[HN Gopher] TikTok is changing the way books are recommended and...
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TikTok is changing the way books are recommended and sold
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 66 points
Date : 2023-09-24 06:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| egypturnash wrote:
| Pretty much the same as the Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood effect,
| really? https://amalelmohtar.com/letter-of-news-the-ballad-of-
| bigola...
|
| (person with funny user name tweets about how much they love a
| four-year-old book, tweet goes viral, book becomes the third most
| popular title on Amazon and a NYT bestseller, also the person who
| created the cartoon that the user name is a joke about ends up
| getting a copy too)
| grepLeigh wrote:
| The #BookTok category in my library is my go-to for fresh reads.
| This year alone, I've already devoured:
|
| * They Both Die at the End, Adam Silvera
|
| * Books #1-5 of Loise Penny's Gamache series (detective serial
| set in rural Montreal)
|
| * Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
|
| * When Women Were Dragons, Kelly Bar Hill
|
| * Books #1-3 in Naomi Novik's Scholomance series
|
| * Babel, R.F. Kiang
|
| * The Cartographers, Peng Shepherd
|
| * Books #1-2 in Olivie Blake's Atlas series
|
| * Books #1-3 in Sylvain Neuval's Themis Files series
|
| * The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa
|
| * Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno Garcia
|
| and the list keeps going. I haven't read this avidly since high
| school (20 years ago). The recommendations coming out of BookTok
| are unabashedly entertaining, fun, and quick reads. Perfect for
| unwinding in the evening, instead of vegging out in front of the
| tube.
|
| Edit: fixed typos.
| [deleted]
| zaphod12 wrote:
| hmm, I know people brag about books they haven't actually read,
| but Book #3 of the Atlas Series is not out until January.
| (kidding, I assume it's a typo)
|
| Not actually on Booktok myself, but if it's pushing people
| towards R.F. Kuang and Susanna Clark then it's a-ok by me -
| read the Poppy War series while you wait for The Atlas Complex.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Hah, fixed that typo. Thank you! Just added the Poppy Wars
| series to my list as well.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I really struggle with this list, for me, the books that stayed
| with me aren't on BookTok. Albeit for me, it's because these
| books are challenging on a craft/architectural level.
|
| The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez is a time travel
| story, kind of, through the lens of a descendant of the
| protagonists of the main novel, kind of. It's a fantastical
| ancient story told to a descendant by an aging relative in
| relatively modern day, and while that story is told it is also
| told to the reader as if it's actually happening, and then
| timelines are crossed over.
|
| The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera is about a guy
| who starts a support group for the almost-chosen-- people who,
| by happenstance, weren't chosen by prophecies. Like literally
| it's like "yeah, so my sister was chosen to herald the
| apocalypse, but I still have visions of angels and I have to
| drink myself to sleep", "yeah, my cousin was chosen to kill my
| godfather, I'm just stuck with chainsaws for hands". But it's
| much more dissociated, and much more unattached-- and the
| reason for this becomes clear at the very end.
|
| I recently finished The Archive Undying by Emma Meiko Candon.
| That book is full of characters with ambiguous identities,
| characters with ambiguous motives-- everyone is hiding who they
| are from everyone else, not in a murder mystery way but in a
| complex conspiracy format where everyone actually has their own
| mini-conspiracy going on. Of course this is in the context of
| "giant mech-god corpse is being resurrected to fight mech-god
| monsters", so there's a fundamental awesomeness. But, y'know,
| when god-AIs can jack into your brain, or connect brains to
| each other, or jack into each other, the story can no longer
| hold linearity in an easy sip read.
| HPsquared wrote:
| (TikTok users) [?] (Book readers)
|
| Empty set
| hotnfresh wrote:
| The remaining tatters of the once-robust market for books rests
| among folks who are probably rather less-intellectual than
| you're supposing book readers to be.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| There are all sorts of tik tok and youtube 'reviewers' of
| products that are basically a decentralized version of QVC.
| transformi wrote:
| QVC stands for?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >QVC stands for?
|
| https://www.qvc.com/
| wg0 wrote:
| I've not installed TikTok like since ever. Will God forgive me?
| neaden wrote:
| "Last year in Britain one in four book buyers used TikTok. The
| slice of sales directly attributable to the app is still small.
| Video platforms like TikTok and YouTube drove only around 3% of
| sales in 2022 in Britain, according to Nielsen, a research firm"
| - Obviously this can grow, but the article just feels like the
| publishers are rushing to jump on the new thing rather then
| TikTok changing the way things are done.
