Sherwood News

Adult fiction titles are booming, thanks to BookTok

It Ends With Us is the latest big screen adaptation to make millions at the box office

8/12/24 10:46AM

This weekend was a big win for one Hollywood power couple, as Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool & Wolverine surpassed $1 billion at the global box office, and Blake Lively’s big screen adaptation of romance-drama novel It Ends With Us achieved a $50 million debut. Perhaps the only person with more to celebrate than the Reynolds-Lively household, though, is the author of the book that inspired the latter movie: Colleen Hoover.

While the 44-year-old Texan first self-published back in 2012, her books have exploded in popularity since 2020. According to Circana BookScan via Vox, Hoover’s titles have now sold almost 30 million in-print copies; in 2022, she held 6 of the top 10 spots in the NYT paperback fiction list, outselling the Bible that year; and It Ends With Us has been a NYT bestseller for over 132 weeks, currently standing at No.1 for combined print & e-book fiction despite being published 8 years ago.

Page-turning

Indeed, Hoover’s meteoric rise has coincided with the ‘BookTok’ boom. During the pandemic, a global community of readers and authors converged on video sharing app TikTok to discuss their favorite titles, offer recommendations, and post reactions to viral novels, giving rise to major author success stories like Hoover, Sarah J Maas, and Taylor Jenkins Reid, among others.

Cut to present, and the #BookTok hashtag has garnered over 35.6 million posts, and counted more than 200 billion total views on the app at the end of last year. Zoom out, and you can even see a broader jump in the popularity of young adult fiction (+50%) and adult fiction (+42%) titles — BookTok’s bread and butter — relative to pre-pandemic 2018, per Circana research on the US book industry; meanwhile, nonfiction titles have seen a slight slump over the same period.

Millie Giles

UP-GRADED

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As Harvard addresses grade inflation, there’s still no easy fix for easy A’s

A damning internal report on soaring GPAs has done little to assuage scores of career-anxious Harvardians.

Gate 1 - Newell Gate entrance - Soldiers Field - Harvard University - Boston Massachusetts

Max Knoblauch11/20/25

Nintendo’s Switch 2 is outrunning the original’s US sales pace by 68%

Unlike its current-generation console rivals, Nintendo’s Switch 2 still hasn’t seen a tariff price hike in the US. Even if it had, though, it would probably still be selling like crazy.

According to new Circana data on October video game industry sales, Nintendo’s new handheld sold 328,000 units in the US last month. Its current pace, per Circana Senior Director Mat Piscatella, is 68% ahead of the original Switch — which is a lock for Nintendo’s bestselling console ever — and even beating the record sales pace of Sony’s PlayStation 4 by 3%.

Hardware - Video game hardware spending in October grew 36% when compared a year ago, to $351M. Switch 2 was again able to offset declines across Switch (-52% versus a year ago), Xbox Series (-37%) and PlayStation 5 (-22%).
— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) November 20, 2025 at 9:02 AM

Per Piscatella, US hardware (console) sales jumped 36% from last year to more than $350 million, despite double-digit falls from the original Switch, the PS5, and Microsoft’s Xbox.

Last month, Nintendo boosted its annual production target to 25 million units by the end of March 2026, Bloomberg reported.

Max Knoblauch

11/19/25

Disney is weighing dynamic ticket pricing for its US parks

Disney wants to optimize the airline pricing model for its parks before bringing it to Disney World or Disneyland in the US.