QUEEN OF BOOKTOK

American author Colleen Hoover has become a smash hit online and no one is more surprised than she is

- JANE VORSTER

SHE didn’t set out to be a published author – it happened by accident in many ways. While waiting for her youngest son to finish rehearsals for a local theatre production, she starting writing on a laptop she’d borrowed from a family member.

That tinkering turned out to be her debut novel, Slammed – and she had no idea then how it would change her life.

It was early 2012 and Colleen Hoover wanted to share the book with her mom, who’d just got an Amazon Kindle e-reader. She released it on Amazon’s then relatively new self-publishing platform, not expecting it to take off.

“I went into it so naively not knowing anything about the publishing industry,” Colleen says.

“I really thought, ‘Okay, just the people I want to read this are going to read it.’ I had no idea there were book communities forming out there and online.”

But forming they were and with no promotion whatsoever her young adult novel about a teen reeling from the death of her father became a New York Times bestseller.

And now, particularly thanks to TikTok, Colleen (43) has become one of the most successful writers in the world.

Last year the author, who’s from Texas in the US, sold more books than James Patterson and John Grisham combined and outsold The Bible by more than three million copies. Six of the top 10 bestselling books of 2022 were her novels, according to Forbes magazine.

She’s been dubbed “the most successful author that most people have never heard of ”. That’s because most of her sales are driven by online fans flocking to buy her books, which jump genres and include steamy romances, gothic suspense and thrillers.