Do You Need a Big Social Media Following to Be a Bestselling Romance Author?

Find out what I learned from analyzing the social media followings of the 102 bestselling romance authors of 2025.

I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that traditional publishers now expect authors to have an established online presence and large social media following in order to get a book deal. If true, that means publishers are banking on social media to drive book sales. While it’s difficult to connect social media content directly to book sales, I was curious to see what I could learn from analyzing the social media followings of the bestselling romance authors of 2025.

Which platform was the most popular? Who had the largest following? Did any of the authors have small followings? Read on to learn what I discovered.

Methodology

I recently published two Top 100 Romance Best Sellers of 2025 lists—one based on the Amazon Kindle Store Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance, the other based on The New York Times Combined Fiction list.

To identify the bestselling romance authors of 2025, I consolidated the two lists (removing all duplicates) and found there were 102 unique authors who had at least one book on at least one of the lists.

Next, I looked up the number of followers each of these authors has on the following platforms (data collected on March 18, 2026):

• Facebook

• Facebook Groups

• Instagram

• Threads

• TikTok

Note: I didn’t include X/Twitter as few authors listed it as one of their social media platforms.

Caveats

Before I get to the good stuff, a few caveats:

• Some of the authors on the list are not usually categorized as romance authors, but they appear on the list because their book was assigned at least one Romance subcategory in the US Kindle Store.

• I did my best to search all the platforms and identify genuine author accounts (often using author websites as a reference); however, I cannot guarantee that the data is 100% accurate. For example, I could easily miss reader Facebook Groups if they are private and hidden from search results.

• I included all accounts I found, whether they are being actively used or not.

• This data does not indicate causation, i.e., that their social media following resulted in their bestseller status (or vice versa).

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Overall Followers

All platforms combined

Followers

• Median # of Followers: 184,050

• Average # of Followers: 467,107

Following Size Breakdown

• +1M followers: 10%

• 500K-1M followers: 15%

• 100-500K followers: 45%

• <100K followers: 30%

Social Media - Follow size Breakdown

Most Popular Platforms

Among these bestselling romance authors, the most popular social media platforms—based on how many authors have accounts on them—along with their median and average follower counts are listed below:

Social Media - % of Authors on Platform

1. Instagram - 98%

• Median # of Followers: 104,500

• Average # of Followers: 222,301

2. Facebook - 86%

• Median # of Followers: 18,000

• Average # of Followers: 97,115

3. TikTok - 77%

• Median # of Followers: 42,100

• Average # of Followers: 166,868

4. Threads - 53%

• Median # of Followers: 19,200

• Average # of Followers: 40,192

5. Facebook Groups - 47%

• Median # of Members: 14,000

• Average # of Members: 31,579

Paid subscribers can read on for a breakdown of the 10 largest and smallest combined social media followings, as well as the top 10 authors on each platform. They can also access the data for all 102 bestselling authors on Airtable.