Don't Knock the 'Tok

     Here's the 411 on TikTok: it's an app where people make and share brief videos, most of them less than a minute long. TikTok is especially popular with teens. It's a place where trends are set, presidents get trolled, memes proliferate, dances go viral, high schoolers make big bank talking about their makeup routines, and...books are hot?

    Yep, there's a subsection of the TikTok universe called BookTok, and it has grown large and powerful enough to capture the attention of the publishing industry. 

    BookTok is full of passionate young readers raving about their favorite books, acting out beloved literary scenes, crushing on fictional characters, bragging about bookstore hauls, and generally enthusing about the written word. BookTok attention has boosted sales of many titles -- not just the latest bestsellers, but backlist titles such as The Song of Achilles, a novel about half as old as many of its TikTok stans. 

 

 

    The exciting thing about BookTok is that it's a grassroots phenomenon. It wasn't created by a publisher (or its corporate parent) to manufacture enthusiasm for upcoming blockbuster titles or create awards buzz for Important Books. It's free of the genre snobbery so endemic to publishing. On BookTok you'll find endless paeans to scifi, romance, fantasy -- all the popular stuff that gets looked down upon by the very "industry" that couldn't stay in business without it. And of course BookTok stands as further evidence against the evergreen complaint that "kids don't read anymore."  

     They say word-of-mouth is the kind of advertising you can't buy, but publishers are trying to buy it on TikTok. Some popular BookTokers are now being paid to chat about certain novels. Maybe BookTok will soon be as choked with "influencers" as Instagram. Let's hope not. We need more realms where the love of books can exceed the lust for lucre.