BookTok and the Publishing Economy

The publishing industry has become over-reliant on TikTok. That's not a good thing.

Welcome to the second installment of Publishing Confidential. Thank you all for reading the launch edition and sharing it. I appreciate it! I will toy with the newsletter’s format (as you’ll see below) and welcome any feedback/suggestions at publishingconfidential@gmail.com.

The Foreword:

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal broke the news that the Biden administration had demanded that the Chinese-owned company ByteDance sell its stake in TikTok or face a possible ban on the app in the U.S. The reason is explained well in this story. The gist is this: The current administration and Congress are concerned that ByteDance could give American user data to Beijing. They are also concerned that TikTok’s algorithm, which is already manipulated, is vulnerable to influence by the Chinese government. Both are valid concerns, and the U.S. threatened but failed to ban TikTok in 2020, albeit for the same reasons I explained above. So, what’s different this time around? For starters, consider President Biden adept at working both sides of the aisle in Congress and the Senate. When Donald Trump attempted to ban TikTok in 2020, he wanted to use an executive order, and Dems weren’t on board with that. A few spy balloons and a pandemic later, the U.S. government is taking a much harder stance against TikTok. Further, the banning of TikTok is not just on the table in the U.S.—the U.K. recently banned the app on government-issued devices. I’ve always considered social media geopolitical, and it is especially so now.

In reading several articles about the possible ban of TikTok, I’ve found that the consensus is Beijing will never approve the sale (which they must for it to happen). TikTok’s CEO will go before Congress next week to plead that moving U.S. user data to Oracle should be a sufficient safeguard. You can read his interview with The Wall Street Journal here.

What does this have to do with book publishing? Everything.

Contents:

Over the past year, BookTok has become a key performance indicator (KPI) for books. Search the BookTok hashtag, and you will likely see videos of emphatic readers emoting over their latest reads. Initially, it felt like a good thing: young people were reading, and books were selling. Granted, much of what occurs on BookTok is organic; there is no way to predict what title might get a boost from it. Nevertheless, publishers have seen BookTok as a way forward in the industry, a way to bridge books and Gen Z. There is no shortage of articles declaring that BookTok is “here to stay.” It reminds me of the book blog explosion in the early aughts when relationships with bloggers were a selling point on your resume (I am that old). Some publishers, like Penguin Random House, have even hired TikTok influencers to revamp their BookTok strategy. The problem with this is that no publisher should rely heavily on one social media app because tech is so fluid and, more times than not, high-risk. We’ve seen this with Twitter after Elon Musk took ownership of the platform: it’s not the same, the algorithm is terrible, and it is anyone’s guess what it will look like over the next 6 months. Book publishing needs to pay attention.

There are a few ways the TikTok situation could play out: Congress could accept the plan put forth by ByteDance to store data with the U.S.-owned company Oracle, ByteDance could agree to sell TikTok contingent upon approval by the Chinese government, Congress could try to regulate TikTok (good luck with that) heavily, or TikTok could be banned in the U.S. It is unlikely that Beijing will give its blessing for TikTok to be sold to an American company because, well, they don’t like us very much. It is also unlikely that Congress will be able to regulate TikTok heavily because it would become a messy freedom of speech fight. The two likeliest scenarios are either TikTok stores data with Oracle, or TikTok gets banned. I am not convinced the latter won’t happen, and the publishing industry needs to be prepared for it.

The publishing economy is a fragile animal that directly competes with the attention economy, and TikTok/BookTok is one way those two economies coexist nicely. Banning TikTok would leave a sizable gap in the publishing economy, affecting sales and revenue. It would also diminish a lot of work that authors from marginalized groups have done because, often, social media is how readers find them. Where coop no longer exists, BookTok does: Walk into Barnes & Noble, and you’ll find an entire table dedicated to titles that are popular on BookTok. The problem is that this delicate ecosystem has become over-reliant on a tenuous platform.

It simply can’t be that publishers continue to favor book proposals from people with large social media followings because, often, the sales conversion isn’t worthwhile. Besides, how many followers is “enough?” Most brands won’t even give a thought to anyone with under 250K followers. Still, many pieces must fall into place for a brand to sell out of a drop (a drop is when a brand has a specific amount of new products for a short time or a season). The biggest is the desire of a consumer to purchase an item because a) they know it’s going to sell out, and b) they want something others may not get. That is not how the publishing economy works unless you are Prince Harry. The backlist is the backbone of publishing, and to build a backlist, you must play the long game with books. Social media, especially TikTok, play a fraught role in that long game. Any time you rely on an entity that requires some kind of regulation or whose erratic CEO (and let’s face it, in tech, there are a lot of those) can easily be scrutinized by the SEC (Security Exchange Commission), you are vulnerable.

I’m not suggesting a quick fix to publishers because there isn’t one. What I am suggesting is that publishers have a Plan B in place sooner rather than later. The conversation of what happens if TikTok no longer exists should be happening right now. Similarly, the conversation about follower count versus algorithm on social platforms should be happening right now—or should have already happened. While there is comfort in the fact that book publishing never goes down in a fight, it is also worrisome that the industry tends to lag when it comes to an ever-changing world of technology. It is time to stop playing catch-up.

Afterword

Something to remember about tech—especially apps—is that many of them start out as utilities. YouTube was a dating site. Twitter was built on the framework of texting. Instagram was initially created so we could share photos. Uber just used to be a ride-sharing service. Apps that have evolved into multi-tasking mechanisms reflect the way we currently live. Everyone wants a “thing” to make other “things” easier. I am one of those people, and that is why I will often write about the intersection of book publishing and tech.

Acknowledgments

App I’m trying: Opal. It’s an app that kicks you off other apps when you spend too much time on them. I’m blocked from Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook if I spend more than an hour on each. It hurts.

What I’m Watching: Daisy Jones and The Six. I might like Daisy Jones and The Six better if I weren’t a huge fan of Almost Famous and the 2002 movie Laurel Canyon. It is a hybrid of those two films and the inner workings of Fleetwood Mac. I’m saying that my 15yo daughter loves it, and I like watching it with her, but wouldn’t watch it otherwise. It doesn’t make me feel anything. I will see my therapist about that.

What I’m Reading: A whole lot of articles about TikTok, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, and the textbook for my current MBA class.

What I Want to Read: The list is endless. I am a big romance book reader, and I need to catch up on author TL Swan’s “The Miles High Club” books “The Do-Over” and “Miles Ever After.” Her books are great fun.

What I’m Listening To, Music Edition: Spotify created a playlist for me that is heavy on 90s R&B/Hip-Hop, and I love it.

What I’m Listening To, Podcast Edition: The Prof G Pod. Scott Galloway is super smart, and I enjoy listening to him talk about tech, marketing, and business.