Daughter's Viral TikTok Makes Her Father's Unsuccessful Thriller Novel Become a Best Seller Overnight

This man spent 14 years writing a book that nobody bought for 11 years. Now, 25 years later, it's a best seller in two weeks because of a viral video.

Posted by Jesse Kessenheimer

Writing a book requires diligence, time, and money. Most people who dream of writing a book are usually missing one of those things and even after being published can struggle to make sales. One man, Lloyd Devereux Richards fell victim to one of the classic disappointments of the art world when he spent 14 years writing a thriller novel that flopped once it reached the shelves for sale.

u/stonemaidens

Originally published in 2012, sales started off slow and remained fairly low, which deflated Lloyd's excitement. However, he was still very proud of his work and was happy to have finally written his book. 11 years after the original publishing date (almost two weeks ago), Lloyd's daughter took matters into her own hands and created a TikTok video sharing how much her dad cared about his project, explaining the story of how it was written and encouraging viewers to go check it out.

Like most boomer dads, Lloyd didn';t even know what TikTok was, but his daughter knew that she could reach a fair amount of people on the platform. After two weeks of the video being live, she saw almost 45 million hits on the video and sales for the book, Stonemaiden, skyrocketed on Amazon.

After 11 years of flat-lined sales, Lloyd had given up on checking the status of the book and went back to enjoying his life of retirement. But when he learned the news of what his daughter had done for him and his book, he was overwhelmed and elated.

Lloyd was never a writer by trade, in fact, he was a criminal lawyer and spent his entire life in law. In the 14 years it took to write Stonemaiden, he was working full time, caring for his family, and balancing writing at the same time. That's dedication. The good karma that has come out of this viral sensation is possibly the most wholesome reward to nearly 25 years of effort on Lloyd's part, which was rewarded almost overnight by his daughter's TikTok video as well as the support of millions of folks online who were psyched about Lloyd's story.