45 pages • 1 hour read
It Starts with Us
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Background
Authorial Context: Colleen Hoover
Born in 1979 in Sulphur Springs, Texas, Colleen Hoover began her career as a social worker and teacher. From as young as two years old, Hoover witnessed her father’s abuse of her mother firsthand: Some of her earliest memories are composed of these traumatic moments. Her parents divorced when she was three years old. Her experiences with domestic violence inspired her highly successful 2016 novel It Ends With Us, in which the characters of Lily Bloom and Ryle Kincaid serve as representations of her mother and father. Hoover has stated that It Ends With Us was her most difficult novel to write due to her personal connection to the main characters. The turbulent relationship between Lily and Ryle ultimately leads to their separation and the birth of their daughter Emerson, who represents Hoover. Through her portrayal of Lily, Hoover hoped to highlight the strength of survivors of domestic violence and to offer them hope. Due to the success and popularity of It Ends With Us, Hoover wrote and released the highly anticipated sequel It Starts With Us, which follows Lily in the aftermath of her divorce with Ryle and the beginnings of her rekindled relationship with her childhood love, Atlas Corrigan. Through Lily and Atlas’s triumphant love story, Hoover offers survivors of domestic violence a hopeful love story.
Hoover’s own story represents this hopeful determination. While still working as a social worker, Hoover self-published her first book, Slammed, in January 2012 and its sequel, Point of Retreat, one month later in February 2012. Soon, her books earned acclaim from online book reviewers and reached the New York Times bestseller list later that same year. This success allowed Hoover to pursue writing full-time. Hoover is unafraid to confront difficult topics and themes within her works, including sexual assault, infidelity, miscarriage, and toxic masculinity. Through her captivating writing, Hoover offers readers realistic and raw love stories that resonate deeply. As of 2022, Hoover has sold over 20 million copies of her books.
Cultural Context: Social Media’s Influence on Book Sales
As the reading public has increasingly moved its conversations about books online, social media has become one of the most important generators of book reviews and sales. Reviews in print media, in-person book club meetings, and authors’ appearances for bookstore readings and book fairs still exist, but they are no longer the main means that expose readers to an author’s work. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic that began in late 2019, online reviews by readers on sites like Goodreads, book reviews and giveaways by influencers, and the presence of authors on social media have shifted the book community’s engagement with books and their authors online. In particular, the video-sharing app TikTok has emerged as a powerful engine for authors’ works to receive wide acclaim and boosted sales. Hoover’s work exemplifies the influence social media in general has on book sales and how TikTok in particular can exponentially increase a book’s reach: Dedicated users who discuss and recommend books under the hashtag BookTok repeatedly feature Hoover’s works, which has led to a massive surge in book sales and popularity.
Forbes Magazine’s article “How TikTok Helped Fuel The Best-Selling Year For Print Books” (Anna Kaplan 28 Jan 2022) describes how TikTok’s influence began in 2020 in the Young Adult genre with young readers’ posts about their favorite books. Soon, the influence spread to adult fiction and nonfiction with sales in adult fiction rising 25% in 2021 over the previous year. It Ends With Us is the title that best exemplifies this trend: “It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover was the second best-selling Adult Fiction book and sixth best-selling book overall in 2021—selling more than 770,000 copies last year—despite being a backlist title originally published in 2016, and [NPD Bookscan executive Kristen] McLean believes that is ‘almost exclusively there because of BookTok,’ where it was championed.” Books rarely receive a surge in sales several years—let alone six years—after publication because press’s marketing strategies usually focus on the lead-up to publication and keeping the public’s interest in the year the book is published. After that, authors are expected to generate interest and sales on their own.
YouTube is another site that raises book sales as more content creators devote their channels to book reviews and discussions, and authors can use Instagram to raise awareness of their work by using hashtags that readers already follow. Sites like Medium and personal blogs provide access for reviews outside of major media outlets, which are highly curated and limited by gatekeeping, issues that are absent on social media. Likes and followers do not necessarily translate into sales or meaningful engagement with books, but works that fall into niche categories or are published by independent presses can receive more attention on social media than they might otherwise.
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