After 8th Note Press was launched in 2023, I was curious to see how well its titles would perform both inside and outside the TikTok ecosystem. The press was launched by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, with the stated goals of publishing fiction and nonfiction and launching an app to buy and read the books.
Ever since the pandemic, TikTok has been considered the most influential and effective social media platform for marketing, promotion, and selling commercial fiction, especially romance. Circana BookScan, which tracks book sales in the US, even curates a list of BookTok authors and tracks their sales over time. Unless you count Wattpad, 8th Note Press remains the only instance of a major social media platform launching its own book-publishing venture. And why not try to capture a piece of growing fiction sales? A range of self-publishing authors, such as Keila Shaheen, were becoming successful simply by selling through TikTok Shop and nowhere else.
But 8th Note Press hasn’t yet had a national bestseller or viral hit (more than 1 million hashtag views) within the BookTok community. When 8th Note Press was first announced, there was concern it might put its thumb on the scale in favor of its own titles on TikTok. But 8th Note isn’t even following TikTok best practices to gain traction on TikTok, much less giving its titles special treatment. Visibility for 8th Note Press titles has largely come from authors’ efforts, whether on TikTok or elsewhere. (Note: For the purposes of this article, I’m not analyzing well-established authors and self-published phenoms who were already successful before 8th Note entered the picture. For example, 8th Note Press didn’t have to manufacture buzz from scratch for Ambrosia R. Harris’s series The Taking of Persephone; they acquired an already-moving train.)
Agent Eva Scalzo of the Speilburg Literary Agency says working with 8th Note Press was comparable to working with any other traditional publisher in terms of the editorial process. Scalzo represented Caitlin Cross for her debut novel On Screen & Off Again. When it came time to talk marketing, Scalzo says, 8th Note didn’t come forward with anything “out of the box,” but Cross was able to get on local TV and was featured in People magazine with her book. Scalzo believes those things would’ve happened with or without 8th Note because they arose from Cross’s own network and connections.
“8th Note seems to be facing the same challenges that all publishers face on TikTok,” author Leigh Stein says, “which is how to generate organic word of mouth for the books, and that has to come from the creators.” Stein uses TikTok and other social media platforms for book marketing and promotion, and she coaches authors on platform building. She says that 8th Note Press has been running paid sponsorships for its titles on TikTok, but these get less engagement than organic videos. She says it can disappoint the fandom to see a paid ad, like their favorite creator is selling out.
Alyssa Morris, who reports on TikTok trends and writes Romancing the Phone, noticed the same thing as Stein: “I haven’t seen anything organically in my feed when I went looking. [8th Note has] done a fair amount of paid promotion with well-chosen creators, but I don’t think those are moving the needle, partially because they don’t feel very authentic.”
One 8th Note Press debut author who has strong, organic TikTok engagement is Sanibel, who Stein interviewed recently about her posting strategy. Her reader engagement and overall presence pre-dates the launch of her book. (She also received a six-figure advance, according to Publishers Marketplace; that is out of the ordinary for 8th Note.) According to Stein, success on TikTok, like the kind Sanibel has, means building personal relationships between the creator and the reader. “That surpasses what the publisher can do for the author.”
Morris says that other 8th Note authors don’t have better TikTok accounts or better content than other authors on the platform. “It doesn’t seem like [8th Note] is giving anyone coaching about how the algorithm works, or it doesn’t seem like there’s any proprietary information being shared that’s giving [their authors] an advantage.”
Nor is 8th Note doing its own organic marketing and promotion on TikTok. While they have a TikTok account, they’ve posted only a single video. Stein says traditional publishers struggle with their own footprint on TikTok, and she believes it’s necessary to hire someone to be the face of that account because of how TikTok users build connections. She pointed to the woman who runs the Simon & Schuster Atria Books TikTok account as a good example in the industry. “Few publishers are doing this at all. 8th Note is the same as everyone else,” Stein says.
8th Note Press also doesn’t have a TikTok Shop—and, until recently, no meaningful print distribution. Selling products directly through its shop has been a priority for TikTok, so it’s surprising there’s no associated shop for 8th Note titles. Stein says, “Even though I can find all these paid sponsorships [for 8th Note Press titles], I can’t buy through the ad.” She says this is something that 8th Note Press, and the rest of publishing, needs to figure out: how to let people shop directly through these videos.
