conducting an annual marketing review?

Well, for one thing it shows we can’t afford to think trends will be consistent. And that’s important in a very crowded market. How can we compete more effectively in a very crowded market? Upwards of 11,000 new books are published EACH DAY, according to many industry sources.

The Importance of Focusing on One’s Niche

Our only consolation as we do our annual marketing review is that we’re not competing against all of the books published worldwide – “only” those in our niche. But it definitely appears to me that we’re wiser to publish “wide” (via lots of booksellers, not just Amazon), and in all three formats, if possible, although audiobooks involve extra difficulties and expenses for Indies (Weird Sisters Publishing is still working on that!).

I wrote above that we’re “only” competing with books in our niche. But what is a niche, and how does an author know if we’ve found ours? In the world of book publishing, one’s niche is the sweet spot in their genre for their kind of books.

Thus, for example, my XK9 books are “hard” science fiction (based on technology and scientific extrapolations). They’re also mystery stories. And police procedurals. But they’re also very animal-centric, and I find that many of my readers’ interest is initially sparked by the “dog” angle. These books also explore psychology, with side orders of sociology and political science in the background. The “Venn diagram” where all of those overlap is my “niche.” (unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t have a category for that).

Stay Flexible and Monitor Developments

My point is that any annual marketing review needs to take stock of both what’s changed and what still works. The publishing market is always evolving. Ways of being found by one’s “perfect” readers change. For one example, since I started publishing in 2019, advertising in some venues appears to have stopped working as it once did.

A lot of that is because the older social media are rapidly enshittifying (It’s increasingly difficult to “go viral” organically on any Meta platform, for example. The algorithms throttle that). The less said about X, the better. We’ll see what happens to Tik Tok under new management.

Newer platforms, such as Bluesky or Substack appear to hold promise, if your niche works there. Patreon, Kickstarter, and other crowdfunding platforms seem to be enduring for authors who’ve figured out how to work with that model. But nothing is a guaranteed winner.

Most bewildering of all, what works great for one writer may not work at all for another – but whether it will or not often isn’t clear until we experiment. Lavish “book boxes” might be the perfect thing for a romantasy author who’s found her special niche of devoted readers. But they’d be a horrible mismatch for someone who writes fast and pursues straight-genre “whale” readers on Kindle Unlimited. But it’s rarely that clear-cut.

A Few Enduring Basics

So, what’s an author to do? Certain basic principles do seem to endure, as far as I can tell – beyond the essential that we write the best books we can. These marketing principles have an important place in my annual marketing review. What are they? I think of them as two major forms of autonomy.

Own Your Own Internet “Real Estate.”

I mean a website – and the more self-owned you are, the better. Nail down your domain name, and stake out your little corner of the Internet, then take the time to put your personal “stamp” on it. WYSIWYG interfaces make this somewhat easier, and there is trustworthy help out there if you look for it.

You may have a magnificently-curated presence on a social media platform that’s really working well – for now. But do you remember Myspace? It used to be the “it” platform. Too ancient a reference for you? How about “Classic Twitter”? Or think about last year’s “OMG they’re going to shut down Tik Tok!” scare.

My point is that somebody else’s platform isn’t yours. They can change it in ways that threaten all your hard work to create a presence there. Websites are a pain in the butt sometimes, but they’re yourpain in the butt. The Social Media Gods can’t crash your website out from under you.

Own Your Own Emailing List.

Many writers (including me!) have found that establishing a good emailing list of people who love your work is a major key to success. I’m talking about a painstakingly gathered emailing list of reader-fans to whom you send periodic emails (I call mine newsletters). Don’t worry about starting small: “organically grown” is slow, but they’ll be the very best of all possible “qualified leads.” It’s probably best to use an emailing service, but remember! The email list you can download to your own hard drive if you want to is yours.

Social media followers aren’t yours. Not only are they provisional and ephemeral, based on the health of the platform, but they don’t convert well by comparison with mailing list subscribers. People who sign up for your newsletter often do that precisely because they want to know when they can buy your latest books.

Beyond that, remain open and flexible. No one can predict exactly what will “click” best with your particular audience – and it’s a frustrating fact that only experimentation (a.k.a. making mistakes) will tell you what’s working for you at this moment in the market. Creative new approaches are working out splendidly for people all the time. We just don’t know which ones will, until we try them!

So, stay attuned to what’s happening, as you do your annual marketing review. Then plan some “old things” that still work, but also leave yourself room to experiment and try new things. And good luck out there!

About the Author

Jan S. Gephardt is the author of the science fiction mystery “XK9 saga.” These books tell the stories of a pack of uplifted police dogs who live on a space station and solve crimes (among other things). Her most recent completed novel in the series is Bone of Contention. She’s now hard at work on the next volume, Bones for the Children, as well as an omnibus edition of The Complete XK9 “Bones” Trilogy. She also is the Chief Cat-Herder and Art Director for Weird Sisters Publishing, and a creator of fine art paper sculpture.

IMAGE CREDITS

The photo of Warren in the first montage, “A BOOK TOUR In a New Pickup” is from the family archive. I took the photos of the vintage 1980s editions of the “Windhover” books. Many thanks to Classic.com for a photo of a 1983 Dodge Ram Pickup.

Both the header and the second image, “Bookstores Roared Back in 2025,” use details of a photo that shows floor displays in a Barnes & Noble bookstore on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, from the New York Times article on which much of this post was based. Photo by Tony Cenicola / The New York Times.

The third design, “Market Share by Format in 2025,” updates a graphic I created in 2024 to reflect 2023 numbers. The pie chart has changed. The 2025 version shows 75% Print Books, 11% Ebooks and 14% Audiobooks. As in the earlier illustration I represented the three formats. I used a the photo of a setup for recording an audiobook (from Libro.fm’s post “How do Audiobooks Get Made?”). The ebook mockup of Weird Sisters Publishing’s title “Deep Ellum Duet,” by G. S. Norwood, and a trade paperback mockup of my trilogy-starter, “What’s Bred in the Bone” are both from Weird Sisters Publishing.

In the fourth design, “What is My Niche?” the painting of XK9s Crystal and Cinnamon is ©2020 by Lucy A. Synk. The Rana Station model is ©2025 by Mark A. Garlick. And the photo of the forensic investigator at work is a Getty photo courtesy of Forbes Magazine. The background photo for the fifth, “Home on the Web,” design was created by “peshkova,” and licensed for use via 123rf.