How BookTok Is Changing Publishing

For our Social Media Week series, Cecilia Beard explains how BookTok makes it possible for people outside the traditional delineation of the publishing industry to propel any book to success.

“Whenever a book shows up on a best seller list and no one knows why, it’s pretty much always a TikTok,” reads a tweet reply to Michele Filgate, editor of the critically acclaimed anthology What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence. In her initial tweet, Filgate writes, “Fellow writers: believe in the magic of TikTok. I am blown away by the attention my anthology has received over the last 24 hours.” Little did I know, it was my TikTok that catalyzed the book’s renaissance.

I had picked up Filgate’s book from the Brooklyn Public Library after reading her author bio on Catapult. Coincidentally, I was looking to take her class, “Building a Writing Career on the Internet.” I read her inimitable line in late November 2021: “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” Soon after, I posted a TikTok, which subsequently went viral. The anthology sold out on Amazon within 72 hours of posting the video, and it’s, still as I write this essay, currently sold out in many physical bookstores and online retailers. The TikTok sits at 1.6 million views, has over 350,000 likes, and has amassed almost two thousand comments. And it’s just under a minute long.

“TikTok is the best thing that’s happened to the anthology,” said Filgate when I asked her about experiencing TikTok virality. Filgate is no stranger to internet fame. When her title essay, “What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About,” debuted in 2017, it also went viral. The piece’s widespread success consequently led to her creating What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About. Her book features fifteen personal essays from writers like Carmen Maria Machado, Brandon Taylor, and Melissa Febos on their nuanced relationships with their mothers. Literary nonfiction doesn’t seem like it would have a foothold in BookTok; even Filgate herself assumed this. She told me, “I falsely thought that in terms of BookTok, that it was mostly for YA and fantasy books,” a common assumption given the app’s predominantly Gen Z user base—an estimated 33.7 million. Until I created TikToks, I was under the same impression.

BookTok, or bookish TikTok, started gaining traction in April 2020, and since then, it’s taken the publishing industry head-on. Backlist titles have reached new heights of success. Self-published authors like Olivie Blake find themselves propelled to TikTok acclaim, such to the extent that Tor is traditionally publishing her beloved book The Atlas Six. Barnes and Noble has set up “BookTok Favorite” tables, with BookTokkers’ recommendations buddying up next to the Pulitzer Prize winners and National Book Award medalists.

It’s also changed my place in publishing.

I had a brief stint in the industry as a summer intern during college. Amid my application process, I spoke with a big-shot scout at a revered agency. In preparation, I researched their career-defining deals and book tastes, the territories they presided over. I could’ve recited their website biography. Ten minutes into our conversation, they mocked me for not reading Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. When I referred to Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus as a fantasy novel, they smirked and replied curtly, “It’s not fantasy.” For those unfamiliar with Morgenstern’s debut novel, it follows the rivalry of two magicians and their protégés in a fictionalized Victorian London. It does include tropes and stylistic choices from other genres, but, at its core, it’s fantasy.

I found internship placements at a different agency and publishing house, but echoes of this casual elitism revealed themselves the rest of the summer.

I spoke with an agent about my interest in social media. Her eyes trudged across me, abruptly turning to pick up a new conversation with a Sarah Lawrence graduate bemoaning their third unpaid internship postgrad. More than one interaction began with, “Oh! You go to such a good state school,” after I gave my spiel about my college—UNC-Chapel Hill—and major—English. Everything I did had a question mark attached to it, an eyebrow already raised.

Each day I sat down to write a report on a manuscript or sputtered about a novel, I turned into myself. I felt forcibly removed from my authority, alien in an industry I thought I understood. I’d been made aware of publishing’s messy and ongoing divorce from a pure love of books early on. It’s a business. Yet my naivete toward the industry’s obsession with undermining and undercutting was on full display. My summer was not unique in its difficulty, and, quite frankly, it was a mild version of what many young publishing hopefuls experience. The promise of doing what you love is the sought-after carrot; elitism, exclusivity, and belittling are the stick. Yet it would be unfair to not acknowledge the kind industry mentors and friends I did meet that summer. They give me hope for how the publishing industry could eventually change.

