Who has never spent too much time on TikTok to the point of getting into the literary area? Book recommendations, trends, POV, memes, unboxing, reviews and even edits and fan arts can be found there. Popularly known as “BookTok”, the new social sensation emerged during the pandemic and has a great influence on users’ reading habits to this day.
Just to give you an idea, the number of views with the hashtag #BookTok exceeds 186 billion.
In this environment, there is great visibility for works aimed at young audiences. Among the most famous, we can find The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, written by Taylor Jenkins Reid, or The Cruel Prince, by Holly Black, for example. But did you know that this literary community is so large that it has attracted not only readers but also writers to TikTok? From this article, you will be able to understand how this social network completely revolutionized the literary industry for independent authors.
With a large part of the public migrating to the Chinese app, writers had to give up the old language and advertising format and began to adapt to this new digital era. One viral post is enough to make a single book reach new bubbles and even become a bestseller. But it’s not just influencers or famous stories that stand out in this branch. In addition to allowing closer contact with readers, BookTok has become a fundamental way for anyone to analyze and discover which issues are most attractive to this new generation.
Among the most recurrent are fantasy books, suspense or the young-adult genre, that is, those aimed at an audience aged 15 to 29. According to data from the infobase, around 40% of active TikTok users are between 16 and 24 years old, the age corresponding to young people who consume famous literary content on the platform. Other attractive works are also those with LGBTQIA+ characters or minorities representation, stories with shocking “plot twists”, social approaches and which, in a more aesthetic aspect, have colorful covers and are visually beautiful.
Although it is a challenge to maintain engagement on TikTok, which can often hinder the writing process, the platform promises more advantages than disadvantages. It is no surprise that in most bookstores it is possible to find specific sections of books that have gone viral on the social, titled “TikTok Books” or simply “BookTok”. In this sense, influencers or authors play an important role in the mutuality of dissemination of personal and consequently national works, which triggers the appreciation of literature as a whole.
In a phase of self-discovery, young people want to find a form of understanding and representation in literature, that is, they want to see themselves in what they are reading. And there is no better way to understand yourself than by writing and more importantly: by reading. Identifying with stories close to our reality and with authors who are just a click away only reinforces the sense of community and establishes a healthy space for new writers to arise.
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The article above was edited by Rafaella Alcici.
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