During the COVID-19 pandemic, a phenomenon called BookTok began to surge in popularity. The community was made up of people gushing about their bookish interests and sharing recommendations with others. “I love that BookTok exists,” says English teacher Ms. Solomon. “It’s cool to see that people are using social media to share their interests.”
BookTok has done wonders in helping debut authors reach out and grab the attention of potential readers and publishers. However, some fear that these new methods of advertising books have led to a decline in the quality of modern literature. Because of BookTok, social media advertising has a chokehold on the publishing industry. In a TikTok, an advertisement must be short and immediately appealing in order to get engagement from viewers. Because of this, advertisements for books have evolved to focus primarily on lists of recycled tropes.
Since books that highlight these engaging, recycled tropes are the ones that the algorithm pushes forward, publishers have become less picky with the writing they are putting out. They’ve shifted their focus from publishing texts with dynamic plots and well written story beats to texts that clearly check all the boxes on the list of BookTok’s favorite tropes. “It reduces books down to just those categories,” Ms. Solomon explains. “It’s become very shallow. There’s not much depth or meaning… it’s not giving [people] the advantages that reading a good book will give them.”
It isn’t as though BookTok books are bad. Books in the modern day are created primarily for entertainment. There’s always been a category of writing literature that’s made up of guilty reads – books that aren’t particularly good writing and are only intended to entertain. The problem is that these books have taken over mainstream media and have left no room for more intentional writing.
The publishing industry has changed a lot since social media has entered the playing field. The urge to follow the trends and buy books from your favorite bookish influencers has replaced the days of searching for a new book in your local bookstore or library. It isn’t as though high-quality books aren’t out there – we just have to go out and find them.