6 ms·

"I'm speaking from personal experience, having spent about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during 2024" My jaw is on the floor... Can you pro

by izend 8mo ago

"I'm speaking from personal experience, having spent about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during 2024" My jaw is on the floor... Can you provide details of your usage, were you just going through video after video for 12-14 hours or were you involved in content production or something?

publicdebates 8mo ago
Scrolling videos, commenting, expanding my algorithm by searching for similar stuff to what I liked, sometimes watching lives, sometimes hosting lives or joining lives. Maybe about 70% scrolling videos and 28% lives and 2% creating. I should mention that I was very financially successful due to TikTok. Around Christmas of 2023, my book got over 20M views and shot up to #122 on all Amazon books, until KDP just stopped offering it within a few hours. I wonder how high it would have gone. But due to that success, I lost both drive and purpose. I had already made it, and it wasn't clear what else I could offer the world. So while I thought about it, I scrolled to pass the time. But that scrolling was endless and addictive. And I never made any progress on figuring out the question of what I'm good for.
- mattmaroon 8mo ago
  Why did KDP stop offering it?
  - publicdebates 8mo ago
    KDP usually cuts off high volume sales at a certain point, in order to give other books a fair amount of copies to print on demand. Usually it takes a few weeks of sales, but I sold so many copies that evening, from a single 10M view video that someone posted, so they cut it off that night for two or three weeks I think.
    - mattmaroon 8mo ago
      Since they make money on every sale I’m really confused by that. Why wouldn’t they just expand printing capacity? In any case congrats that’s awesome. What was the book, if you don’t mind sharing?
      - publicdebates 8mo ago
        I don't know why they do that, but it's really the main (only?) drawback to KDP. My guess is that they do expand, but only when genuinely needed for long-term. They probably keep a certain amount of blank books in stock, and ration them out to PoD books somewhat evenly, with established books getting higher priority. This was the video that singlehandedly got me all those sales I mentioned earlier: https://www.tiktok.com/@alwayscandid/video/7318066843044875562 https://www.tiktok.com/@alwayscandid/video/73180668430448755... ... honestly it's quite poetic how it all turned out. I did almost no work making a book, I made way more money than I ever deserved, I wasted all of it, and now I'm sleeping in my car. It's very fair, it's more than fair. It's generous.
        mattmaroon 8mo ago
        Ha yeah I could see that. And at least you got a great story out of the deal. I have made and squandered a few very small fortunes myself so, respect.
iberator 8mo ago
Those are not crazy numbers for unemployed people. If you want a real shocker: TikTok is EXTREMELY popular amongst 60+ men, consuming stuff like teenagers plus super naive... Just check out hospitals or elderly shelter thing.

by izend 8mo ago

publicdebates 8mo ago

Scrolling videos, commenting, expanding my algorithm by searching for similar stuff to what I liked, sometimes watching lives, sometimes hosting lives or joining lives. Maybe about 70% scrolling videos and 28% lives and 2% creating. I should mention that I was very financially successful due to TikTok. Around Christmas of 2023, my book got over 20M views and shot up to #122 on all Amazon books, until KDP just stopped offering it within a few hours. I wonder how high it would have gone. But due to that success, I lost both drive and purpose. I had already made it, and it wasn't clear what else I could offer the world. So while I thought about it, I scrolled to pass the time. But that scrolling was endless and addictive. And I never made any progress on figuring out the question of what I'm good for.

mattmaroon 8mo ago
Why did KDP stop offering it?
- publicdebates 8mo ago
  KDP usually cuts off high volume sales at a certain point, in order to give other books a fair amount of copies to print on demand. Usually it takes a few weeks of sales, but I sold so many copies that evening, from a single 10M view video that someone posted, so they cut it off that night for two or three weeks I think.
  - mattmaroon 8mo ago
    Since they make money on every sale I’m really confused by that. Why wouldn’t they just expand printing capacity? In any case congrats that’s awesome. What was the book, if you don’t mind sharing?
    - publicdebates 8mo ago
      I don't know why they do that, but it's really the main (only?) drawback to KDP. My guess is that they do expand, but only when genuinely needed for long-term. They probably keep a certain amount of blank books in stock, and ration them out to PoD books somewhat evenly, with established books getting higher priority. This was the video that singlehandedly got me all those sales I mentioned earlier: https://www.tiktok.com/@alwayscandid/video/7318066843044875562 https://www.tiktok.com/@alwayscandid/video/73180668430448755... ... honestly it's quite poetic how it all turned out. I did almost no work making a book, I made way more money than I ever deserved, I wasted all of it, and now I'm sleeping in my car. It's very fair, it's more than fair. It's generous.
      - mattmaroon 8mo ago
        Ha yeah I could see that. And at least you got a great story out of the deal. I have made and squandered a few very small fortunes myself so, respect.

iberator 8mo ago

Those are not crazy numbers for unemployed people. If you want a real shocker: TikTok is EXTREMELY popular amongst 60+ men, consuming stuff like teenagers plus super naive... Just check out hospitals or elderly shelter thing.