TikTok wants to be your new favorite book publisher.
No, really.
ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has announced it wants to take the popular #BookTok trend even further and launch its own print publishing company.
While a social media app thinking it can be a successful literary publisher seems like a stretch, if you’ve been on TikTok in the last three years, the move might not be a total surprise. #BookTok first exploded during the pandemic and has since racked up 60 billion views. And those views have translated directly to book sales. It’s no wonder ByteDance wants more of a piece of the action.
The social media platform previously dipped a toe into e-books with 8th Note Press, but now is going all-in on physical books. The company will focus on the types of titles that are popular on #BookTok, which mostly include romance, contemporary fiction, young adult and fantasy.
The first book published will be Caitlin Cross’ On Screen & Off Again, a “romantasy” novel about former child co-stars reconnecting in their young adulthood, which sounds exactly like something BookTok will eat up like candy.
The company that’s revolutionized how we consume digital content now wants us to get off our phones and read a 400-page novel (as long as we buy it from them).
This post was originally published on here
