Every few months, a news outlet drops a new article about how the physical book industry is collapsing and how young people aren’t reading books anymore; they have scary headlines like *“Report finds ‘shocking and dispiriting’ fall in children reading for pleasure,”* a Guardian article from last year, that blame technology for this decline. And while this is true (there is more illiteracy and less reading for fun today) one corner of the internet is doing its best to reverse this phenomenon: BookTok.
BookTok started as a hashtag on TikTok and has since expanded to several social media platforms, boasting a following of millions of users. Skeptics will call BookTok a momentary fad and supporters will call it a community, but no matter how we describe it, BookTok has managed to transform the print book industry and turn young people back onto reading.
BookTok has a unique way of making certain books and authors popular. Before BookTok, a typical book recommendation would either start with new novels or classics. But just as social media black box algorithms make trends go viral somewhat at random, BookTok viral books can also seem pretty random.
Some authors are just popular on BookTok in general and the community anticipates each of their new releases. Emily Henry, Ali Hazelwood, and Kristin Hannah are just three of these viral authors; you might recognize some of their more recent works:
These BookTok trends are most similar to how the reading community operated before social media — various authors gain popularity and a bigger audience, causing their new releases to be widely anticipated. However, the more fun part of BookTok is when older books suddenly gain popularity again. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller came out in 2011 but went viral in 2022; A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara came out in 2015 but went viral in 2023; and the A Court of Thorn and Roses series by Sarah J Mass started in 2015 but has been a BookTok staple since 2021. It isn’t clear why these books gained traction as opposed to any other older book, but it’s pretty awesome that they did. Social media trends tend to push us towards new content only, but this BookTok phenomenon also elevates older content, allowing it to shine again.
Another interesting BookTok side effect is that the video-based platform has made book content more visual, putting more of a focus on book covers and spines. More than ever before, a book’s cover art is included in a review right alongside the discussion of its content. When a new book is released, it sometimes has a different cover in the US versus in the UK, which always sparks a BookTok debate.
Further, BookTok readers will hunt for limited edition prints of new books or be angry when a series addition doesn’t look consistent with the rest of the series. This kind of behavior can prevent readers from engaging with certain books purely for aesthetic reasons. Yes, cover art is absolutely part of a book, but the saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” exists for a reason; it seems that BookTok is driven by cover art pretty frequently which detracts from its ability to elevate different stories and encourage people to keep reading.
For all of its valid pros and cons, BookTok gets a ton of outside judgment. Specifically, BookTok readers are sometimes looked down on for not reading “real books” (whatever that means). These book elitists judge people necessarily for reading books that are trending or not as serious or long. But to that, the rest of the reading community calls BS. Authors James Patterson and Matt Eversman wrote recently, “It doesn’t matter what you like to read, as long as you love to read” in their short stories collection, The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians. Some may judge BookTok readers but at the end of the day, BookTok is a digital community that has revitalized reading and introduced a new community of people to the magic of books.
While my book tastes are not always consistent with BookTok, I have read a handful of the highest trending books over the past few years and couldn’t go without inserting my thoughts: