The New Empress of Self-Help Is a TikTok Star
In 2006, Oprah Winfrey couldn’t stop talking about The Secret. She devoted multiple episodes of her talk show to the franchise, which started as a kind of DVD seminar and later became a best-selling book. Its author, Rhonda Byrne, claimed to have stumbled upon an ancient principle, one that can teach anyone to manifest anything they want: money, health, better relationships. Winfrey retroactively credited its core philosophy for bringing her success, and her endorsement helped bring the book international fame: It has now sold more than 35 million copies. But in the era of endless scrolling, an author doesn’t necessarily need Winfrey’s stamp of approval. They just need TikTok.
Keila Shaheen figured this out last year, when her self-published book The Shadow Work Journal began to dominate the app’s feeds. A slim volume, the book purports to help people unpack their “shadow” self—the repressed unconscious—through various activities. In video after video, TikTok users show themselves filling out its exercises and talk about the journal as if it has magical powers. They learn about Carl Jung’s model of the psyche. They circle terms related to their trauma. They heal their inner child! If you use a new coupon on TikTok Shop, the app’s new built-in store, you too can heal, for just a couple of bucks! they say. (Many of those posting earn a commission from each sale, but pay that no mind.)
The journal has sold more than 600,000 copies on TikTok alone, and more than 1 million copies in total, a feat usually accomplished by the Prince Harrys and Colleen Hoovers of the world. Shaheen, a 25-year-old writer with a marketing background, is the new breakout star of the self-help genre. She even outsold Winfrey’s latest book.
[Read: The 24-year-old who outsold Oprah this week]
Her story began in an untraditional way: Here is a young author, plucked from obscurity by a powerful app’s algorithm during a conveniently timed e-commerce push and turned into a best-selling phenom. Yet her next chapter is following an expected arc. She has signed a multi-book deal with Simon & Schuster to bring an updated version of The Shadow Work Journal to new audiences. Specifically, she is working with the brand-new imprint Primero Sueño Press, which will launch her book as its “flagship,” Shaheen told me, in addition to releasing a new Spanish translation later this year. The self-help queen of TikTok is officially going mainstream.
Shaheen’s popularity makes a lot of sense. We live in the age of therapy-speak; talking about one’s mental health isn’t as stigmatized as it once was. And yet a lot of people are still struggling. Teenagers—many of whom say they use the app “almost constantly”—are experiencing hopelessness and sadness at record highs. TikTok is known for authenticity, at least when compared with the picture-perfect posts on Instagram—it is supposed to be messier, more real. The kind of place where you’d talk about your struggles while in your sweatpants.
The Shadow Work Journal isn’t the only such success on the platform. One of Shaheen’s other books, The Lucky Girl Journal—which teaches readers how to manifest their own good fortune, rather than leaving things up to chance—has sold more than 25,000 copies on the app’s store. Don’t Believe Everything You Think, a self-published volume by Joseph Nguyen, a mental-health content creator with little notoriety outside social media, has sold about 60,000 copies on TikTok, and is currently in the top 10 most sold books on Amazon.
It’s boom times for self-help on social media. Kathleen Schmidt, who helped publicize The Secret and now runs a public-relations company (and writes the Substack newsletter Publishing Confidential), first heard about Nguyen’s book when her 16-year-old daughter asked for a copy. “I can see why it has caught on,” she told me. “It’s very simplistic, and it gives you big promises, like You’ll stop suffering, you’ll understand how to let go of anxiety, and all that.” A lot of self-help books, she explained, are too complicated or ask the reader to do too much; the more successful books tend to be accessible. If The Secret were published today, she argued, “it probably would have gone viral on TikTok and would have had somewhat of the same effect—but without Oprah.”
[Read: TikTok is doing something very un-TikTok]
With all of this in mind, I asked Shaheen why she’d made the decision to go a more traditional route. It was over Zoom, during a meet and greet set up by her publisher (and attended, as far as I could tell, by just me, one other writer, and some folks from her team). “I think I was just at a time and place where I couldn’t control what was going on,” she said, of all the attention last year, “and it was very overwhelming for me.” She realized that if she “wanted to continue helping people and grow the impact of this journal,” then she “would need help from a traditional publishing company.” She said she’d entertained offers from various publishers before settling on Primero Sueño Press, which will take over the production of her books. And anyway, her books will still be available for purchase on TikTok Shop.
One publishing house she hadn’t heard from is 8th Note Press—which is owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. It appears to have acquired three titles so far, and published its first book last month; a representative for TikTok told me that it has seen significant growth on TikTok Shop and success for a variety of books and book sellers, but did not comment on Shaheen’s decision to sign with a traditional publisher.
Perhaps ByteDance has a little too much on its plate to prioritize courting authors. TikTok still faces the threat of a national ban in the United States. When defending itself in ads or before Congress, the app likes to tout how many small-business owners it supports—people like Shaheen. For some businesses, that’s definitely true. But with all the uncertainty about the platform’s future, a big, traditional publishing house can offer two things that never feel especially present on social media: stability and security. After all, Simon & Schuster has a pretty good track record. It publishes a little book called The Secret.