If you’re a part of the widely growing community of book lovers online, there’s a chance you’ve heard of Steph Bohrer. She’s basically the queen of “BookTok,” the side of the app TikTok where users gush about their favorite novels and offer reading recommendations. Steph boasts a whopping 536.9 thousand followers on the platform at the time of this publication, and that number only keeps growing. She also has 122 thousand followers on Instagram, and her YouTube channel has 260 thousand loyal subscribers.
I had the privilege of chatting with Steph recently. She kindly joined me on a Zoom call from her new apartment near Arizona State University, and she was enthusiastic to talk about her love of reading and how she developed a social media presence. When I asked her about what inspired her to start pursuing social media, she told me that, “It actually started in quarantine. I was super bored, not really talking to anyone. I was reading a lot because I had nothing better to do. And I was just like, I need to talk about the books I’m reading with people… I saw like two TikToks about books and was like, I could totally do that from my room.”
As a fan of Steph myself, I often have questions about the behind-the-scenes process of what it’s like to be an influencer. It’s easy to wonder to yourself if you could do the same thing, or if the pressures of having thousands of people tuning into your opinions and recommendations would be too much to handle. “Every time I’m doing something that’s not reading, I’m like: Oh, I should be reading right now so I have new stuff to recommend, so people aren’t saying ‘Oh, you recommend the same stuff all the time.’” Steph also commented on the difficulty in sharing her opinions, and how it’s impossible for her to appeal to everyone.
“I’m pretty sensitive,” she admitted once we started talking about the negativity that happens online. “The biggest challenge is accepting the fact that not everyone is going to like you… I want everyone to like me and I’m such a people pleaser… I don’t want to offend anyone.” She even expressed how she limits time on apps like Twitter so she doesn’t get sucked into the toxic side of social media.
This is one of the reasons why I think Steph has such a large audience: she wants to be liked, but also doesn’t want her opinions to be misconstrued as anything negative or offensive. She took an activity she loved (reading romance books) and is showing an audience that there is a community of book-lovers out there. Even with the stereotypes surrounding romance novels, she remains committed to sharing her passion for words.
What’s even crazier is that Steph has managed to become a big name on social media while keeping up with her studies. I asked her about how she balances life as a college student with content creation. She had a very strategic mindset when scheduling her classes for the semester, especially since she started posting on TikTok during the pandemic when online school was the norm. Steph explained, “Now that I have in-person classes, when I picked my schedule I was like ‘Okay, I’m gonna do two days a week, just jam-pack those two days of classes. And then leave a day in between for homework.’ And then on the weekends I’ll film, edit, do all my social media stuff. But I always make sure I get my school done first.”
She actually allows herself the freedom to post about what she wants and when she wants, but still wonders how her platform could be different had she started earlier. She wanted to start in high school but was unsure about the response from her classmates. “I can’t even imagine how much bigger my platform could’ve been if I actually started when I wanted to and how much more fun I could’ve had in high school if I would have had the book community already to talk to from the start.”
“Do what you want to do and stop worrying about what other people are gonna think.”
Steph Bohrer
Steph also went on to tell me about how much she fangirled when author Colleen Hoover followed her on Instagram: “She wrote all my favorite books! So that kind of means that all my favorite characters know who I am because she created them.” Even authors like Elle Kennedy, who wrote the popular Off-Campus and Briar U series, are fans of Steph’s content. In fact, myself and other fans view Steph as Kennedy’s character Hannah Wells when reading the books. “I obviously would never picture myself, but when other people say it, that is like the highest compliment… People take fancasting so seriously… I can’t even believe that that’s real.”
To wrap up our conversation, I asked Steph about what books she thinks everyone should read. Her first recommendation is actually one of my favorite books: It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. “I always say this one,” she explained, “I feel like everyone would enjoy it because there’s a huge powerful message within it. When you finish you feel like you took away so much, learned so much, you put yourself in someone else’s shoes. I feel like that’s a really important part of reading.” Personally, I couldn’t stop thinking about the book for days after I read it, so Steph’s recommendation holds true in my eyes.
She also recommended A Thousand Boy Kisses by Tillie Cole and said that “It’s so sad, but it taught me so much about appreciating life… It really changed my perspective on life,” before gushing about the Addicted and Calloway Sisters series by Krista and Becca Ritchie, which one of her tattoos is dedicated to.
“You don’t always need to read a book that you take away something from, but I feel like if I had to tell you what to read, it would be something you could learn from.”
Steph Bohrer
So, what can we expect to see from Steph in the future? “I have a bunch planned,” she smiled as she told me that she has a notebook dedicated to planning videos. “Obviously I love focusing my channel around books, but I’ve also been thinking about expanding into more lifestyle and doing more makeup videos because I love doing my makeup, or hair because I always get asked… I love doing vlogs of my life in college. As an introverted book reader that just hangs out, I feel like I love just showing what I do.” She’s excited for the future of her platform, and it was really inspiring to hear her talk about all her plans for the next few months.
So, next time you want someone new to follow or you want to pick up a good book, follow Steph. Because of her genuine and authentic personality and her creativity, this is certainly only the start for this content creator.
Thanks to Steph Bohrer for sitting down for an interview with me.