8th Note was releasing books only in digital format until it announced a partnership with Zando in November 2024. Delaying or de-prioritizing print for this audience is yet another surprise, given how much BookTok influencers prefer to have print books to show in their videos. Plus every month the industry hears something new from Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt about young people coming into bookstores to socialize, buy their romantasy favorites, and pick up limited deluxe editions.
Even when it comes to a digital-first strategy, 8th Note didn’t follow some best practices, especially for romance. Morris says, “BookTok is very Kindle Unlimited driven.” Yet no 8th Note title is in Kindle Unlimited (with one exception I’ll explain later). As seen in the list of 8th Note Press titles below, the number of Amazon ratings for these books is low overall. KU availability drives more ratings and review activity and thus more Amazon discoverability. Meanwhile, Goodreads ratings are higher in number, helped by NetGalley ARC campaigns and Goodreads giveaways.
Will the Zando partnership change things? It’s possible, but so far Zando is not selling any 8th Note Press books in their TikTok Shop. However, Zando has published titles that have been successful in the BookTok community, particularly dark romance.
Which brings up an interesting point: “The books 8th Note Press is acquiring don’t seem to be particularly TikTok-y books,” says Morris. “They’re much more straightforward rom-coms, or they’re not the things that are doing well on TikTok in the indie space that aren’t [already] being published by the Big Five.” One set of titles that has performed comparably well, though, is Ally Wiegand’s sports romance series. Sports romance is a popular niche and trend on BookTok, and Wiegand regularly posts on her own TikTok account. There was also a strong NetGalley ARC push. And, in a significant twist, the ebook is available in KU—but only in the UK. (I could not find any other 8th Note titles available in KU in either the US or UK.)
Scalzo told me that her agency had been working on a second deal with 8th Note for an author with a romantasy novel, but they later rescinded the offer. Editor Allison Moore, who has since departed 8th Note, told Scalzo the press had changed their editorial strategy. “Romantasy, as far as I can tell, is still doing really well on TikTok,” Scalzo says. “I’m very curious as to what their actual strategy is.” She later added, “I don’t know if it’s the uncertainty with TikTok [the ban] or the trade war with China or other market concerns. They don’t have a fully realized publishing strategy aside from using TikTok as a platform but not really using it.”
Bottom line: While I’d hoped to speak to authors for this piece, those I contacted declined to comment about 8th Note, some indicating their contract prevents them from doing so. And 8th Note Press did not respond to my inquiries. But it’s obvious that signing with 8th Note has not brought their authors any particular marketing and promotion advantage. In fact, I’d argue that authors who launched without a print edition were at a distinct disadvantage. Authors with long publishing histories, like Tara Lush, typically see lower visibility and reviews for their 8th Note Press books, and debut authors without TikTok skills risk getting lost in a competitive environment. If there’s a turnaround, I expect it will most likely arise from Zando’s involvement.
| Title (*debut novel) | Author / TikTok account | Genre | Release Date | Goodreads | Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Lost Saint | Rachael Craw (@rachaelcraw1) | YA time-slip romantasy | April 29, 2025 | 56 ratings | 2 ratings |
| Love to Hate You | Marina Adair (@authormarinaadair) | Adult rom-com | April 22, 2025 | 216 ratings | 45 ratings |
| To Have and Have More * | Sanibel (@sanibel.ink) | Contemporary literary satire | April 15, 2025 | 118 ratings | 18 ratings |
| 37 Questions * | June Kaye (@junekayewrites) | Adult romance | Feb. 11, 2025 | 87 ratings | 20 ratings |
| On Screen & Off Again * | Caitlin Cross (@writtenbycaitlincross) | Adult contemporary romance | Feb. 4, 2025 | 152 ratings | 15 ratings |
| So Many Somethings * | Molly Dunn (n/a) | Rom-com | Oct. 29, 2024 | 87 ratings | 23 ratings |
| Savory & Supernatural | Karen Healey (n/a) | Paranormal rom-com novella | April 30, 2024 | 75 ratings | 24 ratings |
| First Base | Ally Wiegand (@allywiegandauthor) | Sports romance | April 23, 2024 | 1,454 ratings | 160 ratings |
| Gator Queen | Tara Lush (@thebooklush) | Cozy mystery/romance | March 26, 2024 | 270 ratings | 79 ratings |
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
