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WriterTok: What Is It?

Krystal N. Craiker

TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform. In fact, it was the most downloaded app of 2021 and is on track to hit that record again in 2022.

It’s no surprise that readers and writers alike are flocking to the social media app, and in particular, the WriterTok community. WriterTok is a subset of content creators who share videos about writing.

Here’s everything you need to know about WriterTok and how you can use it to promote your writing.

What Is WriterTok?

Is tiktok good for writers, how do writers use tiktok.

Within the TikTok app, there are communities that are identified by hashtags. These communities include MomTok, MoneyTok, and WitchTok.

WriterTok is a group of TikTok creators who are published authors and aspiring authors. They share funny videos about writing problems, advice about the writing process and publishing process, writing prompts, and more.

WriterTok’s fast-growing community creates writing-themed content for other writers and for their readers. It can be a valuable resource for connecting with other people in the industry.

TikTok is the hottest social media app right now, and there’s no indication that this is changing anytime soon. It is expected to hit 1.5 billion monthly active users by the end of 2022. The US alone has 138 million monthly active users.

As well as offering an endless supply of viral dance videos, TikTok is an excellent, free tool to connect with people who love to read and write books. It offers a large, captive audience for writers to share their writing with.

WriterTok is just one niche community. It’s a great way to network with other people who understand the struggles of writing, and it’s an invaluable learning resource. WriterTok videos can help you learn new skills and hone the ones you already have.

The best community on the app for novel writers is BookTok . BookTok is a community of readers. If you write books, this is where you’ll find your target audience.

Is TikTok Good for Poets?

Novel writers aren’t the only writers out there. TikTok can be a great place for poets too.

The hashtag #poetry has over 36 billion views. Yes, billion! TikTok allows poets to share their poems and reach a much wider audience. People who never thought they were into poetry now watch poetry videos on the app.

There are several more popular hashtags you can search to find talented poets or post your own works:

• PoetryTikTok (250 million+ views)
• Poem (3 billion+ views)
• Poems (780 million+ views)
• PoetryTok (499 million+ views)
• Poet (1.4 billion+ views)
• PoetryLover (1.9 billion+ views)
• Poets (29 million+ views)
• PoetTok (59 million+ views)

Poets often share their poetry in videos with pretty music and aesthetic background images.

Writers use TikTok to create videos about their writing process or the field of writing in general. Sometimes trends emerge within WriterTok, so you’ll see many authors making similar videos.

Some TikTok creators will share writing prompts . Prompts can help push your creativity to new heights. If you aren’t ready to make TikTok videos just yet, try using some of the writing prompts to improve your skills.

Writing advice videos are also popular. TikTok videos can make writing advice feel less sterile and more personal than just reading a book on the craft.

You can meet some amazing, supportive writers through WriterTok. You can start building a community by commenting on other people’s videos and regularly engaging with their content.

It’s also a great way to interact directly with your readers. Respond to their comments and messages when possible to help build a loyal fanbase.

WriterTok Post Ideas

Creating TikTok videos can be intimidating at first. Spend some time getting familiar with the app and the writing and reading communities. See what sort of content performs well.

If you’re stuck, here are a few writing ideas you could post on your TikTok account:

TikTok doesn’t have to be scary. Start by seeing what’s out there. When you do start making videos, they don’t need to be elaborate. Simple is okay at first—you’ll improve and find your own video style with time and practice.

But don’t overlook the value of this social media app. It’s a free tool that can bring you book marketing success and connect you with a powerful community of writers and readers.

Are you prepared to write your novel? Download this free book now:

The Novel-Writing Training Plan

So you are ready to write your novel. excellent. but are you prepared the last thing you want when you sit down to write your first draft is to lose momentum., this guide helps you work out your narrative arc, plan out your key plot points, flesh out your characters, and begin to build your world..

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Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and blog manager at ProWritingAid. She sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which brings fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

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Another Word

From the writing center at the university of wisconsin-madison.

#essayhack: What TikTok can Teach Writing Centers about Student Perceptions of College Writing

By Holly Berkowitz, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

There is a widespread perception that TikTok, the popular video-sharing social media platform, is primarily a tool of distraction where one mindlessly scrolls through bite-sized bits of content. However, due to the viewer’s ability to engage with short-form video content, it is undeniable that TikTok is also a platform from which users gain information; whether this means following a viral dance tutorial or learning how to fold a fitted sheet, TikTok houses millions of videos that serve as instructional tutorials that provides tips or how-tos for its over one billion active users. 

That TikTok might be considered a learning tool also has implications for educational contexts. Recent research has revealed that watching or even creating TikToks in classrooms can aid learning objectives, particularly relating to language acquisition or narrative writing skills. In this post, I discuss  the conventions of and consequences for TikToks that discuss college writing. Because of the popularity of videos that spotlight “how-tos” or “day in the life” style content, looking at essay or college writing TikTok can be a helpful tool for understanding some larger trends and student perceptions of writing. Due to the instructional nature of TikToks and the ways that students might be using the app for advice, these videos can be viewed as parallel or ancillary to the advice that a Writing Center tutor might provide.

A search for common hashtags including the words “essay,” “college writing,” or “essay writing hack” yields hundreds of videos that pertain to writing at the college level. Although there is a large variety in content due to the sheer amount of content, this post focuses on two genres of videos as they represent a large portion of what is shared: first, videos that provide tips or how-tos for certain AI tools or assignment genres and second, videos that invite the viewer to accompany the creator as they write a paper under a deadline. Shared themes include attempts to establish peer connections and comfort viewers who procrastinate while writing, a focus on writing speed and concrete deliverables (page count, word limit, or hours to write), and an emphasis on digital tools or AI software (especially that which is marked as “not cheating”). Not only does a closer examination into these videos help us meet writers where they are more precisely, but it also draws writing center workers’ attention to lesser known digital tools or “hacks” that students are using for their assignments.

“How to write” Videos

Videos in the “how to” style are instructional and advice-dispensing in tone. Often, the creator utilizes a digital writing aid or provides a set of writing tips or steps to follow. Whether these videos spotlight assistive technologies that use AI, helpful websites, or suggestions for specific forms of writing, they often position writing as a roadblock or adversary. Videos of this nature attempt to reach viewers by promising to make writing easier, more approachable, or just faster when working under a tight deadline; they almost always assume the writer in question has left their writing task to the last possible moment. It’s not surprising then that the most widely shared examples of this form of content are videos with titles like “How to speed-write long papers” or “How to make any essay longer” (this one has 32 million views). It is evident that this type of content attempts to target students who suffer from writing-related anxiety or who tend to procrastinate while writing.

