Prior to the internet, and certainly before the days when every home has multiple televisions, reading was a common activity, whether for educational or entertainment purposes. Since the rise of the digital age in the early 2010s, reading rates dropped exponentially.
For almost a decade, young people stopped reading due to the influx of numerous social media apps taking over their attention spans. Fortunately, back in 2020, a little app called TikTok brought literature back to life and into the lives of many young, impressionable individuals.
If you are stuck in a haze of unbothered ambivalence and don’t already know, TikTok is an app used commonly amongst young people. The app has single-handedly changed the game for many businesses when it comes to promoting their products and services.
How did that happen? Well, it’s simple: users post short videos, often displaying the product they are enjoying, and then those videos end up getting millions of views, becoming trends that millions more can join in on.
One of those trends ended up getting mixed up within the publishing industry. There is an entire side of the app dedicated to what is known as “BookTok’,” which is basically a book club. But instead of it being a small group, it numbers millions around the world, reviewing and sharing their most beloved reading experiences. It’s a community where people can ruminate on the books they adore, creating content that often gets eye-popping numbers of views. These reviews span the literary genres, from romance to thrillers to fantasy; everything is pretty much covered.
According to WORDSRATED, the #BookTok hashtag has garnered over 42 billion views as of 2022, with some even suspecting that number will double by the end of 2023.
In other words, because of social media’s impenetrable influence, reading has become addictive again.
Another bonus to this easy-access service is that it allows authors to directly communicate with their readers, building connections that can further their careers. It’s now possible for authors to reach a wider audience and be able to deliver a wider range of content. It has also allowed publishing companies to be more lenient with what they choose to publish, as the popularity of social media is making publishers more likely to take risks with books that may not immediately have mass appeal.
TikTok is not the only app that has a notable platform for book promotion; Instagram and YouTube have large reading communities, with authors and publishers taking advantage of these platforms as well.
With the majority of TikTok’s users being under the age of 35, #BookTok has brought an influx of a younger, more impressionable audience to the world of literature.
