Many authors have heard that book marketing is popular and effective on TikTok, but they don’t know how to use it. This is a simple write-up about how I established my TikTok channel.
TikTok For Selling Books
To jump to the conclusion, will TikTok help you sell books? I found that it didn’t. I believe that TikTok marketing is better for certain genres, particularly romance, and there wasn’t much interest in my urban fantasy, nautical high fantasy, or non-fiction titles.
It’s free and fun, so if you’re still willing to give it a try, why not?
Use It As A User First
Before making content, spend a few hours as a regular user. Install it on your computer, tablet, or phone, and start looking at videos. Each one is short, and if you like it you can press the heart on the right-hand side. Below the heart is a speech bubble that you can click on to leave a comment or read comments left by others.
If you don’t like a video, or after you’ve watched it, swipe up on the screen and it will show you the next video. Depending on how long you watch videos for and which you click the heart icon on, it will show you more personalized videos. In short order, you should start seeing video that you enjoy. If you particularly dislike a video, you can press and hold on the screen, then choose “not interested”. It will then show you less videos like the one you weren’t interested in.
Creating Content
You can either make videos within the TikTok app or in Canva which lets you export videos to TikTok. You can cut out parts of the video you don’t like, add music, add visual effects, add text on the screen, and many other options.
Once you’ve gotten the video looking how you like it, you can post it and other users will immediately start seeing it. Some of them will like your video or leave a comment. The more interaction with your videos, the more they’ll be shown.
Establishing Yourself
To link to your homepage or Amazon author’s page, you need 1,000 followers. Follow is another choice on the side of each video (the ‘+’ symbol under the picture for the creator). Following other creators sometimes gets you a follow, as they might follow you back. A portion of the users who like your videos may also follow you. The more interest you get in your videos leads to more likes and comments which leads to that video being shown more, which leads to more followers and people who’ll watch other new videos you post.
Choose Your Audience
Many writers on TikTok follow and interact with other writers. That’s fine if that’s what you’re there for, but the algorithm will assume that’s who you’re looking to interact with and not show your content to readers. If you’re focused on selling books, you should try your best to follow readers of your genre on TikTok, watch their videos, like and comment on them, and respond encouragingly when they interact with you.
Book
I released a book on Amazon expanding this post with far more details about marketing books. If you enjoyed this post, I think you’d dig it.
Video
Have you been on TikTok? Has it helped you sell any books?
Thanks you. That’s very helpful to those looking to get started on there.
Thanks for commenting!