Aishwarya 00:10
Welcome to the book people, I'm assure you as a writer, book editor, Podcast Producer, and the head of originals at bound in this heartbreaking podcast, I demystify the publishing and creative industries, and uncover the biggest opportunities and challenges for writers in India today. Welcome to another episode of the book people. And in this episode, I'm going to take something new that's happening in the industry that has been announced this very week. And I'm going to look at what this means for writers and for creative professionals in India today. So a new development took place this week, which I'm very excited to decode and talk about. And I actually also mentioned this on LinkedIn. So if you don't follow me there, please go follow me there. And I said that I would be coded in this week's episode. So here I am. So what has happened is tick tock, right, which is this giant content company, which has the short form videos, that companies parent company, which is called by dance, has announced that it's going to start its own book publishing. So what this means is because tick tock has a lot of booktalk, right, just like we have Bookstagram, we have booked you, we have booked up, and a lot of authors have been promoting their books on booktube. You know, readers gather on booktube. And a lot of self published authors have been making really good sales on booktube. And so with this new publishing arm that tiktoks parent company is going to create, everyone is worried about how this is going to impact authors, how is this going to impact publishers and the industry as a whole? So what I'm going to look at today is obviously answering this question, which is how is this going to impact the industry? How is this going to impact authors who have been using Tiktok primarily to market their books and sell their books? And I want to look at specifically in India, what does this mean? You know, because tick tock has been banned in India since 2020. So is this publishing, going to land up in India? What does this mean for Indian authors and for Indian publishers? So let's dive in. So let's start with what is tick tock. So like I said, tick tock is this app that allows people to consume and to record and put out short format videos, right, we had wine we had musically. And now we have tick tock, and we mostly see tick tock videos on our Instagram reviews, or on our YouTube shorts, where they're just basically repurposed. But essentially, that is the way that the Tick Tock platform works. And tick tock has a parent company called bytedance. Now bytedance is a Chinese internet technology company, which has a lot of different content apps and content platforms, tick tock just being one of them. So they do a bunch of different things. But tick tock in itself has become huge, right? So I think that if I look at the latest numbers, as of 2023, tick tock has been downloaded 3.5 billion times. And this is not even counting India, since it is banned in India. So don't count the giant population that India has. And it has over 1 billion monthly active users. That's a lot. Right. So tick tock is obviously doing really, really well. So let's talk about why tic toc got banned in the first place in India. So in 2020, there were some indo Chinese skirmishes that were happening at the border. And essentially, the Indian government was worried about Tik Tok and a few other apps, basically, because their Chinese apps are having, you know, data breach issues or data security issues or being able to, you know, create manipulated content in some way. And because of that, a lot of apps including Tiktok, were banned. And at that point, Tik Tok had one 50 million monthly active users in India alone. Right. So obviously, we haven't had picked up for a long time. And at that point, most of the people who were very critical of Tik Tok score, were, you know, sort of happy or relieved about the fact that tick tock was, you know, no longer doing its thing in India, so it didn't really impact us very adversely in any way. Now, what does all this have to do with books and publishing? So as tick tock has been growing, you know, every app has its own sub communities. So tick tock has its own sub community called Book doc, right, which is, you have writers you have readers, you have book lovers kind of interacting with each other, the way you have Bookstagram or we have booked you. So book talk started getting a lot bit of traction, a lot of authors started, you know, promoting their books doing book trailers doing book content on tick tock, which was directly leading very heavily to large number of book sales. So literally, there have been authors who just because they became very popular on book talk and gained a huge following, have been able to write best sellers and essentially become best selling authors just because of book talk. So today, booktalk has over 29 billion views. And you even have big chain bookstores like Barnes and Noble holding exclusive sessions purely for the booktube community, because of how influential it is. I do some authors as well. So you have Jenny Han, who became famous for her Netflix movies, right To All the Boys I've Loved Before, which again, was originally a book, then you have Taylor Jenkins, read, who wrote the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones on the sixth, again, huge bestsellers internationally. And you have Colleen who, right, I think she's the best example, she has over 1.4 million Tiktok followers, and her books have sold over 24 million copies. So clearly, there is a direct correlation between you know, someone becoming very popular on booktalk. And someone selling a lot of books. Obviously, this is also true of you know, people who become influencers on Instagram or on YouTube. But I think tick tock is where people are seeing the most direct and sort of the highest conversion as such from you know, someone following an author and buying that authors books. So all this brings us to why is bytedance entering the industry. So obviously, I think it's pretty clear that you know, this company already has a clear marketing platform where authors are able to promote their books. So it makes sense to then go and help the authors create the books in the first place. So they are starting a publishing arm called eighth note press. And they are describing this as an ecosystem where people can find buy, read, review, and discuss books. So essentially, a lot of online marketing services is what they're going to offer, along with obviously royalties and advances. And right now, what they're saying is they're gonna mostly be focusing on self published authors, and especially focusing on the genres of Fantasy, Romance and mystery. So highly focused on fiction, and highly focused on these three genres, which are the most popular genres on booktube. Now, obviously, the moment this announcement was made, a lot of people have raised concerns about what does this mean for the Tiktok community as well, the book reading and also community as well, internationally, and then we'll obviously come to India. Now authors are the first group of people to be worried, because obviously, many of these authors have built their entire success off book doc. Right now, if this publishing arm comes in, obviously, we can expect that the company will focus and prioritize on promoting the books that are being sold through this publishing app right through eighth note, press. And then eighth note press authors are the ones that will get more visibility on Tik Tok will have more marketing opportunities on tick tock. And so does this mean that authors who are not signed with this press immediately lose the kind of visibility or the traction that they have built already? And