Meet Shanti Hershenson

Shanti Hershenson’s first two novellas were published when she was in the sixth grade, although her writing journey started long before then. Ever since she could hold a pencil, marker, or crayon, she was creating stories. They started from pictures, mere scribbles, and eventually turned into captivating tales.

She lives in California with her parents, sister, and furry friends. Besides writing, she enjoys skateboarding, fencing, being a regular teenager, and, of course, reading.

She writes in a variety of genres, including Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Contemporary, although she mostly sticks to Sci-Fi

As an anti-bullying advocate, you may find her volunteering or performing powerful poetry at open mic nights.

​Born on October 15, 2007, Shanti is eighteen years old and a freshman at Bryn Mawr College, where she studies Creative Writing.

Full Transcript.

Post Every Other Day, Sell More Books: The 18-Year-Old's TikTok System for Authors with Shanti Hershenson

Laura Williams: [00:00:00] Most writers treat TikTok like a necessary evil. Post something, hope it sticks, feel vaguely embarrassed the whole time. But the ones actually winning aren't the best dancers or editors — they're the ones who stopped treating it like marketing and started treating it like a conversation. Today's guest, Shanti Hershenson, isn't a social media strategist.

Laura Williams: She's an eighteen-year-old sci-fi author who skateboards, fences, and figured out TikTok because she wanted readers, not followers. The result is a genuine audience that actually buys books, built between homework and open mic nights. Shanti, thank you so much for joining me.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:00:38] Thank you so much for having

Laura Williams: [00:00:39] me. I think this is going to be a really valuable conversation.

Laura Williams: My listeners, I'm sure, would appreciate any help they can get in understanding how TikTok works and how they can use it in their writing business. You've built a really cool, authentic presence online. When you're making TikToks, do you see it as a place to sell your books, or more as a creative outlet where you're just hanging out and showing readers who you are?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:01:06] Ooh, good question. It's absolutely both at the same time. As I'm posting, I'm thinking, does this video make my book look interesting and engaging, or does it shape my career in a way that others can connect and interact with? But at the same time, it's absolutely something I do because, while it can feel like a chore, it can also be really fun.

Shanti Hershenson: A lot of the time I'm using songs I really like. I'm creating content that, if I were a reader, I'd enjoy myself. So I'm very focused on the business side of trying to sell my books and build my career, but I also don't think I can do that authentically without creating content I genuinely enjoy, that reflects my own artistic expression.

Laura Williams: [00:01:48] That's a smart way to put it. It makes everything a lot easier when you're building content straight from the heart like that. So how on earth do you find the [00:02:00] balance between keeping up with content, going to school, finding the headspace to sit down and write, getting your books out there, and everything else you do?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:02:12] It's definitely something I've gotten much better at, compared to middle school, when I'd be doing all my writing and marketing and suddenly realize I had thirty missing school assignments. For me now, it's all about consistency — I usually post every other day.

Shanti Hershenson: I used to post every single day, but school got in the way of that. I've found posting every other day works just as well. From there, I section off my time — I'll tell myself, okay, I need to do my writing for the day, and I need to finish this homework assignment, and then after that I'll do my TikTok.

Shanti Hershenson: If I'm feeling more motivated, making a TikTok can almost feel like a fun little break, so sometimes I'll do that first and then move to writing. I make to-do lists, so I always know exactly what I need to get done that day and [00:03:00] what's non-negotiable versus what can wait, and I just work through it.

Laura Williams: [00:03:04] Have you graduated high school now? Was this your final year?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:03:09] It was — I graduated last month.

Laura Williams: [00:03:10] Oh, congratulations, what a great feeling. So —

Shanti Hershenson: [00:03:14] Thank you.

Laura Williams: [00:03:14] — you're headed to Bryn Mawr, right? That'll be wonderful. What are you planning on studying?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:03:22] I'm going to study creative writing.

Laura Williams: [00:03:24] That's wonderful — I was really hoping that's the answer you'd give, I was worried you'd say something like finance.

Laura Williams: I have no plan B for that one.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:03:33] No.

Laura Williams: [00:03:34] Well, you've made this decision, and this progress, so early in your life — it's wonderful that you're gaining this experience and knowledge as you grow into it, and can apply it not just in school but in running your business. I give you a lot of credit for that. Was there a specific strategy that really worked for you on TikTok? [00:04:00]

Shanti Hershenson: [00:04:01] I got a little lucky with TikTok — I created my account in 2021, right when BookTok was at its peak. At the same time, since it was during the pandemic, a lot of other teenagers were getting into writing too. I'd already written a few books, and I joined that community, kind of shyly at first, just trying to put my work out there. Through that, I built a community of readers who also happened to be writers.

