字母榜精选

wrote a column ·

Selling books on Douyin, quietly rose to number one

Following the path once taken by Dong Yuhui, Sun Dongxu has now returned.

In late May, more than half a year after stepping down as CEO of Oriental Select, Sun Dongxu appeared in his own Douyin live stream under the name 'Sun Meili' and launched his first book-selling broadcast.

The live stream lasted less than two hours, with over 20,000 viewers consistently watching simultaneously. Sun Dongxu recommended three books: 'The Body of Infinite Possibilities,' 'A World History for Young Readers,' and 'My Mother Works as a Cleaner.' All quickly climbed to the top of Douyin’s 'Books & Magazines Chart.' 'A World History for Young Readers' alone sold 16,000 copies.

Before going live, Sun Dongxu frankly admitted, 'Today, I’m ready to step out,' attempting“to just chat, talk about books, and sell some books.”This is precisely the approach that enabled Dong Yuhui and Oriental Select to gain initial success. Although the two have since parted ways, they have coincidentally chosen the same path.

Book-selling streamers like Sun Dongxu and Dong Yuhui exemplify the broader ecosystem of Douyin’s book e-commerce.

Since Douyin entered the e-commerce space through short videos and live-stream selling, books have remained one of its core categories. Even before Oriental Select captivated the internet with its poetic and literary style, this segment had already produced numerous major streamers—such as 'Fan Deng Reading,' 'Uncle Kai’s Storytime,' 'Host Wang Fang,' 'Zhao Jian’s Reading Notes,' and 'Dr. He Chuhan'—with leading streamers each amassing over ten million followers.

Following the rise of Dong Yuhui and other hosts from the Oriental Selection camp, the number of book-focused livestreamers on Douyin has surged, and the content categories have diversified significantly. No longer concentrated solely on popular niches like children’s books, science education, personal finance, and academic tutoring, the platform now features numerous influencers specializing in pure literature such as novels, poetry, and essays.

Compounding this trend, renowned authors like Mo Yan and Liu Zhenyun, along with leading publishing houses such as People's Literature Publishing House and Peking University Press, have all entered the platform, helping Douyin turn book sales into a thriving business.

In the meantime,Consumer habits around book purchases are also shifting.

Over the past two decades, China’s book retail market evolved through the physical bookstore era, the vertical e-commerce era, and then the comprehensive marketplace e-commerce era. Today, it has entered the content-driven e-commerce era. Most readers now purchase books either based on recommendations from livestream hosts or author-led readings, or by waiting for discounts in official livestreams from major bookstores and publishers. Patiently hunting for books—whether online or offline—has become a niche hobby.

Industry data trends corroborate this shift.

In recent years, the share of total book sales generated via content platforms has climbed steadily, reaching new heights annually. Public data shows that in 2022, short-video platforms surpassed physical bookstores in terms of gross sales value (list price multiplied by units sold); in 2023, they overtook vertical and other e-commerce channels to become the second-largest sales channel; and by 2025, amid an overall decline in the retail book market’s gross sales value, content-driven e-commerce channels grew against the tide, becoming the largest channel in China’s book retail market.

Content-driven e-commerce is not limited to Douyin; however, it is evident that Douyin—as the largest short-video platform—accounts for the majority of book sales volume. Indeed, one could even say thatDouyin has likely already overtaken traditional e-commerce platforms to become China’s top online book retailer.

Book retailing is a high-frequency business and has long been a key battleground for e-commerce platforms. Online price wars for books were once extremely fierce—first between JD.com and Dangdang, and later with PDD Holdings aggressively entering the market.

Yet Douyin’s success in standing out among these traditional players does not stem purely from pricing—in fact, prices for most titles, especially new releases, are now largely aligned across different online platforms.

InZiMuBang (ID: wujicaijing),It appears that Douyin’s quiet victory hinges on how its live-streaming ecosystem aligns precisely with readers'“From buying books to buying into personalities”shift in consumer psychology. Meanwhile, book sales on Douyin both consume content to convert traffic and generate new content to drive additional traffic, effectively sidestepping the long-standing challenge traditional e-commerce platforms face in directing traffic to books, thereby demonstrating stronger self-sustainability.