obviously, this will also impact their book sales, right? On the other hand, does it put pressure on the authors that, you know, if they want to keep being successful? Or for new authors who are kind of entering the industry who want to start publishing? Does it force them saying that, you know, you have to publish with a note press in order to be successful? So is this sort of skewing the industry in some way where this company emerges internationally as almost this you know, monolith where it says that if you want to guarantee sales, you want to guarantee success? As a new author, or an author who you know, doesn't have many books published already doesn't have a pre existing sort of huge readership or following then you have to go with this press if you want to see any kind of sales or success, right? So is it creating almost this new infant giant sort of company that will rival your penguin or your Simon and Schuster, or you know, your biggest sort of multinational giants? So that is, I think the biggest concern and obviously for the publishers themselves, especially traditional publishers, this is sort of a threat right? Because your is a company coming in to monopolize the publishing market to take you know, this huge chunk of sort of fiction writers But then the question also comes is if they're going to focus mostly on self published authors who you know, as such don't have a big platform to showcase their work, right. So far more self published authors only publish on Amazon or, you know, basically through Kindle. So Amazon is one company that has, you know, focused a lot on helping self published authors put their work out. And that's kind of what they are. They make their money out of as far as publishing is concerned. And so is it not press going to be another a different version of Amazon, essentially, in what it's gonna do? Internationally is sort of the question that comes up. But on the other hand, if you even look at what part right now, what part is an example of another company that, you know, started huge content companies started with a load of crowdsource stories where people were writing their own stories, publishing them for free on the platform. And Wattpad has also opened its own books division, where it takes the most popular stories from his platform, and it puts them out as books, or tries to get them converted to screen, Ivan Wattpad, at first announced it, you know, again, it had created this huge wave where people were like, this is going to be the next big thing. And you know, this is gonna take over the industry. But so far, it hasn't really had that level of impact that people expect from it. So it's very much possible that the same thing would happen with it and WordPress, when people think that it's gonna revolutionize everything, and it's gonna change everything, but it just ends up becoming one of the, you know, different companies or options in the market. So what does this mean for India? Now, obviously, it's been two, three years since Tik Tok was banned in India. And we haven't really seen a change in that of it. I'm not sure if we expect to see a change in this soon. But I think this is going to be one of the biggest factors that define whether this publishing arm even enters India or not, because if tick tock is it's sure short marketing plan and platform, and that platform isn't available in India, then I don't see why the press would, you know, come to India distributors, books in India or try to publish Indian authors, and then have to figure out other marketing avenues beyond Tik Tok, as a way to make sure that the book sells. So at this point, there isn't a lot of possibility of this press affecting Indians, you know, in a big way. And also, obviously, we don't even know if the press will be able to come to India in the first place as far as government rules and restrictions are concerned. So I'm not even touching the whole sort of legal aspect of it, because those things are not clear at this point, because they haven't tried the company as such does not exist and has not tried to do anything in India yet. Right. But even if they could come to India, I think the fact that tick tock does not exist in India would be a huge deterrent for them to enter the Indian market. But obviously, this could change in the future, if tick tock comes to India tick tock becomes big, then there is definitely a chance of this company coming in and trying to you know, monopolize, again, the Indian book industry. But for now, I think that Indian authors are fine, safe. Honestly, though, you know, Indian authors could even want this company to come in, right, because so many authors that I speak to are worried about how to market their books, they're not sure how to increase their sales, whether they are traditionally published or self published. So this might be something that Indian authors actually look forward to, you know, where they might think that hey, is this a platform that I can use to promote my book, and you know, make myself a best seller, recommend selling author, but again, like authors are already struggling with the existing social media platforms like Instagram, and YouTube, and now you have threads and Twitter and all of these things. And I think that book marketing is definitely a pain point for Indian authors. But I'm not sure if Tik Tok or this, it's not press can solve that problem. But on the other hand, for publishers, self publishing is definitely becoming bigger and bigger. In India. There was earlier a lot of stigma, I think about you know, self published books or going the self publishing route. But we see a lot of new companies coming up a lot of imprints that are really making publishing accessible, they're democratizing the industry. And we see a lot of new self published imprints coming in helping authors publish their books. So that is definitely a part of the industry that is growing very actively. And if you want to know more about how this whole self publishing process books, you can check out my conversation with Naveen balsa Kumar, who is the CEO of notion press, and he sort of breaks down the self publishing process and answers and busts a lot of myths. about the self publishing process and that part of the industry. So definitely check out that episode. In conclusion, I think as far as India is concerned, currently, this doesn't really impact India in a big way. Maybe we will see an impact in terms of, you know, international authors and international books sort of coming into the country. But as far as Indian authors are concerned, or Indian books are concerned, at this point, it's not press doesn't have a huge impact on the industry, especially since tick tock isn't really here at this point. But this could totally change in the future. So I hope this really helped decode what exactly is happening in the industry and how this impacts you in the first place. I hope you enjoyed this episode, if you want me to do more episodes like this, where I take a new update or a new development in the industry, and I kind of break it down so that, you know, you understand exactly what's going on, let me know, I'm thinking that these episodes will be really helpful for everyone, for the listeners, for the viewers, and for me as well to sort of really break down what is going on in the industry. So I hope you found this helpful. If you have any concerns about books, or if you want book related services. If you're a writer, you're a publishing professional and you're looking to do something around books, you can definitely reach out to me i Shraddha at bound and your.com and don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn. Keep watching. Keep listening to the book people. And I'll see you next week for another episode.