What takes up most of your "author time"? Writing or something else (like editing, marketing, scheduling…)?

Answer: Yes - unfortunately writing takes up all too little of my time.

Editing, marketing, scheduling, revising, checking and quality assurance, etc. etc.

and the other BIG one is:

Research.

I spend a lot of time on research. It’s one of the reasons I hang out on Quora too. I’m constantly looking for interesting ideas, interesting facts, and marketing research.

Who reads what, why and how and where do they source it?

To write books, particularly novels, I want lots of good ideas, so I can cull 95% of them and use the best 5%.

That’s one place quality of writing comes from, and it requires plenty of reading and other forms of research.

Hope this helps.