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CAROLINE PECKHAM and Susanne Valenti are proof of the power of BookTok. Ever since the sisters were little girls, they had dreamed of becoming authors. But like many budding writers, their manuscripts were rejected by dozens of publishing agents.

Now, thanks to TikTok , they are best-selling authors, with 2.8million copies of their books snapped up and two billion pages read on Kindle Unlimited. The hashtag for their series of novels, the Zodiac Academy, has amassed 251million views and they have been nominated for BookTok Breakthrough Author of the Year.



Mum-of-two Susanne, 37, says: “As little girls, all we ever wanted to do was write. We tried to get into publishing the traditional way, by sending manuscripts to agents, and only received rejections.” The sisters decided to take matters into their own hands.

At first they wrote material alone and self-published books separately . But during lockdown, they started writing together from their parents’ garden shed, while also working in the family cattery business . They completed the first of their Zodiac Academy series – hailed by fans as an adult Harry Potter – and created a TikTok account to market it.

“Covid had a huge impact because everyone was reading so much,” says Susanne. “We began writing the Zodiac Academy series together and created a TikTok account and things went crazy.” To date, the sisters have self-published eight books in the series and, last year, six publishers offered them deals – all.

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