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You ever buy a book and not read it? You feel almost guilty having it up on a bookshelf. People are like, "Hey, how's that book?" "I haven't read it." "Oh, did you just buy it?" "I've had it since high school." "Well, can I borrow it?" "No."

Jim Gaffigan

Dateline Charlottesville, VA

In This Issue

TikTok had a big impact on book sales in 2022, with Colleen Hoover leading the way, according to new data. Here are 4 key takeaways about BookTok's effect on the industry.

By Marta Biino 

https://www.businessinsider.com/

https://bit.ly/3XP6kLS

TikTok is revolutionizing all sorts of industries, from music to hospitality and restaurants. But it's had a particularly big impact on publishing.

A dedicated and growing community of readers has blossomed around the hashtag #BookTok, a combination of the words "book" and "TikTok," which had 110 billion views as of February 17.

Publishers who spoke with Insider credited the BookTok phenomenon as the primary driver of 2021 being the most successful year for the industry in almost 20 years.

"It's huge, beyond anything in my career," James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble and of British bookstore chain Waterstones, told Insider in early 2022.

And now new data from NPD BookScan, the largest sales tracker of physical books in the US, shows that BookTok continued to be instrumental for the industry in 2022.

Here are four key takeaways:

1. Book sales declined slightly in 2022, but BookTok continues gaining ground

Last year was the second-biggest year for book sales in the US since 2004, when NPD BookScan began collecting data.

Sales were down 5.8% compared to 2021, with 780 million copies sold, versus 828 million the year prior.

The category that grew the most was adult fiction, with an increase in sales of 14.8%.

Kristen McLean, books-industry analyst for NPD, said matching 2021 numbers was virtually impossible.

"The down part of last year is just because it's like we climbed Everest," she said. "There was no other place to go but down.

We were down off the peak, but we're still above 2019. Using that Everest analogy, we're only back at the first base camp, we're not all the way down in the valley."

NPD said sales of titles written by BookTok authors increased by 66% compared to 2021. NPD's BookTok authors list includes over 100 writers "featured prominently on TikTok's BookTok channel."

These two charts show how much BookTok has grown over the years, and which BookTok authors have increased their sales in 2022. NPD BookScan

2. Colleen Hoover dominates the phenomenon

The biggest star of the publishing industry in 2022 was fiction author Colleen Hoover, whose novel "It Ends With Us" has been at the top of the New York Times bestsellers list for fiction for 86 weeks. 

Hoover sold 14.3 million copies of her novels in 2022, compared to 1.88 in 2021 — a 661% increase.

"She definitely got the big push from BookTok, and when the retailers started to merchandise it, a whole other group of readers who aren't BookTok readers got exposed," McLean said.

"She basically has made the leap into the name recognition that puts her in the top best-selling author list."

Other growing BookTok writers were Jenny Han, author of the trilogy "The Summer I Turned Pretty" (which inspired an Amazon Prime Video show), and Taylor Jenkins Reid, known for "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" and "Daisy Jones and the Six."

3. BookTok contributes to the increase in sales of older books as opposed to new ones

Sales of backlist books, or books published over 12 months before NPD collects data, have been growing steadily for 20 years.

In 2022, only 30% of the books sold were newly published titles, while 70% were backlist names. That's up from 68% in 2021.

"Part of the backlist story is the fact that a lot of the books that were embraced by BookTok, which is one of the strongest drivers of adult fiction, were backlist titles," McLean said.

McLean mentioned Hoover's "It Ends With Us" as the most prominent example of a backlist title that's driving the growth of this sector.

4. The power of BookTok goes beyond fiction

It's not just fiction authors like Hoover and Jenkins Reid who find success on the platform.

McLean mentioned the example of UK-based publisher Welbeck, known for its non-fiction Little Books series on subjects ranging from music to fashion.

People on TikTok got excited about their books, filmed videos about them, and drove a 96% growth in sales in December 2022 compared to December 2021.

Non-fiction categories like business and economics, or psychology and mental health, have also grown, despite the general sales of non-fiction books decreasing.

"I cannot overstate the power of what's happening on BookTok," McLean said.

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