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After struggling with addiction and depression, former professional rugby player Luke Bateman finally found a community where he belonged.
The 30-year-old was a lifelong fantasy reader but "never saw men loving the same things." BookTok welcomed him. His videos, recorded in his logging truck with a beaming smile and Australian accent, went viral practically overnight.
As Bateman racked up more than 3 million likes on TikTok, his longtime friend Tim Wall became his manager and encouraged him to shoot for the moon. He helped pitch publishers on the book Bateman had already been writing. He nabbed a two-book fantasy deal with Simon & Schuster Australia before he had finished the first manuscript.
But BookTok wasn’t celebrating. Readers were frustrated with publishers for signing Bateman while so many authors, particularly non-White authors, struggle to get eyes on their manuscripts. In traditional publishing, fiction writers typically query a finished manuscript and sign with an agent, who puts the book on submission to publishing houses. The barriers are vast – an agent may receive more than 1,000 queries a month and take on only a few clients a year. Books can die on submission if no publishers bite.
But these days, a prominent following on BookTok can feasibly land you a book deal, and the publishing industry is hungry for a built-in audience. For some, it represents a new method of finding talent. To others, it’s a frustrating pass to skip the line.
For some readers, BookTok makes author dreams a reality
Cait Jacobs, 27, is the influencer we have to thank for christening the community with the name “BookTok” in 2020. Their account has enjoyed a sizable following of more than 311,000 since. Jacobs, who uses they/them pronouns, is both a writer and reader. They wrote the first draft of what would become their debut novel in 2018.
In 2022, Jacobs started posting memes and aesthetic vibe teasers for their book in between their normal bookish content. Followers wanted more. It held Jacobs accountable to go back in and rework the draft. Then HarperCollins Publishers UK, having seen the videos, reached out with interest. Jacobs didn’t even have an agent yet, but Harper helped facilitate. Jacobs dropped everything to finish the book. "The Princess Knight" published in October and is now a USA TODAY bestseller thanks to a supportive follower base.
“The fan art, the cosplay has all been so surreal for me, especially as someone who has been in the fan spaces before,” Jacobs says. “It is a dream come true.”
Bateman also credits BookTok for fast-tracking his dream.
“I feel like fulfillment doesn't do it justice. I really do struggle to put into words how meaningful it is to me,” Bateman says of becoming an author. He gets teary-eyed talking about it. “I spent a lot of those (younger) years really hopeless and really bereft of life and passion, and then to finally get to a place in life where I feel really peaceful. I just feel like I've come home to myself in many ways.”
Not everyone is thrilled with BookTok influencer deals
But those early days after the book deal announcement were dark, Bateman says. Users posted videos asking how Bateman secured the deal without a finished manuscript, calling him a "marketing plant" who didn't deserve it. Others directed their anger at the publisher, with one commenting "This is a classic example of 'don't hate the player, hate the game.'"
“I feel like I had decades of perceived wrongs of an industry laid on my shoulders when I was kind of just like, I love magic, and I just want to share my own magic with the world,” Bateman says. “I’d just become a part of a community that I'd been divorced from for my entire life. … And then they all hated me.”
He says he didn’t feel he knew enough about the publishing industry to respond appropriately. Bateman says he submitted 15,000 words, world-building and development of a fantasy trilogy. His publishers reassured him that getting a deal without a completed manuscript was not an anomaly, he says. But he still understood why other authors were frustrated.
“I’m still capable of allowing, I suppose, joy and success for myself while understanding that other people feel limited, like they can’t access that.”
'You’re investing in her as an author’
Haley Pham, 24, has been making lifestyle YouTube videos since she was a teen, eventually shifting her channel’s focus to almost entirely on books, often reading vlogs or viral challenges. She has dreamed of becoming an author since she was 17. In 2023, she started writing her debut novel, “Just Friends” (out in March 2026). She sent the first chapter to romance author Lynn Painter, whose books she raved about online. Painter confirmed she had something worth finishing, and Pham made a promise to finish her first draft in June 2024. In July 2024, she posted her first video about the book.
As with Bateman, Pham’s talent manager acted as her literary agent.