However, Douyin’s book e-commerce model is not without vulnerabilities. Particularly with the advent of the AI era, consumers might bypass live-stream hosts altogether and place orders directly via AI, delivering a potentially devastating blow to influencer-driven book sales.

Book sellers have now become a critical component of book consumption.Personal branding forms the foundation of book influencers’ aggressive sales performance.

Early book influencers who struck gold on Douyin had typically built up substantial experience in other fields and carried multiple prestigious labels. For short-video users who lack the patience for deep dives, these labels quickly establish trust.

For instance, Liu Yuanyuan, who boasts 23.6 million followers, previously won a speech competition reality show. Leveraging her personal journey through education and entrepreneurship, she rapidly crafted a persona as “an underprivileged student who overcame adversity to become a successful, elegant female CEO,” striking a chord with multiple emotional triggers among ordinary people. As early as 2021, her monthly sales volume already exceeded RMB 100 million.

Other influencers adopt even more elevated personas: seasoned business tycoons, erudite scholars of Chinese classics, former TV presenters who left stable careers to venture into business… At the very least, one must carry the title of “senior education expert” to command attention and speak confidently in the live stream.

Book influencers who have risen to prominence in recent years, however,Social identities have been downplayed, with everyone rushing to adopt the label of 'cultured individuals.'

Dong Yuhui naturally pioneered this 'school.' His poetic line—'Alaskan cod leaping out of the water'—cut through consumers long numbed by aggressive sales pitches. Overnight, Dong, reciting lyrical prose, became the nation’s 'favorite son-in-law,' propelling a cohort of teacher-turned-hosts from Oriental Selection into stardom.

When 'teachers' sell products, books are naturally the easiest to move. Dong Yuhui’s crowning moment came in January 2024: during a four-hour livestream, his team sold nearly one million copies of People's Literature, generating RMB 17.85 million in sales—briefly surpassing the annual sales volume of this highbrow literary journal.

Fans’ frenzied purchases of People's Literature carried a hint of irrationality—many die-hard supporters declared, 'If it’s for sale, I’ll definitely buy it.' After all, as the old saying goes, 'Books borrowed are the ones actually read'; once you buy them, you rarely do.

During the livestream, Dong Yuhui described himself as previously overlooked—'until literature made the world see me and understand me.' But to be honest,it wasn’t literature that discovered Dong Yuhui—it was Dong Yuhui who gave literature its devoted following.

Following the original Dong Yuhui came hundreds, even thousands, of 'youth editions': his fellow alumni Dun Dun, Ming Ming, and Tian Quan; Zhao Jian, who specializes in historical figures; Du Liang Reading, known for social sciences; He Chuhan, deeply versed in traditional Chinese culture; and many others.

Compared with the first generation of book-focused livestreamers, Dong Yuhui and his successors embody a stronger 'cultured individual' identity and generally demonstrate a higher level of content creation. Fans now buy books not merely out of admiration or even reverence for the host’s former teaching role, but because they resonate—however slightly—with the host’s worldview and aesthetic sensibilities, projecting part of themselves onto the host and willingly opening their wallets for books.

This reflects a deeper shift:Today’s readers don’t just buy books—they also 'buy the person.'

In the past, readers did not buy books simply because a title appeared on a certain e-commerce platform or in a particular bookstore, or because the bookstore changed ownership or hired new staff. The shift from physical bookstores to online book retailers, and then from specialized book e-commerce platforms to general e-commerce platforms, merely represented changes in sales channels and efficiency.

Now, however, many consumers expect to obtain ample book-related information, professional quality endorsements, and even emotionally resonant value from 'booksellers' before making a purchase. As a result, book-focused live streamers—who fulfill multiple roles—have risen in prominence, driving book consumption to concentrate increasingly on short-video platforms. This trend remains ongoing.

The era of buying books based on recommendations from reading-focused streamers has arrived. Douyin, which has gathered numerous top-tier streamers, is naturally the biggest beneficiary of this new transaction model.

