TikTok is Taking the Book Industry By Storm, and Retailers Are Taking Notice (nbcnews.com) 30
An anonymous reader shares a report: Author Adam Silvera four years ago released the young adult science fiction novel "They Both Die at the End," which found success and landed a few weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. But years later in August 2020, Silvera said his publisher noticed a significant sales bump, the start of a trend that would send the book to the top of the New York Times' young adult paperback monthly bestseller list in April, where it still reigns. Silvera had no idea where the sales spike was coming from. "I kept commenting to my readers, 'Hey, don't know what's happening, but there's been a surge in sales lately, so grateful that everybody's finding the story years later,'" Silvera said. "And then that's when a reader was like, 'I'm seeing it on BookTok.' And I had no idea what they were talking about."
"BookTok" is a community of users on TikTok who post videos reviewing and recommending books, which has boomed in popularity over the past year. TikTok videos containing the hashtag #TheyBothDieAtTheEnd have collectively amassed more than 37 million views to date, many of which feature users reacting -- and often crying -- to the book's emotional ending. BookTok's impact on the book industry has been notable, helping new authors launch their careers and propelling books like Silvera's to the top of bestseller lists years after their original publication. Madeline Miller's "The Song of Achilles," E. Lockhart's "We Were Liars" and Taylor Jenkins Reid's "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" -- all of which were published before BookTok began to dominate the industry -- are among some of the other books that have found popularity on the app years after their initial release. Retailers like Barnes & Noble have taken advantage of BookTok's popularity to market titles popular on the app to customers by creating specialized shelves featuring books that have gone viral.
"BookTok" is a community of users on TikTok who post videos reviewing and recommending books, which has boomed in popularity over the past year. TikTok videos containing the hashtag #TheyBothDieAtTheEnd have collectively amassed more than 37 million views to date, many of which feature users reacting -- and often crying -- to the book's emotional ending. BookTok's impact on the book industry has been notable, helping new authors launch their careers and propelling books like Silvera's to the top of bestseller lists years after their original publication. Madeline Miller's "The Song of Achilles," E. Lockhart's "We Were Liars" and Taylor Jenkins Reid's "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" -- all of which were published before BookTok began to dominate the industry -- are among some of the other books that have found popularity on the app years after their initial release. Retailers like Barnes & Noble have taken advantage of BookTok's popularity to market titles popular on the app to customers by creating specialized shelves featuring books that have gone viral.
Me too. (Score:2)
Reddit has book forums too. Where's the upsurge?
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It's the audience that matters (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's the audience that matters (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really true with millenials. They are staying childless far more than other generations, spending on themselves instead.
But they spend on things like intoxicants and status symbols, not books. Those who'd spend on books probably still get married and have kids as they parents did, which means they spend on their kids as a priority, not on themselves.
Good. (Score:2)
The world is overpopulated and that continues to get worse. I am happy to see that current generations of developed countries are trying to reverse the trend.
It this creates a problem of developed countries having too few people, then I definitely think they should import some from places where there are too many.
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Genocide is the solution as usual. To extremists.
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I'm sure that made sense when you ran that thought in your head. The rest of us could use an elaboration of what that means.
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Are "America and friends" trying to exterminate "muslims" as ethnicity or religion?
Are Chinese?
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I see. Good to know.
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I didn't say anything about general economy.
Average age 62 (Score:3)
Sure, if you're selling video games.
If you're selling speedboats, that's the older market aka me.
The *average* age of Corvette owners is 62.
Average age of a sailboat buyer is 57, outboard 53, stern drive 52.
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If you're selling speedboats, that's the older market aka me.
The *average* age of Corvette owners is 62.
Average age of a sailboat buyer is 57, outboard 53, stern drive 52.
A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money.
Millennials can't afford them.
Re:It's the audience that matters (Score:5, Interesting)
older folk are a surprisingly crappy demographic to target. They don't have much disposible income.
This is demonstratively false to the point of being laughable. Baby Boomers dominate discretionary spending by age tier [equifax.com], hold 70% of the disposable income in the US, and spend roughly 50% of US CPG dollars [buxtonco.com].
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re: teens as demographics for sales (Score:2)
FWIW: I used to work for a marketing company. My take-away from that is, marketers really don't have definitive answers about who to target or what will sell. They try to get a group of creative people together to come up with ideas that sound promising, and then work hard to find ways to pitch them to clients who will pay them for the campaign if they're sold on it as a good idea.
There's a lot of trial and error involved, and a whole lot of re-purposing of whatever they threw at a proverbial wall before, i
Meh... (Score:2)
Long story short... (Score:5, Interesting)
Contradictory (Score:5, Insightful)
How do people with TikTok-level attention spans manage to read books? Are they very short books?
Crying (Score:5, Funny)
TikTok videos containing the hashtag #TheyBothDieAtTheEnd have collectively amassed more than 37 million views to date, many of which feature users reacting -- and often crying -- to the book's emotional ending.
Are you sure it was the book's emotional ending that made them cry? Perhaps their eyes were smarting from reading something longer than 140 characters.
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Rebranding Is Interesting (Score:2)
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I'm still getting used to "perpetual child" now being "young adult".
Portrait (Score:2)
Are they forcing us to read books in landscape orientation similar to how they are making people film things using the incorrect camera orientation?