Sharing “hacks” online is a common practice that manifests in many corners of TikTok where content creators demonstrate an easier or more efficient way of achieving a task (such as loading a dishwasher) or obtaining a result (such as finding affordable airline tickets). The same principle applies to #essay TikTok, where writing advice is often framed as a “hack” for writing faster papers, longer papers, or papers more likely to result in an A. This content uses a familiar titling convention: How to write X (where X might be a specific genre like a literature review, or just an amount of pages or words); How to write X in X amount of time; and How to write X using this software or AI program. The amount of time is always tantalizingly brief, as two examples—“How to write a 5 page essay in 2 mins” and “How to write an essay in five minutes!! NO PLAGIARISM!!”—attest to. While some of these are silly or no longer useful methods of getting around assignment parameters, they introduce viewers to helpful research and writing aids and sometimes even spotlight Writing Center best practices. For instance, a video by creator @kaylacp called “Research Paper Hack” shows viewers how to use a program called PowerNotes to organize and code sources; a video by @patches has almost seven million views and demonstrates using an AI bot to both grade her paper and provide substantive feedback. Taken as a whole, this subsect of TikTok underscores that there is a ready audience for content that purports to assist writers in meeting the deliverables of a writing assignment using a path of least resistance.

Similarly, TikTok contains myriad videos that position the creator as a sort of expert in college writing and dispense tips for improving academic writing and style. These videos are often created by upperclassmen who claim to frequently receive As on essays and tend to use persuasive language in the style of an infomercial, such as “How to write a college paper like a pro,” “How to write research papers more efficiently in 5 easy steps!” or “College students, if you’re not using this feature, you’re wasting your time.” The focus in these videos is even more explicit than those mentioned above, as college students are addressed in the titles and captions directly. This is significant  because it prompts users to engage with this content as they might with a Writing Center tutor or tutoring more generally. These videos are sites where students are learning how to write more efficiently but also learning how their college peers view and treat the writing process. 

The “how to write” videos share several common themes, most prevalent of which is an emphasis on concrete deliverables—you will be able to produce this many pages in this many minutes. They also share a tendency to introduce or spotlight different digital tools and assistive technologies that make writing more expedient; although several videos reference or demonstrate how to use ChatGPT or OpenAI, most creators attempt to show viewers less widely discussed platforms and programs. As parallel forms of writing instruction, these how-tos tend to focus on quantity over quality and writing-as-product. However, they also showcase ways that AI can be helpful and generative for writers at all stages. Most notably they direct our attention to the fact that student writers consistently encounter writing- and essay- related content while scrolling TikTok.

Write “with me” Videos

Just as the how-to style videos target writers who view writing negatively and may have a habit of procrastinating writing assignments, write “with me” videos invite the viewer to join the creator as they work. These videos almost always include a variation of the phrase— “Write a 5- page case analysis w/ me” or “pull an all nighter with me while I write a 10- page essay.” One of the functions of this convention is to establish a peer-to-peer connection with the viewer, as they are brought along while the creator writes, experiences writer’s block, takes breaks, but ultimately completes their assignment in time. Similarly to the videos discussed above, these “with me” videos also center on writing under a deadline and thus emphasize the more concrete deliverables of their assignments. As such, the writing process is often made less visible in favor of frequent cuts and timestamps that show the progression toward a page or word count goal.

One of the most common effects of “with me” videos is to assure the viewer that procrastinating writing is part and parcel of the college experience. As the content creators grapple with and accept their own writing anxieties or deferring habits, they demonstrate for the viewer that it is possible to be both someone who struggles with writing and someone who can make progress on their papers. In this way, these videos suggest to students that they are not alone in their experiences; not only do other college students feel overwhelmed with writing or leave their papers until the day before they are due, but you can join a fellow student as they tackle the essay writing process. One popular video by @mercuryskid with over 6 million views follows them working on a 6000 word essay for which they have received several extensions, and although they don’t finish by the end of the video, their openness about the struggles they experience while writing may explain its appeal. 

Indeed, in several videos of this kind the creator centers their procrastination as a means of inviting the viewer in; often the video will include the word in the title, such as “write 2 essays due at 11:59 tonight with me because I am a chronic procrastinator” or “write the literature essay i procrastinated with me.” Because of this, establishing a peer connection with the hypothetical viewer is paramount; @itskamazing’s video in which she writes a five page paper in three hours ends with her telling the viewer, “If you’re in college, you’re doing great. Let’s just knock this semester out.” One video titled “Writing essays doesn’t need to be stressful” shows a college-aged creator explaining what tactics she uses for outlining and annotating research to make sure she feels prepared when she begins to write in earnest. Throughout, she directly hails the viewer as “you” and attempts to cultivate a sense of familiarity with the person on the other side of the screen; in some moments her advice feels like listening in on a one-sided Writing Center session.

A second aspect of these “with me” videos is an intense focus on the specifics of a writing task. The titles of these videos usually follow a formula that invites the viewer with the writer as they write X amount in X time, paralleling the structure of how-to-write videos. The emphasis here, due to the last-minute nature of the writing contexts, is always on speed: “write a 2000- word essay with me in 4.5 hours” or “Join me as I write a 10- page essay that is due at 11:59pm.” Since these videos often need to cover large swaths of time during which the creator is working, there are several jumps forward in time, sped up footage, and text stamps or zoom-ins that update the viewer on how many pages or words the writer has completed since the last update. Overall, this brand of content demonstrates how product-focused writers become when large amounts of writing are completed in a single setting. However, it also makes this experience seem more manageable to viewers, as we frequently see writers in videos take naps and breaks during these high-stakes writing sessions. Furthermore, although the writers complain and appear stressed throughout, these videos tend to close with the writer submitting their papers and celebrating their achievement.

Although these videos may send mixed messages to college students using TikTok who experience struggles with writing productivity, they can be helpful for viewers as they demonstrate the shared nature of these struggles and concerns. Despite the overarching emphasis on the finished product, the documentary-style of this content shows how writing can be a fraught process. For tutors or those removed from the experience of being in college, these videos also illuminate some of the reasons students procrastinate writing; we see creators juggling part-time jobs, other due dates, and family obligations. This genre of TikToks shows the power that social media platforms have due to the way they can amplify the shared experience of students.

To conclude, I gesture toward a few of the takeaways that #essay and #collegewriting TikTok might provide for those who work in Writing Centers, especially those who frequently encounter students who struggle with procrastination. First, because TikTok is a video-sharing platform, the content often shows a mixture of writing process and product. Despite a heavy emphasis in these videos on the finished product that a writer turns in to be graded, several videos necessarily also reveal the steps that go into writing, even marathon sessions the night before a paper is due. We primarily see forward progress but we also see false starts and deletions; we mostly see the writer once they have completed pre-writing tasks but we also see analyzing a prompt, outlining, and brainstorming. Additionally, this genre of TikTok is instructive in that it shows how often students wait until before a paper is due to begin and just how many writers are working solely to meet a deadline or deliverable. While as Writing Center workers we cannot do much to shift this mindset, we can make a more considerable effort to focus on time management and executive functioning skills in our sessions. Separating the essay writing process into manageable chunks or steps appears to be a skill that college students are already seeking to develop independently when they engage on social media, and Writing Centers are equipped to help students refine these habits. Finally, it is worth considering the potential for university Writing Center TikTok accounts. A brief survey of videos created by Writing Center staff reveals that they draw on similar themes and tend to emphasize product and deliverables—for example, a video titled “a passing essay grade” that shows someone going into the center and receiving an A+ on a paper. Instead, these accounts could create a space for Writing Centers to actively contribute to the discourse on college writing that currently occupies the app and create content that parallels a specific Writing Center or campus’s values.

