{"id":2224811,"date":"2024-04-18T22:32:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T02:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-business-end-of-tiktok\/"},"modified":"2024-04-18T22:39:13","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T02:39:13","slug":"the-business-end-of-tiktok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-business-end-of-tiktok\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring TikTok&#8217;s Business Side"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">8<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-business-end-of-tiktok%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2224811&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Sarah Janet Maas, an accomplished author in the romance \u200band fantasy\u2063 genre, has\u200c seen immense success in the book business, \u200cwith\u2062 sales exceeding 38 million copies in\u200d English. Her\u2064 multi-volume epics have captivated readers worldwide. A\u2062 significant factor in her recent surge in popularity is BookTok, a community on TikTok that \u2063promotes\u2063 and discusses books, contributing to \u2064increased sales and visibility.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/books\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>book<\/a> business, there are technical bestselling authors who manage to\u00a0hawk\u00a0anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of copies in a relatively short sales\u00a0window. And then there are the\u00a0bonkers successful\u00a0writers who actually keep the lights on.<\/p>\n<p>Sarah Janet\u00a0Maas\u00a0belongs in the latter, brighter category. Her \u201cromantasy\u201d (romance and fantasy) books are packaged\u00a0together\u00a0as\u00a0multivolume\u00a0doorstoppers and are widely available. They have enjoyed sales of more than 38 million copies \u201cin English,\u201d according to her website.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNovelist Sarah J Maas gives Bloomsbury the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/2788768\/harry-potter-sales-up-nearly-5-million-despite-attempts-to-cancel-j-k-rowling\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Harry Potter effect<\/a>,\u201d was the headline accompanying a <em>Times of London<\/em> story announcing her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/english-language\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>English language<\/a> publisher\u2019s record year in 2023. Maas\u2019s books continued topping most of the charts that mattered for the first quarter of 2024\u00a0as well. They have also\u00a0done brisk translation business.<\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>(Illustration by Tatiana Lozano \/ Washington Examiner; AP and Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Maas,\u00a038, began writing her books at 16, with the question, \u201cWhat if Cinderella was an assassin?\u201d firmly in mind.\u00a0This eventually spawned the eight-volume, 5,600-page\u00a0\u201cThrone of Glass\u201d series.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter a year of slavery in the Salt Mines of Endovier, Celaena Sardothien,\u201d the heroine, \u201cwas accustomed to being escorted everywhere in shackles and at sword-point,\u201d the first book begins.<\/p>\n<h2>How the tok ticked<\/h2>\n<p>The story of Maas\u2019s recent success is part of a larger story about the improbably successful and controversial <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/michigans-matt-sealy-explains-how-president-trump-has-several-paths-to-victorynever-count-donald-trump-out-video\/\" title=\"Michigan\u2019s Matt Sealy Explains How President Trump Has SEVERAL Paths To Victory\u2026\u201dNever count Donald Trump out!\u201d[VIDEO]\">social network<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/tiktok\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>TikTok<\/a>. She had gained some notoriety in the past from publishing versions of her stories on sites such as FictionPress. That notoriety, however, wasn\u2019t what turned sales up to 11.<\/p>\n<p>No, it was really \u201cBookTok\u201d that carried Maas\u2019s book bricks into some of the best real estate at Barnes &#038; Noble and other booksellers by creating a genuine groundswell of support for her work.<\/p>\n<p>BookTok is the name that has been coined to describe the use of the visual social network TikTok by interested readers and authors. They make short videos, also known as \u201cTikToks\u201d or \u201cBookToks,\u201d boosting and arguing about books.<\/p>\n<p>TikTok videos tend to be between 15 seconds and three minutes long. The content can be almost anything: pool hall trick shot videos, movie clips, recipes, sexually suggestive numbers, and, yes, BookToks.<\/p>\n<p>The format and a passionate user base have turned TikTok into a ravenous cash cow. It had estimated revenues in 2023 of over $16 billion, mostly from advertising, though direct commerce is a growing concern.<\/p>\n<p>The video social network was launched by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/china\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Chinese<\/a> firm ByteDance, initially only in its domestic market. It is known in China not as \u201cTikTok\u201d but as \u201cDouyin.\u201d Many firms in the People\u2019s Republic of China have struggled to build an international brand. TikTok got around that in the United States, initially, through a key acquisition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile many Chinese apps have failed to succeed outside of China, most notably Tencent\u2019s WeChat, TikTok managed to push itself into the overseas market through the acquisition of Musical.ly in November 2017 for $1 billion,\u201d according to the Business of Apps website. \u201cThis added 80 million users, mostly in the U.S., which TikTok then imported to its own platform.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That gave TikTok the in it needed. It has successfully hooked viewers not just in the U.S. but around the globe. TikTok had about 1.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/universal-music-group-to-pull-songs-from-tiktok-due-to-failure-to-reach-agreement\/\" title=\"Universal Music Group will remove songs from TikTok as an agreement could not be reached\">5 billion monthly users<\/a> in 2023. Just over 100 million of those users were from the U.S., and half were from China. The app has been downloaded 4 billion times and counting.<\/p>\n<p>Some projections have TikTok use rising to 1.8 billion monthly viewers by the end of this year, though the company is facing competition from other social networks and pushback from Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<h2>TikTok time\u2019s up?