Shanti Hershenson: As for specific video strategies, I've stuck with roughly the same format, though I try to adapt my style depending on what's trending. But for the most part, a standard Shanti Hershenson TikTok opens with a hook — something like, ‘Hi, I'm eighteen years old, and I'm about to publish this book,' my twenty-third, say — and then I'll share something about it. Maybe the characters, a description, some fast-moving images that give you the vibe of the book.

Shanti Hershenson: Maybe I'll talk about [00:05:00] how I got the idea. It's really about engaging readers with small pieces of the book, and small pieces of my process, but keeping the videos quick — the kind you can rewatch a few times, nothing that takes too long. I've also started doing slideshows, where people can flip through images at their own pace.

Shanti Hershenson: I find both formats really useful — for sharing about the book, but also for sharing about myself, because as much as I'm selling individual books, I'm also selling my brand as an author.

Laura Williams: [00:05:27] I watch a lot of TikTok — got to where I was watching too much for a while there, had to pull back a little. It's so addicting.

Laura Williams: But I do watch a lot, and I love seeing the different styles of content, the creativity, how people present whatever they're doing — an interview, a book, something comedic. I just love seeing all the different approaches and thinking about how they could be used. It's really a great place to learn how [00:06:00] to make content, just spending time scrolling through it.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:06:05] Oh yeah, for sure.

Laura Williams: [00:06:06] Do you have —

Laura Williams: you've got a pretty good following there, don't you?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:06:09] I do.

Laura Williams: [00:06:09] What's your following at?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:06:12] I believe it's about seventy-five thousand followers now.

Laura Williams: [00:06:15] Wow, that's amazing, that's huge. I hope you're monetizing that. Have you thought about branching into any other types of content?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:06:27] Yes and no. For the most part I try to keep it very specific to my writing, because that's what people follow me for.

Shanti Hershenson: Every now and then I'll post little videos of my cats, things like that. But no, for the most part I really stick to writing, publishing, that kind of thing. I'll also occasionally talk about books I really love, because as much as I'm a writer, I'm also a reader, and honestly an avid fangirl — I think showing little snippets of my life outside of writing helps, because it reminds people I'm human, [00:07:00] and I think that's sometimes easy to forget on TikTok.

Laura Williams: [00:07:02] Yeah, but it also builds that connection — it starts to feel like you're making a friend, rather than just watching someone's videos. My daughter watches TikTok too, and we have creators we absolutely love, and it's funny, we'll be eating dinner and one of us will say, ‘Did you see what so-and-so posted?'

Laura Williams: It's the same with me and my mom, actually. It makes for good conversation. So was there anything you tried early on that you'd tell other creators to just skip, or that you figured out a better way to do?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:07:38] I actually had a couple of failed TikTok accounts, and I'm trying to remember exactly what didn't work about them.

Shanti Hershenson: I think one issue with my earlier attempts, and even my early videos on the Shanti Writes account, was that I wasn't really telling people anything about who I was. I'd make [00:08:00] videos like, these characters in my books deserve better, but you had no idea who I was or what the books even were.

Shanti Hershenson: I was making videos almost assuming people would already know these characters and their stories. As fun as that content is once you have a following and everyone already knows your books, when you're thirteen years old and only a handful of people have read what you've published, that kind of content is fun for you, but not necessarily for your audience.

Laura Williams: [00:08:30] Are your parents writers?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:08:33] They're not.

Laura Williams: [00:08:34] That's interesting. Do they help with the business side of your writing?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:08:41] I like to joke that my parents are my Uber drivers — my dad and my mom will drive me to events. But other than that, pretty much everything at this point I manage entirely myself.

Shanti Hershenson: I have to actually tell them what's going on, otherwise they'd have no idea.

Laura Williams: [00:08:58] Right.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:08:58] I'm very grateful to [00:09:00] my parents for, very early on, giving me the money to hire my first cover designer and my first editor, back when I had no royalties and no idea

Laura Williams: [00:09:08] Oh, absolutely —

Shanti Hershenson: [00:09:09] how I was going to make any of this work.

Laura Williams: [00:09:10] You write across so many different lanes — I saw everything from science fiction to deep, emotional poetry. Do your followers jump between genres with you, or do you feel like you have to reintroduce yourself every time you release something outside your main lane?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:09:33] I have a core group of readers who absolutely jump from book to book, no matter what I write.

Shanti Hershenson: I've got a lot of science fiction, these wild concepts, immortal beings, aliens — and then those same readers will go pick up my novel-in-verse about sharks, or my children's book about a shy hermit crab, or even this eight-hundred-page contemporary young adult novel about [00:10:00] high school drama.

