Words by Shayni Solanki
TikTok is encouraging more people to pick up a book, but is ‘BookTok’ an authentic celebration of reading or simply a fad aesthetic?
BookTok is nothing new: book communities tend to form in every corner of the internet. Over the past few years, TikTok’s monopolisation of social media has seen the tragic fall of BookTube and meteoric rise of BookTok. TikTok creators tend to find their perfect audience thanks to the almost-magical algorithm: if you press like on a book-related video, chances are you’ll see 10 more.
No one knew how powerful BookTok would become. It Ends WIth Us author Colleen Hoover had been around for years, but her book sales only spiked after gaining popularity on TikTok. It’s been reported by Business Insider that she made $14 million from book sales in 2021 alone. Yet still, the positive reception to Hoover isn’t unanimous: there are those who adore her books and those who think they’re almost an insult to literature. Regardless of the latter, because her books are so popular online, they continue to sell. People simply want what’s popular.
No doubt swimming in her millions, perhaps Hoover hasn’t had time to address the ‘bad writer’ allegations. Her books have been described as Wattpad fiction and an “abusive fantasy”. It isn’t just Colleen Hoover under fire: Normal People by Sally Rooney is another insanely praised and popular book on TikTok, so much so you’d think it was the Mariah Carey of books. Many of my friends have argued that it’s clunky and entirely based on a miscommunication trope, suggesting that perhaps it’s only on TikTok that these kinds of books thrive, rather than in reality.
The varying quality of books peddled surely threatens BookTok’s legitimacy, but so does the sheer amount of content pushed. Of course, content creators are on the platform to manufacture content but when does its production start to threaten the age-old philosophy of quality over quantity? Where is the value in recommending 10 books in one TikTok video when all 10 books are merely average in quality and accompanied with hints of sexism and pointless trauma? When did we start basing our reading habits on 2 second clips of book covers rather than 10 word descriptions and reviews?
BookTok primarily targets young-adult readers and has been credited as bringing books back into the mainstream. Young people are reading again, right? A former BookTuber wrote in a GQ article that creators are mostly at fault for promoting overconsumption, hence book-buying becoming a trend on TikTok. It’s considered cute to be that girl carrying a book around on the Tube, and others can tend to be jealous of the gorgeous book collection on display in your bedroom, but for some it’s a big commitment actually read a book.
TikTok has found itself under fire for its promotion of overconsumption, which is more typically found in the fashion and lifestyle arenas, but this criticism shouldn’t exclude books. There’s an over-saturation of book hauls and wish-list TikToks that is having a real-life-purchasing effect on those watching, even if they already have a shelf full of books. Worse yet, some creators showcase the unread books they own, with these books often comprising the vast majority of their book collection. As an avid reader, it may be hard to understand how someone could have 50 unread books lying around, unloved and untouched.
Considering TikTok’s relentless debasement of niches and hobbies, it’s no surprise that the app has stimulated the transformation of reading into an aesthetic. There are TikToks of people meticulously setting up their space to read, ready to perform to the camera when, in reality, the average reader would simply sit down and read.
The effort and thought that goes into creating BookTok videos must be respected. However, we should keep in mind that TikTok has a tendency to water down culture and champion the most menial of tasks. For instance, a couple of years ago, so-called “Hot Girl Walks” began trending: TikTok had made walking into an aesthetic. There are positives and negatives to how TikTok popularises activities and hobbies, but where do we begin to question the authenticity of the creators’ sudden interest in these pastimes?
It is undeniably a good thing to get teens and young adults reading again, but at what cost? Do we want them to consume arguably poorly-written fantasies? Maybe context collapse is the issue here – platforms like Goodreads were once exclusively used for book recommendations. Now, in the age of TikTok, all creators are consigned to one platform, switching their aesthetic and brand according to whatever is popular at the time. Reading might be in now, but in a year or two, BookTok will presumably be replaced by another hobby that will possibly encourage worse practices than a bookcase full of unread books.
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