“We got a lot of no’s from a bunch of different publishing houses,” Pham says. “And then we got this one meeting … and this editor was talking about my characters, and I just couldn’t even believe that she was saying their names. I was like, ‘This was all in my head, and now this real professional editor is talking about them.’ It all got very real, very fast.”
Pham’s manager, Brooklyn Gordon, says she stressed to publishers that the book wasn’t just a “one-off.”
“So much of the conversation was about wanting to pursue this long-term, and I think that that made the conversation so different,” Gordon says. "You're not investing in Haley and just her platform; you're investing in her as an author, as a true author, as someone who wants to pursue this as a career.”
Comedian and influencer Brooke Averick, 29, known to followers as @ladyefron, had similar worries when she announced her debut novel, “Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It” (out in May 2026).
“Anything that you do, starting as an influencer, it’s really scary to branch out because … people will think you have this advantage, and I think I was really scared that people would think that,” Averick says. “Which, I do have (that advantage), and I think that I need to own that, but people have been really supportive and kind and really excited about the process.”
Agents say it’s not about ‘reverse engineering’ a novelist
Averick also had a lifelong dream of writing a book. She talked about it on her podcast to put it "in the manifestation space." She didn’t yet know that two literary agents were listening and wanted that dream to become a reality.
Madison Hernick and Kelly Karczewski are literary agents at United Talent Agency, the same agency Averick is signed to for general talent representation. They approached Brooke’s other agents and asked if she might be interested in writing a book.
“Her platform was ripe to be translated to fiction, but we just got so lucky because her literary prowess was really a piece of good luck. She's just an incredible writer who has a natural talent,” Karczewski says.
“Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It” follows a nearly 30-year-old woman on a mission to lose her virginity by the time her birthday rolls around. Hernick and Karczewski say their job was “really, really easy” because of Averick’s marketable idea. They approached publishers with the first 130 pages and a detailed outline of the rest, Averick says. She sold it to Crown Publishing at Penguin Random House in a two-book deal.
Hernick says she believes publishers are hungry for the reasons an influencer's audience stays, not just a large following.
“Publishers are always going to want to publish tried-and-true debut authors in their own right, but I think the most important thing to us is knowing our clients' audience and really staying authentic to that,” Hernick says. “It's not this kind of reverse engineering a debut novelist with a platform already, which is everyone's dream. It's not a plug-and-play for every single kind of client with a platform. It's not going to work with every single person, unless you really understand your clients' audience and why people are following them.”
But not everyone in publishing agrees the industry should be moving this way.
Bucking that trend is Bindery, a nontraditional publisher that taps influencers as book marketers. These “tastemakers,” as cofounder and CEO Matt Kaye prefers to call them, start their own publishing imprints and acquire books. They promote the book aggressively to an existing follower base. They throw “pitchfests” for authors without agents to sell their books. This helps support authors who are “slipping through the cracks” in today’s traditional publishing model, Kaye says.
Where does the publishing industry go from here?
As leisure reading rates decline, publishers are faced with the task of keeping the lights on. The influencers USA TODAY spoke with all write within the fantasy and romance spaces, among the biggest genres in book sales. Many publishers also turn to big names to guarantee cash flow and make up for smaller releases.
Kaye worries about the precedent that priority sets.
“If you were to imagine the group of people who are amazing online creators and the group of people who are amazing writers, there is certainly some overlap,” Kaye says. “I don't think that most are. I don't think most amazing writers are also amazing content creators, and I don't think they should have to be fundamentally.
"I don't think it's good for culture to expect that. If the only stories getting published are from people who are amazing content creators, that's going to really narrow the kinds of books that we're reading.”
With Bindery, Kaye’s model is “tastemakers promote, authors write.” He says the publishing industry should be turning to influencers to market books, not necessarily write them. He doesn’t believe this current model can last forever.
“At some point, there will be an expectation that publishers have to have their own audience,” Kaye says. “The fact that (influencers) have an audience doesn't necessarily mean you have a good book. It totally might, but not necessarily.”
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Influencers are going from BookTok to book deal. Is it a new publishing model?
Reporting by Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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