Joe Wicks. Heard of him? You’ve undoubtedly seen him: also known as the Body Coach, the eternally cheerful Wicks currently has three health and fitness books in the UK top 10 – and it’s all thanks to Instagram. He joined the social media site in 2013 to get more clients for his personal training business, and his toned pecs, quick workouts, and 15-second video recipes won him a 150,000-strong following and the attention of publishers. Macmillan’s Bluebird imprint didn’t reveal what it paid for Wicks’s first two books in 2015, but the Bookseller reported it was a “heated” eight-way auction, so it’s safe to assume six figures. (The two-book deal later became four, now eight.)
Lean in 15 sold 77,000 copies in its first week of sales in December 2015. In 2016, it sold 972,000 copies, making it the third bestselling book of the year. (His other books came seventh and 27th, with 449,000 and 177,000 sales respectively.) Wicks has parlayed that success into a TV show, DVDs, and a fitness empire. His business now turns over more than £1m a month. He also now has 1.6m Instagram followers (and counting).
Publishers turning to Instagram – a photography-based medium – to find authors may seem strange. But we live in an image-focused society and a lot of a publisher’s work has already been done if their new signing has already shaped their brand. Consider the authorial success of a YouTuber juggernaut such as gamer PewDiePie’s book This Book Loves You, which reached top spot on the New York Times bestseller list in a week. Or Zoella, whose 2014 novel Girl Online sold more copies in one week (78,109) than any debut novel since records began, making the £100,000 advance she was paid to have it ghostwritten seem like small potatoes. For comparison, the last Booker prize winner Paul Beatty sold 45,000 copies of The Sellout in the 18 months before the ceremony – actually very successful for literary fiction. A 2015 survey found the median author advance was less than £6,600.
Other Instagram successes include comedian Bella Younger, whose tie-in book for her Deliciously Stella web presence pokes fun at some of the sites’s more earnest dieting trends. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a play on Deliciously Ella, aka Ella Mills, another Instagrammer and bestselling author, whose first cookbook, also called Deliciously Ella, sold 32,144 copies in its first week (a record until Wicks turned up). You don’t even need to be a person to be an Instagram author: in 2015, Orion snapped up the rights to Marnie the Dog: I’m a Book, by the eponymous shih tzu, famous for her lopsided grin among her 1m followers. Turning the popular Cats of Instagram account into a book? A no-brainer.
It would be easy to look at all these and feel cynical about the future of publishing. But it’s worth remembering that popular books help keep the industry afloat. Print sales rose 7% in 2016, in large part thanks to Wicks (with a little help from JK Rowling and colouring books for adults). Even established authors in all genres are embracing Instagram: The Night Circus author Erin Morgenstern shares what she’s reading, plus the odd kitten shot; Bret Easton Ellis posts pictures of shiny LA alongside his recommended reads and judging by Paolo Coelho’s account, the new-age novelist splits his time between frigid walks and taking photos of ads for his books. Publishers want all their writers to have a social media presence. It is the new normal.
Some authors have even begun using Instagram to tell stories, all within the 2,200-character photo caption limits imposed by Instagram. And the results are fascinating. Caroline Calloway’s memoir And We Were Like started as a series of Instagram updates by the 24-year-old about her life as an American in Cambridge and comes out in 2018. Journalist Jeff Sharlet has published his Instagram photo essays in magazines such as GQ and plans to devote his next book to them. And this month sees the release of Rachel Hulin’s novel Hey Harry, Hey Matilda. Originally told on Instagram, the story of unusually close twins in their early 30s is written in the form of emails that gradually reveal the shameful secrets they’ve both been hiding. It’s weird, witty and clever, and it leads me to think that in future we should not always be cynical about looking at Instagram to find our next read. Now picture that.
