Saskatoon publisher sells out of 22-year-old book of poetry after its title appears in TikToker's dream

A New York TikToker, claiming to have psychic powers, is creating fresh demand for a 22-year-old book published in Saskatoon.

Marni Webb posted a TikTok video about a dream where a man asked her “Is the fifth window open?”

In the video, viewed more than three million times, Webb said she Googled the phrase and discovered a book of poetry called The Fifth Window.

Webb said she became intrigued in the book when she struggled to access it. Some of Webb’s followers theorized there was a conspiracy behind why the book was difficult to find.

“Turns out it’s only available in academic settings like Yale and Harvard’s library,” the TikToker says in the video.

Webb said she could only find a copy in the New York Public Library in the reserved section.

“I think the fact that I couldn’t have immediate access to this book, made me want it more,” Webb told CTV News from Brooklyn.

Webb’s video garnered thousands of comments from other TikTok users wanting to get a copy of the book too.

With so much demand, Thistledown Press is reprinting The Fifth Window.

Caroline Walker, the managing editor at Thistledown, said it’s unusual for a book of poems to gain this much traction, decades after the original release.

“We’ve had orders from overseas — places as far away as Australia, Norway, Germany, Bulgaria, England, Ireland — just all kinds of places you wouldn’t expect to have been ordering this little Canadian poetry book,” Walker said.

“We were surprised but really thrilled and pleased to make the book available again.”

The author of The Fifth Window, Russell Thornton, has also been flooded with messages about his book.

Thornton’s 13-year-old daughter was the one who showed him the video.

“I was baffled … she dreams the exact words of the title of my book,” Thornton told CTV News from his home in Vancouver.

“At first, I thought someone was playing a prank on me.”

The Fifth Window was one of Thornton’s first publications. He said he never expected one of his oldest books to get reprinted.

“To hear that there are orders for it, it’s really nice on a personal level. But it’s equally nice on a communal level. It’s very hard to get attention for Canadian poetry,” Thornton said.

The Vancouver author mailed Webb one of his personal copies of the book, which she recorded herself opening in another TikTok video.

“There were two poems that really connected to me because it was something I had written about years ago when I was younger, also based on a dream,” Webb told CTV News.

“There were just too many coincidences.”

More copies of The Fifth Window are set to be available in March.