The book publishing world may be on the cusp of another major change. We have seen a few in the past couple of decades. First there was online selling, Amazon leading the charge. Then came electronic books and e-readers, Amazon and Barnes & Noble at the forefront. Then, it was Amazon again with their enabling authors to self-publish. That afforded new writers, great and mediocre, the opportunity to get their books in front of the public. They didn't first have to convince some publisher, for whom greatness equals nothing more than sales volume. Now, it looks like there may be a new player in town, and its one with the strength to have a good chance of competing, even against the likes of Amazon.
The name may surprise if you are not quite up on what the young people, Gen Z and tail-end millennials, are up to. It's TikTok, promoter of the amusing short to shorter videos. It is also the firm American politicians of all stripes hate and want to ban. The reason is it is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, and politicians battle it out to prove who is more anti-China. It doesn't matter. The younger generation loves TikTok and figuring out how to keep them away, even if it is banned, will be quite a challenge. They haven't been able keep viruses emanating from other countries from infecting computers and phones via the internet, so how will they “protect” us from TikTok?
TikTok's possible move into book publishing was not part of some grand plan. It was an offshoot of the site's great popularity. Viewers, primarily young women from their teens to early 20s, began publishing their own, verbal book reviews. They coalesced in a part of the site called "BookTok." Their interest was primarily romance novels, and some fantasy, and they were good at emoting during the reviews. Romance novels are emotional and they proved adept at rising to the challenge in their reviews. The audience loved it. They flocked to BookTok. If there was any doubt before that young people still have their share of readers, that fear was quickly dispelled by BookTok. Tens of thousands of young TikTokers not only watched the reviews, they started purchasing the books. If you look at the reviewers today, you will see that more and more males are participating now too.
This was all an underground phenomenon until suddenly some older, almost forgotten romance novels started showing up on bestseller lists. What was going on? Publishers wanted to know what was the source of these unexpected sales. A little digging revealed that some BookTok “influencer” had given a positive review of the book and thousands of followers wanted to read it too.
Of course, you know what comes next. Publishing is a business. Publishers wanted to influence the influencers to promote their books. Hence gifts and payments started flowing their way. Paid reviews, except no one was telling viewers about the payments. It's what happens.
Now, TikTok is assessing how to get in on the action. Sure, the increased traffic is good in itself, but what if they became the publishers? Of course, they might treat all books equally regardless of publisher, but they have algorithms that help viewers decide what to view, and consequently, what to buy. The temptation is there, just as it was when the publishers threw gifts at the TikTok reviewers. Like the internet itself, it was all once young and innocent, but once it becomes a business, money shows up to corrupt that innocence. It's the way of the world.
Business Insider reported that TikTok parent ByteDance had taken out a trademark for “8th Note Press,” a publisher. The New York Times expanded on this, reporting that ByteDance has sent emails to some writers offering to purchase rights to their books. The upfront offer, they said, was not particularly generous, but they offered royalties and something else, online marketing services. With their access to millions of eyes (the Times said 150 million in the U.S. alone), that has to be appealing to young writers. One hopes they don't attempt to freeze out other writers (which would undoubtedly get the federal regulators on their case for unfair competition), but it would be unrealistic not to expect them to take advantage of their massive audience and make sure the books they publish are seen by it.
You may wonder what this means to us, as our audience is collectors of old, rare, and highly collectible books. The answer is everything. Tomorrow's collectors are likely to be drawn from people who read and loved books when they were young and broke. It's always been that way. There has been much concern that technologically advanced media, TV, movies with incredible special effects, virtual reality, the “Metaverse,” would make printed books irrelevant to the young. It hasn't quite happened that way. Books do something all the most advanced technology, the most spectacular special effects, cannot do. They allow the reader's imagination to run wild. They can build the world around the story line. Imaginative people like that, perhaps more than being spoon fed every last detail. It turns out the young are more creative than older folks give them credit for. It's all good.
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