Warm up
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- What industry do you work in and what is your role?
- What are your responses in your role / position?
- Can you describe to the function of your workplace / company?
- How many departments, how many offices. National or International?
- What are the minimum requirements for employment ie Education or Experience?
- How many opportunities are there to ‘move up the ladder’?
- What is the process for changing job roles ie Interview? Test?
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- Current projects? Deadlines? Opportunities?
- Anything of interest happening?
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Key Facts
1. The U.S. print book market was up 9% compared to 2020, according to NPD Bookscan, finishing 67 million copies ahead of 2020, and selling 125 million more copies than in 2019. Kristen McLean, executive director and industry analyst at NPD Bookscan, said social media—particularly TikTok users who post about books, known collectively as BookTok—has “definitely been a factor” in surging book sales, along with the pandemic in general, with many of the sales gains coming in Q1 and Q2 before the Covid-19 vaccines were widely available.
2. TikTok’s influence particularly began in 2020, and primarily boosted sales in the Young Adult category, McLean said, noting the trend “started in the teen book space, but it’s not just the teen book space,” before eventually spreading to Adult Fiction and Adult Nonfiction.
3. Adult Fiction led the growth of sales in 2021, up 25% from the previous year and driving more than half of 2021’s overall market gains, according to NPD Bookscan, and Young Adult had its best year in NPD Bookscan history, with sales quadrupling compared to 2004 data.
Have you heard of TikTok? Have you ever used it or know anyone that has/does? What is your image of the application? Who do you think it appeals to mostly? (please include atleast 3 demographic variables)
4. The romance novel It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover was the second best-selling Adult Fiction book and sixth best-selling book overall in 2021—selling more than 770,000 copies last year—despite being a backlist title originally published in 2016, and McLean believes that is “almost exclusively there because of BookTok,” where it was championed.
5. Other books that emerged as popular on TikTok, according to McLean, include They Both Die At The End by Adam Silvera (published in 2017, selling 685,000 copies in 2021) and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (published in 2012 and selling 650,000 copies in 2021—and ranking as the fourth best-selling Adult Fiction book).
6. Key Background
BookTok can often be the first stop for popular titles on best-seller lists, according to McLean. Retailers like Barnes & Noble keep track of popular titles on the app, and advertise them as BookTok favorites. “BookTok gets excited about it, the retailers pay attention, merchandise it, other people find it, other retailers start to find it because the numbers start to go up, and it takes off,” McLean said. “It starts with BookTok and then it just ripples out from there.”
7. BookTokers who get enough views are eligible to be a part of TikTok’s Creator Fund—a pool of money distributed based on a creator’s share of the platform’s overall views—or can get sponsorships to discuss companies or products in their videos. Some BookTokers also add link lists to their accounts, where they can include affiliate links for their viewers to purchase books they discuss, discount codes for bookstores and their own Amazon wishlists.
Did you enjoy reading when you were younger? what kind of books do/did you enjoy? Which book left the greatest impression on you when you were young?
8. McLean first noticed the TikTok trend during the fall of 2020. We Were Liars, a young adult novel by E. Lockhart which was published in 2014, began rising up the teen bestseller list. McLean looked into it, and found out that Lockhart hadn’t done an event or promotion, so she started investigating on social media. She found a tweet from Lockhart thanking a TikToker for posting a video about her book, and she made the connection (TikToks tagged with #wewereliars now have more than 82 million views).
9. Lockhart told Forbes she first found out about We Were Liars’ renewed success from the teenagers in her life, and discovered a number of videos on the app featuring people’s reaction to the book, which often included a lot of crying. “It wasn’t like they were sharing the plot, or the premise or anything like that, they were just sharing a real gut, vulnerable reaction,” Lockhart said.
How do you think the market has changed over the last 30 years?
Do you think there will always be a market for physical books? Why?
Phonetic Chart