Holly Berkowitz is the Coordinator of the Writing and Communication Center at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She recently received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she also worked at the UW-Madison Writing Center. Although she does not post her own content, she is an avid consumer of TikTok videos.

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — TikTok — The Impact of TikTok on Society and Culture

The Impact of Tiktok on Society and Culture

• Categories: Effects of Social Media TikTok

About this sample

Words: 507 |

Published: Sep 6, 2023

Words: 507 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Redefining entertainment, fostering creativity and expression, challenges to traditional media, social and cultural trends, conclusion: a cultural force.

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Our expert deal-hunting staff showcases the best price drops and discounts from reputable sellers daily. If you make a purchase using our links, CNET may earn a commission.

Don’t Snooze on These Extended Sleep Sales: Last Chance to Save on Sheet Sets, Comforters, Cooling Pillows and More

You can still save big on sleep accessories with these extended deals before they end.

• Carl R. Greer/Andrew D. Hepburn Award for Best Nonfiction Essay (Miami University, 2020)

Memorial Day is done and dusted, but you can still grab some great deals if you know where to look. Extended Memorial Day sales are still live, ranging from big  discounts on mattresses to buy-one-get-one-free deals on pillows. We've rounded up the best offers still available to help you upgrade your sleep, no matter what your budget is. We've combed through the best extended Memorial Day sleep deals, including deals from top mattress brands like Sleep Number and Casper .

Memorial Day sales are over, but that doesn't mean deals are. Head to CNET Deals for all the latest coverage.

Buying a new mattress isn't the only way to invest in your sleep. These are the top Memorial Day sleep deals that are still active today, including sheets, pillows, comforters, mattress toppers and more. I've tested bedding products from each of these brands, so I know what's worth adding to your mattress. This list will be updated periodically, but remember, these sales are winding down.

Best deals on sheet sets and bedding

Save at least 20% sitewide.

My favorite sheets come from Buffy. The brand offers Earth-friendly, plant-based, cruelty-free and temperature-regulating products. Save 20% or more on bedding, such as the Wiggle pillow and the linen duvet cover , across the site. Prices start at $33. 

I sleep on the  Breeze sheet set , and I love how breathable and lightweight the fabric feels. These sheets are a game-changer for hot sleepers like myself. Save $29 on a queen-size set right now. 

Sleep Number

Bogo deals on pillows and sheet sets + 20% off bedding + 30% off headboards and beds.

Sleep Number is having one of its largest sales of the year right now. In addition to its mattress deals -- like up to 50% off smart beds -- there are a few bedding sales. When you buy one pillow or sheet set, you get another 50% off. If you buy one pillow in the Ultimate shape, you get another for free. Select Sleep Number bedding is also 20% off with free shipping, and take 30% off headboards and beds. Prices start at $30.

This is one of the best bedding sales out there. I enjoy the True Temp pillows, and I slept with the True Temp blanket (20% off) on my bed for a year. I recommend these products for hot sleepers.

Boll and Branch

Save on bedding bundles.

Boll and Branch is a luxury bedding brand that is known for its sheets (which even made our best sheets list). The Memorial Day extra savings have ended, but they still have a ton of beautiful, bestselling bedding bundles on sale. Plus when you add more, like a comforter or blanket, the savings go up. 

Up to 50% off sitewide

If you're a hot sleeper, I recommend a cooling comforter, and the Evercool Cooling Comforter from Rest is by far my favorite. The winner from my best cooling comforters list, this comforter is currently 35% off -- saving you $70. 

Rest also offers bedding for kids, sheet sets, pillowcases and duvets, currently up to 50% off. You get free shipping with orders of $100 or more. Prices start at $59.

Best deals on pillows and other sleep accessories

Brooklyn bedding, 25% off sitewide.

Brooklyn Bedding is one of our favorite mattress brands here at CNET. It also happens to offer some great pillows (the Luxury Cooling Pillow won a spot on my list of the best cooling pillows ). The brand is offering 25% off sitewide with the promo code MEMORIAL25 .

In addition to mattresses and pillows, Brooklyn Bedding's accessories include mattress toppers, sheets, blankets, mattress protectors, foundations and adjustable bases. Prices start at $25.

BOGO 50% off Kapok pillows

Essentially everything at Layla is on sale over the Memorial Day holiday. In addition to sales on its memory foam and hybrid mattresses, if you buy one kapok pillow, you get another 50% off. It also made my best cooling pillows list. The Layla Down Alternative comforter made my best cooling comforters list.

On top of the kapok pillow sale, take $60 off memory foam toppers, $70 off bamboo sheets, $50 off down alternative comforters, $100 off weighted blankets, $30 off memory foam pillows, up to $600 off adjustable bases and $65 off mattress protectors. Prices start at $59.

Up to 30% off mattresses and 35% off bundles + 10% off sleep accessories

While Casper's mattresses have changed recently, its bedding and accessories have stayed the same. I have been impressed with its selection of pillows. For example, its Hybrid Pillow with Snow Technology won my best cooling pillows list. 

This Memorial Day, take 35% off sleep bundles such as the Comfy Bundle , which includes Original pillows and a percale sheet set. This deal saves you $94. Mattresses are also on sale for 30% off individually. Take 10% off sleep accessories. Prices start at $59.

Tuft and Needle

Save up to 20% on bedding and accessories.

Tuft and Needle offers affordable and quality mattresses, such as the Tuft and Needle Mint . Its bedding is also reasonably priced and holds up over the years -- at least it has for me. I have the Original Foam pillow on my bed, and it even made my list of the  best pillows for neck pain .

Save up to $700 off mattresses and 20% off Tuft and Needle bedding such as pillows, percale sheet sets, quilts, mattress toppers and more. Prices start at $35.

Birch is an eco-conscious brand that specializes in natural and organic mattresses. The same can be said for its bedding products. Birch has an eco-conscious pillow, pillowcase, mattress topper, mattress pad, mattress protectors, duvet insert and sheets. Birch is offering 25% off sitewide and two free Eco-Rest pillows with a mattress purchase. Prices start at $37.

If you aren't interested in a new bed, I recommend Birch's Organic Pillow . It won a place on my best cooling pillows list since the materials are naturally breathable. It's also supportive for back and side sleepers. The Birch Natural Down Duvet Insert also won a place on my best cooling comforters list.

