The rise of Booktok: A reading revolution

Source: https://www.mountholyokenews.com/books/2023/7/15/tiktok-controversy-raises-discussions-of-review-bombing-on-goodreads

Social media and its rise have helped quite a few lesser-known things come to the top and leave behind a mark- reading books being one of these. Reading books was always cool but wasn’t a very common hobby amongst the previous generations. With the advent of Booktok, many book-lovers have started sharing their passion and reading recommendations with fellow book enthusiasts. And by doing so, a small corner of TikTok has become such a powerful force that it seems strange that it didn’t exist before this.

It has completely transformed the way people have started reading and sharing book recs. But is it all for the better? Or are there some things we need to look out for?

Beginnings

BookTok was born on the short-form video hosting entertainment app, TikTok, which was launched globally in 2017. It’s been quite a few years since TikTok started getting used and now it is one of the most popular social media apps in use. The rise of TikTok has allowed several creators to tell their followers about food, music, books, and everything else they want to. This has paved the way for trends like BookTok which have formed a community of their own.

Many BookTok creators started off by sharing their best recommendations and/or posting reviews about the ones they had read. Many chose to do this by sharing jokes, plotlines, some spoilers and forming communities based off on similar tastes in book genres. Whatever they chose to do, it was highly successful and BookTok allowed this small hobby to turn into a full-time job for a lot of people.

A lot of people were able to publish their own books while many others got sponsorship deals from publishing houses to endorse their books. Authors had the freedom and authority to advertise their books on their own and also connect with their audience. This helped them write better and address queries from the readers. #BookTok was trending- it became a hit!

At the present

Currently, there are numerous creators on BookTok whose accounts just inch closer to more success. A lot of books have been termed as “BookTok books” because of how popular they got through the trend.

People who weren’t readers have become part of the community and owe this new habit to creators who give them apt recommendations. The adrenaline rush and serotonin boost they get after finishing a book is unparalleled!

Currently, there are more than 108 billion views on the BookTok hashtag on TikTok and publishing houses have reported that their sales have been boosting like never before. NPD BookScan released data which revealed that in 2021, 825 million books were sold in the US alone and this number was 9 percent more than what they had sold in 2020. It was also the highest number they had seen since 2004. Authors had sold 20 million books in 2021 and this had increased by 50 percent in 2022!

Some of the most famous “BookTok books” include:

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover (also got adapted into a movie starring Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively in 2024!) (Every Colleen Hoover book has become extremely popular on BookTok.)
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
Babel by R.F. Kuang
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
‘Song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller
‘Someone Else’s Shoes’ by Jojo Moyes
‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’ by Holly Jackson

These are just 15 books we have named but BookTok has popularized many others too which might not have been so successful if it weren’t for the video hosting platform.

The future

Even as #BookTok continues to rise as the viral trend on the social media app, many critics also find it worrisome that BookTok works for the benefit of a very narrow community of people who are interested in genres like fantasy, YA, and romance. The books which make rounds on Booktok posts often belong to just these three genres and steal the limelight from other themes. Another group worries about the fact that popularization of titles like these might draw publishers to books that are likely to go viral instead of books which are actually good reads.

Amongst all of such complaints, there’s still the fact that BookTok has made it easier for people who couldn’t read that properly earlier to find recommendations tailored to their choices and pick up the right book for themselves. It has been found that more people have started reading now and demographics which were left untouched by schools and libraries have been reached as well. So, the fact that BookTok is overall a positive influence on society remains undisputed.

Moreover, with developments in the tech industry, it is also possible that AI and BookTok will be squeezed together to create better features available for the readers. All in all, the future of the BookTok community seems bright.

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