| kevincox wrote:
| Yeah, it seems like non-news. Any popular site is going to
| share opinions and product reviews. It doesn't seem like TikTok
| is especially effective here, it is just popular.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >but the article just feels like the publishers are rushing to
| jump
|
| this is just the standard playbook for all social media though.
| it doesn't matter if your message is true or not. just say your
| message boldly and keep repeating it ad nauseam. people will
| promote it, and followers will follow it. as long as a follower
| likes the person saying it, it will be believed. if the viewer
| doesn't like the speaker, it will be hated.
| colechristensen wrote:
| But how was this 3% attribution done?
|
| There are lots of ways to buy books that aren't clicking
| affiliate links.
|
| I see book recommendations on HN all the time and regularly buy
| something I see... by searching Amazon or a local store, nobody
| would ever link that purchase back to HN.
| AndersSandvik wrote:
| Interviews and statistics.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Nielsen does things like surveys that don't necessarily
| depend on affiliate links.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| Yeah, I can definitely believe that TikTok is changing the way
| that books are being _recommended_. But I'm not sold (haha)
| that TikTok is changing the way books are being _sold_.
|
| There are quite a few stories of books going viral through
| BookTok, Bookstagram, and BookTube. But it does feel like
| slightly different. On TikTok, a _random_ user can make an
| _unknown_ book go viral. But on Instagram, it's usually an
| already established influencer that makes a book go viral and
| often it's their _own_ book lol. YouTube is more for longform
| discussion and the level of virality has changed. But some
| influencers do still sell books similar to what the influencers
| on Instagram do.
|
| Related to books being sold in _Britain_ , I wonder how the
| demographics of these communities affect the stats. _Most_ of
| the members are white teenage girls and women that live in the
| _United States_.
|
| Also, related to books being sold in general, many of the
| members of the various book communities have similar opinions
| to HN's users. They don't like ads or affiliate links. They'd
| prefer to go to the library or buy from a local/indie
| bookstore. They're anti-Amazon. They discuss overconsumption.
| On YouTube, they really dive into the ethics of it all.
|
| I do believe that TikTok has gotten people to _read_ more. But
| that's different than recommendations and selling.
|
| (I'll admit that I started reading Cain's Jawbone due to
| TikTok. I had heard of it before for years but never bothered
| to try it out.)
| yojo wrote:
| I follow what independent authors are trying for marketing,
| and some of them are having great success with TikTok. For
| them it absolutely is changing how books are sold, as before
| finding success on TikTok, they literally weren't selling
| much of anything.
|
| As the article mentions, romance authors are doing the best,
| but there are authors like AP Beswick (writes dark fantasy
| retellings of popular legends) who have gone full time indie
| off the back of TikTok sales.
|
| Maybe they would have been successful without TikTok, but
| right now it's how they find an audience.
| bluepod4 wrote:
| That's good to hear!
| cableshaft wrote:
| My wife did book promotion on TikTok last year and didn't
| really see it result in too many preorders, despite a few of
| her videos going somewhat viral (about 5-10k views).
|
| And the instant she took a break from doing 1 video/day her
| future videos went down to a trickle of views (like around
| 100), so it seems you have to go pretty hard and consistent on
| it to get the algorithm to keep throwing eyeballs your way.
|
| She finds book swaps in newsletters and parties and takeovers
| of Facebook communities to be more effective and easier to keep
| up with, and she can take breaks from it without suffering too
| much from it.
|
| That may not be true for all regions or genres, though. And
| she's a pretty new author still, working on finishing up her
| third book in her first series, although her first two did
| pretty well.
| xmprt wrote:
| Not to ruin things but 5-10k views on TikTok is not nothing
| but it's also not very viral so I wouldn't expect that to
| drive any sales. You'd probably expect with TikTok viewer
| retention, maybe 1/100 viewers would actually be interested
| enough to watch through the video as well as be in the target
| audience and then another 1% might actually buy the book.
| Likes are a more accurate metric since it's kind of the bare
| minimum for audience interaction.
|
| The real power of TikTok is that you can get 100k+ views even
| when you're not really that famous and once you see those
| kinds of numbers you might be able to drive more attention to
| whatever you're trying to sell. It might also be a bit soul
| crushing but creativity doesn't really help. If you have a
| viral video that gets 100k views then you need to make the
| same kind of video as many times as you can until it stops
| working.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I said somewhat viral. I'm not claiming these are crazy
| high numbers for TikTok. I've certainly been shown some
| dumb videos on there that somehow have 70million+ views.
