By: Darren Chen

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, launched a new publishing company, which will now allow independent authors to publish their books.

According to the New York Times, “this could be the next big thing, Mariah Dietz, a self-published romance author, said of ByteDance’s publishing arm.” People like Mariah think that ByteDance’s publishing platform, Booktok, may actually change the book industry economically and virtually.

Even if there are some pros to the emergence of this new publishing platform, let’s first look at the cons. According to the New York Times, “the pitch[to self publishing romance writers], delivered in a generic email, was impersonal and formulaic. The terms [sent by ByteDance] weren’t generous, sometimes amounting to just a few thousand dollars for the rights to a book.” First of all you have to sell the rights to your own book, which even if you do well with sales, you actually might not be getting as much profit out of using Booktok. Most things that are simple to use, always have a catch.

Second, Booktok could be putting “traditional publishers and self-published authors at a disadvantage. Even as they’ve come to rely on the platform to promote their books, publishers have found it difficult to manufacture viral book videos, since users tend to reject anything that feels corporate or inauthentic.” Self publishing authors may suffer because promoting their books may become harder.

Traditional publishers and the authors who they work with may also be at a disadvantage because the platform is difficult for large companies to effectively use.

Now, here is one of the pros:, the company has the potential to sell lots of books. According to the New York Times, users like Colleen Hoover have greatly benefited from TikTok, the app propelled her “to the best-seller list. Posts tagged #ColleenHoover have been viewed more than 4.2 billion times, and her books have sold more than 24 million copies,” the New York Times reports. Her numbers are incredible – 24 million copies sold! That’s amazing.

Now users on TikTok can use Booktok to promote their books and draw in sales with their videos.