BookTok Mayhem 📚

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy TikTok, with the best of them, but it's starting to get frustrating with the drama that tends to unfold around books.

Ever since BookTok started in 2020, book sales have increased exponentially, and for someone who loves books and wants to work in the book industry, it’s exciting to see the revival of the beloved print form. There are plenty of reasons why BookTok is efficient and effective, especially in the modern era where there is a lot of digital marketing that is needed to make sure that a wide audience is reached - ooh look at that my media studies A level is coming through there - and TikTok allows not only the authors to promote their books but also the readers themselves.  At this point, it is really common to promote the books on TikTok, especially for the popular authors like Sarah J. Maas, Ali Hazelwood, Emily Henry, Jennifer Lynn Barnes and so on. In addition, some of the smaller authors who have a very niche audience are able to promote their books. They may not become the best-selling authors of New York straight away, but hopefully their dreams of authorship are coming true.

Though a wonderful place I feel - like all social media - BookTok has its moments of being harmful towards authors and creators. It should always be a stream of sharing what you do and don't love to read, not a platform to steer people in a certain direction of not liking or reading a book. There are plenty of reasons why people don't like certain authors, and that's okay, but I don't think they should be continuously garnering bad publicity about them. If you don't like it just don't read it, and if you do like that's your own preference - you don’t need to be swayed by trends and popular opinions. Just because it's popular doesn't mean you have to like it.

However, that's the good thing about books, it allows people to experience new worlds as well as build their creativity through fan art, fan stories and so much more. For example, some fanfiction novels have become very famous on their own, like the Fifty Shades of Grey and After series. This has now created book collections, fandoms and multiple on-screen adaptations. That's what the social media version of books can create, and this can be used in the right way, and I think this is how the industry can continue to promote in this way.

Traditional publishing has been following the trend of romance novels, but the Amazon self-publishing has recently become a big boom. I read a lot of the self-published books, because they are interesting and a bit different, and there is just something about all the different perspectives you can get from indie authors.  

I have also noticed that, in the recent years, through the trends on TikTok, a lot of the books on the shelves have stickers for ‘TikTok sensation’ or ‘TikTok made me buy it’. I completely understand that social media is important in the promotion of the books, however, it can be frustrating to readers to have unremovable stickers that compromise the details of the front cover that people have already spent so much time on to achieve the perfect one. This focus on stickers, which cannot be removed, can be disheartening for readers who prefer to choose books independently rather joining the trends that are pushed by the algorithms of social media.

Perhaps the books I haven’t seen on TikTok are actually circulating in ways I haven’t encountered, and I just have the different TikTok algorithm on my for-you page, but is there a way to solve this dilemma for both the publishing companies and readers to still have a harmonious relationship?

Just something to think about.

Until the next chapter,

#BellesBookBabble