BookTok Has Quickly Become a Major Force in Publishing

SOURCE: The Mary Sue

As any fan or hobby community, readers know we take up space in pockets around the web. While Book blogs, Bookstagram, BookTwitter, and BookTube each are uniquely influential to publishing and book trends, BookTok, via TikTok, right now is making big waves. Now, books discussed by readers on BookTok are getting their own table at Barnes & Noble and picked up by major publishers.

Boasting 22.1 BILLION views on the hashtag #BookTok alone (and trust several other bookish tags are in the tens and hundreds of millions), the social media subset holds organization-animations, critiques, ASMR, general TikTok trends, shitposts, and recommendations. The recommendations—including all its variants like “TikTok Made Me Buy It!” and its counter, “Books That Wasted My Time”—are bite-size reading lists that dominate the space. This is also the same section of BookTok influencing IRL book-buying trends….