Books need a new marketing strategy.

If you are an avid book hoarder like me (not exactly an avid reader which FYI, are completely different beings) and have a calling towards books for no particular reason — perhaps you only find the smell heavenly, how gorgeous they look in their diverse covers, and of course, the promise of *escapism* they give you perhaps to another land, to another story, another world that isn’t yours. Many a times the book you are interested in has had a good review, or almost relates to another similar novel you have read.

This usually intrigues you to take a step into a book store, navigating your fingers along the spines of books you have never seen or heard of. You go further by hovering over the shelves for a moment longer to read the summary of a book that catches your eye. Maybe it is the cover that attracts you, maybe your brain relates it to another series you have read before. But then you check the author, the publishers and at times may have caught yourself asking “who on Earth is that?”.

Even if you book hunt online, you may find yourself following a similar pattern — site jumping from Amazon to a second hand book accounts over instagram. And then in the midst of it all, you abruptly wake up to notice your book buying pattern.

But that is a buying pattern.

What is it actually about a book that makes you buy it?

After watching numerous tiktoks post 2020, observing book-tokers who boast their reading numbers, share their reading experience, even recommend books — and no, it does not end at genre anymore, our glorious Gen-Z has brought in “tropes” in the world of books.

So now, romance isn’t just romance anymore, it may focus on a sub-category of “enemies-to-lovers”, “the love triangle”, “forbidden love” and many more. Books on focused characters may include “the chosen one”, “the secret heir”, “the mentor”, and yada yada.

Technically, such tiktok videos have only opened up a new world and made me question on how I have been buying books all this time — and many were mainly through recommendations and reviews from strangers on the web.

I do not remember ever buying a book being marketed to me directly by the agency — the editor or the publisher, it has always been through the author themselves, specifically the ones that I am following, or third-party end customers: the avid book readers. I do not remember coming across any traditional or modern advertisements for books; videos, posters, social media accounts of newly published authors. And if I did for a book I have never heard of, I would never look at it he second time.

Honestly, how is the publishing industry even alive? Or have I missed out on it and instead have been recommended books my entire life? Is word of mouth the only possible marketing tactic that are used for books?

It wasn’t until recently that I saw a (self-published?) author on tiktok. She created a video describing how she had travelled all the way to another country to find her missing twin sister who was living with her boyfriend. She noticed writing on a board in their apartment that happened to be their secret language which transleted to “Help Me”. She runs out of the apartment in search of her sister and realizes the danger she is in — only that the climax to the video was that it was the plot to her book that she was describing and I among 400K others found that plainly brilliant.

I am sure by now she has more people hooked to the plot and she must be queried with pre-orders.

This, I personally found a briliant way to market a book — narrating the plot with a cliff hanger and not revealing more than the the part to have the audience hooked. Got me thinking, how is the book industry not investing in marketing books properly, reaching a potential target audience that maybe looking for a fresh step into a genre they have never tried out? Also, where’s the branding? There must be numerous different creative ways to get a book out there, just like this author had? Sure book signing, reading the book in libraries or book clubs may have worked and still do given these are mainly the ways that t have been around for the years now, it’s about time to bring in new media, creativity, innovation to selling books.

P.S I tried for the past 15 minutes to credit and link to the video of that writer, unfortunately could not. I’ll keep my eyes open and update once I find her.