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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-

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.
  - xmprt 3y ago
    Yeah. Completely agree with your analysis there. I think one more point I'd add is that TikTok virality (especially with books and other product recommendations) comes more from secondary recommendations such as people stitching your video and going viral. It's really hard to promote something at scale as just a single person.
    - cableshaft 3y ago
      I know she did a few stitches herself and a couple of her videos were kind of designed to try to encourage stitching, like some sort of prompt or something (although I don't remember the premise of them anymore), but I don't think anyone did.
- LegitShady 3y ago
  I would caveat and say that conversion of 1% of all viewers is very unlikely. I would guess it's probably between 1-3% of the channels "fans" who wouldn't otherwise buy the book. If you have 100k+ viewers that leads to enough buyers to support you. If you have a lot more you're going to make a lot money. But you have the put in years of costumer engagement and marketing throufh through tiktok and other platforms and that in and of itself is a full time job that you have to do in addition to writing books.

xmprt 3y ago

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 3y ago
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.
- xmprt 3y ago
  Yeah. Completely agree with your analysis there. I think one more point I'd add is that TikTok virality (especially with books and other product recommendations) comes more from secondary recommendations such as people stitching your video and going viral. It's really hard to promote something at scale as just a single person.
  - cableshaft 3y ago
    I know she did a few stitches herself and a couple of her videos were kind of designed to try to encourage stitching, like some sort of prompt or something (although I don't remember the premise of them anymore), but I don't think anyone did.
LegitShady 3y ago
I would caveat and say that conversion of 1% of all viewers is very unlikely. I would guess it's probably between 1-3% of the channels "fans" who wouldn't otherwise buy the book. If you have 100k+ viewers that leads to enough buyers to support you. If you have a lot more you're going to make a lot money. But you have the put in years of costumer engagement and marketing throufh through tiktok and other platforms and that in and of itself is a full time job that you have to do in addition to writing books.