12 ms·
TikTok is changing the way books are recommended and sold
- yieldcrv 3y agoI’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
- cush 3y agoSay what you want about TikTok, but anything that drives people to read more is a good thing
- PurpleRamen 3y agoWhy do you assume they read the books? Why do you think that reading in general is good?
- falcolas 3y ago> 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 3y ago> 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.
- falcolas 3y agoConsidering that the average reading comprehension level in the US is 7th Grade, I think we're fine recommending that people read - even if they're reading trashy books.
- hotnfresh 3y agoThe 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.
- Spivak 3y agoThis attitude is why people stop reading when they become adults. It's no wonder people burn out of it so fast when you want it to literally be homework. Like good god, easy to read should be a compliment to the author's ability to effectively communicate. They're books not puzzle boxes, calling "not easy to read" a virtue is absurd. Go read some bad fanfic and see for yourself how difficult to read and follow doesn't mean good.
- grepLeigh 3y agoI wish I could up vote this multiple times. I've received so many "heavy" recommendations in my 20s and 30s, from people who read (at most) 1-2 books per year. Some people I know have stopped reading altogether, since they can't find the energy to get through "edifying" material. If that resonates, my unsolicited advice is to: 1. Read for fun. If you're you're going to nosh some brain junk food, it might as well be a book. Enjoy it! 2. Don't be afraid to stop reading one book so you can start another. I've seen so many people try to finish a book they're not enjoying, then stop reading altogether. 3. Once you've (re)cultivated a habit of reading, you might have more tenacity for that hallowed "edifying" material. I'm reading and noodling on "Tensor Calculus for Physics" exercises as a bedtime activity, but that was preceded by months of reading YA spec/sci fiction to unwind.
- hotnfresh 3y agoNobody said all reading had to be terribly beneficial. I just object to the idea that it necessarily is. That it’s not is fine. Some folks claim it’s virtuous and better for you than, say, watching so-so TV shows, just because it’s READING, and I happen to think that’s plainly silly. And also that it’s fine that it’s largely not. There are multiple ways I could have intended “easy to read”, and I mean that this, from the post I was responding to: > It exercises your imagination, your vocabulary, and ironically your writing ability. Is readily sacrificed, in most salable books, to avoid challenging the reader, because readers who don’t like to have any difficulty with a book are a much larger market than those who want that. You would agree that “See Spot Run” may offer little improving to most adults, even if they enjoy reading it, yes? Then at most we disagree about where that line falls. But, again, it is fine if 40-year-olds like to read See Spot Run. There’s not anything wrong with it, it just bothers me when people paint reading as always some wholesome activity. It’s not—not always, probably not most of the time—but also that is OK.
- metaphor 3y ago> 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 3y agoVoltaire 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.
- cush 3y agoHate to break it to you, but we still live in a time where education is a privilege. Reading is a very good activity to partake in for countless reasons. If you’re worried about people being discouraged from finding good literature, I promise that the gatekeeping attitude you’re perpetuating is way more damaging than a group of online book lovers
- PurpleRamen 3y ago> Hate to break it to you, but we still live in a time where education is a privilege. Not in Voltaire's country France, or most other democratic countries. And I'm talking about the average education available to all citizen, so school, not university. And yes, there are of course exceptions even with school, but those are for other reasons. But that's the point, with any somewhat rich country, the level of education is high enough, that a generalization on the benefits of reading which Voltaire is talking about, are not valid anymore, because we now have them, and are on the point of moving on. And this is especially valid for the young generations. > I promise that the gatekeeping attitude you’re perpetuating is way more damaging than a group of online book lovers How am I gatekeeping? I'm just describing the reality and speak against the delusion of gatekeepers. Reading today is not anymore the great awesome enlightenment it was in the past.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago> Why do you think that reading in general is good? Attention span. For me, anyway. I read LOTR as a kid in about 10 days. I tried re-reading it a few years ago and found I just couldn't keep my attention on the words for that long. Like social media and the mobile phone had rotted my ability to keep my attention on a single thing for hours. I uninstalled social media (for other reasons, primarily mental health) and stopped using the phone so much, and managed to finish Wheel of Time (finally!). Reading is good for the attention span, I think.
- optimus_banana 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20230925100440/https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/09/21/tiktok-is-changing-the-way-books-are-recommended-and-sold https://web.archive.org/web/20230925100440/https://www.econo...
- neaden 3y ago"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.
- colechristensen 3y agoBut 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 3y agoInterviews and statistics.
- heavyset_go 3y agoNielsen does things like surveys that don't necessarily depend on affiliate links.
- cableshaft 3y agoMy 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.
- Eumenes 3y agointeresting, I didn't think users of tiktok read books.
- syvjohansen 3y agoMy 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 3y agoThis 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 3y agoBuying books doesn’t imply reading them (talking from personal experience)
- sockaddr 3y agoI too have a "living" library haha
- quickthrower2 3y agoNot buying books doesn't imply not reading them (libraries!)
- jasonlotito 3y ago#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."
- edgarvaldes 3y ago>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?
- lloydatkinson 3y agoIt feels like the entire article was someone scraping the barrel. This particular point is absolutely useless, it’s as useful as saying 25% of book readers also have a pet hamster.
- grepLeigh 3y agoThe #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 3y ago[deleted]
- EatingWithForks 3y agoI 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.
- janalsncm 3y ago> 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 3y agoI like owning the physical copy. I like buying and reading the ebook.