But cultural gatekeepers is still the phrase I associate with my time in publishing; tastemakers, if I’m feeling nice. Pre-2020, the industry set the standards of what makes a “good” book. Heads tipped back, readers consumed. Readers flocked to critics from The New York Times Book Review or NPR for their next recommendation, explained Filgate, also an ex-bookseller. And big-time book influencing was still, in many ways, limited to celebrities. People sought out Reese’s stickers or hankered for Emma Roberts’s next Belletrist pick. 

BookTube and Bookstagram made headway between 2010 and 2015 respectively, but their sphere of influence is limited when compared to BookTok. Creators needed to amass relatively large followings to set any real trends in motion. The biggest bookstagrammers had anywhere from thirty thousand to one hundred thousand followers. And these fan bases weren’t accrued overnight. Bookstagrammers spent months, if not years, growing their audiences.

I didn’t set out to be a book influencer. Despite how much I disliked my time in publishing, all I wanted was in. I wanted approval, to know my previous missteps and shame could be washed away in the ink of a full-time contract. I set out to prove a point: I wanted the industry to know I had something to offer.

In 2019, post–publishing internships, I made my bookstagram account under the handle “ceciliabereading,” a small nod to Lizzo. The account would act as physical, indisputable proof of my literacy, my value, my taste. If anyone questioned me, I could point and say, “Look. Look at all the books I’ve read. Look at how much time I’ve dedicated. I am in this just as much as you are.” Bookstagram, like BookTube and BookTok, is the community-christened name of the bookish corner of Instagram. Readers, publishers, and authors take part in photographing recent reads, monthly reading wrap-ups, reviews, and recommendations. When I joined, Bookstagram was well established.

Several people I knew in the industry leveraged their successful bookstagram accounts when interviewing for and ultimately landing publishing jobs. “They saw my bookstagram as proof,” a newly minted publishing house’s social media manager told me. Her popular bookstagram sat at around fifty thousand followers, which she’d gained over four dedicated years. Another creator set up informational interviews with book publicists when they reached out to send ARCs. She, too, signed on for a full-time position.

I continued angling for a publishing position, hopeful I’d land somewhere in New York postgrad. But, with the pandemic’s onset in 2020, my plans shifted. So many talented, experienced people in the industry were losing their jobs overnight. Many houses and agencies stopped hiring altogether. Like so many, I pivoted but kept publishing on the back burner. I toiled away reading, photographing, and documenting books on Instagram while working as a marketing writer.

Simultaneously, BookTok gained traction, and I saw many creators from Instagram and YouTube shifting over to the platform. Unlike its social media predecessors, BookTok has unparalleled reach—the hashtag #BookTok has 48.6 billion views and counting. Its algorithm allows book influencers to reach an audience beyond those who already identify as readers. It’s why many app users talk about falling back in love with reading after long hiatuses or feeling seen by the book community for the first time. TikTok’s algorithm can identify and nurture even the slightest interest in books, distinguishing which genre and video style pique a viewer’s interest and expanding creators’ audiences exponentially. It’s also why follower count has less influence on video virality.

My jump to BookTok was slow, reluctant, and then all at once. I made my first video in August 2021, featuring a simple book stack titled “My Hot Girl Book Recommendations,” where I slowly revealed one book after the other, filling the screen with covers of “unhinged” women and feminist politics. Newfound loves like A. Natasha Joukovsky’s The Portrait of a Mirror appeared alongside established favorites: Lauren Michele Jackson’s White Negroes and Melissa Broder’s So Sad Today.

I made my first viral TikTok in early September that same year titled “POV: You’re a young woman who needs to know it’s not just her that feels this way.” A cover of Bon Iver and St. Vincent’s “Roslyn” plays as I, again, slowly reveal the books. Melissa Febos’s Girlhood, Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, and Frances Cha’s If I Had Your Face appear. My movements are slow, in time with the song’s patient thrum. The video was born out of impulse. It was a small plea to my new home in New York, where I felt terrifyingly alone. I had no ambition for virality.