Shanti Hershenson: It's really cool to see, because those readers know me, and they're willing to take a chance on things they might not normally gravitate toward.

Laura Williams: [00:10:08] Is your average reader on the younger side — high-school age, or —

Shanti Hershenson: [00:10:16] Yes and no. I try to keep track of my readership and audience, and it can be tricky, because I do have a lot of teenage readers who interact with me on social media, who I talk to regularly — but I also have a lot of older readers.

Shanti Hershenson: A lot of adult readers, some around my parents' age or older. And that's really cool to see, because even though I'd say my ideal reader is a young adult, I have this wide variety of people who enjoy my work, and I always try to pay attention to that and cater to them too, in different ways.

Laura Williams: [00:10:48] There's a big crossover between young adult and older readers. I write fantasy fiction myself, so I see that a lot — older readers picking up younger-skewing work, [00:11:00] which is no problem at all, it just means the primary market they're aiming for skews younger. Some of the YA books I've read have been absolutely excellent.

Laura Williams: I think it's really cool that you're able to keep an audience with you across all these different genres. That's not easy to pull off — it really isn't.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:11:24] Yes.

Laura Williams: [00:11:25] So if you were sitting down with a writer who's totally overwhelmed by the idea of becoming a content creator just to get their work out there, what would you tell them to help lower that nervousness and pressure?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:11:41] As much as it can feel like this really intense, robotic thing you have to do every single day, it's actually pretty fun once you get into it — you just don't have that routine, or that intricate understanding of how social media works, on day one. [00:12:00] Ultimately the easiest way to start is to experiment — put out content you think is interesting.

Shanti Hershenson: Even if you don't know whether people will engage with it, there's really only one way to find out. And you do have time — I know it doesn't feel that way, I know there's so much pressure to go sell a million books right away. But you have time to experiment, and for me, as both a writer and a marketer, experimenting has been the best way I've found to actually sell books.

Laura Williams: [00:12:26] Yes, I understand that completely — especially since trends change so fast, the platforms themselves change so fast, people's interests change so fast, that experimenting is really the only way to stay relevant. It helps you feel out those shifts in a fresh way, instead of just doing the same thing over and over.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:12:49] Oh, absolutely.

Laura Williams: [00:12:49] And I say that, but I'm completely guilty of doing the same thing over and over myself, mostly because I don't have time to do everything I'd like to. My TikToks are [00:13:00] just an image of the guest with the episode title, a waveform, and audio — that's just how I put them out.

Laura Williams: They've done fine, for what I'm doing and how long I've been running this podcast, which at the point we're recording this is only three months in. I'm still getting around two hundred views, which isn't bad, I can't complain. Maybe I'll get up there someday, but content like yours is absolutely more suited to building a much larger following, because of the energy and creativity behind it, which you really do bring.

Laura Williams: You do an excellent job of it.

Shanti Hershenson: Thank you.

Laura Williams: No problem. So what's been the biggest ‘wait, this [00:14:00] is actually part of the job' moment — something that surprised you as you went from writing to actually trying to sell your books? The one thing where you thought, do I really have to do this?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:14:13] When I first started, I was thirteen — that's when I made my first TikTok account. Honestly, at first I was kind of in a countercultural mindset about it, thinking all these trends were kind of silly, I don't want to do this,

Shanti Hershenson: like I was somehow too good for TikTok. One thing I've had to learn, and actually come to love, is the trends themselves. It's really cool when I see some completely silly, random trend and figure out how to tie it back into my books, my characters, or myself.

Shanti Hershenson: I've genuinely learned that I like TikTok. I like making these silly videos, I like engaging with what's trending, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Laura Williams: [00:14:57] One of my favorites was the Hamilton [00:15:00] trend, where everyone dressed up. I thought that was hilarious — not only is it one of my favorite productions ever, but I loved how people took that idea completely out of the box, dressing as Hamilton and singing in these really odd situations.

Laura Williams: I loved it so much. So, did you struggle with teachers understanding what you do, or did you just keep it separate from school? I could understand keeping it separate, but I'm curious how you handled that.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:15:37] I've attended a handful of different schools over the years, so it's really depended on where I was at the time and what was going on there.

Shanti Hershenson: I do like sharing my writing with teachers — it's especially helpful because there are times I have to miss school for writing-related events. Having them understand that this is genuinely my career has been really helpful. [00:16:00] On the other hand, I've absolutely had teachers who didn't get it, who thought it was silly, who got a little upset with me for writing during class, or even after I'd already finished my assigned work.

Laura Williams: [00:16:13] Right.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:16:13] But that's just part of the experience, I think.

