If you’re a book blogger, or a reader of books, then you’ve probably heard of or been on BookTok, which is today’s discussion topic. BookTok is a specialized side of TikTok, that focuses on, you guessed it, books. I’m going to do my best to present both sides as evenly as possible, regardless of my own personal preferences and ideas. Wish me luck!
BookTok does have positive sides. It’s a way to expose more people to reading, and to make reading books more appealing to younger audiences. When I was young, reading was a nerd activity, especially if you were reading books that weren’t assigned, for fun *gasp* but things seem to have changed and there’s a pretty big subsection of young people who read. It’s a great way to reach people and share our favorite books. I’ve been introduced to some really great books through BookTok, and there are some seriously creative individuals making TikToks. I also love when people’s pets make an appearance during videos, especially when they are unexpected.
Even BookTok has negative sides. Firstly, it pressures bloggers to also make engaging TikToks, and that is no joke. Getting ARCs is influenced by the reach of a blogger, our presence on social media and ability to make these books appeal to potential readers. However, this pushes bloggers to adopt new social media platforms and strategies to adapt with the ever-changing nature of social media. TikTok has a ton of awesome features that I’ve seen on BookTok, but if you aren’t tech savvy this probably isn’t the best platform for you. Another thing is the quality of the recommendations that are made—a lot of these wind up being books that don’t have a plot, just vibes, yet they are so highly recommended. BookTok is the place to go for hyped books, but not necessarily good books.
So what are your thoughts about BookTok?
Categories: Sunday Bookish Discussion
Leah's Books 
The problem with TikTok and Instagram is drives creators to make Content that appeal to the algorithm and that’s super boring. Both BookTok and Bookstagram are full of the exact same repetitive Content and the same books over and over. It’s so hard to find anything different, it takes a lot of stamina to persevere through the thousands of posts about Romantacy, Sally Rooney and whatever the latest (it seems always mediocre) hyped contemporary lit is.
And that’s if content creators are even talking about books! So much of it seemed to be videos of carefully curated shelves, and centred around acquiring books more than sincere discussion. I guess also the short format doesn’t allow for nuance either.
It makes me distrust most of the opinions of creators on those platforms because it feels like they make videos to be please the machine – to get on publishers marketing lists – rather than offer honest opinions.
I also just prefer to read someone’s thoughts, I really hate how everything has to be in video format now. It’s obnoxious to me! Since I’ve stuck to blogs only I’ve had so much more fun!
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I fully agree with you on so much of this. I hate being forced to watch a video when I can read it faster and recall the information better than when it is in a video format. And it does seem like videos are being pushed more and more – on all social media platforms as well as with everything else. There’s nothing I hate more than when someone forwards me a recipe and it’s only in video format.
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Oh yeah video recipes had better come with a blog post version!
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I totally agree on the negative side, I don’t want to go there even. So I have no experience with the positive side of this platform. I absolutely agree on your point of the books that are represented, there is not much variation it seems. However, I’m afraid that this social media platform will push bloggers away completely at some point.
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I absolutely agree with you on that. I’m not a huge fan of watching videos overall, but there’s so much toxicity on TikTok especially. I hope it doesn’t push old-school bloggers away.
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Interesting-haven’t really heard of booktok (only heard of it thanks to the blog world) that much. True, I am a bookworm but don’t spend time on it
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You aren’t missing out on much, in my opinion.
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I definitely agree that there are positive and negative sides to booktok. I think it’s a great place to find new book recs and a way to discover new authors but there is the negative aspects of booktok as well. There are definitely people who do take advantage of others who are looking for people to read their books like the current controversy was all over the community of someone charging people to promote their books. I think every community is going to have their good and negative sides too them.
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You’re right – each platform has its pros and cons, but it feels like there’s so much overhyping the same books. I can’t even remember when the last time I found a book rec on TikTok that was actually really good.
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I’m not on TikTok as it’s banned in India. But it looks same as Instagram reels.
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It is a lot like Instagram reels, but there seems to be less oversight. I don’t think you’re missing out on much without TikTok.
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I like booktok for many of the reasons you mentioned, but I get tired of the algorithm pushing the same popular books over & over (i think a lot of users say you have to curate the algorithm) but wither way it’ll still find ways to push the overhyped, already discussed books somehow. As a blogger, its tough to see that publishers don’t appreciate this platform enough but I still love blogging & making posts, because I think what booktok (or ig) cant capture is that longer, engaging content that you can still find through blogs!
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