BookTok BUSINESS
Is TikTok every author’s dream marketing platform? Simon Whaley chats to two authors about their experiences.
In 2022, the Publishers’ Association attributed some of 2021’s five per cent rise in book sales to the social media platform TikTok. They even went as far as saying that sales for four out of every five young adult bestsellers in 2021 were because of the video platform and its BookTok hashtag.
Understandably, traditional publishers are encouraging their authors to make use of the social media platform, and self-published authors are finding success through it too. What’s exciting many publishers and authors is there’s evidence that TikTok’s BookTok hashtag is breathing new life into an author’s backlist.
In early 2020, the lifetime sales of US author Colleen Hoover’s books stood at 237,000 copies. But this jumped to over 2.3 million in less than eighteen months after several of her books became popular on TikTok. So, should we all be on TikTok? How do we get started on the platform, and how can we make it work for us too?
BookTok basics
TikTok is a Chinese social media platform that began in 2016 and quickly gained a large user base. By October 2022, users had downloaded the app over three billion times, and it has over 1.5 billion active users every month.
It’s a visual platform, so its posts are videos, similar to Instagram
Reels. However, what makes TikTok different is that anyone can see our videos, especially if we use the right hashtags. Whereas, anything we post on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter is only visible to those who follow us and anyone those followers share it with.
TikTok’s users find content by searching for hashtags, and for authors, the best hashtag to use is BookTok. However, it’s not just writers using this hashtag. Readers use it to engage with other readers who share similar reading interests, and they also use it to find new authors.
Glenda Young (glenda_young_ author), whose latest saga, The Sixpenny Orphan, is published in paperback in May, writes historical sagas and cosy crime mysteries for Headline. She’s been on TikTok for about a year now.
‘I’ve always embraced social media,’ she explains, ‘and find it a great way to interact with readers. So, I thought I’d give TikTok a go. Joining TikTok was an organic thing for me as an extension of my interest in social media and to see if I could use it to find new ways to reach readers and provide content for them.’
Self-published author Adam
Beswick, who writes fantasy novels as A. P. Beswick (a.p_beswick_author), posted his first author TikTok video in January 2020.
‘My author buddy Rob Radcliffe challenged me to join a TikTok for an authors group to get over my fear of putting myself on camera. I had a new book coming out and wanted to get out of my comfort zone to let people know about it.’
Camera coy
I’m sure there are many authors who can identify with Adam’s camera shyness. It’s why I prefer Facebook and Twitter, hoping my words and photos will do the marketing. But there is something in the magic of video that catches browsers’ attention.
Adam has over a thousand posts on his TikTok account, and his face appears in most of them, but not all. There are ways and means for authors to use TikTok without holding their phone camera in front of their face. Adam’s first post is twelve seconds and shows him flipping through his handwritten notebook before switching to the front cover of his first novel, A Forest of Vanity and Valour, on his tablet.
Those twelve seconds show his author journey from scribbled notebook to published book.
Similarly, Glenda’s first post is seventeen seconds long and simply moves from a promotional postcard showing the front covers of all her historical novels to a bookmark detailing her cosy crime books.
Both authors have experimented with different styles of videos, ranging from flicking through the pages of a book and cover reveals, through to book unboxing and asking readers’ questions. And that’s the key: experimentation.
‘Don’t be afraid to try new things,’ Adam encourages, ‘and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.’
Glenda believes it’s always best to think about your reader and whoever
might stumble across your post. ‘A good TikTok post is visually gripping from the first frame, has relevant hashtags, and at the end you feel you’ve learned something or been entertained.’
Reader reach
Adam agrees, TikTok is all about interacting with readers, and that’s what the content is all about.
‘TikTok is about engagement, so if people comment on your posts, asking questions, try to respond to as many as you can. Those initial followers will soon become your super fans. People like cheering on people chasing their dreams. Remember, every time you post, that’s fresh eyes seeing your work for the first time. Whether it be ten views or a thousand. You can reach new readers every day with every video you post at no cost. From a marketing point of view, that is incredible.’
Just like other social media platforms, the people who succeed most on
TikTok are those who turn up regularly. How you define regularly is up to you. Some authors post videos several times a day. Others succeed by posting only a couple of times a week. As Adam suggests, it’s not about frequency, but about being honest with readers.
‘Be consistent and hold yourself accountable.’
Use TikTok to share your writing journey. Glenda posts videos from locations that have inspired her stories, while Adam shares the trials of life as a writer, especially when he slots it in between his role as a full-time nurse.
But his consistency is now paying off. With five books in his Levanthria series, and his Arnold Ethon trilogy, Adam’s about to become a full-time writer. Naturally, this is something he’s shared in a seven-second TikTok video because, for him, he wouldn’t be where he is now with his writing if it wasn’t for TikTok.
‘TikTok definitely helped with sales,’ says Adam. ‘It certainly helped my organic growth last year.’
TikTok terror
Of course, just because many jump onto a bandwagon doesn’t mean we should all follow suit. Ultimately, it’s about finding different ways to engage with our readers and if our readers aren’t on TikTok, then our time may be better spent elsewhere.
One year on, Glenda is reviewing her TikTok strategy. ‘My advice would be to embrace all kinds of social media but only if you want to and feel comfortable. TikTok – and social media – isn’t for everyone and no-one should feel pressured into using it. To be honest, I’m not really sure TikTok is the right platform for me. My readers are more Facebook-based where I have a huge and dedicated following, and that’s where the bulk of my social media efforts go.’
