A few weeks ago, I was at Crossword, browsing the half-price section. A group of girls stood next to me, scanning the books before them. One of them picked up a book and exclaimed loudly, “This book is amazing. You all have to read it.” Curious, I turned my head to see her holding It Starts with Us. I had braced myself for a Colleen Hoover book, but I still died a mini-death. And this was after some hundred deaths I had died when I saw four (or maybe five?) of her books on the Top 30 Fiction shelf. Now, it’s fairly evident that CoHo is very popular. She has a pretty huge fanbase (who I hope will not beat me up after reading this). But a generous amount of the credit for her rise to popularity can be attributed to TikTok’s space for all things bookish: BookTok.
Let’s take a look at what BookTok exactly does to book sales trends: NPD BookScan, which tracks bestsellers and book sales at major retailers, indicated that the collective sales figures for BookTok-featured authors doubled in 2021. The New York Times reported a further 50 per cent increase in sales for authors promoted on BookTok by July 2022. Stores like Barnes and Noble in the US even have displays dedicated to BookTok favourites.
It may seem as if this is not very relevant to us, because, well, TikTok is banned in India. BookTok’s effects, however, are felt internationally. If you’re wondering why you see books like Fourth Wing, The Spanish Love Deception, and The Love Hypothesis everywhere, you have your answer. And it’s not just brand new, fresh-on-the-shelves books that gain popularity on this platform; books like The Song of Achilles, They Both Die at the End, and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo also went viral a few years after publication. Generally, the books that blow up on BookTok are fiction, especially from the genres of romance, YA, and fantasy. Therefore, publishers now take TikTok into consideration while trying to chart sales, more so for books from these genres.
BookTok is now a community that has a considerable impact on publishing. Publishing houses sometimes partner with influencers for promotion. Kathryn Lee at Pipe Dream calls BookTok an “economic kingmaker”. And often, this platform has had tremendous positive impacts for authors. It has been incredibly beneficial to self-published books like The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake, which were then taken up by publishing houses. Aliya Chaudhry at Observer talks about how BookTok also helps readers. By escaping the confines of traditional publishing and institutional gatekeeping, many readers also say that they meet a diverse set of books, worlds, and characters — all thanks to BookTok.
Clearly, BookTok, and in the same vein, BookTube and Bookstagram, have benefitted authors who could not make a breakthrough in the traditional publishing scene. The book corner of TikTok has also introduced many to the world of reading, especially during the pandemic. Anyone on TikTok can find a book they like: the use of hashtags like #fakedating and #chosenone has made things very simple. But is that as good as it seems?
Trope-ification is a huge phenomenon on BookTok (and the same is reflected in reels and Shorts as well). “5 books with enemies-to-lovers romance” and “7 books with the one-bed trope” – titles such as these are trendy on these platforms. Genre classification only hints at what the book could be about, leaving room for the author to write flexibly, sometimes bending the borders of each genre. On the other hand, when authors write to fit into overused or well-represented tropes, how much does it affect what goes into the book? And what aspects are we choosing to ignore when we market a particular book in a specific way?
Trope marketing may not be inherently evil, helping users find their niche interests and, at the same time, explore diverse interests while anchoring themselves to a familiar theme. However, it promotes oversimplification of complex, nuanced elements and sometimes glosses over things that need to be emphasised. For instance, let’s go back to my one and only favourite author: Colleen Hoover. Her 2016 novel It Ends with Us blew up on TikTok, but it was marketed as a romance, which is troubling on many, many levels because it has themes of domestic abuse and violence.
Tropes also influence how we portray ourselves online. As Diana Reid at Primer puts it, “We might read Sad Girl Books to prove that we are emotionally complex, or classics to prove that we are smart, or short stories to prove that we are independent-minded and uninterested in trends.” She also argues that through this, TikTok threatens the solace that reading offers. Once reading, which is an escapist adventure for some, also becomes performative – the joy it provides is no longer the same.
BookTok has thus altered reading habits and in the process, book-buying trends. TikTok favourites occupy much of the shelves in most bookstores.
Looks like we’re stuck with CoHo for a while. Sigh.
Edited by Amirtha Varshini V C and Yatin Satish
Article 19 