Laura Williams: [00:16:17] Yeah, it's interesting — I asked that because it's part of the experience I wanted to highlight, since even adults with regular jobs run into the same thing. You're on your break writing, and maybe your coworkers don't quite understand that you're a writer.

Laura Williams: I don't know if I'd say people pick on you exactly, maybe it's some kind of jealousy, I'm not sure, but sometimes people look down on it a little. I've been lucky not to run into too much of that myself, but I know it exists, I've seen it. It's so much easier when you're part of a community, though, and I love that you've built one that's so supportive of you, [00:17:00] both online and offline.

Laura Williams: That's really cool.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:17:04] Yeah.

Laura Williams: [00:17:05] That's really cool, and I know it took a lot of work. So tell me about your writing, your books — what are you working on now, and what's been most successful for you? Let's talk about that for a bit.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:17:18] As we've touched on, I write a lot of young adult books. I started in science fiction, and I still write a lot of it.

Shanti Hershenson: I really love stories that bridge the fantastical with real life, so I've done a lot of dystopian work, some sci-fi mystery, time travel. At the same time, I have a real soft spot for contemporary young adult books, ones that are very realistic and track the experiences of adolescents in our society, and touch on distressing social issues that don't get talked about enough.

Shanti Hershenson: Think books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, or Speak — those are some of my [00:18:00] all-time favorite books. On the other hand, I'm also interested in more experimental work, things that blur the line between what's considered standard for fiction today. So I'm really all over the place. I even have a children's book.

Laura Williams: [00:18:16] I was actually curious about that. So where do you see yourself — say, five years from now, you'd be twenty-four, just finishing college. What would you want to be doing then?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:18:28] I'm so excited for college, to have the chance to expand my career somewhere new, to have the resources of a great university, and to explore the surrounding cities.

Shanti Hershenson: I'm going to school in Philadelphia, so I feel like I've basically got the whole Eastern Seaboard to explore. But five years out, that'll be after college — I'm interested in pursuing an MFA in creative writing. Whether that ends up being poetry or fiction, I'm not sure yet, but it seems really exciting to take this as far as [00:19:00] possible, to keep studying, to keep improving.

Shanti Hershenson: I was about to say, to keep improving until I literally can't improve anymore — but really, you can always keep improving.

Laura Williams: [00:19:09] That's a really good goal, because it'll help you start solidifying your business once you're out of school, having that credential behind you. It'll open up all kinds of opportunities to teach and speak.

Laura Williams: It's a good move on your part, really.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:19:26] Thank you.

Laura Williams: [00:19:27] I'm excited for you. So once you're out of school, do you see yourself running your writing business full-time, or would you consider going into one of the big publishing houses as an editor, or something along those lines?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:19:44] I don't think I could go into the publishing industry as a career, because I'm too dedicated to being on the other side of it.

Shanti Hershenson: That said, I am interested in being traditionally published at some point. As much as I love self-publishing and doing everything myself, [00:20:00] it would be really nice to have a whole team of professionals around me, championing my work. I love writing novels, that's my main thing, but I'd also love to branch into other kinds of writing, and I think studying creative writing is a good way into that — maybe writing a play or two, or doing some work for film or TV.

Shanti Hershenson: The way I see it, I'd rather write the books and have those adapted, than actually work inside a writers' room myself.

Laura Williams: [00:20:26] No, I get that — but you'll find that things come to you when you're ready for them. That's something I firmly believe, and something I've seen play out in my own life — you'll never quite know where an opportunity is going to come from.

Laura Williams: You'll plan for everything, but the real opportunity, the one that's actually perfect for you, might turn out to be something completely different than what you had in mind. It always seems to come through some person or circumstance, and you just have to stay open to it. But you're already setting yourself up to find those opportunities. I have no doubt you're going to keep [00:21:00] doing great things.

Laura Williams: I'll definitely be watching your progress. I love seeing people who are this passionate about what they do — whatever it happens to be, it doesn't have to be writing, just something they eat, sleep, and breathe. And I know you're one of those people.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:21:18] Yeah —

Laura Williams: [00:21:18] Do you have local friends who got into writing that you're mentoring, or maybe not mentoring so much as just supporting?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:21:31] I have a handful of friends who write, so occasionally we'll write together, or I'll read their work. It's really nice having friends who are genuinely interested in writing too, because it can be such an isolating practice.

Shanti Hershenson: It's very much a solo pursuit for most people. So even when we're not necessarily writing something together, having friends doing the same thing means we can still engage with each other's work.