But even if we decide TikTok is not for us, there are still ways in which we can spread the word about our books on this platform. Glenda recommends working with someone who enjoys the platform.
‘Team up with a TikTok influencer who is already a fan of your books and will help promote them for you. In my case, this has been a wonderful young woman called Kathrine Taylor (north east no st algic).Kathri ne is a big fan of my historical sagas set in the northeast and we’ve met a few times when I showed her the locations of my novels in the coal-mining village where they’re set. Kathrine has been hugely supportive and creates TikToks around the locations of my novels.’
TikTok takeaways
TikTok and its BookTok hashtag have been hugely beneficial for the publishing industry, both for traditionally published and self-published authors. Spend time getting to know the platform, and the BookTok hashtag in particular, before getting involved.
The classic 80/20 rule applies to TikTok, just like other social media channels. So, for every post marketing your book directly, have four that engage with readers instead. Share videos of your writing desk, or wherever you write.
Don’t use too many hashtags for each post. Use the BookTok hashtag, and one or two that identify your book’s genre, and perhaps another to explain the content, such as #coverreveal, #betareaders, #unboxing.
Most users create their TikTok videos on their smartphone, using nothing more than the phone’s camera and the tools offered in the TikTok app. You don’t need professional video-editing software. Often, the most spontaneous and informal videos work best.
Finally, remember that social media platforms regularly change the algorithms that determine who sees which posts.
The organic reach enjoyed by many on TikTok at present used to exist on Twitter and Facebook during their first years.
If your books could do with a free marketing boost, and you’re not already on the platform, perhaps now’s the time to check out whether TikTok is where your new readers hang out.
If you’re writing nonfiction, at some point you may want to include other people’s writing in your work. This could be, for example, to report existing research findings, to support your point of view by referring to an expert opinion or to quote someone else’s cleverly crafted sentences. Whenever you’re using other people’s work (and it’s not considered common knowledge), you need to be open about it and explicitly acknowledge it. This is not only morally right, but failing to do so may leave you vulnerable for being accused of plagiarism.
Plagiarism and copyright infringement
Plagiarism can be understood as incorporating someone else’s work into your own without appropriate acknowledgement. This could mean either identically or substantially reproducing other people’s material.
For example, copying a passage verbatim without putting it inside quotations marks would count as plagiarism, as would not citing your sources or citing them incorrectly.
Although plagiarism can be an infringement of copyright, the two are not the same: the former is about ethics while the latter is a legal term (find out more at https://writ.rs/pci). Copyright applies to all sorts of creative works, including written text, images and videos, irrespective of whether they have been officially published or not. Many people think that whatever they can find online can be freely copied and used, but this is not the case.
To protect yourself against accusations of plagiarism, always tell your readers that you’re basing your writing on someone else’s material and cite your sources accurately.
Quoting and paraphrasing
There are two ways in which you can include other people’s work in your writing: you can either quote the original passage or you can paraphrase it. Quoting refers to reproducing a piece of text by putting it inside quotation marks:
In A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver writes, For a poet… diction has several components – [including] the sound of the word; the accuracy of the word; and its connotation…
You’re allowed to modify the quote provided you make it clear how you’ve done it. If you want to omit any words, replace them with an ellipsis; if you want to add any words of your own, place them inside square brackets. (You can see above how I have indicated the changes.)
Paraphrasing means using your own words to convey the passage:
In A Poetry Handbook, Mary Oliver explains that there are many aspects in diction that are relevant for poetry writers, such as how words sound as well as their accurate use and connotations.
In both instances you need to acknowledge the creator of the original material by citing the source. Above, I have mentioned the name of the writer and the book title. In addition to indicating that I have borrowed someone else’s work, citing helps readers find the original source if they want to explore the topic further.
There are different ways to cite sources and each publication has its own preferred style. Some publications require the references to appear in footnotes or endnotes while others want them to be incorporated within the main body of text. Generally speaking, the more academic a publication is, the more detailed attributions they require. In the example above, some publishers might have also wanted me to include the page number (p76) and/
or the year of publication (1994). Before you start writing, study your publisher’s style guide and then follow it to the letter.
Reference lists and bibliographies
For some publications, such as books and certain kinds of articles, you’re required to compile a reference list or a bibliography. A reference list refers to sources that you have referred to in your writing while a bibliography additionally includes all the background reading that you’ve done, including sources you haven’t cited in your text.
It’s a good idea to get into the habit of recording reference details every time you consult a new source. Here’s what you need to jot down:
• Book: author(s), title, publisher, publication date and place
• Article: author(s), article and journal titles, journal volume and issue numbers, publication date, page numbers for the article
• Web page: author(s), webpage title, web address, website host/publisher, publication date (or date of copyright/when the page was created or updated), date you accessed the web page
The items in a reference list tend to be arranged either alphabetically by the author’s last name or in the order that you cited the sources in the main body of text. The exact rules of laying out reference information depends on the publication. Ask your publisher to give you a detailed style guide. If a specific guide is not available, follow one that is commonly used in the subject area you’re writing about (find out more at http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Citation). The book in my example could be referenced in line with the APA style (https:// apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines) as:
Oliver, M. (1994), A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry, Boston:
Mariner Books.
If you’re not familiar with citing or compiling bibliographies, all of this may seem daunting. However, it is not difficult. Provided you’re explicit about other people’s work and follow a style guide to acknowledge it, you’re on the right track.