Thoughts on BookTok

Jane Friedman, publishing guru (and I'm not saying that sarcastically because she really is, and is fabulously informative), notes on Instagram:

BookTok has helped authors sell 20 million printed books in 2021, according to BookScan. So far this year, those sales are up another 50%. NPD Books said that no other form of social media has ever had this kind of impact on sales. As a result, publishers are being influenced more than they’re doing the influencing, according to Emma Quick, senior marketing manager at Bonnier Books UK. As is often observed, BookTok is full of readers’ emotional, visceral reactions to books. Strong reactions require provocation: plot twists that make you angry enough to throw the book across the room, or endings that make you bawl your eyes out.

On the one hand, I think it's great that readers become passionate about books and want to promote then on TikTok videos. I mean, if you're an author who appeals to the BookTok demographic, that's likely to result in lots of sales even if you never once go near TikTok.

On the other hand, TikTok's demographic is heavily teen and under-thirty--a limited slice of the readership pie. What's more, even among that age group not everyone wants to read a steady diet of books that prompt sobbing and book-throwing. Even a reader who enjoys a quiet tear over a sad moment in a book may not want to weep copiously or feel buffeted by hurricane-quality winds of emotion.

And so, while I'm pleased that lots of teens and younger adults are reading and loving to discover and discuss books, I won't be so pleased if publishers decide that they need to base their acquisition strategies on what makes fifteen-year-old girls the most histrionic. We already have way too much of a tilt in US publishing toward insisting that novels begin at some exciting point and escalate from there. Again, nothing against novels that do this, and nothing against highly emotional teen readers, but the world of books and readers encompasses so much more. Just as it's good to have books that excite strong feelings, it's also good to have books that are calm, cozy, or thought-provoking. Both thinking and feeling are important, just as rest needs to balance intense activity.

As a side note, I wonder whether Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (infamous in its day for prompting numerous suicides) or the works of Dostoevsky (also known for their emotional effect) are currently inciting any BookTok videos.

The Reader of Dostoevsky, 1907, by Emil Filla