Up to 60% off select pillows and sleep accessories

Bear is offering 35% off bedding. In addition to its mattresses, Bear has various accessories such as mattress protectors, mattress toppers, pillows, sheets and weighted blankets and a free $320 accessories bundle with a mattress purchase. Prices start at $30.

My favorite pillow from Bear is 60% off right now, saving you $117. This pillow made my best cooling pillows list. 

Nest Bedding

Up to 50% off bedding + bogo easy breather natural pillows.

Nest Bedding is another sustainable mattress brand. In addition to its beds (all named after birds), it offers pillows, mattress protectors, bedding sets, comforters, blankets, foundations and frames. Right now, if you buy one Easy Breather Natural Pillow, you get one free. Use coupon code EASYBOGO at checkout. A version of this pillow won a place on my best cooling pillows list. 

Also, save 50% on sheet sets, duvet sets and weighted blankets. Then save up to 50% on select comforters, mattress protectors, pillows, robes, toppers, foundations and frames. Prices start at $44.

Up to 70% off

Parachute's Memorial Day sale is over, but it still has a sale on many of its bedding products, with discounts up to 70%. Right now, you can save on the brand's popular sheets, duvet covers, pillow covers and more.

Silk and Snow

20% off sitewide + bogo 50% off eco soy pillows.

Silk and Snow is still offering 20% sitewide for its Memorial Day sale. This means you can save 20% on sheets, bed frames, pillows, quilts, duvets, weighted blankets, mattress protectors and mattress toppers. Also, Eco Soy pillows are buy one, get one 50% off (or free when you buy an organic mattress). Bedding bundles are also currently 32% off. Prices start at $28.

Its Down Alternative comforter made my best cooling comforters list. Save $24 on the full- or queen-size, all-season comforter.

Best deals on sleep and loungewear

Up to 55% off bedding + free shipping on orders of $50 or more.

Cozy Earth's Memorial Day sale is offering big savings on some of its most-loved products, including a flash sale for up to 55% off select bedding . I'm a huge fan of Cozy Earth bedding, and if its prices have kept you from trying its products out in the past, now is a great time to snag some deals. Currently, some items on sale include pajama sets. The brand's short sleeve bamboo pajama set is a bestseller and probably one of the most comfortable things I own. It's available in more than 10 colors and is currently available at 20% off . You can also browse hoodies, joggers, bath robes and lounge socks, which start at $36 .

Is Memorial Day a good time to buy sleep products?

Memorial Day is one of the biggest times for discounts on sleep products and mattresses. We see some of the most generous sales and bundles, as well as a long sales runway -- meaning deals will run for a few days after the actual holiday.

The average sale will be between 20% and 35%, although some brands might offer higher sales. If you've been researching the best sheet sets, comforters or other sleep products to refresh your space, Memorial Day season is truly one of the best times to buy.

How we choose the best Memorial Day deals

Our team of expert shoppers and deal hunters has worked for years helping buyers understand which major sales and deals are legitimately good and which are more routine. That includes Black Friday , Prime Day , Memorial Day and countless other shopping events. We've gotten good at weeding out scams and superficial deals so you see only the best offers from retailers all over.

We look for real discounts, quality reviews and remaining sale time when choosing the best sleep deals to share with you. We have a team of sleep experts who have tested over 200 mattresses and more bedding and sleep accessories than we can count.

• Real discounts mean exactly that. We look at the price history for that product to make sure no brands are inflating prices to make the discount seem more substantial than it is.
• Quality reviews and testing are important for any product, but especially for mattresses and sleep products. If you're unhappy the first time you use it, the discount isn't worthwhile. 
• Remaining sale time is a huge part of our vetting process. If a deal seems like it will only be around for a short while or will only be available for the remaining stock, we'll let you know upfront so you don't come back to the deal later only to be disappointed. 

Impulse Buys Under $25 That Actually Make Great Gifts

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CFA Sculpture Class: Wearable Cardboard Sculptures

Students in jeffrey nowlin’s foundation sculpture course create wearable art out of an unlikely material: cardboard.

The Art of Reuse

Jay Kimball

Sophie yarin, jackie ricciardi.

In the video above, Jeffrey Nowlin, a CFA lecturer of art, talks about how the students in his Foundation Sculpture class gain an appreciation for using found materials—in this case, cardboard—to create wearable sculptures. The project also teaches them a valuable lesson about creative reuse and sustainability.

One of the main takeaways of Jeffrey Nowlin’s undergraduate Foundation Sculpture class is that artists must make sure to cultivate a keen sense of observation. And one of the biggest observations Nowlin (CFA’10), a College of Fine Arts lecturer in art, has made during his years at BU is that there’s a lot of cardboard lying around. 

“We just accumulate so much of it on campus,” he says. “You could really make anything with it, because it’s a very flexible, versatile material.”

In 2020, when Nowlin introduced a cardboard sculpting project to the Foundation curriculum , it was not only intended to help students understand that they “can make sculpture from anything”—it also taught a few other valuable lessons, such as how to think creatively and economically about the materials they use.

Another lesson, he says, is “to highlight how much stuff we have as a society, and how much ends up going into our waste stream. Where are the opportunities to disrupt that stream of waste, and what can we do as individuals to reuse or rethink what we might have otherwise thrown out?”

In the years since he introduced the cardboard project, Nowlin’s students have sculpted reliefs, or three-dimensional pictorials, where sculpted figures remain attached to a two-dimensional background; they’ve also recreated everyday objects, like oversize cameras and telephones, as well as busts of heads.

To source their cardboard, the class is asked to put their budding observational skills to the test by keeping an eye out for promising materials around campus. They’ve also worked with BU’s Office of Sustainability to procure larger pieces from around the Charles River Campus. In March, the class went on a quick field trip down Comm Ave to the University’s mixed recycling sorting area at 120 Ashford Street to rescue carts of the stuff.

This past semester’s final project was a group effort: small teams of students were tasked with creating a wearable cardboard sculpture that conveys their social and political values. In their makeshift atelier, the fledgeling sculptors created pieces that range from highly ornamented couture, decked out in cardboard flowers and feathers, to more stark, direct works with overt messages of environmentalism.

In the course “there’s usually some kind of public art or monument project,” Nowlin says. “This semester, we [were] working with wearable art, because what’s more public-facing than something that we wear on our bodies?”

Nowlin’s own experience with upcycled unconventional material is extensive: in his gallery work , he frequently incorporates found objects—like bottle caps, jam jars, and pill bottles—into skeins of woven and embroidered fiber. His sculptures and those of his Foundation Sculpture students are meant to force the viewer to think beyond the boundaries of traditional sculpting materials like clay, wire, and marble, when they consider three-dimensional art.

“My hope is that students leave the class knowing that they have a ton of material to work with,” he says, “and that they can also be more mindful about their impact on the environment and carry that message forward in their art-making.”

