An 81-year-old man who began posting online videos to promote his self-published novel has garnered millions of views, sharing eight decades of life advice.
From Dentist to BookTok Sensation
Ian Smith, from Snettisham in Norfolk, posts a video twice a day to his 1.5 million followers on BookTok, a sub-community of TikTok dedicated to book lovers.
His wife encouraged him to start posting, and Smith recounted feeling like a “red rag to a bull” after she suggested he would never gain 100 followers.
“I thought, I’ll show you,” he joked.
“I said ‘Look if I can get 100, I can get 1,000. If I can get 1,000, I can get 100,000’ — never really thinking that, and I just began to get people who began to follow me.”
Before venturing into the social media world, Smith worked as a dentist for over 50 years, retiring in 2022.
He started writing a novel, and despite sending it to hundreds of agents, he received only three responses. Instead of being discouraged, he self-published his book and promoted it on BookTok.
A Global Audience for Positivity
For the past 18 months, he has been posting regularly on the platform with messages of motivation and positivity. He described it as “staggering” that he had not received any negative responses or comments.
Speaking to BBC Look East, he shared, “It’s very humbling.”
“You think, here’s this 81-year-old sitting talking to a tiny little telephone and response has come from all over the world.”
“I do a live session on a Thursday at eight o’clock, and you have people popping up from Brazil — all over the world, and it’s really staggering.”
His most viewed video has been seen more than 59 million times, with people in their 20s forming the largest age bracket among his fans.
“Eighty-one years old, and you don’t actually think you’ll be doing this kind of thing at all,” he reflected.
“As I’ve grown, my audience has grown.”
#TikToker #BookTok #IanSmith #LifeAdvice #SocialMediaSuccess #ElderlyInfluencer #Motivation #SelfPublished #GlobalAudience #Inspiration
Leave a Reply