Carissa Broadbent is an author from Rhode Island who enjoys writing about magic and kissing. In December, the author of The Serpent and the Wings of Night and Daughter of No Worlds noticed a sudden rise in her book sales—and in her following on social media.
Behind the surge: Her work was viewed and discussed on BookTok, a community on TikTok, the popular social-media app owned by Beijing-based ByteDance. “I do very little paid advertising and I put, like, no thought into it. But I don’t need to because word-of-mouth has really kept my series—both of them—afloat,” Broadbent says.
Now, TikTok is at risk of being banned in the U.S. as politicians in both major parties voice concerns that the app is collecting data about its users that could be used by the Chinese government. If a ban goes through, users who are a part of the BookTok community will no longer have the platform to share their favorite books or talk about popular authors.
TikTok was the most downloaded app in the U.S. in 2022, according to Business of Apps. The hashtag #BookTok has over 127 billion views on the app. The rise in popularity came in early 2020, when pandemic lockdowns forced people to stay home. Many young people turned to reading and posting 60-second to three-minute videos about their favorite books and authors on TikTok.
Broadbent published her newest book, The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King, on April 14. That same day, the book was the No. 1 seller on the
Amazon
Kindle Store and was the No. 3 Wall Street Journal seller in fiction ebooks. As of May 2, #CarissaBroadbent had close to 14 million views on TikTok.
In March, TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew talked up the value of BookTok in his testimony before Congress. “I’ve had people telling me that they are reading more because of BookTok, so there is a lot of good, and joy, and positive, that can be derived from the TikTok experience,” Chew said.
A TikTok ban poses a risk for booksellers and authors who have seen a surge in sales and income because of the app. Research firm Circana says TikTok is the leading driver for books, and 80% of BookTok users are 34 years old and younger.
According to data analysis site NPD Group, in the 52 weeks ended Nov. 5, 2022, sales of young adult print books in the U.S. increased over 50% compared with 2019. “The young adult category has continued its growth trend in 2022,” wrote Kristen McLean, books industry analyst for NPD. “Growth has been driven by a variety of authors and series, which were supported by BookTok and word-of-mouth discovery.”
“Part of the impact TikTok has on books is tied directly to the BookTok hashtag blooming in the midst of the pandemic,” says Matthew Quint, director of the center on global brand leadership at Columbia Business School. He says that during the pandemic, people had more discretionary income as stimulus checks rolled in, allowing them to explore new areas of entertainment.
Elise Kova has written and published more than 20 books, including A Deal with the Elf King and Air Awakens. Near the end of 2020, Kova noticed that Air Awakens shot up in sales to the top 700 best-sellers list on the Kindle store. She thought that was strange: The book was published in 2015.
“When you see that as an author, you’re going, OK, what happened? Because I’m not running a sale. I’m not running any kind of promotions. I didn’t do anything. And then I came across a video on TikTok, and that’s what it was,” Kova says, referring to a video giving a positive review of the book. “I think that was the first moment that I kind of realized the power of the platform.”
Shares of
Bloomsbury Publishing
(ticker: BMY), an independent publishing house that trades on the London Stock Exchange, have more than doubled since March 2020, as the company has seen sales of its books such as A Court of Thorns and Roses and Song of Achilles jump in popularity because of TikTok. The company’s revenue grew 40% from 2020 to 2022.
“Since mid-2020, TikTok has been one of the driving forces of an unprecedented surge in Consumer book sales,” Bloomsbury said in the company’s 2022 annual report, adding that the platform has engaged “an exciting new generation of readers.”
A TikTok ban would be a blow to not just to authors and publishers, but to social-media influencers. Ayman, 22, runs the TikTok account “Aymansbooks,” with more than 943,000 followers. She created her account in early 2020, and has gained her large following by posting short videos about different books. She also gets paid by publishers, earning $2,000 or more for each sponsored video. That helped her get through college, and even buy a car.
Ayman says it’s “scary” that the app could go away at any time, and is preparing to move to other social-media platforms so she can continue what has become a full-time job.
Barnes & Noble, which is opening 30 stores this year, devotes precious upfront space to promote books mentioned at #BookTok. “TikTok was, and is, a way for people to discover what reading is, but that’s not why people keep reading,” says Shannon DeVito, senior director of book strategy and customer experience at Barnes & Noble. “I think it was a way for people who hadn’t normally read, or were rediscovering their love of it, or finding it for the first time in their life, to realize how awesome reading is.”
Broadbent and Kova think the conversations on BookTok about reading will migrate to
Meta Platforms
’ (META) Facebook,
Alphabet’s
(GOOGL) YouTube, Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Goodreads, or other places if TikTok goes away. Whether those platforms could take the place of BookTok is another question.
“I know that if TikTok went away tomorrow, people would not just stop talking about books. I like to believe that Instagram Reels would kind of fill in that space and people would talk elsewhere,” Broadbent says. “But it would be a shame to lose a platform that has so readily enabled people to enthusiastically and organically connect about books.”
Write to Angela Palumbo at angela.palumbo@dowjones.com
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