MAKE TIME FOR #BOOKTOK
Let’s talk about #BookTok. Face it, if you’re reading Writing Magazine, you probably only know that TikTok is a social media platform like Twitter, but for video. While Tweets can be no longer than 280 characters, TikTok videos have to be between 15 seconds and three minutes. Then there’s BookTok, not actually a website/app, but a hashtag for labelling book-related videos on TikTok. The reason it’s worth knowing this is that since TikTok launched videos tagged with the #BookTok hashtag have been viewed almost six billion times.
The site skews young, and is particularly popular with teenage girls, so is probably of most value to YA authors. Some authors have seen massive increases in back catalogue titles that TikTok users have waxed lyrical about, and now bookshops, especially in the US, are even having sections devoted to books that have gone viral via #BookTok. There’s even a BookTok page on the Barnes & Noble website, and director of books at Barnes & Noble, Shannon DeVito, recently said, ‘We haven’t seen these types of crazy sales
– I mean tens of thousands of copies a month – with other social media formats.’ As a result of the #BookTok hashtag Madeline Miller’s decade old novel Song of Achilles entered the bestseller lists, and in January was selling around 10,000 copies per wee – Astonishing numbers for a novel first published in 2012.
Under the #BookTok hashtag you will find everything from book reviews, videos of users book collections, fans re-enacting scenes from favourite books, and videos of readers reacting emotionally to powerful moments from favourite books or the endings of new releases. These videos often involve a lot of crying and are particularly popular.
Not surprisingly, money has crept in, with the New York Times reporting ‘BookTok influencer’ Selene Velez, has been receiving payments, sometimes in the thousands of dollars, to recommend particular books. At the time of writing she had 209,000 followers on TikTok.
If you want to explore TikTok and see how it might help you promote your books visit www.tiktok.com and search for the #BookTok hashtag.