How I Sell Books on TikTok (Updated 2024 Guide for Authors & Creatives!)

to date the most popular video on this YouTube channel is the first video I ever posted about how I sell thousands of books on Tik Tok but things have changed since I posted that video in 2022 so today I am bringing you a new and updated Tik Tok tutorial for creatives Tik Tok is still one of the best platforms to be on for creatives looking to sell their creative products so if you are not yet on Tik Tok I highly recommend it before I get started I want to say that it is really up to

each individual to decide what social media platforms are best for them and do your research so if Tik Tok is available to you I highly recommend that you jump in and give it a try knowing that while there are a lot of videos out there that will tell you you can sell thousands of books tomorrow that's not what you're going to find here it took me a few months to start seeing a slight increase in sales and continue to grow from there but it isn't instant and it takes dedication and consistency to start seeing results

yes you can go viral right away which is awesome and I've seen it happen but it's not super super common at this point so I don't want to give you the wrong impression that this is going to be an easy way to make a ton of sales quickly but it can be done one of my most popular videos sold me 7,000 books within a couple of weeks getting over 10 million views on that video so if something like that happens to you you certainly can sell a lot in one time but the Great thing about

Tik Tok also is that it brings you a gradual stream of new people exposed to your book or your creative work and it becomes a steady increase in sales which is awesome so let's go ahead and dive into the content of this video which is going to be the updates that have happened since my last video on this topic some video ideas and examples for you and just my top tips on having a successful video if you are new to the channel my name is Shelby Lee and I am a marketing coach for creatives I've

worked with over 2,000 authors musicians artists and more to help them sell more on social media as an author myself I have over half a million followers on social media and have sold over 50,000 books in just the last 2 years using organic social media strategies so I'm excited to jump into this video and share my top tips with you so the first thing you're going to do is start your account now something that has been newer that I've seen more and more lately is people starting a new account and immediately starting to post and

and Tik Tok kind of categorizing you as a bot or fraud account and banning that person from the platform and I don't like seeing this cuz that obviously doesn't mean that every person starting a new account and immediately starting to post is a bot or a fraud account but I do recommend at this point that you make your account and you do spend a few days at least to engage with other people and get a feel for the platform especially if this is your first account what I like to recommend doing is once you create

your account you can choose between business or personal business is going to have more options such as analytics that are great however there is less access to all music in the music library and that's because businesses promoting their projects should not be using non-commercial music for promotion so that's something to keep in mind as well so it's really up to you which one you want to choose and kind of know that you could potentially be using music that isn't licensed for commercial use with a personal account after you've made your account you're going to add

your profile picture which should be a nice engaging photo of you that fits kind of the vibe of your genre or the vibe of your work and then you're going to write your bio which there's not a ton of space for but typically I recommend a mission statement I've talked about this before so I won't dive into it too much but I'll link a video that talks about mission statements you can watch it after this one then search for your genre or your category if you're a musician you can try searching for your genre of

music if you're an author search for your genre of books if you are an artist artist try searching for other artists and see what comes up take a look through the content get a feel for the different styles because there are so many different ways you can make an engaging video on Tik Tok and just start scrolling through you can like videos that you like leave comments on videos that you enjoy and start following people as well now I also want to note that following hundreds or thousands of people right away might also trigger the

Tik Tok algorithm and make them think that you are a bot trying to follow thousands of people at once so don't go too hard on following a bunch of people but it is good to get a little bit of Engagement going right off the bat plus it will also teach you about the types of content that works well on Tik Tok so after you've done that it's time to make your first video and I want to talk about a few different video types that are common for creatives that have changed slightly since my first video

that I posted now some of them are still the same there's page flips there's spine flips and I'm going to link that first video I ever filmed so you can watch that and get a sense of those types of videos that work work well but there's also other types as well so I'm going to talk about those the first one is get ready with me type videos that are more like manyi Vlogs of different clips you put together and these can work really well for people who have a creative process that they want to show

so a lot of artists will show the behind the scenes kind of time lapse of them creating a project so you could do a get ready with me to create my new painting for example and film yourself in a Time apps doing that video and put together maybe multiple clips of you setting up the studio and cleaning up afterwards so it's like a mini Vlog and the same could apply to your writing process or whatever type of creative process you do so that's definitely a very popular get ready with me Style video the next style

