‘Booktok’ and Book Buying
Take a few steps into any Waterstones outlet, and you’ll no doubt find a table with BookTok recommendations, replenished almost as quickly as books are snatched from its surface. There is a certain kind of magic here; before a single review appears in any publication or a prize committee has weighed in on the story, a viral minute-long video filmed in a bedroom decides what people all over the world are buying – and increasingly, what we are reading.
BookTok, for anyone unfamiliar with the term, is the reading community on social media app TikTok, where users review and recommend books to one another. Think of it as a giant book club that, understandably, gained popularity particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Just how influential is this book club?, you might ask. Well, according to research organisation WordsRated, in 2021, BookTok helped sell around 20,000,000 books.
In a space once dominated by literary critics and qualified reviews, content creators have now emerged as the most influential figures in the publishing world. Through their blending of unfiltered enthusiasm with a sense of authenticity that traditional marketing methods could never manufacture, a single clip can propel an obscure title into the bestseller charts overnight, as seen with titles like It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover.
Democratisation or Algorithmic Slop?
Such a shift in the power dynamic has forced publishing houses to restructure themselves or risk obscurity. Now, budgets are set aside specifically for BookTok campaigns; marketing teams hire platform specialists; and designers rework covers and blurbs to maximise 'scroll-stopping' potential. In a 2023 study, an unnamed publisher revealed to researchers that they would be more likely to 'spend money on luxury editions of books by top authors, for example, by putting an elegant jacket over a stamped cover, adding a case, or spraying, gilding, or deckling edges of pages.'
This is why I believe BookTok raises a complicated question: has the public’s reading taste truly been democratised, or simply re-routed via algorithm? On the surface, TikTok may offer visibility to indie authors, niche genres and long-forgotten backlist titles. But beneath that sense of freedom lies what I think could be the system’s own undoing––virality shaped by trends, aesthetics, and a recommendation system that rewards the same, familiar tropes.
When retailers like Waterstones take advantage of BookTok’s popularity by creating specialised shelves featuring books that have gone viral, and platforms like Goodreads promote checklists along the lines of, ‘How many of these BookTok titles have you read this year?’, we really need to ask ourselves: are we commodifying reading, thus diluting and limiting critical engagement with our books?
After scrolling through #BookTok for a solid three minutes, I’m fairly certain the secret of its influence lies in the emotional handholding it offers. Videos, no matter their length, rarely offer detailed analysis of the plot or values found in the story––instead, they rely on punchy hooks: 'You guys, I cried for three hours', 'This book healed me', or 'I just could not put this book down'.
These highly emotional, highly 'clickbait-y' statements aim straight for the viewer’s curiosity and desire to experience the same strong emotions, while also ensuring engagement to boost said content in the algorithm. Two birds with one dramatic video. Genres like romantasy, trauma narratives, and 'sad girl lit' dominate for-you-pages because they spark extremely visible and, more importantly, shareable reactions. In such an environment, emotion is currency: the more intense the community’s response, the more likely a book will go viral. This phenomenon has reshaped not only what readers choose to consume, but also what creators write and publishers promote, privileging storytelling that is primed for shortform video content.
The Kids Are Alright
Despite all the whining about short attention spans and screen addiction, young adults are not abandoning books––rather, they are embracing them in new, communal ways. In 2022, the Publishers Association found that 59% of 16-25 year-olds (from an interviewed pool of 2,000) acknowledged that BookTok or book influencers helped them discover or rekindle a passion for reading. For many, BookTok has transformed reading from a solitary activity into a social experience: it has become both a form of self-expression and a way to connect, with titles acting as social currency within online communities. In this way, it seems that BookTok has not just revived an interest in reading; it has redefined what it means to be a reader as a significant part of youth culture.
Besides reviving a culture of enthusiastic reading and boosting the visibility of indie authors and neglected backlists, the platform that BookTok offers carries its own risks. The truth is that virality is unpredictable, and it leaves authors and publishers at the mercy of trends they cannot possibly control. For writers, there is the added pressure to produce works that will perform well online, sometimes at the expense of originality.
The influence of BookTok raises massive questions for the future of the publishing industry and reading culture alike. Will an author’s career increasingly hinge on their social media traction rather than critical acclaim or literary merit? Could the current surge of enthusiasm towards reading fade if TikTok’s algorithm changes or if users migrate to new platforms? And just how much of this reading revival is really sustainable? While BookTok has certainly energized both readers and publishers, its long-term impact remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is that social media now plays a central role in shaping what—and how—we read, making the future of literature inseparable from the digital platforms amplifying it.