BookTok is the book community on TikTok, where readers post recommendations, reviews and emotional reactions to novels under the #BookTok hashtag. Wikipedia defines it as “a subcommunity on the social media platform TikTok that focuses on books and literature,” and its members are known as BookTokers.
Origin
According to Wikipedia, the community “emerged in late 2019 as TikTok was becoming more popular” and grew in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Wikipedia also reports that in October 2024 the #BookTok hashtag had been viewed over 309 billion times on TikTok. In December 2021 NPR cautioned: “It’s hard to quantify how big BookTok is, because TikTok doesn’t release a lot of analytics.”
How It’s Used
BookTok videos range from short recommendations and shelf tours to tearful reaction clips; Wikipedia notes that for The Song of Achilles, “videos of creators crying over the ending rose in popularity on the app.” Many Barnes & Noble stores have BookTok displays featuring books popular on the app. The community has also turned self-published work into traditional deals: Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six was self-published via Kindle in 2020, became a viral “BookTok sensation,” and was re-published by Tor Books in 2021. Wikipedia groups popular BookTok titles by genre, including romance, dark romance, fantasy, historical fiction and young adult. See also #DarkAcademia.
Effect on Sales
Publishers Weekly (Jim Milliot, August 2023) tracked the roughly 180 BookTok authors that Circana BookScan follows:
| Year | Copies sold by BookScan’s BookTok authors |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 13 million |
| 2021 | 27 million |
| 2022 | about 47 million |
| 2023 | Up 23% year to date through July, after being up as much as 38% through May; July 2023 brought the group’s first year-over-year dip (4.5%) |
Books BookTok Made Famous
| Book | Author | Published | What BookTok did | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| It Ends with Us | Colleen Hoover | 2016 | 770,000 copies in 2021, No. 6 across all genres | Tubefilter |
| They Both Die at the End | Adam Silvera | 2017 | 685,000 copies in 2021 | Tubefilter |
| The Song of Achilles | Madeline Miller | 2012 | 650,000 copies in 2021, No. 4 adult fiction book of the year | Tubefilter |
| The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo | Taylor Jenkins Reid | 2017 | Spent much of 2021 on the New York Times bestseller list | NPR |
| We Were Liars | E. Lockhart | 2014 | ”A perennial BookTok favorite” | NPR |
| Fourth Wing | Rebecca Yarros | May 2023 | Almost 400,000 copies by August 2023 | Publishers Weekly |
More on the most-discussed author: #ColleenHoover.
Criticism
Wikipedia notes that while BookTok has helped promote writers from diverse backgrounds, “Others argue that it can create an echo chamber about which books should be read.”
Recent Developments
- 2023. TikTok’s parent ByteDance filed a trademark for “8th Note Press” in April 2023 and was soliciting authors by July, Tubefilter reported, with a plan to “focus on digital publishing with limited print-on-demand runs.”
- June 2025. Vice reported that 8th Note Press was rumored to be negotiating the return of rights with its signed authors, citing The Bookseller, which broke the story on June 19.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BookTok
- https://publishersweekly.com/pw/print/20230821/93014-booktok-helped-book-sales-soar-how-long-will-that-last.html
- https://www.kunc.org/2021-12-26/tiktok-is-driving-book-sales-here-are-some-titles-booktok-recommends
- https://tubefilter.com/2022/01/28/tiktok-booktok-2021-book-sales-data-bookscan/
- https://tubefilter.com/2023/07/03/bytedance-booktok-8th-note-press-self-publishing/
- https://www.vice.com/en/article/tiktok-owners-book-publisher-shutting-down/