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Jay Kimball Profile

Associate Editor, BU Today; Managing Editor Bostonia

Sophie Yarin is a BU Today associate editor and Bostonia managing editor. She graduated from Emerson College's journalism program and has experience in digital and print publications as a hybrid writer/editor. A lifelong fan of local art and music, she's constantly on the hunt for stories that shine light on Boston's unique creative communities. She lives in Jamaica Plain with her partner and their cats, Ringo and Xerxes, but she’s usually out getting iced coffee. Profile

Staff photojournalist

Jackie Ricciardi is a staff photojournalist at BU Today and Bostonia  magazine. She has worked as a staff photographer at newspapers that include the Augusta Chronicle  in Augusta, Ga., and at Seacoast Media Group in Portsmouth, N.H., where she was twice named New Hampshire Press Photographer of the Year. Profile

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The End of Merch

By Samuel Hine

It's Merch Week at GQ. See the 41 Most Iconic Pieces From the Golden Age of Merch .

Recently, I was reorganizing my dresser drawers when I discovered a thick layer of graphic T-shirts buried under my solid white standbys, undisturbed for many months. As I unfolded the creased garments, I found mementos I had bought as far back in 2017 at concerts, restaurants, and from random people on Instagram, all of which I wore for a while then all but forgot about. It was a stockpile from the years when merch occupied a special cultural position, when graphics were the language of style and fashion embraced souvenirs and novelty. I placed my minor collection into a plastic tub for long-term storage. I can’t imagine getting rid of any of it. But I also can’t really imagine wearing any of it anymore.

For about a decade starting in 2013, merch was everything in fashion. Definitions of “merch” are subjective, but a good place to start is any branded item of clothing or accessory that is distributed to promote something, like a New Yorker tote bag or a Beyoncé Renaissance tour tee. Whatever the subject matter, merch is a way to endorse things you admire, to establish yourself as a member of a fandom or subculture. Merch “signals people who are like-minded,” says the artist Andrew Kuo, an avid collector and longtime designer of merch. “It’s a way to come together,” he says.

There’s ordinary merch—and then there’s the merch that constitutes the one-time hottest trend in fashion. A Yankees hat is the former, a Yankees x MoMA ballcap the latter. The addition of an embroidered MoMA logo on the side of a Yankees hat turns an iconic accessory into a style statement and, more importantly, a vector of taste. The modern merch wave was driven by these collectible signifiers. For those with the merch bug, a hat that says your interests meet at the intersection of modern art and the Bronx Bombers hits much harder than any old team colors.

And as it turned out, there was no event too big or small, no spot too grand or unassuming to get its own merch. Your morning coffee spot stocks beanies, the MTA sells socks and baby onesies for every subway line, the New York Times sells Connections tees (you missed out on the NYT x Sacai gear in 2018), your job comes with a custom Stanley cup, your date notes that the restaurant lists a dad hat on the menu, and she’s wearing a Paris, Texas sweatshirt designed four decades after the Wim Wenders film’s release. The funny tweet you hearted earlier? It’s already splashed across a sweatshirt on Etsy.

We don’t need all of this stuff, but merch scratches a distinctly modern itch. “Not to get too philosophical about it, but we're all brands now,” says Alix Ross, who cofounded sprawling merch empire Online Ceramics with Elijah Funk in 2016. In the online age, Funk explains, merch offers a succinct and legible way for people to define themselves. “It’s such an easy way to communicate to strangers, Hey, we might have something to talk about. It is social collateral.” Merch, Funk says, is part of “a conversation that's happening actively everywhere all the time.”

The rise and fall of trends is a predictable cycle. Early adopters get a style popping, and by the time it has trickled down to the masses those on the bleeding edge of cool have long since moved on. Merch had a long, steady rise. It was cheap, plentiful , and often incredibly compelling. The low barrier to entry—all you needed to make your own line of tees was Photoshop and a screen-printing plug—meant there was always a new wave of exciting original graphic design, as well as a constant stream of new iterations of an increasingly gonzo aesthetic.

But the decline of merch was extraordinarily swift. By the time pandemic restrictions were all but a memory, we reentered the world with a specific kind of anxiety. In an increasingly chaotic cultural landscape, our merch was ourselves, how we fixed the boundaries of our identity. But at a certain point it felt like our niche combination of interests, or at least the heavily stylized graphic garments that advertised them, was simply one big trend that had gone way too far.

“When I was younger, if I saw another guy in a Rancid And Out Come the Wolves tee, I would be like, Holy shit, we can have a conversation about this ,” says Lawrence Schlossman of the menswear podcast Throwing Fits. The most fundamental dynamic behind the end of merch is this: We once got excited to see other people wearing our interests on our sleeves. And then it began to terrify us. “Today,” says Schlossman, “if you’re walking down the street and see somebody wearing Erewhon merch or something, you're not going to stop and talk to that person about whether or not they tried the Hailey Bieber smoothie. ”

It’s hard to avoid the feeling that all of the merch we’ve collected doesn’t add up to much more than a fuzzy bicoastal identity. When everything became merch, what did any of it mean? When you see other people wearing these specific but ubiquitous signifiers, continues Schlossman, “if anything, you’re thinking, Ugh, I thought I was so smug and special, and here's this other fucking idiot who also thinks they're so smug and special. ” Merch once made us feel unique. Then it made us realize that we’re not so unique after all.

The merch boom started with a “fart.”

That’s how the artist Wes Lang describes the amount of time it took for him and Virgil Abloh to come up with the designs for Kanye “Ye” West’s 2013 Yeezus tour merch . “It was like: This is it,” Lang recalls. “There was no time from the ask to do it until the night of the first show. It just happened.” Thus began the trend we know as merch.

Lang, who says he was “born in a graphic T-shirt,” was nonetheless an unlikely collaborator for an enormous rap tour. The Los Angeles painter’s previous merch credits included making Grateful Dead bootlegs for a small group of friends; he went official in 2012 when he used the spooky skull-and-roses iconography that permeates his eminently tattooable work to design a Grateful Dead box set (merch included). But Abloh, who at the time ran Ye’s Donda creative studio, was a visionary when it came to graphic tees. In 2010, he launched the DJ collective Been Trill alongside Matthew M. Williams and Heron Preston . Been Trill threw a great party, but is best remembered by the Goosebumps-core tees they passed out from behind the booth.

By the time the Yeezus tour kicked off in the fall of 2013, Abloh had launched the proto-fashion line Pyrex Vision and was well versed in remixing diverse design languages to sensational effect. Still, the tour merch, which juxtaposed a vampiric Yeezus logo with skeletons pulled from Lang’s canvases and the words “God Wants You,” was a rare kind of alchemy.

“It didn't just change high fashion,” says Lang of the Yeezus merch. “It changed everything.”

The Yeezus merch sparked a movement. “It was a mic drop from the first night of the first show,” Lang recalls. Fans were cleaning the merch stands, sure, but the real innovation came a few tour dates later, when the Yeezus gear hit PacSun. You no longer had to fight through the crowds at a concert to get your hands on it—you could just go to your local mall.

