The slow creep of influencer publishing – the rise of social media stars being handed fat advances and big marketing budgets for memoirs, self-help books and novels – is accelerating. Since the late 2010s, bestseller lists have been riddled with social media-famous-first personalities, from Chidera Eggerue’s What a Time to Be Alone to Florence Given’s Girlcrush to Stacey Solomon’s Tap to Tidy. Major publishers such as Penguin and Hachette now have dedicated influencer programmes, giving select TikTok book reviewers early access to proofs and working with them directly on promotion; literary agencies have been created to cater to influencer authors.
The popularity of these books, coupled with social media’s ability to make certain books fly, have led to an increasingly entangled relationship between influencers and publishers – one they both claim is good for books, bringing new audiences to reading for the first time. Last week, Ebury announced that it will be partnering with the influencer and podcaster Steven Bartlett to create a brand-new imprint, Flight Books, which Bartlett will lead. The imprint will publish books pulled from guests on Bartlett’s podcast, The Diary of a CEO, in which he interviews popular business figures and influencers – such as the hard-right guru Jordan Peterson, the Love Island finalist Molly-Mae Hague, and fellow podcaster Jay Shetty – about their lives and businesses. The imprint’s first book, to launch in October, will be from the ultra-marathon runner Russ Cook (known by his moniker the “Hardest Geezer”), which will reflect on his recent charity runs in Hardest Geezer: Becoming the First Person to Run the Entire Length of Africa. (The second has been announced too, from the Married at First Sight UK and Celebs Go Dating presenter Paul C Brunson). Ebury said it would be adopting an “AI-powered, data-first, growth-focused” strategy to enable Flight Books’s “great authors and their books to get the credit and reach they deserve”.
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