Tiktok’s real weight has been better measured since 2022-2024. In the United Kingdom, Nielsen estimated that 1 out of 4 books buyers used Tiktok/Booktok in 2022 and that these consumers represented nearly 90 million purchases that year.
At the same time, Nielsen evaluated the share of UK sales at 3 % directly triggered by discovery via videos (Tiktok/Youtube): “ relatively modest “, But in strong progression, and with a multiplier effect on adult fiction.
Views, tears and purchases
On the United States side, the demonstration-totem remains Colleen Hoover: in 2022, it sold 14.3 million printed copies (NPD Bookscan), dominated the records and repositioned the backlist as hits deposit.
Son roman It Ends With Us (Never moretrad. Pauline Vidal) has since crossed the milestone of 10 million copies worldwide according to the publisher (Attia/Simon & Schuster, 2024). This triumph is not “sad girl” stricto sensu, but it explains the attention paid to emotional fictions led by communities and aesthetic online.
The networks do not only convert views to sales on these specific editorial segments (and probably just them). They make languages. On Tiktok and Instagram, short quotes are running in a loop (the “line-up”), the aesthetics are essential (trembled hands, notebooks, lean morphologies, milky filters), videos-reaction (tears’ readers) become proof of a “real” book.
The heart has its hashtags …
The publishers understood this: creative campaigns, EP sendings, hashtag challenges, staging of vulnerability as a promise of authenticity – which marketing pros now summarize without detour.
Beware, however, of the optical illusion: Publishers Weekly underlined in 2023 a relative slowdown in the “corpus booktok” followed by Bookscan, even if adult fiction remained upwards. In other words, dependence on viral codes is neither guaranteed nor lasting.
However, the cultural imprint (and the purchase reflex) remains. In parallel, the opening of bookstores to a young clientele – and the return of the store as a cool place – show that the ecosystem is hybrid: we discover on Tiktok, we also buy because a bookseller embodies the recommendation.
Does the buzz slow down?
Finally, we cannot ignore the ancestor Tumblr/Instagram which incubated the Sad Girl Theory of Wollen: the (controversial) idea that performing your sadness can be a gesture of resistance irrigated part of the online aesthetics.
Survey – The Booktok phenomenon: between trend, recommendation and promotion
« The sadness expressed is not an individual failure but an act of protest “Summaged Audrey Wollen. This enticing Art/Affects/Networks sheds light on the popularity of a literature that claims the right to negative – and its monetization.
An extract from the works cited is offered at the end of the article.
Photo credits: Photosterockeitor CC 0
By Nicolas Gary
Contact : [email protected]
