Marketing Strategies of Youth-Book Publishers on Douyin under the AMO Framework: A Statistical Analysis of the Douyin Stores of 46 Publishing Institutions

In the book retail market, the scale of content e-commerce in 2025 increased by 30.43% year-on-year, accounting for 40.53% of the overall sales market, surpassing platform e-commerce to become the largest segmented retail channel. Content e-commerce primarily refers to the type of e-commerce that utilizes content (images, texts, videos, etc.) as the presentation form, combines users' content interests, and employs algorithmic recommendations to achieve book sales. Youth books, as an important segment of book content e-commerce marketing and possessing educational attributes distinct from other book categories, require specialized systematic research. On April 16, 2026, the Ministry of Education issued the "Framework for Chinese Youth Reading Literacy" as an educational industry standard, proposing a three-dimensional reading literacy model of "knowledge-ability-value" to promote reading behavior from a utilitarian instrument to the level of personality shaping and spiritual growth. The release of this standard also presents two new propositions for the research on youth books marketing: first, paying attention to the latent risks behind the current sales market growth regarding the mobilization of utilitarian reading motivations; second, exploring how to scientifically empower the long-term promotion of youth books in the content e-commerce field through "standards". The article summarizes the current situation by analyzing the sales data of 46 relevant publishing institutions and finds that domestic youth books publishing institutions have basically established a presence on the Douyin platform, but there are significant gaps in operational capabilities; a few publishing institutions have successfully developed self-broadcasting channels, achieving remarkable marketing effects; influencer promotion still contributes half of the sales market; the mall attribute of the Douyin platform is prominent and the sales of product cards bring significant revenue. Through participatory observation and user interviews, further combined with the AMO framework to analyze the problems in user communication and persuasion, it is found that the Douyin marketing of youth books publishing institutions has the following issues: focusing on superficial practical knowledge, which makes it difficult to mobilize users' evaluation abilities; relying on low prices to mobilize users' bargain-seeking motivations, which makes it difficult to cultivate user brand loyalty; the diffusion effect of communication touchpoints is poor, and users have insufficient effective contact opportunities. Subsequently, the optimization path for the marketing of youth books publishing institutions is discussed, proposing the A dimension—focusing on reading ability improvement, constructing a diversified reading service system for readers; the M dimension—activating reading motivation upgrading, creating brand value for books, writers, and platforms; the O dimension—striving to expand touchpoint opportunities, triggering breakthrough communication through multiple measures. Notably, this article focuses mainly on the external perspective of publishing institutions' marketing. From the perspective of internal operations, there are more deep-seated issues, such as insufficient book selection, lack of professional talent in marketing team building, and lack of effective incentives in performance mechanisms, which require further research.