What Even Works Anymore
Hey, at least it hasn’t capsized.
The US government has been going after TikTok. I’m not pro or anti TikTok. The platform doesn’t suit my skills. Unless someone sends me a particular video, I let people have fun over there. I mind my own business. I have been paying more attention, though, when the push to ban TikTok in the United States picked up steam. One of the great fears I hear repeated is that the end of TikTok will obliterate the careers of many creators, with a trickle-down effect on authors.
It reminds me of when an electric scooter company threatened to pull out of a large city, and residents (rightly) pointed out that the service had become a crucial band-aid covering lackluster public transit options. Without the electric scooter company, many car-free residents would have no easy way to reach the places they needed to be. But, the electric scooter company was being difficult and the politicians wanted them gone. It didn’t matter to them that, for decades, money that should have been spent on inner city infrastructure had gone to highways to the suburbs. The scooter company was banned, and another eventually took its place. But how many people missed job interviews and medical appointments before that happened?
The thing is, these niche companies flourish when there is a failure. This is sort of what is happening with TikTok, particularly for the publishing industry. The marketing budgets and infrastructure for book promotion has been chipped away. Authors who bring their own social media audiences tend to get better publishing deals, and a lot of that audience uses TikTok. That’s where they learn about and get excited for new (or old) books. Authors all know that publishers want new talent who have an audience built in. Yes, that is partly because they think it is easier to sell books that way. I also think they no longer know how to build an audience. They can make amazing books, but whether they can sell books and make a product that is profitable, I’m not so sure.
I’m not saying this to be an asshole. There’s things about standard traditional publishing deals that are exploitative and hostile (I go into this in my piece for Writer’s Digest). The audience thing, though, that is real. We don’t know how to reach people. Digital advertisements are blocked, no one buys print magazines, and colleges spend so much time bring students up to what was high school reading twenty years ago that there isn’t time for anything new. Plus, 30% of people read ebooks, so you don’t even get the free advertising of your book cover in doctor’s offices, libraries, park benches, etc. nearly 1/3 of the time.
Think about your own reading habits. How often have you thought, ugh, I don’t know what to read. It happens to me. It happens to me a lot. I actively seek out under the radar books and I struggle to find anything that fits my mood. How is that possible? We have more books publishing every day than ever before, and yet discovery is broken. I need a friend to tell me, You Must Read This Book before I look into it. I need to go to a library and see a compelling book on a shelf. I need an indie bookstore with handwritten reviews from employees.
There’s a problem, of course. Those books were discovered by friends, librarians, and bookstore employees through... TikTok.
