every writer trying to grow on tiktok should read this
what i've learned from 2 months of being on TikTok
Did that headline get you? It’s exactly the kind of hook I’ve learned to put at the beginning of my TikTok videos. Grab them in 3-5 seconds. Offer a valuable insight, advice, a controversial opinion. Cut your breaths out, they slow you down. Matter of fact, stop breathing altogether. You don’t need to be alive for this.
Not everyone operates this way on TikTok, of course. A new friend of mine (Hi, Aneurin!!!) does deeply researched, long form videos (well, long for TikTok) on niche historical and literary topics. There are always exceptions.
But let me step back for a second: I decided to start posting on TikTok a couple of months ago. If you’re wondering if it’s because I have a book coming out next year, you’d be TOTALLY FUCKING RIGHT!!!
Despite being a Zillennial (petitioning to get this term outlawed), I was very afraid of TikTok. Why did shit start playing whenever I opened the app even though I didn’t ask it to? It was like I was being attacked. What was I supposed to get from this video of people shaking hands to that PinkPantheress song? I liked that song, but I didn’t want to keep hearing it, not while people were shaking han—oh look, that 22-year-old just knocked his girlfriend in the head with his ass on beat and magically changed into a suit. That old Taylor Swift is playing in the background beneath an explanation about why you look happier. But are you happy? Are you?
I still don’t entirely get it. But I’m on it now. I’m in it. And I plan to stick out this beautiful, miserable internet k-hole hellscape.
Here’s what I’ve learned about one of the most powerful social media platforms ever.
TikTok Is Your Daddy: On The Algorithm
I’ve heard people say that TikTok owns the most advanced algorithm of all the social media companies. It’s an algorithm that watches you, learns you, knows you, internalizes you. Reduces you.
As a creator, I’ve been told that it tests you. If I push her videos to 200 people, will it perform well enough to push it to 400? If I stopping pushing it, if I let her views fall, will she show up the next day with a new video?
It’s also a powerful search engine. It’s where people find out where the best Thai place is in town. What book to read next.
And I was so, so excited about TikTok during those early weeks! I thought I understood it. I felt good about my posts. I believed I had cracked some hard shell.
And then I started wanting to grow. I’d moved on from messy experimentation, a fumbling kind of play, and started considering strategy.
But whatever the opposite of skyrocketing is, that’s what happened to my views.
They plummeted, my views plummeted.
As of writing, my most recent video is my worst performing (top left corner, if you please. Look how cute I look in it. But TikTok doesn’t care about my cuteness).
I didn’t understand. I was honing my hooks, paying more attention to the titles on the cover. I was getting better at editing, better at showing my personality. I even used one of Justin Bieber’s new songs, like, what the fuck was going on?!?!?!
The endeavour started to feel vacant to me. Maybe because I started to realize that showing up, “being myself,” probably wasn’t going to do much in the end. There was a game. And I was going to have to play it to win.
GROW GROW GROW, YOU FUCKING HO!
Determined to sell my body to Daddy TikTok, I binged 27 videos of this one content strategist coaching creators on how to grow 100k followers in 100 days. Her videos were compelling! Hopeful! She called her followers, intimately, BookieBoo. And I believed her.
She screamed at me, “LOW VIEWS????? CONGRATULATIONS!!!! TIKTOK IS TESTING YOU!!!!!
Fuck, but what was the test??? How was I supposed to pass this invisible exam designed by this corrupt corporation in kahoots with the Chinese government???
I felt reinvigorated consuming all these TikTok strategy videos. They started popping up on my feed. The algorithm was learning me as I was trying to learn it, but I had to be captive to the algorithm to get close enough.
One morning, after a regrettable binge, I woke up bleary-eyed, intellectually hungover and thought, why tf am I here?
Recently, I saw a video of a girl talking about an influencer who posted 35 times a day before blowing up. The girl spoke about this influencer with admiration. We were supposed to want to be like the influencer who posted 35 times a day. Instead, this made me want to blow up, but physically. Someone commented, “35? I’m over here struggling with my 3-5 videos a day.”
Am I insane? All of this feels like too much to me, even the 3-5 videos a day.
Or no. This feels like an app whose goal is to keep you on it. A drug company that wants you addicted, a healthcare system that wants you sick.
The thing is, you’re going to have trouble succeeding on TikTok if you’re not a consumer of it. TikTok knows this. It set up this symbiotic relationship. Content like trends expedite this expectation. If you’re not on it, you’ll miss it. That’s what trends do, make you feel late to them, make you feel like next time, you can be first. But you’ve got to already be in line to be first. All incentives are structured around keeping you scrolling.
Although I was pained by my plummeting views, I asked myself a clarifying question: how would you feel if you got the views, if you got 400k followers tomorrow?
