Summary

• BookTok has propelled novels like A Court of Thorns and Roses and Daisy Jones & The Six to success through viral marketing.
• GameTok, inspired by BookTok, is on the rise.
• The developer of indie puzzle Storyteller saw great success off the back of a viral TikTok.

Everyone in the book publishing world knows about BookTok. It's a modern social media phenomenon whereby influencers review books and the enormity of their followings means that a positive post can result in thousands of sales. Novels like My Sister, The Serial Killer, Song of Achilles, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Frankenstein and Cleopatra all saw immense success off the back of viral TikTok success.

I first became aware of the phenomenon when my local Waterstones had a section of the store labelled 'BookTok'. The books therein had no discernable commonalities other than the fact they've gone viral on the social media app.

The quality of the books varies greatly. Of course everything's down to personal taste, but A Court of Thorns and Roses is derivative, boring, and deeply unsexy for a fantasy romance novel. My Sister, The Serial Killer never lived up to the title's promise. I enjoyed Legends & Lattes, a book that heralded the 'cosy fantasy' genre craze that dominates the industry still, but other viral books in the genre are far less interesting.

Other books have been even more successful, books that you might recognise from other media. Daisy Jones & The Six was made into a hit Amazon Prime show off the back of the book's success. It's only a matter of time before Hollywood looks to more BookTok hits for its next blockbuster – after all, half the marketing has already been done for them.

BookTok And Videogames

The BookTok phenomenon has now spread to videogames. Solo developer Daniel Benmergui noticed a strange spike in his game Storyteller's sales recently, a spike he attributes to TikTok.

"Storyteller had a weird sales curve," he writes on social media site , formerly Twitter. "When we luanched it seemed it would just die out but more🍸 than a year went by and we are doing *great* now [sic]."

🅘In response to what caused this sudden sales spike, he had a simple, two-word answer. "TikTok, spontaneously."

There's no way that you can game the TikTok algorithm (as much as social media gurus would want you to believe they can), and there’s no way you can ensure your game will be a viral hit in the GameTok niche. However, there might be learnings you can take from its literary contemporary.

What Can We Learn From BookTok?

BookTok centralises around romance novels. Not always, but often. Cosy novels also feature predominantly. So it's safe to say something like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Stardew Valley, a cosy farming sim with plentiful♌ ♔romance options, would be an instant hit on the platform, were it not already an indie success story.

Cosy games have been enjoying a renaissance since the pandemic, steered into public consciousness by the timely arrival of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Animal Crossing: New Horizons, just as lockdown hit. If GameTok becomes as big a social medi⛦a storm as BookTok, these games will be sure to profit.

Indie games may also be poised for success. BookTok rarely shines its spotlight on established authors, preferring to showcase new authors and even self-published or independently published novels. BookTok is not the telescope that finds existing stars in the night sky, it's the collapsing molecular cloud that creates new ones.

Solo devs like Benmergui will hope to be the beneficiaries, but there are no guarantees. You can put your game in the hands of as many GameTok creators as possible and it still might not take off. Sometimes it will take years, as in Storyteller's case, for your game to get noticed.

I'm reminded of the by Trigun fan account 'bigolas dickolas', which launched onto the New York Times bestseller list.

"read this. DO NOT look up anything about it. just read it. it's only like 200 pages u can download it on audible it's only like four hours. do it right now i'm very extremely serious." - bigolas dickolas

It's not BookTok, but it's viral marketing all the same. While Storyteller's rise to social media fame wasn't as memorable as How You Lose The Time War's iconic tweet, the result was similar. Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's romantic science-fiction poem was an award-winning critical darling, but commercial success had been limited. However, the passion project took on new life years after publication with dickolas' tweet. A decade ago, this kind of success was unheard of that long after publication. Now, the power of social media can resurrect long-forgotten stories and shoot them into the spotlight once again.

Such is the power of social media, but BookTok - and, by extension, any emerging GameTok - is another matter entirely. Powered by select influencers and their audiences, success is dictated by the whims of a minority. Games now have to navigate this subjective marketing tool, and a slither of a percentage will achieve their viral dreams. But for those chosen few, GameTok could keep a team in their jobs for another year, keep the doors open until the next game is released, or change the life of a solo developer plucked from obscurity. So long as the viral sensation doesn't come too late, that is.