As social media and other digital forms of entertainment have skyrocketed in popularity over the last decade or so, the modern philosophers have theorized that the age of the book is over. “Books are dying! The kids don’t want to read anymore!” they say. However, over the last couple of years, a new player in the publishing world has emerged, one that combines social media virality and good fiction to create an unexpected, yet, in retrospect, inevitable explosion in popularity for books amongst a generation they thought would lose reading altogether. It’s called Booktok. 

It turns out that it’s not a question of whether or not “the kids” are interested in books; it’s a question of what will interest them about books. 

Tiktok is a social media platform with over a billion monthly users, primarily composed of Gen Z and millennials. Finding its origins in dance videos and eventually morphing into a conglomeration of content including comedy, cooking, fashion, political discussion, and really anything you can think of, one thing the platform has proven to do remarkably well is start huge trends. One Tiktokker will show that a foundation makes her pores disappear, and in two days the product is sold out nationwide. A creator will post an intriguing recipe video, and the next day everyone’s “For You Page” (which serves you videos Tiktok thinks you’ll like) is filled with videos of people trying pasta with a cream sauce made of melted feta, or frozen honey which is supposed to have an oddly satisfying texture. It’s exactly this type of virality, this need to try what everyone’s talking about, that has revolutionized the way that book marketing is done through Booktok. 

It’s safe to say that there are some star authors of Booktok: Colleen Hoover (It Ends With Us, Verity, Ugly Love), Emily Henry (Book Lovers, Beach Read, People We Meet On Vacation), and Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones and the Six, Malibu Rising) to name a few. The books that tend to go viral are usually commercial fiction, meaning that they are accessible and enjoyable to the general public. Booktok books tend to be romances or thrillers. It makes sense that virality is what has led to the massive success of books like Hoover’s It Ends With Us—everyone can read them and find interest in them, and so everyone does. In the same way that the viral feta pasta is easy to cook for young beginners, the Booktok books are easy to digest (perhaps their biggest distinction from the dairy-filled pasta recipe). 

This is where book marketing takes a turn from the way it’s always been done. Traditional book marketing involves selling the content of the book, its story, and hoping that people will want to read it. When it comes to Booktok, it’s no longer just about selling books; it’s about selling a shared experience, the ability to see for yourself what everyone’s talking about and to talk about it too. One of the biggest trends on Booktok is the discussion of books you thought would be five stars but weren’t. Here, people are weighing in on a trending novel, rather than giving a traditional review. Then, viewers want to buy it to see if they agree. The mechanism for book purchases is curiosity and connection. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a good story. The best part is that Booktok is not just for avid readers, as other book platforms tend to be. It takes place on an extremely accessible (and as a bonus, addictive) platform, and the For You Page has the ability to show people new things, things they might like but don’t know about yet. It’s a more engaging Goodreads that everyone can and will participate in. 

With the many benefits of Booktok’s impact come challenges. What does it mean if Colleen Hoover takes three out of five spots on the New York Times Bestseller list for Fiction week after week? What do readers lose if they go straight to the “Booktok” section of Barnes and Noble and then head to checkout without browsing the other books? In the viral engine of Tiktok, the content that is splashy and juicy will come forward at the expense of creativity.

Still, there is an opportunity for books and authors who would be “underdogs” in the traditional publishing world (for example, authors of color or people without the resources to find an agent) to find success through Booktok. They wouldn’t need a big marketing budget, or an appearance on Good Morning America vetted by a well-connected publicist; they’d just need to find a passionate audience. There’s an opportunity for this fascinating pivot in marketing—selling books for the experience of reading them rather than the content itself—to benefit underrepresented authors. Books that have previously been marketed traditionally see a completely new life when they take off on Booktok; they are often discovered and truly appreciated years after their initial release, selling millions more copies than they did originally. It’s also possible for books to become popular because of their genuine quality, not just their universality. 

With Booktok, people can decide what books are a part of the conversation, not publishers. Readers are calling for a more varied approach. There have even been Tiktoks made lamenting that the only recommendations they receive are Colleen Hoover. Viewers are ready for a wider variety of books from a wider variety of authors. As Booktok becomes more normalized, more advanced pieces of literary fiction and nonfiction have made their way into the mix. If Booktok brought reading back to a generation that might have been losing it, it can also expand what this generation reads. It’s time for new voices to go viral. Now that the Booktok conversation has been started, it’s ready to reach new depths. 

By Muse Thalia