Warning: Reading this blog may make you spent an absurd amount of money on books, just so you can try to read them before they are spoiled for you by Tik Tok users
Additional side effects may include buying an author's entire bibliography
This is the God Tier Book Tag. It may only be used for your finest, your freshest, your most scrumdidiliumptious books.
Many users who find themselves on the Book side of the Tik Tok algorithm, or BookTok as it has become known, may be quite used to this sound, and sounds like it, popping up all over their For You Pages. These popular sounds include voice overs of someone asking for people to show their "most underrated book" or a book "they would love to read again for the first time". Or my personal favorite "the book that made you cry" which, more often than not, ends up being The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.
BookTok started off as a place for individuals to come together to talk about the books they enjoy and are currently reading. Now it has more than 20.3 billion videos on videos with the caption #booktok. BookTok has created insane sales numbers for books, which cannot be overlooked.
Now, I will embarrass myself with this information and that is okay, because I feel my secrets are safe with you. Are you ready for the secret … here it comes … I bought Sarah J Maas's entire bibliography - that's right ever book she wrote - before I knew if I would like her writing. Why? Because of BookTok. Sarah J Maas's books, whether it be Throne of Glass, Crescent City, or A Court of Throne and Roses, are in almost every BookTok video I have seen. Maas's books have over 28.5 million video views from Tik Tok. So, naturally, after hearing so many people pitch these books to me, I gave in and bought them. Like so many other readers.
BookTok's sales power does not stop at pushing individual readers to purchase the BIG titles that are mentioned in the videos. BookTok has changed the sales game completely by bringing books back from the dusty ware house shelves turning them into best sellers over night. Publisher's Weekly published an article at the beginning of this month on this very phenomenon with Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us. Colleen Hoover's book was originally published in 2016. With good publicity the book sold 21,000 copies that year, which is not bad. Then in 2021, when BookTok started talking about the book, the sales jumped to around 308,000 copies. Jumps like this cannot be overlooked, and book sellers are listening.
BookTok has sway over one of the largest commercial booksellers, Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble is a excellent example of how book sellers are listening to what readers are demanding. BookTok is heavily influencing the sway of what readers buy so Barnes and Noble has implemented the use of a #BookTok table. This table puts the newest and most sought after books from the BookTok platform in one easy location in the store. It has dramatically increased sales, although Barnes and Noble received some backlash for not including many BookTok books in their annual fifty percent off sale. And you know, all readers love a good sale. The company needs to remember that if they are going to use the platform they need to work with it, not against it.
Book has impacted what individual readers buy and it has impacted the way book sellers market books. But that still is not all the power the platform has. BookTok is turning brand new authors into best sellers, giving self published and traditionally published new authors their big breaks. The individuals on BookTok are not just readers, but also authors using the short videos to market their books. New authors can now bring their pitch directly to the readers and watch the snowball of interest take flight. Katee Robert, the author of Neon Gods, created and is marketing a limited edition boxset of one of her series specifically because of BookTok. Her followers asked for a new boxset, so she made one.
BookTok has turned the book industry on its head and companies, publishers and book sellers alike, and authors are rushing to keep up with the changing market. But readers like you and me, we just get to sit back and enjoy the ride. BookTok is just making it easier to get the book content we want brought right to us. And I for one, am a big fan of that.
Hi Tereza!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the amazing blog post! I didn't know anything about the BookTok before, as a matter of fact I haven't been using TikTok for a very long time, I basically quitted it since it's just too time consuming. But it's good to know from you about the BookTok, especially how it influenced people's lives, readers in particular. You made the introduction very appealing, your original post really made me want to look more into BookTok.
Thank you.
Anzhe Li
Hi Anzhe! Thank you for saying that! I am glad that I have done Book Tok the service of convincing you to take a lot at it. I do agree that Tik Tok can be very time consuming, especially when you only intend to use the app for a moment and then half an hour has gone by. If you would ever like any book recommendations please let me know!
DeleteThat's so nice of you Tereza! I do want have some good books to read, I will narrow down the scope and ask for your advice. Thank you!
DeleteHi Tereza, your hook at the beginning of the post is very effective. You said that we will spend money, which can stimulate our attention to have a look to find the reason. And about Took Tok, I think it is a creative product which provide some new ways of reading. And because of Tik Tok, the marketing of books can be designed to be pretty interesting.
ReplyDeleteHi Shiqiu, thank you for that! I do think that Book Tok has created an interesting way for books to be marketed, mainly because the community was not started for that purpose. I am glad you enjoyed my blog!
DeleteTereza, if I could count how many hours I've spent going down the rabbit hole that is BookTok, I honestly do not know if I would want that information made public. I find BookTok interesting because to be completely honest, the rapid fire way the videos tend to be made make it too quick for me to actually be able to get the names of the books down, especially when I'm casually scrolling. I always wish they would put the names of the books in the description or hashtag them to make it easier for me to screenshot and come back to it when I have time. Like you, I've also read Sarah J Maas's entire bibliography (and I am beyond ready to read the second book in the Crescent City series!!), but I stumbled upon it via my Libby app's explore section, became addicted to one, and just couldn't stop. That's how I found "The Song of Achilles" as well, which was great as well. I found that book after reading "Circe," have you read it yet?
ReplyDeleteI love the cosplay videos on BookTok, where the creators bring the characters to life (and we all drool together over our favorite dashing leading characters). I think my favorite part of BookTok is not so much how it raises awareness of books to read, since as I mentioned it doesn't really do that for me, but how it can bring people like us together to bond over our favorite books (and the characters we wish existed in real life). Look how it's bringing some of us from class together already :) I look forward to continuing to read your future posts, which I am sure will be just as engaging as this one!
Hi Karen!
DeleteYes I have read Circe! Madeline Miller is actually my favorite author to date, I simply love her!
I have found quite a few BookTok users who do write the names of the books in their comments! It is so much better than having to try to pause the video at that exact second. And thank you for the compliment on my post, that was so sweet! :)
Hi Tereza,
ReplyDeleteAs a bookworm from early childhood - I appreciate the way your passion for books came out in this blog. I also enjoyed the way you were able to combine the marketing aspects of BookTok with your personal experience of buying/reading books over the pandemic. It was very refreshing and enjoyable to read about how BookTok has grown and is featured in Barnes & Noble stores. It shows that Barnes & Noble is using the groundswell as a way to strategize and figure out what their consumers are engaging with online. I love the last picture you used as well - great work!