How An Unknown Book Went Viral And Ended Up On Amazon's Bestseller List – In Less Than 24 Hours

Don't you just love how books bring people together?
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Book lovers everywhere know the power the internet and social media have when trying to promote a book – it’s the reason why Booktok is all the rage right now. So much so, that BookTok helped authors sell 20 million printed books in 2021, according to BookScan.

Now we have the option of buying books directly from the app from publishers like HarperCollins UK, WH Smith, Bloomsbury, and bookshop.org all selling books via TikTok Shop.

But you’ll never guess how one specific book managed to go viral on Twitter. Twitter user Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood (@MaskofBun) runs a fan account for a 90′s anime called Trigun. He simply tweeted about his love for the book This Is How You Lose The Time War by Max Gladstone, and the tweet went wild. 

Why did this tweet go viral you ask? Well, it might have something to do with the user’s name. It seems that the internet’s immaturity managed to cause the book to do the rounds on Amazon. Shockingly, it turns out that book is actually worth the hype. 

@MaskofBun’s promotion of the book did so well that now it’s on the Amazon best-seller list.

This isn’t the first time the internet has randomly boosted the sales of a book. Lloyd Devereux Richards’s book went viral after his daughter posted a TikTok video saying: “I’d love for him to get some sales.” The video did the rounds on the clock app and the book Stone Maidens managed to hit No 1 on Amazon. Don’t you just love a happy ending?

There are a lot of conversations around the role of social media in relation to book sales but this is an example of how powerful the internet can be. I might have to get a copy of This Is How To Lose The Time War myself.