TikTok Is Selling Books? How?

TikTok Is Selling Books? How?

Sina Issayas, Staff Writer

A new wave of book promotion is occurring on TikTok, a social media platform, promoting literacy with a twist. #BookTok is a new social media trend that allows people to talk about their favorite books with others. This hashtag has received over 5.8 billion views on TikTok. Authors from a variety of genres have seen their sales skyrocket and have never seen anything like it before. 

Many people, authors, and businesses have taken notice of this trend. Barnes & Noble, an American bookstore, has even dedicated a page to BookTok on their website. The “BookTok” page focuses solely on the app’s most popular books. Barnes & Noble dedicates book titles that have gone viral to their retail locations.

For those who are unfamiliar with TikTok, it is a social networking app that allows users to create a variety of short films ranging in length from 15 seconds to 3 minutes. Depending on the type of videos you’ve liked in the past, the videos on your FYP, for you page, will range from dance, art, comedy, and so on. This platform has also been used to discuss social injustices, raise awareness for events, and much more. With BookTok, users record themselves either reading short clips of the book, acting it out, or showing their reactions. 

Because of how quickly this book club is growing, titles like The Song of Achilles have become increasingly popular. Madeline Miller’s 2012 novel, The Song of Achilles, has become a commercial success due to this trend. Just overnight, #thesongofachilles went viral, garnering 22 million views. Sales have skyrocketed in comparison to the previous two years. As a result of the dramatic changes, publishers have decided to capitalize on this trend and promote their titles.

With this new mode of technology, we can not only communicate with one another during a pandemic, but we can also share our love of literature.