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About a year ago, I posted something on TikTok for the first time. It was a reading list for spring, in which I took a selfie of myself pouting with a book in hand, captioning it, “Why is my spring TBR sooo sexy?” (TBR stands for “to be read.”) Then I hit “post” and expected…nothing. Maybe a few likes from my best friends, who had made it a habit to follow my social media activities with stoic loyalty.
But then: 90,000 views. Ninety. Thousand. To put that in human terms: enough to fill Wembley Stadium or buy out a bookstore. And then came comments like, “This is my sign to finally break out of my three-year reading slump,” “OMG, these sound so good!” or “I bought them all right away.” At first, I was just stunned. And then I thought: Maybe I should keep going?
At first, it felt strange to speak into the camera. I tried not to blink, practiced saying sentences that didn’t start with “uhm,” and wondered if my voice had always sounded like this or if I was changing it for TikTok. But with each video, it got easier. Eventually, I just started talking as if I were sending a voice message to a friend.
I already read three to five books a month, so I had plenty of material to share regularly. But more than that, I wanted to highlight novels that hadn’t yet received the attention I thought they deserved; and I felt a strong need to find a community I could discuss them with. Since then, I’ve been posting regularly, talking about weird-girl fiction and other emerging genres, introducing classics perfect for beginners, and sharing my favorite books each month.
What is BookTok, exactly?
The part of TikTok dedicated to literature is known as BookTok. Countless users post book recommendations, reviews, and other creative content, seeking literary inspiration and engaging in conversations with people who share their taste in books.
Tens of millions of books are sold each year due to mentions on BookTok. One impressive example of the platform’s power is the antiquarian bookstore Willbrand in Cologne, Germany. The shop was able to save itself from closing after the owner began discussing classic literature on TikTok last year, attracting new customers to the store. Another example: The novella White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in 1848, sold out overnight on Amazon after British BookToker Jack Edwards read his favorite quotes from it on TikTok.
Who’s on BookTok—and what are they reading?
The target audience of BookTok seems to be predominantly young and female. A full 93% of my followers are women. Of those, 57% are between the ages of 18 and 24, 34% are between 25 and 34, and only 9% are older than 35. A 2022 poll in the United Kingdom found that among more than “2,000 16–25 year olds, almost two-thirds (59%) say that BookTok or book influencers have helped them discover a passion for reading.” As a result, TikTok has established itself as one of the most significant social media platforms in the literary space, alongside Instagram and YouTube.
And yet the question remains: How can it be that a digital platform, of all things, leads young people to read more? How can it be that those who are often described as having short attention spans—who swipe and scroll in seconds—are suddenly drawn to a medium that promises the opposite: depth, slowness, and permanence?
Unlike Instagram, where beige feeds, soft-focus selfies, and curated vacation dumps dominate the content, TikTok stands for the opposite—immediacy, emotion, realness. People on TikTok openly share negative experiences, cry on camera, discuss red carpet looks from their beds, or talk about books while rolling their eyes, furrowing their brows, and raising their voices. And this—authenticity, unfilteredness—is exactly what drew me to the app from the start. Isn’t that also what literature is also about? Not just consuming but diving in, getting outraged, grieving, swooning.
Relatedly, a survey of BookTok bestseller lists published by Barnes & Noble, Pan Macmillan, and other major booksellers reveals a clear pattern: almost exclusively, the books that rank are romance, fantasy, and new adult. Where professional critics tend to focus their reviews on bluechip biographies and literary fiction, a distinct and dynamic reading culture thrives on BookTok, reveling in genres once only discussed in book clubs or Reddit threads.
The downsides of BookTok
But before I get too carried away: There are, of course, some negative sides to BookTok too. For one thing, the same works are pushed over and over again. (I don’t even want to know how many times I’ve seen videos about books that are sold as “hidden gems,” yet have been on bestseller lists for weeks.) There’s also pressure to read an incredible amount (in my opinion, videos that feature ultra-short books to help viewers boost their end-of-year tally miss the point; reading is not a competition!)—and to spend quite a lot of money. (BookTok is all about buying new, but don’t forget your local libraries and secondhand book shops!)
Another slightly disconcerting trend is the rise of so-called “dark romance” books—those in which the stalker becomes the lover, schoolgirls fall for their teachers, and kidnapped women fall in love with their captors. These books romanticize toxic, manipulative, or abusive relationships, glorifying extreme power imbalances and violent sex scenes, and their popularity, in the age of the manosphere, strikes me as troubling.
And then there’s the lack of diversity. A 2024 study from the University of Toronto found that while BookTok centers more authors of different genders than traditional publishing, too many marginalized groups are still underrepresented. Addressing that disparity is exactly what drives me as a BookToker: not to hype for the sake of it, not to parrot others, but to promote diversity, amplify voices, discover debuts, and provide a platform. Well, that and transforming a deeply solitary hobby into something much more communal.