Douyin has captured book sales from traditional e-commerce platforms, fundamentally because itsolved the traffic black hole problem that plagued book e-commerce。

Traditional e-commerce platforms have long held an ambivalent attitude toward selling books.

E-commerce platforms valued books for their high-frequency transactions, which could drive traffic to other product categories. However, selling books itself continuously consumed traffic; at the same time, books had low average order values and were perpetually discounted. Consequently, the expensive traffic platforms acquired was inefficiently utilized when allocated to book sales.

This explains why, in recent years, the fierce competition in online book retail has gradually subsided and the market structure has stabilized. Major players have realized thatunder the 'input traffic–generate transactions–output traffic' model, book e-commerce is not a profitable business.

In fact, book sales on traditional e-commerce platforms have already declined. According to the '2025 Insight Report on Trends in the Open Market Book Retail Sector,' sales value from traditional shelf-based distribution channels fell by 16.5% year-on-year.

After entering the e-commerce space, Douyin initially paid little attention to book sales, perhaps recognizing its inherent limitations. However, book-focused live streamers have carved out a new path, brightening the prospects for online book retail.

Unlike traditional e-commerce platforms that jump straight into transactions, top streamers like Dong Yuhui and Sun Dongxu always start with content—either knowledge-rich, humanistic livestreams or short videos infused with insight and sentiment. First and foremost, they are content creators; only secondarily are they transaction facilitators.

The streamers’ motivation lies in this: only by producing sufficiently compelling content can they attract traffic, generate orders, and thereby sustain the ability to create even more content. The process of selling books thus integrates both traffic generation and conversion as well as content creation and accumulation.

The online book-selling workflow has evolved into“Create content – attract traffic – drive transactions – accumulate content”. This new closed loop begins with content and no longer requires massive external traffic injections—it can sustain itself through the streamer’s own efforts.

Douyin never designed this new model from the outset, but it clearly welcomes the outcome.

As previously noted, the platform allocated valuable traffic to the book category—a move that traditional e-commerce players couldn’t make work, and one Douyin itself was unwilling to pursue. A more viable solution was to let the book business become its own source of traffic. Streamers’ content creation capabilities, combined with their followers’ willingness and habit of paying for content, provided fertile ground for this approach.

Yet this was not the result of long-term planning. Within Douyin’s e-commerce strategy,books have never been among the core categories.

Since 2019, Douyin E-commerce has focused on mainstream categories, including apparel, footwear and bags, daily necessities, home goods and appliances, 3C electronics, beauty and personal care, and sports and outdoor products, launching numerous marketing IPs of varying scales around these categories, such as 'Refresh Week.'

As for books, although the platform has run some campaigns, its GMV, external visibility, and level of support have all lagged significantly behind those of larger categories.

Despite this, book sales on Douyin have grown rapidly. According to data disclosed by the platform,around 2021, approximately 450,000 books were sold daily on Douyin; by 2025, that figure had surged to 3 million copies per day.

This explosive growth cannot be explained solely by 'Douyin’s massive traffic.' After all, other major e-commerce platforms also enjoy substantial traffic and have clearer purchase intent and higher conversion efficiency. The deeper reason Douyin has emerged as the new leader in book e-commerce lies in how live-stream hosts have driven platform development in reverse and reshaped consumer behavior around book purchases.

However, book e-commerce on Douyin is no idyllic pasture.Amid fierce competition, an increasing number of hosts have adopted a loud, hard-selling approach reminiscent of 'OMG'-style promotions.

In many book-focused live streams, substantive discussions about books are dwindling, while high-pressure sales scripts urging immediate purchases are becoming more prevalent. This is especially true for matrix accounts: top-tier hosts with the highest viewership and strongest capabilities are often stretched too thin, leaving smaller hosts or assistants to take over—precisely where aggressive hawking is most rampant.

In addition,It is increasingly common for book-focused live-stream hosts not to sell books at all.