of video that I see most often with authors versus other types of creatives is going to be the aesthetic video which is stock images or videos all put together that that represent your book well the visuals of your book so you'll want to get stock images or videos from license free websites such as unsplash or canva or pixabay or pixels to name a few and find pictures or videos that fit well with your genre with the vibe of your books and then you'll put them together in a Quick Clip with some music that's fitting from

the Tik Tok music library and you'll also want to add text on the video that describes the book now I've done an entire video on creating hooks for your book and how to really find strong hooks so I'm going to link that video for you as well to watch after this one if you need some help with your Hooks and while we're on the subject of hooks let me go ahead and just explain what that is if you're unfamiliar so with short form video which you'll find on Instagram reels Facebook reels YouTube shorts here on

YouTube and Tik Tok videos as well you really need to capture attention in the first second or you're going to lose people and so that first second is called your hook what actually gets people to stop and watch the video which could be your visuals it could be text on the video that you've added within Tik Tok it could be the sound maybe you're voicing over the video and say something that makes people stop typically a mix of two or more is going to be a solid hook and that's something that you really want to

practice and nail Your Hooks because that's really what's going to get people to watch the video which increases your watch time which tells Tik Tok they are making engaging content that they will show to more and more people so that's why that's really important is you want people to stop while they're scrolling their feed so experiment a lot with your hooks no matter what type of video you're making and eventually you'll start to pick up on patterns and realize what is working well for you and what is not there's also been new types of posts

such as carousels which are similar to Instagram where you can post a few photos and people can swipe through them you can still add a text hook to these types of carousels so people are hooked and they want to scroll through the rest of the photos this is one that I've been using quite often and it sometimes really takes off so I encourage you to try them if you haven't yet they also introduced text posts only earlier this year which was surprising to me because it's such a video platform it has been slow to take

off because people want that fast-paced exciting video on Tik Tok so you might find that you try text post only and doesn't really work super well I've tried a couple so far and haven't had great results but if you are just starting out on Tik Tok and are feeling kind of the weight of having to create videos I think it's worth trying but of course you do have to have something engaging about the text post for it to work something else that is newer to Tik Tok is Tik Tok shop which has been pushed so

much by Tik Tok they introduced this to compete with Instagram shop where you can buy things Direct on the Tik Tok app without having to leave the platform which is ideal for Tik Tok who doesn't want people to leave and see more ads and so on and so forth so if you are interested in selling your products directly to your consumers and shipping out those products you should definitely try Tik Tock shop because Tik Tok is really pushing accounts out to more people that are using Tik Tok shop so there are definitely authors seeing success

and artists selling their artwork directly through Tik Tok so certainly give it a shot Tik Tok will take a commission of those sales that you make and you'll get the remaining of course as well if the whole thought of Tik Tok makes you feel overwhelmed and you're unsure about starting I want to give you a couple reassurances about how Tik Tok works so you know that it is not as timec consuming as you might think it is the first thing that is wonderful about Tik Tok and a lot of the short form video platforms is

that you can certainly repurpose your content quite a bit now this does not mean posting the exact same video over and over again but this does means that you can reuse hooks that have worked well in the past you can reuse visuals that have worked well in the past so I have certain pages of my books for example that do really well most of the time and so I'll repeat those every couple months or if I find a hook that works I'll use the same hook again pretty soon after I used it the first time

but I'll change up something about the video such as the visuals or the page from my book that I'm showing for example so there are lots of different ways you can change it up while still not having to restart from scratch so it can be really easy to do it does take time though so in the first few months you might find yourself spending more time creating content because at that stage you are still learning what is working for you if you are an author curious about using Tik talkk to sell more books I have

an entire comprehensive guide with video tutorials called the book talk blueprint that I will link in the description of this video over 2,300 authors have used this guide to see more sales on Tik Tok and I've personally worked one toone with dozens of authors now to see more success so that's why I wanted to refilm this video for you and share some new insights and if you are another type of creative that is not an author stay tuned because I am working on a Tik Tok for creatives guide that is just for you that should

be out soon so I'll make sure to update the description with that link whenever it is available I hope you found this video helpful if you are on Tik Tok feel free to leave your handle below so I can check it out and thank you so much for watching have a great rest of your day bye