| But it was certainly a big jump from the 300-ish views she
| was getting for her videos the day before.
|
| This was multiple videos she was getting those numbers for
| (like for a couple of weeks), and she was seeing her
| preorders go up exactly 0 from it, while seeing better
| returns for her time on other social media, she ended up
| with several hundred preorders from other sources. I don't
| doubt you can get some numbers from TikTok, especially if
| you can regularly get 100k views.
|
| But it seems to be very fickle and require constant (and as
| you say, uncreative) spammy videos on there to get that (at
| least from her experience).
|
| And it's not like it doesn't take time even to make the
| seemingly low-effort videos. While she was doing it, she
| was spending time watching other videos to get ideas and
| get a feel for the TikTok voice/zeitgeist, checking
| trending audio sources, coming up with how to do something
| similar yet link that idea to her book, preparing for it
| (like putting on make-up, making props, etc), filming it
| (sometimes requiring multiple takes), editing it (within
| the app), and then posting it. It was taking her somewhere
| between 45 minutes and 2 hours each day.
|
| I still think she could have gotten to the 100k+ views if
| she stuck with it, but it was taking significant time and
| energy away from other things, and as is she's trying to
| write books while also working a full-time job, so she has
| little energy for much else right now to begin with.
| EatingWithForks wrote:
| I think we're actually talking about different phenomena. It's
| not that booktok is driving sales for all books, it's that
| _certain books sales are primarily driven by booktok_ and there
| 's an attempt to figure out how to make that trigger consistently
| to drive traffic where publishers want it to go. Consider that
| Night And Its Moon is critically panned, but has a huge following
| on BookTok and was primarily got a book deal due to the initial
| pitch going viral on BookTok.
|
| Of course one of the things to note is that the books with
| disproportionate BookTok audience whose sales are driven this way
| are often written by pretty, white, well-off women.
| falcolas wrote:
| Pretty aside (while not denigrating its value in videos), the
| book market has long been dominated (reading, writing, and
| publishing) by well-off white women.
|
| Not always dominated, mind you, but when they took it over,
| they grabbed ahold of it with both hands.
| [deleted]
| ghaff wrote:
| Which is pretty much, while by no means a guarantee, the
| formula for get influencer traffic and followings in general on
| easy mode.
| atrus wrote:
| Sorta. The issue is the traffic and followings from people
| who are there because you're pretty aren't the correct
| audience for what you're selling (assuming what you're
| selling isn't yourself so to speak). A million views from the
| wrong audience is less useful than 1000 views from your
| perfect audience.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Don't forget an athleisured ass to drive attention and an
| appropriate coefficient of sales.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > E-books do not make such attractive visual props. According to
| a survey by Nielsen, 80% of Brits aged 14-25 prefer print.
|
| As one of the central pillars of what TikTok is reportedly
| changing, it has extremely weak supporting evidence. How many
| outside of that age group prefer print? Is it also 80%? 90%? 50%?
|
| I personally prefer physical copies as well due to DRM. I also
| like the physical appearance of being able to see all of the
| books I've read.
|
| The other pillar seems to be virality which is likely far more
| relevant. And the article has some better examples of that.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I like owning the physical copy. I like buying and reading the
| ebook.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have way too many books in my house. For certain types of
| books I prefer a physical copy. But in general if I bring a
| physical book into the house, another one needs to go to my
| library's annual book sale.
| falcolas wrote:
| This is quite an understated truth, particularly if you're a
| remotely voracious reader. As in over a book a week.
|
| Plus, moving a library of books? The worst. Gods below have
| mercy upon you if you live in an apartment.
| izacus wrote:
| This stat seems very strange, especially considering that about
| 40% sales at some point for many popular new books are being
| attributed to Audible versions. Something smells here.
| Eumenes wrote:
| interesting, I didn't think users of tiktok read books.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| #BookTok is a fairly large community. Recommendations move
| needles. The Barnes and Nobles near where I live has a
| "Recommended by TikTok" section. Most of the people that read
| and talk about books (for enjoyment) reference TikTok to some
| degree. This isn't to say they are all content creators. Simply
| put, that makes as much sense as me saying "I didn't think
| users of HN read books."
