Storingtelling in the Age of TikTok

Throughout history, reading has been the preferred form of entertainment. Today, however, with the introduction of digital objects in our day-to-day lives, less and less people see the necessity to turn to books to get entertained. In the attention economy, books have to compete for consumers’ time with other media such as phones, movies, and social media. The proliferation of these social media is worrying the public and academics alike about their impact on readership. Research has therefore been conducted on the impact of social media on the reading habits of individuals (Akande & Oyedapo, 2018; Owusu-Acheaw, 2016; Rafiq et al., 2019). However, little has been done to study the impact social media has on the authors themselves. Therein lies the subject of this thesis. This paper aims at discovering how authors use the TikTok platform to promote their books, taking into account that TikTok is known as a social media where users scroll mindlessly and never remember what they have seen (Hirose, 2022, para. 3). This thesis therefore aims at investigating the following question: “How can romantasy YA authors capture potential readers’ attention on TikTok to promote their books ?” Existing literature on the young adult publishing industry (Strickland, 2013), the promotion of books (Martens, 2016) and, most importantly, audience engagement (Hollenbeek et al., 2014) is thoroughly examined to give a solid base for the continuation of the paper. A qualitative analysis is chosen as being the most appropriate way to approach the research question. Subsequently, a thematic analysis is deemed the most suitable form of analysis for this thesis for its flexibility and its usefulness with a large data set (Braun & Clark, 2006). Through a thematic analysis of 100 TikTok videos by 10 different authors, three main themes are uncovered: “promoting a story”, “promoting an object” and “promoting a person”. The findings of the analysis reveal that, in order to capture viewers’ attention, authors not only talk about their book’s story in their videos, but they also promote their book as a pretty item of decoration, an essential feature in an aesthetically-filled social media world. Moreover, in a cancel culture world, authors also promote themselves in a positive light, trying to appear friendly.