Last week, TikTok executive Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress, where he was distinctly unable to alleviate lawmakers’ security concerns about the app’s Chinese ownership. The Biden administration suggests it will ban TikTok if it is not sold to a US-based company, but China has indicated it will oppose a forced sale.
A recent Vox article reported that BookTok (a community within TikTok) is behind today’s book sales growth. In 2021, TikTok was responsible for doubling the sales of featured authors, a phenomenon that continues today. Authors favored on BookTok have seen sales increase by 43 percent in 2023 so far. Circana BookScan’s Kristen McLean told Vox, “When I look at the data, there’s no other area of the US publishing market that we can pin that’s seeing that level of year-over-year growth right now. That’s the third year of growth for these authors.”
Vox takes a closer look at the influencers who are driving these sales and monetizing their activity—one influencer is paid about $2,000 per video. The danger, of course, is that monetization could defeat the authenticity and trustworthiness of BookTok recommendations.
Canadian publisher Kenneth Whyte recently commented on the likelihood of a TikTok ban, writing, “Instead of a flat-out ban or forcing a sale, Team Biden might settle for heavy regulation of the app … maybe regulation amounts to the same thing as a ban if the approach is so restrictive that the company chooses not to submit and abandons the US market.” If that should happen, the question isn’t whether book sales will decline as a result but how badly they will decline.
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.
