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I prop my iPhone against the cookbook holder – you know, the old-fashioned kind that used to keep the correct recipe displayed back in the day when hardcover books were a thing. I take a deep breath. Then I extend a shaking index finger and poke the button for “Record.” Grimacing at the camera and hoping that my expression comes off as a charming smile, I babble, non-stop, for a couple of painful minutes.
I have become, at 70, TikTok savvy. At my publisher’s urging, I post daily videos, as a publicity push to promote my novels. The theory is: Forge a relationship with your readers, and they shall love you so much, they’ll rush out and purchase your books.
Recently, desperate for material, I have introduced a series of videos where I tell anecdotes culled from my 1960s diaries. Today’s topic is how I snooped in my parents’ bathroom closet when I was 12 and found a copy of a naughty paperback (The Harrad Experiment), which I proceeded to read with ever-widening eyes and rapt interest. I spent a lot of time in that bathroom, I explain to the camera, to the point that my mother wondered if I had developed a ghastly gastric condition. I learned a lot from the book, not much of it wholesome.
I turn off the camera. Without dwelling too deeply on the recording’s quality, I do a couple of rudimentary tweaks, deploying TikTok’s editing function on my phone. Then, with an eyeroll and a shrug, I post the video. Off it zips into the cybersphere.
Forget the fuddy-duddyism of Facebook or the stilted curation of Instagram. I’m a woman of the moment, a paragon of progressiveness. I enjoy the free-for-all, carnival atmosphere of TikTok, where cat videos mingle with book reviews, and how-to-get-rich-quick advice exists cheek-by-jowl with tutorials on applying liquid eyeliner. I study the techniques of leading influencers until I’ve learned ways to hook an audience and halt the doom-scrolling. I apply the knowledge and hope for the best.
The miraculous occurs. My dirty book video blows up overnight. The “like” hearts accumulate faster than I can clear them, blasting in like unrelenting January snow. For days, every time I refresh the screen, the hearts stack up to the maximum count of 99+. I can’t shovel them away quickly enough. Over and over, I clear my screen. I hit 100,000 views, then 500,000. Within a couple of weeks, I shoot past 1,000,000.
Oh, dear goodness. I’ve officially gone viral!
Somehow, by talking publicly about reading forbidden literature as a preteen, I’ve created something that apparently every person on this planet relates to. The comments flow in, mostly along the lines of, “wow, canon event,” and “the sixties version of Wattpad,” and “so it is not the internet’s fault.” At this point, I’ve collected over a thousand of these remarks, along with more than a quarter of a million “like” hearts.
I’m stunned that not a single comment is nasty or particularly critical. The viewers love that they relate to the subject matter. Don’t we all, at one time in our development, sneak a peek at a risqué photo or salacious story? Of course we do! We just usually don’t discuss it in a public forum.
TikTok’s analytics function provides interesting demographic information, telling me that 87 per cent of my audience is female, under the age of 34. They live in every nook and cranny of the world. For a while, many of the viewers’ comments were in Dutch. I hope they were polite.
Some of my young virtual friends want to adopt me as their grandmother. One even begs me to stay alive as long as possible (“please don’t ever die!”). I decide I won’t be appalled to be perceived as a super-senior oldster. Instead, I embrace my elder status in the most loving and secure way possible. Grandmothers, after all, are ever so much cooler than mere moms, and young people are my biggest supporters, bless their tender hearts.
In creating material for TikTok, I’ve encountered a couple of problems. First, in posting and editing at least one episode daily, I have very little time or energy to work on my official writing projects. My efforts at fostering publicity have cannibalized my actual production schedule. Second, there doesn’t seem to be the desired correlation between blowing up virally on TikTok and sales of paperbacks or e-books. Maybe TikTokkers are too busy scrolling to pick up an honest-to-goodness book and read it. I’m still in the wait-and-see stage of gauging results.
What I’ve learned about storytelling, though, is invaluable. Within each brief TikTok video time frame, I seek to pique curiosity, retain interest and provide a satisfying ending. It’s not the same as writing compelling, long-form novels, but it’s intensely satisfying, and very personal, too. As TikTok’s cozy grandma, I embrace my audience and the medium, and give my publisher thanks for steering me on a path of learning. It allows me to share my stories with an appreciative audience of young people, worldwide, and I’m grateful for this opportunity.
Sally Basmajian lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