My stomach turned at the thought. Now I had to show up for 400k people. Show my face, project my voice, keep posting, keep commenting, keep pretending. The hate comments, the mean remarks. My first reaction was, that’s too many fucking people. I don’t want to talk to 400k people. I want 400k people to buy my book and then we both go on about our totally separate days.
This is the rubix cube insanity trap of trying to be a Writer on TikTok.
Is there a way to be known without being seen? Few authors can have it both ways.1
Selling Out Doesn’t Sound So Bad When You’re Trynna Sell Books
You might recall my last post was about how I sold my novel in a week. The choice to write about it was a wrenching one. The whole framing of it made me squeamish. But I felt like Substack was enough space to contain the nuances I wanted, and I did my best to make it helpful rather than navel-gazing.
It seemed like a good video to make after incorporating everything I’d learned from Screaming Strategist about strong hooks and valuable advice.
So, I sat down and tried to make the video. This is what happened:
I couldn’t even get the words out of my mouth without looking stressed. Because I was stressed, my whole body was tight. I kept thinking, Who is this helping, really? This is not going to help any writer on here. This is a bullshit ploy to get views. There’s nothing I could say on this topic in under a minute that wouldn’t wind up being reductive and lacking important context. There are no 4 steps you can take to replicate my experience.
The thought of wasting this super cute outfit on something dumb made me ashamed. I had just bought this poncho. Was this really the first time I was going to debut it? In this dumbass video?
I’d bumped against a boundary, I saw, a line I wasn’t willing to cross. I would keep posting on TikTok. But only videos that didn’t make my mouth sour simply speaking in them.
Bleach Blonde Bad Built BookTok
The biggest problem I had was an existential one: I’m not a genuine Booktok consumer.
I don’t go to TikTok for book recommendations. I already have five trillion books I know I want to read, I don’t need to hear about anymore. I don’t go to BookTok for reviews, I go to Parul Sehgal at the New York Times. This does not mean rigorous reviews don’t exist on TikTok, it just means I don’t seek them out.
So how the fuck was I going to be a part of something I didn’t believe in?!?
Subconsciously, I felt, why the hell would someone turn to me on here? Besides being cute, funny, with an oddly comforting and intimidating presence, I wouldn’t even turn to me, so why would Naomi in Upstate New York??
Weirdly, my genre homelessness also felt heightened in this space. I found that many of the Booktokers I’d come across were either too literary or too romance-heavy for me. The ones in between showed me the following: Sally Rooney, Coco Mellors, Emily Henry. Writers, books, I know like the back of my hand.
ALL UP IN YOUR MIND ft. The Chinese Government
I mean, we all know this. That our data is being farmed, we’re being watched, privacy is a thing of the past, our minds are being warped, manipulated.
Even knowing this, it’s insane how fast this app can change your brain.
I had this mantra before I decided to start a TikTok: this platform is a tool. I use it, it doesn’t use me.
But if you’re trying to expand your audience, this boundary can get mushy. The app is telling you how many people watched what, for how long, their age, gender, when they’re most active. If you’re using any kind of strategy, you’re probably going to listen to what the app is telling you.
And that’s what TikTok wants after all. Your attention.
The One Where I Talk About My Most Popular TikTok
Here’s why, after absolutely laser-blasting this platform in this post, I haven’t lost hope in it: my most popular video is the one I did announcing my book deal. It’s me narrating a video where I’m just sharing my life. There’s some shots of my beautiful coworkers, a shot from a small Hands Off protest.
There’s no hook in the first 3-5 seconds, no 5 things I’ve done, read, learned. It just starts with, “This is Haili.”
It’s the opposite of the girl staring dead-eyed at the camera saying, “This is how I sold my debut novel in a week. Here are 5 ways—”
When I initially imagined myself on TikTok, this is what I saw—getting to be silly, being a touch dramatic, playing with video editing. It’s the most ‘me’ video I’ve done.
Maybe that’s the lesson in all of this. There’s the algorithm. But then there’s your audience. And what is an audience but regular people searching for each other?
Or maybe I’ll just try my luck with Instagram.
WHO IS ELENA FERRANTE REALLY!???!???
This is so validating but also the point about TikTok only rewarding creators who are also consumers is so wildly accurate and how are more people not articulating that? Because it’s true, of course it is!
FELT this on a spiritual level, you articulated a point i've been thinking about which is that authors struggle with tiktok probably because we aren't necessarily the booktok audience (which is fine! it's our job to already have a zillion books to read!) but we appreciate those folks' enthusiasm so much and want to be a part of it in a way that feels genuine. for whatever it's worth your book cover outfit videos have popped up on my fyp before! and your this is haili video is one of the most charming tiktoks i have ever seen. can't wait to read the book!