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 11:46AM

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.

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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.

Tom Jones

Time’s up?

LIV Golf’s Saudi backers are reportedly pulling out after pumping $5 billion into the tour

The 2026 season will continue “uninterrupted and at full throttle,” LIV’s CEO said.

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The most popular male and female names in the US, according to the latest Census

New data published Tuesday by the US Census Bureau has revealed the most common names provided in the 2020 Census, in the first release to include forename data since 1990.

As described in the brief, Michael was the most popular name for males in the US, with roughly 3.5 million American men reporting having this name or a close variant. This is up from fourth place in the 1990 Census, when the top US male name was James — though there were still 3 million Jameses in 2020’s tally.

Despite a three-decade gap, Mary remained the top name for American females in both censuses, with the 2020 survey counting almost 1.8 million females with this given name. Interestingly, Mary was one of just two predominantly female names that broke the top 10 given names in the US, with the overall list dominated mostly by male monikers.

Most popular names US census 2020 chart — Sherwood News

In all, American females had far more first-name diversity than male counterparts: 16% of US males had one of the top 10 most frequent names among men, compared with 7.8% of women. Zooming out, almost 3x as many given names were needed to cover a quarter of the US female population than that of males.

Max Knoblauch & Tom Jones4/14/26

6 months after hiking Game Pass prices by 50%, Xbox determines it may be too expensive

Microsoft’s new Xbox chief, Asha Sharma, thinks the division’s recent price hikes have been a mistake, per an internal memo to employees seen by The Verge.

“Short term, Game Pass has become too expensive for players, so we need a better value equation,” Sharma’s memo reportedly read.

It’s an interesting take, given that Xbox hiked the price of its Game Pass subscription by 50% in October, before Sharma took over. The memo is a signal that Sharma’s tenure — which began in February, taking the industry by surprise — will include some big changes for Microsoft’s gaming strategy.

Whether Game Pass prices will drop is not yet clear. Last month, The Information reported that Sharma and Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters have “kicked around ideas” about potential bundles. That would fit with Netflix’s renewed gaming ambitions.

Xbox Game Pass ‘has become too expensive,’ says Microsoft’s new gaming chief in leaked memo

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Will a resolve to reduce screen time see a revival of landline telephones?

For parents trying to limit their kids’ exposure to smartphones, the answer could be yesterday’s tech.

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Rory McIlroy just secured a second consecutive Masters title — and the biggest prize pot to date

Winning a sixth major title in the year of a record purse, McIlroy is now the Masters’ highest-earning golfer.

Adult fiction titles are booming, thanks to BookTok

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The most popular male and female names in the US, according to the latest Census

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