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| syvjohansen wrote:
| My SO got TikTok for this reason. There's a big community on it
| for reviewing the latest fiction and YA novels. I suppose many
| readers aren't looking for lengthy reviews when they choose
| what to read next, but rather a person suggesting related
| content to a genre they enjoy.
| falcolas wrote:
| This is easy to understate, given how panned fiction and YA
| both are in other venues. Even Reddit's /r/books is (and long
| has been) absurdly stuck up when it comes to YA novels.
|
| Dear YA prudes, remember that Heinlein and Asimov (and so
| many others) wrote books aimed at that demographic too.
| baskind wrote:
| Buying books doesn't imply reading them (talking from personal
| experience)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Not buying books doesn't imply not reading them (libraries!)
| sockaddr wrote:
| I too have a "living" library haha
| dawsoneliasen wrote:
| Interesting to me because I was just reading an article from an
| agent that said TikTok doesn't sell books at all. Both articles
| are probably wrong. As with anything, it's not so cut and dry.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I've bought 2 books because I saw them on tiktok. Seeing as
| there is nothing special or unique about me, I'm sure thousands
| of others have as well.
|
| Now I'm curious how much HN is a driver of book buying. I've
| bought books solely based on praise from an HN comment.
| unixhero wrote:
| Bangkok8, read Bangkok8! A riveting thriller.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I'm into it, book and audiobook discovery is pretty broken
|
| The communities on reddit are far too nerdy for me
|
| and I'm stuck between self help books and action/scifi
|
| I just want an escape, and not those
| optimus_banana wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230925100440/https://www.econo...
| edgarvaldes wrote:
| >Last year in Britain one in four book buyers used TikTok
|
| What does that mean? Do they surveyed the buyers and 25% use
| TikTok? Is this data pointing at something different to say, IG
| users or other social media for book advertisers?
| cush wrote:
| Say what you want about TikTok, but anything that drives people
| to read more is a good thing
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Why do you assume they read the books?
|
| Why do you think that reading in general is good?
| falcolas wrote:
| > Why do you think that reading in general is good?
|
| It exercises your imagination, your vocabulary, and
| ironically your writing ability. And that doesn't even count
| any new knowledge gained from books - not guaranteed with
| fiction, but it still happens quite often.
|
| All skills which are valuable for the rest of your life too.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > It exercises your imagination, your vocabulary, and
| ironically your writing ability.
|
| That strongly depends on what you are reading and what your
| average level of education is. And considering we are
| talking about Booktok and UK, or any other country with
| similar levels of education, I'm not really sure if this is
| even remotely true. Booktok seems to favor more trashy,
| silly books, not the kind of content which will enrich your
| vocabulary or imagination. And I'm saying this as someone
| who also likes to read such trashy content.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| The bulk of what actually sells and gets read is
| deliberately written to be _very_ easy to read and follow,
| to maximize potential market size. It's a reaction to the
| shrinking size of the total market, and why YA and YA-
| reading-level books (if not nominally YA) now dominate.
| Been trending that way for 20 or so years.
|
| "Any reading is good reading" is an attitude that's true
| and useful for young kids, but is less true as they get
| older, and not true for most adults. At some age and level
| of development, reading the next Harry Potter prequel book
| isn't any more improving than binging a middling TV series.
| metaphor wrote:
| > _Why do you think that reading in general is good?_
|
| Seriously? To quote Voltaire's _Philosophical Dictionary_ :
|
| >> _You despise books; you whose lives are absorbed in the
| vanities of ambition, the pursuit of pleasure or indolence;
| but remember that all the known world, excepting only savage
| nations, is governed by books._
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Voltaire lived in a time, where education was a privilege
| and most books had a decent level of quality, in relation
| to their time. Not so true anymore for everything we have
| today. Books for "the vanities of ambition, the pursuit of
| pleasure or indolence" are pretty common today.
| bertman wrote:
| Imho the stark difference between the number of views and likes
| that these videos generate and the actual sales of the books and
| (often) their literary quality shows that these book influencers
| promote merely the _idea of reading_.
|
| The average TikTok user knows that being on this platform is a
| gross waste of one's time, but it's oh so addictive, so giving a
| like to a video promoting a much more healthy and valuable
| activity like reading a book works as a kind of self-assurance
| that "I'll start reading again someday, I promise".
| arolihas wrote:
| That's the reality of all social media engagement though. There
| are going to be way more people just viewing or liking a video
| versus any other form of more active engagement. The average
| user you're describing is probably not even engaging in these
| niches at all that influencers are cultivating.
| falcolas wrote:
| > their literary quality
|
| In one book title of four simple words... "50 Shades of Grey"
|
| The biggest market has always been romance, followed by
| mystery, and neither of which requires tremendous literary
| quality. Beware of survivorship bias when claiming otherwise.
|
| As for the rest of the argument... it speaks for itself.
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