Just a little feel-good story:
TikToker makes author best seller overnight with viral video: ‘I’m trying to wrap my head around it’By Nicholas McEntyre
July 7, 2023
A Texas man became a bestselling author overnight after a TikTok video showing him selling his debut book at a grocery store was seen over 17.5 million times.
Shawn Warner, an Army veteran turned pediatric mental health worker before becoming a software engineer followed his childhood dream and become a writer after he was laid off.
So Warner, 58, wrote his first book despite people always telling him, “You can’t make a living out of doing that,” according to his website.
In the now-viral video, Warner was stationed with several of his books on display at the Texas Kroger when two men approached the author, who sat alone, over the Fourth of July weekend.
“This new author seemed super defeated when I first walked past him. So before I left the store, I decided to go back,” the video text read.
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Warner had received only two reviews on Amazon before Swearenjin posted the video and rose to the top of the retail site’s best seller’s list.
“So yesterday on Amazon, he had two reviews and it’s his first book and now he’s a number one best-selling author on Amazon,” Swearenjin said during a phone call in a second TikTok.
Swearenjin said the reason he recorded Warner in the first place was because he “imagined all the times I worked so hard and never got any recognition.”
“Here’s a fellow neighbor that’s just struggling and I just wanted to help him out,” Swearenjin told WFAA after posting the video to his TikTok account “internetfamouslol.”
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/07/07/texas-author-shawn-warner-becomes-bestseller-overnight-due-to-viral-tiktok/
