Introduction to the term ‘BookTok’
The app TikTok has been on the rise for many years now and along with that came something called ‘BookTok’. If you are a part of BookTok, or if you’ve seen videos about it, you may know that it is one of the most popular hashtags on the app. It consists of book recommendations, artwork to show what a character or a scene looks like, simply talking about a specific book or series, and many more things. It is a vast community of people who enjoy reading and talking about so many different genres of books. I believe that BookTok has taken over many parts of the literature world and it is the reason why more books are being sold today.
What do authors have to gain from BookTok?
Some people may know about a series called A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sara J. Maas, who is a very well known author in the literature world. Some may also know about a book called Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. What do these two series’ have in common? They both gained a lot of their popularity through BookTok. Now, A Court of Thorns and Roses was definitely a popular series years before TikTok became well known, but I do think it reached many more readers around the world because of it. Sara J. Maas has also written two other book series’ which then gained more readers as well. Her recent book series called Crescent City not only gained popularity because of her previous readers, but because of BookTok and the many posts talking about different plot twists and characters. Rebecca Yarros, the author of Fourth Wing, published the first book in her series during the year 2023, but it gained most of its popularity in 2024 because of BookTok. I personally have never seen a series gain so much popularity as fast as the Fourth Wing series and I am happy for Rebecca Yarros because she was able to create a loyal community for her books as well, which is something that I think every author dreams of. Another example would be the book Powerless by Lauren Roberts. She was able to market her book through BookTok when she was first writing it. Lauren would film her journey and post about it when writing her first book and she managed to gain a large following from it.
What do readers have to gain from BookTok?
Since BookTok is a big community of readers and writers, it’s a place where you can always find a new book to read. There are people who prefer one genre over the other, for example: I prefer fantasy over sci-fi books, but I have seen some people switch their favorite genres because of BookTok. I have gotten a good amount of book recommendations from the community and I was able to get back into reading after having not read a book in a long time. I used to be an avid book reader and one day I just stopped, but when I found out about a book through BookTok and finally picked it up, I could not put it down. I then went on to read so many more books and expanding my genres.