Lang was living in Hollywood at the time, and recalls a time when he would see people wearing Yeezus merch every time he left his house. The mass distribution didn’t render it uncool. In fact, it made it even more of a status symbol. “I got hit up by every person I ever met asking me for that shit,” Lang says. In fusing a luxury streetwear sensibility with a zeitgeisty musical project and Lang’s heady iconography, the Yeezus merch signaled that you were hip to the scene at the center of the rapidly converging worlds of art, music, and fashion. At the time, there was nothing cooler.

The merch arms race was now officially on. Tour merch was beginning to represent a much-needed revenue stream for artists in the digital age, but for those with ambitions in fashion, it could also function like their own clothing line : a platform for collaborations with designers, and an arm of their image-making campaigns.

Come spring of 2016, when Beyoncé dropped “Boycott Beyoncé” tees to hit back at the reaction to her “Formation” video, merch was a thriving subgenre of fashion itself. Many artists worked with rising designers, like when Justin Bieber collaborated with Fear of God’s Jerry Lorenz o (who also worked on Yeezus ) on a line of upscale Purpose tour gear that was sold at Barneys and VFiles that summer. When Rihanna released her punkish Anti merch at legendary boutique Colette in Paris at around the same time, merch was officially welcome on the luxury-retail racks.

Not to be outdone, the next month Ye—the alpha and omega of fashion merch —set up his own immersive retail experience , launching his Cali Thornhill DeWitt–designed The Life of Pablo merch into the stratosphere with a simultaneous 21-city pop-up shopping experience that Vogue compared to a “social experiment-cum-art project.”

It’s no coincidence that Ye, Abloh, and Lorenzo were three of the main instigators behind the streetwear revolution that turned the fashion industry upside down in the mid-2010s. At the time, there was a real celebration of subcultures in the air as hip-hop and skateboarding defined what was cool in the broader fashion world. The corollary was that everything was up for grabs. If merch is a way to find the like-minded, it’s also about excluding others. Which is now impossible, says Andrew Kuo. “If you can just go online and consume all of Black Flag's records in an hour, you have the agency to wear a Damaged T-shirt, or the logo, you know?”

In the free-for-all merch arena, menswear Tumblr guys wore Been Trill T-shirts and Abloh wore Grateful Dead bootlegs. Anyone could walk into Supreme and buy a Scarface or Nan Goldin tee—what used to look like poser behavior became a mark of good taste. To keep up with the shifting cultural understanding of cool, the layers of references in the merch system became extremely intricate, which made the whole scene even more subversive and interesting. Vetements put a yellow DHL deliveryman tee on the runway, a commentary on—what, exactly? Nobody could be sure, but it launched a spirited debate about the nature of luxury, not to mention countless memes.

By 2018, when Abloh—who redefined graphic T-shirts as luxury objects and preached appropriation as a design ethic—became the creative director of Louis Vuitton men’s, the abstract aesthetic of merch was a more important statement than the content itself.

In this new paradigm, merch was fashion. Few understood this better than Ross and Funk, who were the leading edge of a wave of young designers who built names for themselves with inventive merch during this period. The friends from Ohio didn’t intend to run a clothing business; they were Deadheads who wanted to be fine artists . Their first designs were bootlegs that they sold outside Dead & Company shows to pay their way along the band’s tours.

If there was a visual thread running through the golden age of merch, it stretched from Stanley “Mouse” Miller and Alton Kelley’s ’60s jam band posters to Wes Lang’s grinning skulls to Online Ceramics. Ross and Funk employed recognizable Dead iconography, but added their own totally imaginative spin. As Abloh once said, “Graphic tees are vibes.” Ross and Funk’s were the vibiest; their graphics felt like portals to a singular and strange dimension, a world narrated in gothic typeface and filled with dancing flowers, spooky scarecrows, and skeletons absolutely shredding the guitar. (Abloh was an Online Ceramics customer and fan.)

Ross and Funk quickly found themselves at the sharp end of a rapidly evolving industry. In 2017 they went official with Dead & Co, collaborating with bandleader John Mayer on a drop of tie-dye hoodies, and by 2018 they were partnering with culty film studio A24 on merch for the horror flick Hereditary , which spawned a cottage industry of official and unofficial movie merch. Jonah Hill and Emily Ratajkowski and Ty Dolla $ign bought Online Ceramics tie-dyes, and Zendaya wore an Online Ceramics x Fela Kuti hoodie in Euphoria . The pair worked with the edgy artist Jordan Wolfson and the estate of spiritual guru Ram Dass and everyone in between.

“Ever since we've discovered that every person wants merch, and people know that we’re the guys that do the merch, we’ve been in this super exploratory place of like, Oh, what can we make merch for now?” says Funk. “Which also opens up this complete can of worms, which is that anything can have merchandise. But it's made our job pretty entertaining.”

Despite Ross and Funk’s hyper-specific references, there is a remarkably universal appeal to the Online Ceramics aesthetic, which toes the line of sincerity and satire. One of their most popular tees depicts the earth inside a cartoon heart under the phrase “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE.” By the time of its release in 2020, the Yeezus edge had been replaced by a more nuanced and ironic message, one that spoke directly to the catastrophic moments we were living through. During the Trump years, as global events rushed toward a pandemic and social media became another vector of the chaos, it had become all the more urgent to align ourselves with the things that meant the most to us. But at a time when sincerity felt grossly trite, the best merch fed into our irony-pilled personas. Were you wearing a frog-covered Online Ceramics “Toadal Chaos” tee as a joke? Was the joke on you? Did it matter?

As merch became more ubiquitous, and its meaning more multilayered, it became increasingly impossible to understand who someone was based on what they wore. Cynthia Lu of Cactus Plant Flea Market has designed some of the most memorable merch of the past decade for artists like Pharrell, Ye, Kid Cudi, Playboi Carti, André 3000, and the Rolling Stones, and brands like Comme des Garçons, Denim Tears, Stüssy, and Nike. Lu’s bubbly designs, which resemble the “Life Is Good” universe on acid, have become a fixture of the modern streetwear landscape.

Last year, Erewhon released a line of charming Cactus Plant merch. This came six months after McDonald’s —perhaps the greatest spiritual enemy to Erewhon’s organic empire—released a line of its own Cactus Plant gear. Lu’s trippy aesthetic world is remarkably consistent, and all of her designs share a distinct graphic language. From afar, it would be hard to tell if you were a raw water enthusiast or on your way to pick up a McFlurry.