Laura Williams: [00:21:56] I had an interview earlier today with someone named J.D. [00:22:00] Barker, and he talked about reading heavily from a young age, and how that shaped him — he absorbed so much other people's work that the mechanics of writing just came naturally to him. He never had to sit down and formally learn outlining, story flow, tone, any of that.

Laura Williams: A lot of that, I think, comes from starting so early, and I think you're one of those writers too. I'm sure you've had to stop and learn some mechanics along the way, but I don't get the sense you were ever a mechanics-first kind of writer.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:22:40] No, I definitely wasn't. I just started writing, and adapted the mechanics from there as I went.

Laura Williams: [00:22:46] Okay, so now you'd probably use, even if loosely, some kind of outline or structure, and think carefully about how the reader is experiencing the book, right?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:22:58] A lot of it is [00:23:00] pretty subconscious as I'm actually writing — for that first draft, I'm mostly just putting words on the page, kind of a pantser at heart, wanting to see where it goes. But I do have outlining habits too — I'll bullet-point things I want to happen in the book, what I think should come next.

Shanti Hershenson: By the halfway point, I usually have a pretty clear sense of where the book is going and how it'll end. I'm also thinking, okay, how is the reader going to react to this — is this something they'll enjoy? A lot of that comes from reading it back myself and thinking, oh my gosh, that's wild — and wondering whether the reader will feel the same way.

Laura Williams: [00:23:40] That's one of the fun parts, isn't it? I sit down with my daughter — since my books are fantasy fiction and pretty dialogue-heavy — and we read the pages back and forth to make sure the conversations actually make sense, that they sound like real conversations.

Laura Williams: I love doing that, [00:24:00] absolutely love it — so much fun for me. So how old were you when you wrote your first book?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:24:07] I wrote my first book when I was twelve.

Laura Williams: [00:24:11] Wow. Was that a book you tried to actually publish, or something just for yourself?

Shanti Hershenson: [00:24:17] The very, very first project I published was, in some ways, kind of an accident.

Shanti Hershenson: That sounds a little silly — it wasn't entirely, but it kind of was too. When I was twelve, I wrote this little novella with a friend of mine, and we really wanted a printed copy. So my solution was to look online for a way to get a printed copy delivered to my door, and what I found was Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.

Shanti Hershenson: Freshly twelve years old, I filled out those forms, and suddenly I'd published a book. That whole thing was pretty silly, honestly. My first serious project came a few months later, also when I was twelve, [00:25:00] and that one was called Biome Lock — the first real novel I ever wrote. I wrote that first draft in about six months, and then, between working on other projects, spent years editing it.

Shanti Hershenson: The first volume in that series actually came out in August of 2021.

Laura Williams: [00:25:15] Wow, you're so dedicated to this. I really love hearing you talk about your writing, it's genuinely impressive.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:25:22] Thank

Laura Williams: [00:25:22] you. And I loved hearing about TikTok, because that's something a lot of us really struggle with, making content like that. My youngest grandson does some TikTok stuff too, and it's hilarious — it does seem to come easier for younger people, though I know some older folks with genuinely great TikTok accounts too, that I really enjoy.

Laura Williams: So I think it really just comes down to what you put into it. You have to relax, tell people about yourself and your book, be authentic, be real and creative. You do it a few times, and the fear starts to fade — it really does fade the more you do [00:26:00] it.

Laura Williams: You should think about doing writer's conferences, maybe put together a program on TikTok for them. I think other writers would really appreciate your input.

Laura Williams: I'm not telling you what to do, I'd just personally love to hear that talk.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:26:13] No, I like that idea.

Laura Williams: [00:26:14] Keep it in mind. Can you share where people can find your work, and anything coming up we should know about? I know you just finished high school and are getting ready for college, so your time's probably pretty tight, but let us know what's going on.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:26:30] First off, you can find my books pretty much anywhere books are sold online. If a particular title isn't on one site, check another — almost universally, they should be everywhere. You can also find links to all my books, plus interviews and events, on my website, shantihershenson.com.

Shanti Hershenson: That's S-H-A-N-T-I, H-E-R-S-H-E-N-S-O-N dot com. You can find me on Instagram [00:27:00] as well, similarly @shantihershenson, and of course, the real star of the show, my TikTok, @shantiwhowrites.

Laura Williams: [00:27:07] So go check her out — I'll put all those links in the show notes to make them easy to find. I really appreciate you spending time with me today.

Laura Williams: Thank you so much.

Shanti Hershenson: [00:27:16] Thank you so much.

Laura Williams: [00:27:17] To learn more about the podcast, and to be the first to know when new episodes are up, visit thewritingbiz.com. Until next time, take what you've learned and put it to work in your writing biz, and on TikTok. Thanks, Shanti.