BookTok is Magic

A Social Media Novice's Impressions

Oct 07, 2022

I hate short-form video. There, I said it. Apart from comedy sketches, I don’t like watching it. I certainly don’t like making it. But when the divine Rachel Ellyn, multi-genre author, kept pestering me about trying TikTok with promises of renewed book sales, I decided to give it the old college try.

And boy am I a believer now.

In 27 days, I amassed 1000 followers. I sold two books from the Mason Timeline series and got a huge spike in page reads for the Black Magic series. I’m not running ads, and Mason Timeline hasn’t sold hardly anything in years. So I know for a fact the traffic came from TikTok.

I’m only a month in, so I’m hardly an expert. But here is what worked for me:

Personal accounts have MUCH greater reach than business accounts. Keep your account as a personal account until you hit 1k followers. You can only put a clickable link in your bio with a business account, but not until you hit 1k followers. So hold off from switching until you do.
Reader and author follow parties are all over the platform. Use them! Do not worry about your follower/following ratio.
Primarily follow readers rather than writers. And stick to those who like or have reviewed your genre.
Stitching and duets do extremely well. But keep your commentary in your own niche. I dueted a lady complaining about men; I made it about why women read romance instead of dating real men. It did great.
Face filters are great. If you’re scared to be on camera, the filters can fix whatever you don’t like about yourself. Speaking to people did way better for me than book trailers and page flips
Have conversations in the comments. If someone else’s book looks good to you, buy it. I’ve had multiple newsletter signups, follows on other platforms, and book sales from talking to readers.
Romance dominates the platform. If your books are not romance (mine aren’t), tie a few of your videos to the romance genre. Most books have at least one romantic interest in them. Work with that.

So from one TikTok skeptic to another, it is WORTH IT for fiction authors.

I can’t speak to nonfiction authors, as I am not following that community. But given the large and enthusiastic motivation/hustle community on there, I’d wager nonfiction authors can get traction there too.

*A note to those concerned about device privacy. You can use TikTok exclusively from your PC if you create your own videos. Food for thought.

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