What is BookTok? Why Does It Matter?

Have you heard of the latest TikTok phenomenon, BookTok?

You may be wondering what the heck BookTok is and why it’s relevant today, in a world surrounded by influencers and social media stars, what makes this latest phenomenon so powerful?

Let’s start at the beginning. BookTok is an online community, mostly on TikTok, that is taking the literary world by storm. It is a term that is used to describe the bookish community on TikTok, where people post videos recommending books, making jokes about books they’ve read or jokes about their love of reading, and sharing their love of literature.

The most fascinating part of this entire “BookTok” phenomenon is that it has the potential to heavily influence the literary and publishing industry. It already has.

For example, take an author like Colleen Hoover, unmistakably the most successful author to come out of this BookTok phenomenon. Her book, It Starts With Us, blew up, seemingly overnight, on BookTok the only thing was that had been published four years before it’s overnight success.

Thanks in part to the pandemic, more people are buying books. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to stay home, opening up their social calendars, allowing them more time to read. The videos that are being posted on TikTok, the latest social media site, are giving people a quick glance into why these books should be read.

It is hard to know exactly how successful BookTok is, but it’s definitely making a difference in the literary and publishing world. If you log into TikTok right now and look for the #BookTok hashtag, you will find a bunch of videos describing books that make you sob, books that you should read before they are adapted, books that are worth the plunge, and so much more.

Word of mouth has always been the way to get book read, but now with BookTok, you are seeing this fast tracked.

The BookTok phenomenon has come at a time where authors have been kept from their audiences through signings and meet-and-greets and has instead connected a new audience of readers through these short clips on TikTok.

Have you been influenced by BookTok? I know I have. Between BookTok and my Instagram feed, I’ve read over 10 books that I probably would not have read without a little push. But because of BookTok, my TBR (“to be read”) pile has quadrupled. I actually had to move all my books out of my bookshelf and into a larger storage area in order to accommodate the 75+ books that I now have lined up to read (and that’s if I don’t buy more before I get through them all, which seems to be a reoccurring issue)!

Make sure to check out my Goodreads account here to keep up with what books I’m reading!