TikTok is Taking the Book Industry By Storm, and Retailers Are Taking Notice

An anonymous reader shares a report: Author Adam Silvera four years ago released the young adult science fiction novel 'They Both Die at the End,' which found success and landed a few weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. But years later in August 2020, Silvera said his publisher noticed a significant sales bump, the start of a trend that would send the book to the top of the New York Times' young adult paperback monthly bestseller list in April, where it still reigns. Silvera had no idea where the sales spike was coming from. 'I kept commenting to my readers, 'Hey, don't know what's happening, but there's been a surge in sales lately, so grateful that everybody's finding the story years later,'' Silvera said. 'And then that's when a reader was like, 'I'm seeing it on BookTok.' And I had no idea what they were talking about.'

'BookTok' is a community of users on TikTok who post videos reviewing and recommending books, which has boomed in popularity over the past year. TikTok videos containing the hashtag #TheyBothDieAtTheEnd have collectively amassed more than 37 million views to date, many of which feature users reacting -- and often crying -- to the book's emotional ending. BookTok's impact on the book industry has been notable, helping new authors launch their careers and propelling books like Silvera's to the top of bestseller lists years after their original publication. Madeline Miller's 'The Song of Achilles,' E. Lockhart's 'We Were Liars' and Taylor Jenkins Reid's 'The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo' -- all of which were published before BookTok began to dominate the industry -- are among some of the other books that have found popularity on the app years after their initial release. Retailers like Barnes & Noble have taken advantage of BookTok's popularity to market titles popular on the app to customers by creating specialized shelves featuring books that have gone viral.

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