If you care about books, read more than just a handful on holiday, or have been in a bookshop recently, you will be aware of BookTok: a book community on TikTok. The videos shared on BookTok include fiction recommendations, summaries of the lessons of non-fiction releases, tips on how to become a better reader, and personality quizzes (what popular novel fits your star sign?). On TikTok the hashtag #BookTok has more than 160 billion views, and drives millions upon millions of book sales.
This certainly seems like a good thing – we should be glad more young people are reading. But while BookTok has caused a surge in reading (or at least in book-buying), it tends to promote a particular type of book: conventional romance novels, trashy thrillers, self-help and the kind of scientifically dubious non-fiction you’d be be recommended by an account manager on LinkedIn. Within this already narrow field, an even smaller number of books and authors appear repeatedly: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera, or anything by the “queen of BookTok” Colleen Hoover.
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