<\/h2>\n<p>The video social network has many detractors in the U.S., from members of Congress to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/how-to-save-shakespeare-and-the-western-civilization-he-espoused\/\" title=\"How To Save Shakespeare And The Western Civilization He Espoused\">literary critics<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTikTok has repeatedly chosen the path for more control, more surveillance, and more manipulation,\u201d said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a hearing that grilled the company\u2019s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, in March 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Lest anyone miss her point, she added, \u201cYour platform should be banned.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As far as the House is concerned, McMorris Rodgers got her way. In March, about a year after the initial hearings, representatives voted 352 to 65 to pass the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.<\/p>\n<p>If enacted, the bill would prohibit \u201cdistributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gallagher-says-bipartisan-tiktok-bill-is-not-a-ban\/\" title=\"Gallagher clarifies bipartisan TikTok bill isn't a ban\">foreign adversary controlled application<\/a> (e.g., TikTok),\u201d which could be waived only when the company has executed a \u201cqualified divestiture as determined by the President,\u201d according to the summary on Congress.gov.<\/p>\n<p>For his part, Barry Pierce has not voted to ban TikTok, but he wouldn\u2019t necessarily be sad to see it go.<\/p>\n<p>Pierce, whose website describes him as \u201ceither a book reviewer or a fashion writer or a cultural critic,\u201d penned a much-discussed article on BookTok for <em>GQ<\/em>. The piece claimed that on TikTok, \u201cbeing \u2018a reader\u2019 is more important than actually reading.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He called BookTok a \u201ccursed landscape\u201d and said that scrolling through videos was \u201clike entering a<em> <\/em>parallel universe where reading wasn\u2019t just something that someone did for fun, it was a lifestyle, an\u00a0aesthetic,\u201d\u00a0and a particularly ill-chosen aesthetic at that.<\/p>\n<p>Pierce said that BookTokers reminded him of an earlier book-related hype machine on YouTube, known at the time as BookTube.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cActual reviews became few and far between and many of the smaller, genuine readers on the platform jumped ship,\u201d he wrote of the BookTube implosion in the mid-2010s. \u201cIt feels like BookTok has got to the same place, only much faster.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Not TikTok\u2019s first rodeo<\/h2>\n<p>On the cultural front, the numbers don\u2019t currently bear out any kind of a BookTok implosion. Maas\u2019s books are still enjoying robust sales, as are many others pushed by BookTokers. For the most part, bookstores are happily catering to this boon to their sales.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a good thing, poet and novelist Leigh Stein said, and much of the literary world would do well to catch up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a banquet room in South Carolina, I\u2019m giving the keynote speech at a writing conference,\u201d Stein reported in the online journal Literary Hub. \u201cTo inspire the audience, I tell the Cinderella story of Colleen Hoover, the bestselling author in America. Three days before my speech, her novel <a href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/p\/books\/it-starts-with-us-colleen-hoover\/18358578\/?aid=132\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>It Starts With Us<\/em><\/a> sold 800,000 copies\u00a0on release day.\u00a0There are 120 writers in the room; only one has heard of Hoover.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She added, from experience, that while those who aren\u2019t familiar with the social network may see BookTok as a \u201ccontraction or reduction of books and ideas to what \u2018performs\u2019 best in a visual medium engineered by Chinese geniuses to destroy our attention spans,\u201d fans see it differently.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, fans tell her that \u201cbeing on BookTok has expanded their horizons as readers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. government could shrink those horizons somewhat by passing the Protecting Americans from<em> <\/em>Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, in theory.<\/p>\n<p>It currently appears to be bottled up in the Senate. The bill faces opposition from many Democrats and some Republicans, such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).<\/p>\n<p>TikTok doesn\u2019t appear to be sweating it much. The U.S. makes up only 10% of its active user base, and the company has previous experience being scrutinized and banned elsewhere. Both Pakistan and India prohibited the app, for instance, though Pakistan eventually came around.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The spread of virtual private networks, or VPNs, would also make a country-specific ban less effective by making it extremely difficult to track where individual users are from.<\/p>\n<p>A study reported in late January by Security.org found that \u201cas many as 105 million Americans have VPNs today.\u201d That is roughly the size of the U.S. cohort that regularly uses TikTok today.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the book industry, some authors sell thousands to tens of thousands of copies quickly, while others achieve remarkable success. Sarah Janet Maas falls into the latter group, with her captivating &#8220;romantasy&#8221; novels bundled as multi-volume epics that keep readers hooked<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2692,"featured_media":2224812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/wex-s3.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/BizCover-1-1024x591.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[538],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2224811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-washington-examiner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/wex-s3.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/BizCover-1-1024x591.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2224811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2224811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2224812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2224811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2224811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2224811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}