It wasn’t always like this for Kaur. She started her career by posting her work to Tumblr in 2012 and then gradually switched to Instagram, but her social-media strategy wasn’t yet making her nearly enough money to live. “My mind-set was: No way can poetry pay your rent,” she told us. Then milk & honey was published in 2014 and hit the New York Times best-seller list in 2016. Kaur realized, It’s not stopping. It’s getting bigger. Maybe this can sustain me. Her success doesn’t seem to be slowing. Within the past year, she appeared on Jimmy Fallon, made the Forbes 30 under 30 list, and sold out a “World Tour de Force” across India and the U.K. This month, she finishes her sweeping American tour. Kaur now has 3 million Instagram followers.

Since the publication of milk & honey, the poetry genre has become one of the fastest-growing categories in book publishing. According to one market-research group, 12 of the top 20 best-selling poets last year were Insta-poets, who combined their written work with shareable posts for social media; nearly half of poetry books sold in the United States last year were written by these poets. This year, according to a survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Census Bureau, 28 million Americans are reading poetry—the highest percentage of poetry readership in almost two decades. Kaur’s publisher, Kirsty Melville, has seen it happen firsthand: “It used to be that poetry was down in the back of the store next to the bathrooms, and now it’s out front,” she told us. “And that naturally helps sales of all poets. The classics and other contemporary poets are selling.”

Read: Poetry is everywhere.

The rise of the Insta-poet didn’t start with Rupi Kaur. In 2013, Melville noticed that a Cambodian-Australian poet named Lang Leav was becoming popular on the internet, her work passed around on social media. Melville took a leap of faith and signed her to a book deal with Andrews McMeel, her publishing company. That book, Love & Misadventure, sold more than 150,000 copies. “We thought, Huh, there’s something going on here ... For a poetry book—a love poetry book—to sell 150,000 copies was notable.”

Five years later, the poetry world has been rocked by myriad other social-media stars. Cleo Wade, the 29-year-old known for her inspirational mantras (“You want love? Be love. You want light? Be light”), has her words on billboards in Los Angeles and Times Square. Atticus, who wears a mask to keep his identity hidden, can count Emma Roberts, Alicia Keys, and Karlie Kloss as fans; his upcoming fall tour will include 12 performances in cities across the U.S. and Canada. R. M. Drake, who first began sharing his poetry in 2011 using Tumblr and DeviantArt, now has 1.8 million followers on Instagram; he’s also published 12 books in print, several of them international best sellers.