Like e-commerce platforms, hosts must also consider the efficiency of monetizing their traffic. Books priced at just a few dozen yuan per copy generate far lower average order values than smartphones, computers, beauty and personal care products, or online courses. Factoring in discounts, profit margins become razor-thin. As a result, many hosts have set aside books and turned instead to selling learning tablets, foreign language tutoring classes, and other unrelated items.

This situation closely mirrors the path Dong Yuhui and Oriental Select have already walked.

When Dong Yuhui and others first rose to fame, the Oriental Select livestream was exceptionally rich in knowledge content. But as viewership skyrocketed, products unrelated to knowledge began flooding the stream, taking up valuable slots. Dong Yuhui became mentally and physically exhausted, and his eventual departure was significantly tied to this unavoidable shift.

Even Dong Yuhui, who wielded tremendous influence, couldn’t escape this fate—other book-focused livestreamers naturally couldn’t hold out indefinitely either.

Regardless of their original intentions, once KPIs and conversion demands take precedence over everything else, book-focused livestreamers are forced to seize the narrow window of audience attention and push consumers to place orders as quickly as possible.

Moreover, livestreamers who genuinely combine taste and knowledge—and can effectively translate that into book sales—are extremely rare. The vast majority of book sellers merely disguise themselves as 'reading guides' or 'book recommenders' while actually just selling products, and some may not even have thoroughly read the books they promote.

Amid this trend, many book-focused livestreamers’ content quality has significantly declined, with an increasingly aggressive sales pitch dominating their streams. They now rely largely on their past personal credibility to drive sales. The original 'content–traffic–transaction–content' model is reverting back to a 'traffic–transaction–traffic' cycle.

In the short term, this indeed boosts livestream sales. But in the long run, it disrupts the foundational logic of Douyin’s book e-commerce ecosystem, pushing the book business back into a pure traffic-consumption model—which clearly contradicts the original intent behind this otherwise unprofitable venture.

On the other hand,Platforms find it difficult to intervene effectively in this dynamic.

Douyin clearly hopes its book e-commerce ecosystem can organically generate content, attract traffic, and form a self-sustaining loop. Dong Yuhui’s earlier meteoric rise was inseparable from the platform’s strategic push to establish him as a model example.

Yet now, as book-focused livestreamers pivot toward becoming general merchandise promoters, this shift may not align with Douyin’s original vision—but it does require them to purchase more traffic. This demand is a structural necessity of Douyin’s traffic-based business model, making it impossible to block through rule changes. Thus, even if the platform dreams of a pastoral ideal, livestreamers will vote with their feet, collectively steering the entire book e-commerce ecosystem toward loud, hard-selling tactics.

Beyond the challenges facing its content ecosystem,AI could also potentially erode Douyin’s market share in book e-commerce.

This year, AI-powered e-commerce has emerged as one of the key development directions for major AI apps. AI-driven shopping via chatbots bypasses not only traditional product shelves but also live-stream hosts, reducing e-commerce platforms to mere product catalogs.

This poses a potential threat to Douyin’s book e-commerce business. Given enough time, once AI becomes sufficiently intelligent, the roles currently played by book-focused live-stream hosts—including product introductions, recommendations ('grass planting'), conversion, and user retention—could be entirely taken over by AI apps. The complex consumer journey they’ve built could be simplified into a direct, two-way interaction between readers and AI, leaving no room for third parties.

Over the past few years, book-focused live-stream hosts have cultivated a robust content ecosystem, enabling Douyin’s book e-commerce to disrupt traditional shelf-based e-commerce models and capture the lion’s share of associated gains. Yet this dominant position remains precarious: as a platform, Douyin lacks the tools needed to counter broader industry trends.The business of selling books—an ancient yet modern trade—has not yet reached its final form, whether in terms of business models or market structure. $ByteDance (FT0001)$$ByteDance Ecosystem (LIST1266.HK)$$TikTok concept (LIST23037.SH)$$E-commerce Concept (LIST0593.SH)$$Rural E-commerce (LIST0622.SH)$$E-Commerce (LIST0942.SH)$$Live Streaming (LIST2438.US)$$Live Streaming by Influencers (LIST0460.SH)$

922 Views