Whether you’re an avid reader who regularly browses bookstores and libraries, or a casual reader who prefers to peruse magazines in waiting rooms, you’ve probably come across Booktok more than once. Even if you don’t read, if you’ve watched or heard of movies like People We Meet on Vacation, It Ends With Us, and The Housemaid, that’s arguably the result of Booktok.
A few of Booktok’s favourites.
What’s Booktok?
Booktok is a portmanteau, coming from the words “Book” and “Tiktok”. Booktok is the younger, more widely known counterpart of Bookstagram (Book and Instagram). Both these online book communities focus on reviewing books, sharing recommendations and bonding over a shared love of all things written.
Bookstagram has a reputation of being slower-paced, with multipage carousels dedicated to breaking down the pros and cons of a book, offering quotes and more. Instagram also offers longer captions, which allow reviewers to go in-depth with their thoughts.
However, Booktok is its own beast. Due to the fact that short-form content is favoured on Tiktok, reviewers often work to compress their videos into a more palatable, bite-sized offering for our attention-deficit generation. Interestingly, Booktok has now become one of the driving forces for physical book sales; According to an article published by the New York Times, Booktok helped authors sell 20 million printed books in 2021. It’s pretty much a given now: If books go viral on Booktok, expect them to become a bestseller.
Booktok: Promoting Literary Junk?
Now, I’m not going to pretend that everything Booktok promotes “deserves” to become a bestseller. While enjoyment of books is subjective, there are common hallmarks of good writing, some of which are the pacing of the story, strong characters, and an evocative writing style, to name a few. Just like how a good dish balances the sweet, salty, sour and spicy to create a satisfying bite. Hence, there is a clear difference between mere production and the art of crafting. This begs the question: Does Booktok promote the publication of “bad” books, simply because they sell well?
A Buzzfeed Article: A list of the worst Booktok viral books
Capitalism demands that “the supply shall meet the demand”. In this case, if the market likes viral, easily digestible books, who are we to deny them? However, when all the market consumes are easily digestible books like candy, it begs the question: At what point does the purchasing of these books turn into mindless consumption? The algorithm rewards engagement, which turns into virality, something crucial that shapes what is published. And when a certain type of book is repeatedly promoted to users, it becomes the norm for engagement, creating somewhat of an ouroboros.
Ouroboros – An Ancient Egyptian symbol
So, when Booktok viral books flood the market in droves, they blur into one another; sure, Icebreaker and Wildfire are easy to read in one sitting, but do they have any staying power? Some of them do, some of them don’t, but some books are designed for immediate emotional impact rather than mindful, long-term reflection.
The BookTok Spectrum
However, claiming that Booktok is all bad is false and disingenuous. While Booktok does have its flaws, it also does an important job of pushing powerful, lesser-known narratives and shaping the cultural zeitgeist. Remember the dark academia craze of the 2020s? It was partly pushed and promoted by BookTok. Without it, many people would not have known about The Secret History by Donna Tartt, which is now touted as a dark academia staple and a modern classic. The branch off of this includes other books like If We Were Villains and Babel, or the Necessity of Violence (one of my personal favourites) by M.L Rio and R.F. Kuang respectively, which have both also gone viral on Booktok. Hence, this shows Booktok’s role in the revival of thematically dense works and how it continues to inspire many.
Booktok also pushes different perspectives and cultures into the global market; where else would I have found out about Sally Rooney, or read about her takes on Marxism from an Irish perspective while her characters fall in love and out of love? How would I have discovered Khaled Hosseini’s works about the Afghan struggle?
Booktok promotes diverse voices and provides a platform where users can access various forms of literature that wouldn’t be discovered otherwise, therefore functioning as a tool in shaping empathy and understanding in today’s world. Books that wouldn’t have been picked up by readers under normal circumstances are now pushed into the mainstream, providing exposure to lesser-known authors and actively shaping our modern literary tastes and landscape at large.
The Death of Nuance
In this day and age, I believe that we constantly straddle a line between two extremes: Taking things too seriously or not at all. In other words, the death of nuance. As seen in this context, you could argue that reading shouldn’t be an intellectual exercise, or a stuffy hobby meant to perpetuate academic elitism, but an important means of relaxation and general enjoyment. On the other hand, you could also say that reading “bad” books and encouraging the publication of these books is the death of critical thinking and an insult to the art of writing. Both are extremes.
Instead, acknowledging BookTok as a useful distribution tool, albeit a flawed one, seems like a balanced way to move forward. Booktok is a reflection of consumer taste, and a tastemaker; a place where book virality means success, and also a place where gems are unearthed and brought forward to the light. While it blurs the line between fast-paced consumerism and thoughtful reading, it still promotes reading: a slow habit in our fast-paced world, a feat that is impressive in itself. And somewhere amongst the sea of Booktok books, there is always a chance that you will find a story that lingers and inspires.
Written by: Sarah Wong
Edited by: Sherman Yap