Two hours after posting, every page refresh showed tens of likes and comments. This continued for hours into the day and spilled into the rest of the week, totaling over 350,000 views.

My jump to BookTok was slow, reluctant, and then all at once.

A few weeks later, I made the TikTok that pushed Filgate’s book viral. I picked up my phone, no script, sitting in my Brooklyn apartment, and invited readers to fall in love with the anthology in the way I did. I usually record TikToks multiple times to come to a concise video. This one came together in one take. I read Filgate’s iconic line aloud, knowing it would resonate with people as it had with me but unaware of just how many. I understood the reach the video had when, days later, coworkers across the globe, my fifty-five-year-old uncle, and my best friend’s younger sibling had all seen it.

When I spoke to Filgate about whether the TikTok had prompted any conversations with fellow writers, she said, “I’ve talked to a bunch of writers [about this experience]. And a lot of the writers are like, ‘How can I make this happen for my book?’”

Multiple BookTokkers have single-handedly sold out books and pushed them into the hands of new and established readers alike. Authors, readers, publishers, agencies—they’re all taking notice. BookTok makes it possible for people outside the traditional delineation of the publishing industry to propel any book to success. After creating a few consecutive viral videos, Nathan Shuherk (@schizoreads), a popular nonfiction BookTok creator, was told by followers that “the Amazon algorithm had changed enough that when you looked at one of the books that [he] recommended, the suggestion from Amazon was actually just all of the books that [he] recommended.”

This influence rivals publishing’s traditional marketing efforts, and it holds space in an industry so keen on keeping its gates shut. I wholeheartedly believe publishing plays a role in peddling the “BookTok is only for YA and fantasy titles” narrative. By acknowledging the influence BookTok holds, the publishing industry would have to relinquish some of its power. And, as BookTok creators like Mel Thomas (@pagemelt) and Shuherk have pointed out, the industry might also have to offer financial compensation and a legitimate seat at the table for book influencers’ labors. The industry loves BookTok for its sales potential and hates how little it controls the app’s outcomes. Frontlist, backlist, literary fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, and back again, these titles are affected by BookTokkers’ sway.

With its more diplomatic entry point, a phone and an account, BookTok creates opportunity for those intentionally pushed out of traditional publishing—for one, those unable to take on multiple unpaid internships or low-wage entry-level jobs in New York, a city with an ever-increasing cost of living. BookTokkers effect real market change, and they’re forcing the industry to meet readers’ demands. In the past two years, I’ve seen more diverse authors, books, and creators popularized by BookTok than any other bookish platform because the space has brought visual representation to who is a reader and what they want to see offered by publishers. Shuherk explains it best: “You had readers clamoring for [diversity in books], but they didn’t have a voice. They didn’t have a viral voice [before TikTok].”

BookTok allows me to influence and operate within the world of books without working directly for publishing. For me, it’s the right call. And for others, it can be a nontraditional path into the industry. I expect some BookTokkers will soon use their platforms to secure publishing jobs. The platform’s flexibility is part of the appeal.

Being a book influencer has opened doors for me, blazed trails, slashed through caution tape. It’s offered me the opportunity to do right by the writers I so adore, like Filgate and the other incredible contributors in her anthology. “I bought [the book] before the video ended,” “I’m convinced,” and “I have never ordered a TikTok book rec so fast,” read the video’s comment section.

Each time I create a video, I carve out my space. Sitting in my bedroom, armed with a phone propped up by an empty coffee mug, holding a public library book, wearing the clothes I slept in—I carve out my space. BookTok is inextricably linked to publishing, but it’s uncharted territory. Publicists can send ARCs. Creators can make content for publishing houses. But no one in the Big Five dictates how we BookTokkers speak about and engage with books.