Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory!
Good morning and welcome back to another Friday Inspiration!
Alright, I think I’m convinced.
I’m joining the dark side. You’ll see what I mean at the end.
This week I have 2 articles dedicated to writing. One sharing some pretty cool stats about the book market and another with a pretty out-there strategy to grow your audience.
Paper Books vs eBooks Statistics, Trends and Facts [2022]
https://www.tonerbuzz.com/blog/paper-books-vs-ebooks-statistics/
As I continue working on Spatium Stories and researching the future of ebooks, I found this article and had to share it.
It is very fascinating to look at actual statistics of the book market. It seems that even in the midst of this digital age, print books still take the majority of sales.
By a pretty wide margin.
Some of the most notable stats they shared were that in their survey, 37% of adults who read, read ONLY print books. Meanwhile, 7% said they read ONLY ebooks.
Now, to save the day are the hybrid people like me and Taylor. 28% said they read from both.
But still, print books outsell ebooks 4 to 1!
Another crazy (yet not surprising) fact is that in the book market, Amazon’s Kindle takes up 72% of the ereaders out there!
I do love my kindle.
But here’s the crazy part most don’t realize. When you buy an ebook on Kindle, you don’t actually own the book. You own a license to be able to read the book. But if Amazon loses rights to a book, they can just rip that book out of your library!
That’s crazy to me. When you buy a print book, no one is raiding your house to take it back.
All in all, ebooks are definitely here to stay and are projected to grow in the coming years.
“Projected e-book sales in 2025 = $7.78 billion (up from $5.91 billion in 2019)”
Will they ever overtake print books? The data seems to argue otherwise.
I Used TikTok To Grow My Audience and Reached 1.5 Million People in Less Than a Month
I have never been more tempted to get a TikTok account than right now.
I have shunned it this whole time like some old person. I have never called it a fad, but I think deep down I thought maybe it was a fad. I thought Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube would just copy what they did (which they have) and then people would stop using TikTok.
Not the case.
But even then I figured, I like writing. Why would I try a platform that is all about videos?
Then Substack released a video option and we began making videos for our runs. And then in the same week, I stumbled upon this article.
This writer doubled their newsletter audience and amassed 1.5 million views in a matter of weeks!
The author goes on to discuss how TikTok is still relatively new and its algorithm is still relatively kind in terms of growing organically.
What does growing organically mean?
It means that if you just simply post consistently, people will see your posts.
That is not the case anymore on sites like Medium (a popular blogging platform), Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. I’ve been trying on Twitter and it really is pretty difficult.
A lot of times on those sites, to gain followers, one of the easiest strategies is to just go follow like a thousand people that are in your niche.
A good 10% or so will follow you back.
But now you’re following a bunch of random people you actually have no interest in following.
All that to say, is it time? Is it time for me to try out TikTok?