The role of social media in promoting books was the subject of a recent panel discussion among book publishers in Italy. While the importance of viral trends is undeniable, it is not clear that the traditional publishing world knows how to deal with them.

“The role of social media is definitely growing today, not only in publishing but in everyday life. I believe that this trend will continue, just as I believe that publishers will find it difficult to manage. This statement by Luca De Michelis, CEO of Marsilio Editori, in an interview with Il Giornale della libreria, refers in particular to the case of The Song of Achilles, which surprisingly returned to the top of the charts ten years after its first publication, thanks to a viral video on TikTok.

The case of The Song of Achilles

The phenomenon was born when @moongirlreads_, a book reviewer with 155 thousand followers, included The Song of Achilles in a list of “books that will make you cry”. The video went viral and hundreds of American teens began filming themselves crying while reading and sharing their videos on Gen Z’s favorite social network.

From there, the trend spread to Italy. Years later, TikTok has titles in the top ten bestsellers virtually every month. But, as De Michelis noted, it is a phenomenon that is difficult to manage, even though it has become central to the dynamics of promoting tastes and trends among young people. One side effect of this new way of approaching cultural offerings is a demand for books that is less and less driven by novelty and more and more by virality on social networks.

If you’d like some additional data on how social media has influenced Italian readers in choosing their next book to add to their TBR list, we recommend these statistics from Statista.

Books no longer die

“Books – in fact – do not die anymore,” said Stefano Mauri during the final round table of the last training seminar of the Umberto and Elisabetta Mauri School for Booksellers. “Today, a teenage content creator can make a title a success by himself, on TikTok. And it can happen at any point in the book’s life cycle.”

Marsilio Publishing, which celebrated its first 60 years this year, is also one of the leading publishers in the arts sector, one of the industries that suffered most during the pandemic: in the first eight months of 2021, sales were 88% lower than in 2019.

“In recent months, however, we have been able to invest significantly in the art world,” De Michelis continued. “It’s an area that we are very focused on, we are growing and we have created a new reality, which is Marsilio Arte, a company dedicated to the organization of events, the production of catalogues and art books, the creation of bookstores… And I believe that our Venetian corner represents a uniqueness to be exploited.”