These days young people are no longer avoiding bookstores, they now prefer a good read over scrolling through social media. Ironically, however, social media plays quite a significant role in this change of pace.
If you haven’t already come across this corner of the internet, BookTok is an ongoing stream of content found within the video-sharing platform Tiktok. There, users are creating videos with topics ranging from simple book reviews, lists of recommendations depending on your favorite genre, and books to read when you need a good cry.
These videos can attract millions of views, and have the ability to reignite a love of reading within younger generations, all in under a minute. The tag #booktok has garnered over 38 billion views on the app and has grown into a full-fledged community with a significant impact on the publishing industry.
During the pandemic, not only did TikTok downloads rise, but so did interest in reading. A pastime that many individuals resumed when other activities were put on hold due to quarantine restrictions.
According to NPD BookScan, book sales, in general, have increased in the past year. 825 million print books were sold in the United States in 2021, a 9% increase from 2020. This is the largest yearly figure BookScan has observed since it began collecting data in 2004.
Even retailers have caught on to the “BookTok Effect”. Most stores now have a dedicated 'BookTok' section where users can easily purchase the platform's most popular titles.
“I think it’s really just been an evolution,” said Libby McGuire, senior vice president and publisher at Atria Publishing, in an interview with Observer. “We’ve always had these influencers that put books into readers’ hands and now TikTok has created an exponential growth way of doing that. It’s wonderful and really rewarding for publishers to see that readers are falling in love with our books and sharing it on this platform that can get it to so many people.”
Atria Publishing has experienced the impact of BookTok firsthand, having been the publisher of It Ends With Us, a novel that went viral on Tiktok in November 2020. According to Publishers Weekly, the book sold 21,000 copies in the first month after its release. In the summer of 2021, the book was now selling around 17,000 copies per week on average. It has since sold over a million copies, and the TikTok hashtag #itendswithus now has over 393 million views.
However, BookTok’s impact is not limited to sales numbers. It has helped readers look past the boundaries of traditional publishing, with self-published titles such as The Atlas Six and The Spanish Love Deception, gaining vast amounts of attention on the platform.
BookTok has also helped address the lack of diversity within the industry, with some creators dedicating their accounts to explicitly promoting works by authors of color.
Kimberly Nwokorie, a 21-year-old student with 97,000 followers and 5 million likes on her TikTok account @kimmybookss, has been striving to raise awareness for books that represent a diverse range of readers. “Seeing the lack of diversity at the time – all the books that were being promoted were very Caucasian books – I was like, ‘Let’s change that narrative,” she said.
Rather than reading alone, BookTok allows users to create a community around reading. The fact that novels with a strong emotional hook are frequently the ones that go viral contributes to the community experience. “Once we cry reacting to a book, we need other people to do it with us,” said BookTok creator Elizabeth Black, whose account @bumblebeezus has accumulated over 344,000 followers and 12 million likes.
BookTok's global popularity is still growing, enabling readers from all around the world to communicate with one another despite the barriers of social distancing. The community aspect draws individuals together in ways that book clubs might not have done before the pandemic, and will continue to give them a space to share and celebrate their love for reading.
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