What's inside
Who uses AI, and how much
Share of indie authors using AI, broken down by task — outlining, drafting, editing, cover, blurb, marketing.
Tools that actually stick
Which AI tools authors still use six months in vs. tools they tried once and dropped.
Time & money saved
Self-reported hours per book and pounds/dollars saved vs. hiring out.
What Amazon KDP allows
Plain-English guide to the disclosure rules and how the survey group interprets them.
The quality debate
How readers, reviewers, and the authors themselves rate AI-assisted vs. traditional books.
What's next in 2027
Predictions from the group on picture books, audiobooks, and translation.
Methodology (planned)
- • 300+ self-published authors surveyed globally, weighted toward Amazon KDP.
- • Mix of memoir, non-fiction, cookery, business, children's picture books.
- • Anonymous by default; opt-in for quotable comments.
- • Data collected Jan–Feb 2026, published March 2026.
Why this report exists
Self-publishing changed more between 2023 and 2026 than in the previous decade. Generative AI moved from a novelty to a core part of most indie workflows, Amazon KDP updated its disclosure rules twice, and audiobook production costs fell by more than 80% for authors willing to use synthetic narration. The industry commentary has struggled to keep up, and most published data still relies on surveys taken before ChatGPT existed.
We're publishing this report because the authors we work with — thousands of them, at every stage from first idea to twelfth title — kept asking the same questions and getting hand-wavy answers. Is it normal to write a full draft with AI? Are readers noticing? Are people making money? What does Amazon actually enforce? This survey aims to replace the guessing with numbers.
Who the report is for
If you're a first-time author trying to decide how much AI to use, the report will give you a benchmark: what the median author does, what the top earners do differently, and where the line currently sits between helpful and harmful. If you're already publishing, it's a chance to pressure-test your workflow against 300 peers.
It's also useful for editors, cover designers, small presses and platform builders who need to understand where indie authors are spending their time and money in 2026. The full dataset — with all identifying details stripped — will be released alongside the report under a permissive licence so anyone can reanalyse it.