With the onset of COVID, merch became a lifeline for venues and restaurants—and maybe for ourselves. I bought a ball cap from a beloved local tapas restaurant. In a stark political moment, there was plenty of cool political merch to choose from. I bought a Black Lives Matter fundraiser T-shirt from Online Ceramics, and a T-shirt bearing an image of Bernie Sanders and the phrase “Rage Against the Machine” from the LA artist Sonya Sombrieul. I was mostly sitting at home, but boy did it feel like I was doing something. The pursuit of merch gave life meaning. I remember spending hours browsing the websites of merch-y fashion labels Beepy Bella, Denim Tears, Awake, Sky High Farms, Noah, Bianca Chandon and many other smallish fashion labels that I figured could use a little extra business while physical retail was all but closed.

An early sign that the merch trend was heading toward a cliff was the widespread adoption of preorders. Merch was once tied up with ideas of exclusivity. It was ephemeral and limited edition. You wanted to be one of a small hard-core group of fans to have earned those stripes. And then merch operators small and large embraced preorders and drop-shipping e-commerce models, meaning the only thing limiting merch quantity was how many people were willing to buy (and then wait several weeks for) a Bernie “Rage” tee, a Dark Brandon coffee mug, an Astroworld hoodie, or a Cactus Jack x McDonald’s pillow in the shape of a chicken nugget. The scarcity model, once the key to the intertwined rise of merch and streetwear, was becoming a thing of the past.

And the more merch we bought, the more merch flooded the market, and all the energy that had built the trend began to vanish. “It happened so fast,” says Andrew Kuo, “that I think it really zapped the endorphins from the movement.” A lot of the merch I amassed reflected something genuine about my life: I love going to the Odeon and bought a cap embroidered with the Tribeca boîte’s logo at the bar. My somewhat extensive Online Ceramics collection spoke to my love for the Grateful Dead and admiration for Ross and Funk’s work.

But the truth is merch was coming to resemble a physical manifestation of the algorithm. For every original and visually compelling merch design that perfectly aligns with my interests, there is a boatload of sweatshirts bearing a one-liner delivered by Gwyneth Paltrow in a Park City, Utah, courtroom , or coffee mugs emblazoned with Donald Trump’s mugshot, the cynical merch version of fast fashion. “Merch used to actually mean something,” says Lawrence Schlossman. “Now, it’s more of a broad-stroke signifier that represents some type of nonspecific message about what you care about. A billboard that says you live in New York or spent two weeks walking around Silver Lake, or whatever.”

Fashion isn’t always great at being a mirror of our times. But the luxury establishment knows a thing or two about how to create desire through exclusivity, and in the past couple of years the industry executed a hard pivot toward understatement and elegance . The graphic tees that had dominated fashion runways for years vanished, replaced by cashmere sweaters in sophisticated tones. People began saying things like “texture is the new logo.” The most lasting visual legacy of Succession is the quiet luxury sensibility of the show’s Loro Piana–clad plutocrats, not the Waystar Royco branded vests that were for sale in HBO’s online shop.

Of course, the death of merch might be news to the hundreds of people who camped out next to a six-lane highway in the rain to get their hands on Taylor Swift merch before an Eras Tour show last spring in Tampa . Some were there for literally days to secure an unexceptional (but purportedly rare) blue Eras Tour crewneck. Similar scenes played out in cities across the world. Swift’s US tour alone is estimated to have brought in $200 million in official merch sales, which nets out to just shy of $4 million per night, and doesn't even count the cash going to the bootleggers in the parking lot. As a category of consumer goods, merch is undoubtedly bigger than ever.

Still, I have yet to see a single Eras Tour merch design in the wilds of downtown NYC—not even as part of an ironic outfit collage in Dimes Square. Neither the biggest tour in human history nor Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour launched an enduring fashion moment offstage. There is no “Boycott Beyoncé” T-shirt of 2024. And even if there was, it might not be clear which side you were actually on.

Around when I started writing this essay, I received a delivery at the office. It was a gift from the fashion brand Loewe. Inside, I found the T-shirt of the moment if there ever was one: a luxury replica of the “I Told Ya” tee worn in Challengers by Josh O’Connor and Zendaya. Loewe’s buzzy creative director, Jonathan Anderson , did the film’s costumes, and based the T-shirt off one that JFK Jr. wore in the ’80s.

As Andrew Kuo told me, at some point the merch craze “is going to get fired back up.” Kuo, who makes bootleg artist merch under the brand name Shrits , is a merch optimist. “All it takes,” he says, “is one or two tees. All we need is something to inspire us again.”

If the merch decade was launched by Yeezus , couldn’t it be revived by Challengers ? I put the tee at the top of my dresser drawer. Whatever effect it might have on the wider merch world, it had a profound effect on me. For the first time in recent memory, I couldn’t wait to wear a T-shirt that tied together a bunch of threads I found meaningful: menswear history, Anderson’s work, and the sweaty tennis ménage à trois movie that makes me want to wear plaid shorts all summer. The feeling didn’t last long. The first time I threw mine on, I was barely out of my front door when I saw another guy wearing one just like it.

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How a Self-Published Book Broke ‘All the Rules’ and Became a Best Seller

Keila Shaheen’s “The Shadow Work Journal” shows how radically book sales and marketing have been changed by TikTok.

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By Alexandra Alter

Last summer, a book changed Kohn Glay’s life.

A TikTok ad had steered him to “The Shadow Work Journal,” a slim workbook that directs readers to explore hidden parts of their unconscious — their shadow selves, in the book’s vernacular. He ordered a copy, and soon was back on TikTok, fervently recommending it to his followers.

“If you’re on your spiritual journey, you absolutely need to go and get you one of these,” he says in the video , urging viewers to buy the book in the TikTok store.

The video went viral, eventually drawing more than 58 million views. Glay, who is 43 and lives in Baltimore, began holding online classes to guide people through the journal. Over the next few months, people who watched his videos bought more than 40,000 copies of the book on TikTok, and Glay earned more than $150,000 in commissions. By December, he had quit his job as a sales representative for Home Depot and now runs his own business, “Happy Healin,” which offers subscribers spiritual mentorship and coaching through Zoom sessions.

Glay is part of the army of TikTok influencers who helped turn “The Shadow Work Journal” into a mega best seller. He’s so closely associated with the book that people often assume he wrote it. “It became a daily thing to tell people I’m not the author,” he said.

@girldadsos For those on a spiritual Journey #theshadowworkjournal #shadowwork #spiritualhealing #spiritualawakening #healingjourney #healingtiktok #healing #spiritualtiktok #spirituality #emotionalhealing ♬ original sound - GIRL_DAD

The real creator of “The Shadow Work Journal” is Keila Shaheen, a 25-year-old writer from Texas with a background in marketing who self-published the book in 2021, and has since been crowned “the self-help queen of TikTok .”

After the journal blew up on TikTok, Shaheen went on to sell more than a million copies. Most of those — nearly 700,000 copies — were sold through the TikTok shop, and were marketed relentlessly by passionate influencers like Glay, who earn a 15 percent commission on each sale from Zenfulnote, Shaheen’s company.

