BookTok Sensation Ana Huang's “Twisted” Journey “— ”How She Went from Hobbyist to Romance Sensation (Exclusive)

The romance writer chatted with PEOPLE about her wild ride ahead of the release of her new novel, 'King of Sloth'

BookTok phenom Ana Huang's path to publishing has been unconventional — she first started writing as a way to practice her English — but she quickly fell in love with stories.

"I grew up in an immigrant household, so I didn't speak English that well and I had to take English as a second language class. And then my mom came to me and she was like, 'You know, why don't you just write me a short story in English every day,' " Huang tells PEOPLE. "And at the time, I thought she just really liked to read my stories. I had no idea it was for language learning, but it kind of got me hooked and she really encouraged that habit of reading and writing."

Huang didn't pursue writing as a primary career, at first. Her parents encouraged her to do something — anything — more financially stable, so she kept writing on the side as a hobby. She shared her work on the social reading platform Wattpad, which encouraged her to keep going.

Her perseverance paid off. In 2020, her Twisted romance series became among the first romances to blow up on BookTok, with over 1 billion views to date. Nearly four years later, it's considered one of the bestselling romance books of all time, per Book Riot.

The fourth book in her Kings of Sin series, King of Sloth, is due out April 30 from Bloom Books and by all accounts, readers can't wait.

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"It's been pretty surreal," Huang says, of her publishing journey so far. "I'm still pretty new in terms of being in the author world. So sometimes there are still moments where I'm like, 'Wow, I can't believe someone is reading something that I wrote and created.' I'm always just very grateful to everyone that has shared and loved the books, and I love how much it's doing for indie authors."

Platforms like BookTok, where creative young readers can share their annotations, create imagined text conversations between characters and even act out scenes, has been a boon to indie authors like Huang, she says.

"Romance has always been a very high-selling genre," the author points out. "But I do think BookTok has brought with it kind of a new resurgence, because of the next generation of readers."

And in stark contrast to their parents' generation, hiding steamy bodice-rippers in their bedside tables or inside less spicy books, young romance fans are loud and proud about their reading diet — and what they want to see in it.

"It's always been fascinating, although unfortunately not very surprising to me, that the one genre that tends to be the most dismissed and looked down upon is the one that is written primarily by women for women," Huang says. "So I love seeing all of these young girls who are just so happy and unabashed about their love for these books."

Related: PEOPLE Picks Our Staff's Favorite Romance Novels

Romance as a genre has historically been fairly homogenous, but Huang says that's starting to change, fueled by the demands of readers who want books that look like the world they live in.

"Having different people feel seen, to feel like their stories are worthy of being told, and that they are part of the narrative is a very important thing," she says. "And as an author and a reader, I always seek out books and media properties that accurately reflect the world around us. And the fact is, we live in a very diverse and rich and multicultural world."

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That diversity, and the way the genre fosters community, is part of what drew Huang to romance in the first place.

"No matter what you're into or what you want to read about, you'll always find a community for it in that genre," she says. "And that's a pretty amazing thing."

King of Sloth comes out April 30 from Bloom Books and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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