- Spivak 3y agoYou can also lend out your physical copy to your friends later which happens a lot more thanks to booktok getting people in my peer group into the social aspect of reading and recommending books to one another. Re: The unreasonable effectiveness of making an aspect of your life that's good for your mental health an aesthetic.
- ghaff 3y agoI 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 3y agoThis 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 3y agoThis 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.
- EatingWithForks 3y agoI 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.
- ghaff 3y agoWhich is pretty much, while by no means a guarantee, the formula for get influencer traffic and followings in general on easy mode.
- atrus 3y agoSorta. 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- falcolas 3y agoPretty 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 3y ago[deleted]
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
- unixhero 3y agoBangkok8, read Bangkok8! A riveting thriller.
- HPsquared 3y ago(TikTok users) ∩ (Book readers) Empty set
- bertman 3y agoImho 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".
- falcolas 3y ago> 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- arolihas 3y agoThat'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.
- kredd 3y agoI don't mean to sound condescending, but how old are you? I'm only in my late 20s, and even I don't consider myself the main target demographic for the app, but it has proven itself fairly useful for certain scenarios (e.g. something happened around X, was curious about quick videos from the area). There are people who read what you would consider "quality books", and share/talk about them on the app as well. Even a very small subset of users/likes transfer into an actual product purchase is a mind-boggling achievement for the writer, so we might be underselling its value.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoThere are all sorts of tik tok and youtube 'reviewers' of products that are basically a decentralized version of QVC.
- transformi 3y agoQVC stands for?
- nobody9999 3y ago>QVC stands for? https://www.qvc.com/ https://www.qvc.com/
- pests 3y agoThis exchange is amazing. There are people around who don't know what QVC is.
- transformi 3y agoIndeed. Wow what a culture hole! Thanks for the exchange!
- egypturnash 3y agoPretty much the same as the Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood effect, really? https://amalelmohtar.com/letter-of-news-the-ballad-of-bigolas-dickolas/ 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)
- dawsoneliasen 3y agoInteresting 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 3y agoI'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.
- Spivak 3y agoThe fact that people who are in the business of selling books are failing at monetizing TikTok while lots of people who are buying books are getting recs from TikTok is every signal you need. TT has somehow managed to grow supermassive while also feeling like the small web of yore. Nothing gold can stay but here's hoping they keep it up for a bit longer.
- wg0 3y agoI've not installed TikTok like since ever. Will God forgive me?
- akomtu 3y agoBy refusing to sacrifice your attention on the altar of TikTok, you've offended the Technogod, and will be banished to the hell of eternal captchas, until the end of the ages.
- sharts 3y agoTLDR: The economics has discovered marketing
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoTikTok is changing the way books are recommended and sold... to people who use TikTok
- j2g 3y agoTo the 1.7 billion people that use TikTok
- raincole 3y agoWhich are, quite a lot of people. [1]: The CEO told the congress that they had 150M users in the US. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/tiktok-now-150-million-active-users-us-ceo-tell-congress-rcna75607 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/tiktok-now-150-mil...
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoPolls suggest large percentage of people are not TikTok users, as they vote in favour of banning it, or remain unsure. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3913503-more-than-40-percent-of-americans-support-banning-tiktok-poll/ https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3913503-more-than-40-p... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/03/31/by-a-more-than-two-to-one-margin-americans-support-us-government-banning-tiktok/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/03/31/by-a-more...
- kirse 3y agoI like to view TikTok as a drug cartel. These recent PR efforts like their toddler reading commercial and this BookTok piece are roughly equivalent to when the drug cartels make a show of supporting the local pueblo with healthcare and other basic needs after cashing in on doping up the population.
- tianshuo 3y agoI want to share a behind the scenes story in Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which relates directly to the subject of this article. Douyin decided to test out its own e-commerce platform, in an alternative to handing over its users to prominent retailers like Taobao and JD.com. They planned to test the water with one category at a time, starting with books. Douyin worked with major publishers to offer their products on their e-commerce platform. The day they began selling books on their own platform, Taobao's book sales immediately plummeted by half. To everyone's surprise, users were reading and buying more books thanks to Douyin. The story ends with Jack Ma, the founder of Taobao, arriving at Bytedance HQ to strike a deal on further collaboration between Douyin and Taobao.
- happytiger 3y agoIronic. We banned TikTok from the house and replaced it with reading and tea time.
- bowsamic 3y agoBooks are one of the trashiest mediums
- Noumenon72 3y agoI did find out that the John Dies At the End author (Jason Pargin, aka Cracked editor David Wong) has a new book out by finding him on TikTok, but most authors aren't going to be interesting enough to really get a following that way. Also even though I listen to his Tiktok before going to sleep most days, I never bought the book.
- JoeNr76 3y agoCompletely anecdotally: I am 46yo. And I was in a reading slump for most of my fourties. I used to be an avid reader until I became a father and my 3 children began taking up more of my time. And I got a shorter attention span too. I signed up for TT because my eldest child wanted an account and I wanted to see what he was sharing and seeing. He abandoned his account quite quickly, but I found fantasy booktok. And the Tiktokers' youthful enthusiasm was a big part of what got me out of my years-long reading slump. I doubt if this happens often enough to be industry changing, but it does happen, even for someone very much outside the Tiktok demographic. As an aside: where it does seem to have an influence is more people in the Dutch language zone reading books in English. I have been reading in English since I was 12 and at the time many people thought that was crazy. But nowadays every bookshop has a wall full of English Fantasy en YA books.