From the video phenomenon to publishing: the TikTok company will publish books

One of the most sensational cases is the one that happened last February to Lloyd Richards, a 74-year-old retiree from Vermont, father of three children. Eleven years after the publication of his book, Stone Maidens, within a week it found itself at the top of the most read chart on Amazon. All thanks to a seventeen-second video made by her daughter Marguerite and which went viral on TikTok, seen over 47 million times. It’s the power of BookTok, the hashtag with 91 billion views through which tiktokers exchange – more than advice and reviews – impressions, feelings, tears and guts turned over, making titles even ten years old and by almost unknown authors splash. at the top of the sales charts. A phenomenon that is revolutionizing the publishing world – we are talking about sales in 2023 increased by 40% compared to the previous year, according to US data from Circana BookScan – and which could be just the beginning since TikTok seems willing to take on another role, that of editor. The company is called 8th Note Press and is described as providing a range of book publishing products and services, with the aim of “creating an ecosystem where people can find, buy, read, review and discuss books”. It is owned by ByteDance, the parent company founded by Zhang Yiming from which the short video platform was developed.

According to New York Times, which has seen the correspondence, ByteDance has already contacted some authors through an email defined as “generic and with an impersonal tone” in which reference is made to the contractual terms, in truth not very generous, especially by American standards : a few thousand dollars upfront for the rights to a book. However, together with the advance and royalties, the company offers the complete online marketing service, ie it guarantees the author a visibility not otherwise obtainable with traditional channels.

What genres ByteDance will release isn’t clear, but insiders speak of a specific interest in tearful, sentimental fiction. “In the same way that Amazon has conquered a large part of the romantic literature market, I imagine the same with ByteDance – Lorraine Shanley, president of Market Partners International, a leading publishing consultancy tells us on the phone -. However, it is difficult to imagine that they will have the same impact on more sophisticated non-fiction, for example. I mean, there are a lot of areas where they’re unlikely to try to publish.” Nonetheless, concerns exist.

One wonders, for example, if the amount of data collected on readers, combined with the skilful use of the algorithm, will not end up distorting a market that will also be carried forward thanks to videos lasting a few seconds, but it is still a process that bottom-up, organic, driven by the enthusiasm of readers who actually tend to reject anything that seems corporate or inauthentic. In this sense ByteDance could act in such a way as to make its projects go viral, leaving less space for other books and posts.

In response to a question about its promotional plans, the company said that 8th Note Press is a separate entity from TikTok, but – as Shanley notes again – there is no doubt that “it will be able to collect a lot of data on who buys their books ».

Another advantage: ByteDance could monitor in real time self-publishing authors who go viral and rush to sign them, i.e. doing faster and more effectively what traditional publishers are already doing, essentially beating them at their own game. as the examples of Ruby Dixon, the author of the series, demonstrate Ice Planet Barbarianswho had started with self-publishing and was one of the first phenomena on TikTok, or like Mariana Zapata, who also self-published her book, which then exploded with 280 million views on TikTok, entered the ranking of New York Times and now published by Harper Collins.

Some in the industry doubt ByteDance can carve out a sizable chunk of the market, in part because publishing remains a stubbornly analog and relationship-based business. Print sales still account for more than 70 percent of publisher revenues, according to the Association of American Publishers—any new major publishing house needs printing and distribution capabilities and relationships with booksellers. But perhaps the greatest comfort for the world of old-fashioned publishing comes from a simple but always true consideration: readers are fickle, what they like today may not like it tomorrow and there is no algorithm that is able to predict it. But above all, virality doesn’t automatically create commercial successes: if the books are bad, there’s no video that holds, people don’t buy them in the end.