Novel becomes top-selling book on Amazon after viral TikTok video by author’s daughter

Stone Maidens, by Lloyd Devereux Richards, was published in 2012

Stone Maidens by Lloyd Devereux Richards has become the top-selling book on Amazon (Left: TikTok/@stonemaidens — Right: Thomas & Mercer)

A novel has become the top-selling book on Amazon after its author’s daughter featured it in a TikTok video that went viral.

Stone Maidens, by Lloyd Devereux Richards, was published in 2012 by Thomas & Mercer, an Amazon imprint that has also published works by authors Dean Koontz, Amina Akhtar, and Patricia Cornwell.

According to a TikTok video filmed and shared by Mr Richards’s daughter earlier this month, Mr Richards spent 14 years writing the novel. He was happy to see it finished and published, even though sales were modest — until his daughter shared the clip in question online.

The video lasts just 16 seconds and states that Mr Richards “worked full time and his kids came first” while he was working on the book. “I’d love for him to get some sales,” the clip reads at one point, in text superimposed over video of Mr Richards at his desk. “He doesn’t even know what TikTok is.”

Less than a week after its release, the video has been watched more than 42 million times. Word spread about the book, so much so that by 14 February, Stone Maidens had become the top-selling book on Amazon.

In a follow-up video, Mr Richards’s daughter showed her father watching the original clip and becoming emotional upon realising its impact. In another clip, the two are seen celebrating with milkshakes.

“These last couple of days — I can’t understand it,” Mr Richards says in that video. “I feel blessed.”

Stone Maidens, a crime novel, follows a chief forensic anthropologist at the FBI as she tries to solve a baffling serial murder case.

According to his author biography, Mr Richards was born in New York City. He worked as a law clerk for an Indiana Court of Appeals judge, “researching and writing drafts for dozens of published opinions, including the appeal of a serial killer sentenced to death and subsequently electrocuted”, then as an attorney in Vermont. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont, with his wife.