Shaheen’s unusual path to bestsellerdom shows how radically book marketing and sales have been changed by TikTok. Over the past few years, publishers have frantically rushed to harness the power of the platform as viral videos and reviews by influencers have propelled sales for blockbuster authors like Colleen Hoover, Emily Henry and Sarah J. Maas.

But Shaheen is perhaps the first self-published nonfiction author to break out in a big way on the platform, a feat she accomplished by fully harnessing its potential not just for marketing, but for direct sales.

Her stunning trajectory has left many authors and publishers wondering whether that formula can be replicated, and how publishers can navigate the new online retail ecosystem — a fast moving, algorithm-driven marketplace that threatens to cut them out entirely.

“To think that she achieved a million copies sold in the United States alone, without a publisher, without any international expansion, without brick and mortar support, it breaks all the rules of what makes a best seller,” said Albert Lee, a literary agent with United Talent Agency, which represents Shaheen.

Others wonder just how much bigger Shaheen’s self-help empire can get. Earlier this year, Shaheen signed a five-book deal with Simon & Schuster, after months of being courted by big publishing houses.

Simon & Schuster won her over with an unusual arrangement: a seven-figure advance, plus a 50-50 profit share. Publishers typically give authors an advance and then a 15 percent cut of royalties if they earn back the advance. The deal included a new, expanded edition of “The Shadow Work Journal,” which was released in late April, with a first printing of 100,000 copies, plus two new books by Shaheen.

“We really wanted to show Keila that we had a long-term vision,” said Michelle Herrera Mulligan, the vice president and associate publisher of Primero Sueño Press/Atria, the Simon & Schuster imprint that signed Shaheen. “There is still a huge untapped audience for this book.”

In person, Shaheen comes across as soft-spoken and reserved, not as a hyper-driven entrepreneur or a charismatic wellness guru.

During an interview in late April at a restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, Shaheen seemed slightly stunned by the flood of attention, and money, that her book has generated. The next day, she appeared on “Good Morning America” to promote the new edition of “The Shadow Work Journal,” then had meetings at her publisher and literary agent’s offices.

Shaheen, who has suffered from acute social anxiety in the past, was surprised by how calm she felt, she said.

“I’m a huge introvert, so that was a testament to how much I’ve grown,” she said.

Shaheen first encountered the idea of shadow work in 2021, when she was feeling anxious and adrift in the wake of the pandemic. After graduating from Texas A&M in 2020 with a degree in business and psychology, she found work in online retail and marketing — including a stint as a creative strategist for TikTok. Coming out of the isolation of Covid, Shaheen felt disconnected, and found working in a corporate environment overwhelming.

One day, while searching online for therapeutic journaling prompts, she came across references to the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s idea of the shadow self, which holds that parts of our unconscious can mask hidden fears and desires. She learned about a practice called shadow work, a somewhat fringe field that draws on Jung’s ideas to guide people as they interrogate their shadow selves, with the goal of accepting parts of themselves that make them feel guilty, ashamed or afraid.

Shaheen started posting videos on Instagram and TikTok about shadow work exercises she was trying, and began getting messages from viewers asking for a printed guide. So in the fall of 2021, she self-published the journal, and began selling copies for $19.99.

The first edition — which didn’t even have Shaheen’s name on the cover — was a slim paperback that guided readers through shadow work with interactive exercises, including Mad Lib-style fill-in-the-blanks (“As a child, I was told not to ___, this made me very ___”), inner child affirmations (“I am protected”) and journaling prompts (“What is your biggest fear in life?”).

Sales were slow at first. Then, in late 2022, TikTok expanded into online retail. The platform started selling products directly through the app, and created an affiliate program, which allowed influencers to post videos about products in the store and earn a commission. Once Shaheen started selling the journal through TikTok, requests came pouring in from influencers who wanted free copies in exchange for video promotion.

TikTok was soon flooded with emotional videos of users filling out the journal’s pages; some gushed that the journal is cheaper than therapy .

The journal also drew some skepticism. Some on social media attacked shadow work as anti-Christian and even demonic. Others said it failed to live up to the hype, or complained that their feeds seemed to be wallpapered with ads for the journal.

Still others questioned Shaheen’s credentials as a mental health guide. Shaheen — who is described in her author bio as “a certified sound healer and behavioral therapy practitioner” — completed an online training course in cognitive-behavioral therapy, but is not a licensed therapist.

Some experts in Jungian psychology worry that “The Shadow Work Journal” oversimplifies Jung’s ideas.

“My concern about it is that the shadow is really complex,” said Connie Zweig, a retired psychotherapist who has published several books on shadow work. “It can be risky to go exploring in the dark without guidance, without expertise.”

Shaheen said that she always intended the journal to be an introduction to shadow work, not a comprehensive guide.

“The journal is meant to be a bridge,” she said. “I wouldn’t say that it’s created to replace therapy.”

By September, the book hit No. 1 on Amazon. In October, Shaheen met with two agents from United Talent Agency, Rebecca Gradinger and Albert Lee. The agency could help her build an international audience and get her book in physical stores, they told her.

Shaheen signed with them about a week before the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest fair for international rights in publishing, and the agency then sold translation rights to “The Shadow Work Journal” in 27 countries, Lee said.

Shaheen was still reluctant to hand over U.S. rights to “The Shadow Work Journal.” She was already a best seller, and “the initial offers weren’t compelling,” she said. Her agents agreed that a typical publishing deal might not benefit her.

“Keila’s at the vanguard of unlocking this entirely new market and ecosystem,” Lee said. “It became very obvious that in traditional publishing, we were all well behind what Keila was doing.”

Shaheen was swayed by Primero Sueño’s profit-splitting offer, which came with a plan to publish and market Spanish-language editions. Shaheen, whose father is from Puerto Rico and whose mother is from Brazil, saw the potential to expand her reach among Spanish speakers.

It’s still unclear whether “The Shadow Work Journal” will catch on with a wider demographic, or if it owes its popularity to a viral trend that has waned. So far, the new edition has sold nearly 18,000 copies, according to Circana Bookscan — a healthy amount, but hardly a hit.

Herrera Mulligan, Primero Sueño’s publisher, said “The Shadow Work Journal” is just the beginning: “We really want her to be the new empress of self-help.”

Primero Sueño is now aiming to saturate the self-help market with Shaheen’s books, and has set an aggressive publishing schedule, releasing two more of Shaheen’s self-published titles this year — one in July, another in October. The titles, along with her poetry collection, are big on TikTok and have sold around 100,000 copies collectively on the platform.

She is also working on two new books: one about the origins and applications of shadow work and another titled “The Light Work Journal,” which prompts readers to reflect on and enhance their strengths.

And Shaheen, no longer held back by social anxiety, seems ready to embrace the spotlight. Unlike the first edition of “The Shadow Work Journal,” the new edition features her name in large font — under a banner that says “more than 1 million copies sold.”

Alexandra Alter writes about books, publishing and the literary world for The Times. More about Alexandra Alter

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