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In this article, Averie talks about the Booktok community and the drama surrounding it.
What is Happening with Booktok?
What is Happening with Booktok?
By Averie Black
By Averie Black
TikTok brought about a whole new form of social media that somewhat mimicked its dead brethren Vine (RIP Vine). This short-form content fostered the perfect environment for all sorts of communities to flourish. One of these communities is referred to as BookTok, a space dedicated to sharing all bookish content. Although it has been scrutinized for making reading a trend, it has encouraged young people across the globe to get excited about books again. However, there has been a strange aura on BookTok lately that is somewhat concerning.
The typical BookTok video usually has book recommendations, skits about books, rants about bad books or fun trends. It is predominantly run by women, typically between 16-35 years old, and tends to be a relatively welcoming community. What is so incredible is how powerful BookTok is when it comes to sales. If a book blows up on BookTok, then that author is going to be set for life. According to The New York Times, Icebreaker by Hannah Grace is currently #2 on The New York Times Bestseller List for paperback trade fiction, Bride by Ali Hazelwood is #4 in paperback trade fiction, and Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros is #4 in hardcover fiction. All of these authors secured their spots thanks to the relentless obsession of Booktok girlies. Communities centering around books is not an unusual concept. Ever since women have first had the ability to talk about books and gossip with their friends, book clubs and brunches have existed. In the modern day, Booktube and Booktwitter predated Booktok, but they were all close-knit communities that did not have much sway in book sales or trends. As a result of the ages of Booktok users, these communities have fully transformed the way publishing companies run their businesses.
If someone were to stumble onto Booktok without TikTok knowing that person’s reading preferences, the algorithm would most likely feed them one of two things: philosophical girl books or romance books. Under the philosophical girl literature are books like The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers, and anything by Sally Rooney or the Brontë sisters. The romance genre is a bit more straightforward with books by Ali Hazelwood, Emily Henry, and Colleen Hoover. Although the women who read the more nuanced philosophical books are often scrutinized for being pretentious, which a few of them are, the people who read the romance genre tend to have more sway within the community. For example, the Booktok romance community popularized a whole new genre– romantasy. While these books were around long before TikTok, romance-heavy fantasy novels finally got a label of their own, thanks to Booktok.
Image of Brittnay Broski Baby Blanket by Carlos Hernandez on Printerval
The fanficification of the publishing community is arguably the biggest shift that came from Booktok. A lot of people on TikTok are very open about doing traditionally nerdy activities, like joining fandoms and reading fanfiction. A big contributor to this is the queen of TikTok, Brittnay Broski, who built her brand on shameless, semi-embarrassing admissions to which many people can relate. With many book lovers also being fanfiction lovers, fanfiction tropes in published literature started becoming more and more common. Fueled by the encouragement of the Booktok community, newly published books are often boiled down to their tropes. Instead of the plot being promoted, the marketing just uses trigger words like enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, and found family. Other members of the various internet book spaces are not happy about this. Books that are being promoted like this often lack thoughtful plot and characters, and they are more so a medium for the tropes.
Another cause for concern is a new publishing technique being referred to as “Booktok fast-fashion.” Fast fashion is when stylish clothes are mass-produced for cheap. These clothes are extremely low-quality, which leads to them breaking and ending up in thrift stores or landfills. A similar issue is currently happening within the publishing industry. Iron Flame, the sequel to Fourth Wing, was released on Nov. 7 of 2023, while its predecessor was released on May 2 of 2023– just over six months. Established authors typically take a year at minimum before releasing another book. This is to go through the entire writing, editing, designing, printing, and distributing process of normal book publishing. Iron Flame did all of that in six months. Even if the author of Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros, already had a draft written up for the second book, six months is still way too short for all of the moving parts of publishing. Unfortunately, it shows. The editing was not done thoroughly, and many fans of the first book did not enjoy the second for this reason. Imme Van Gorp on Goodreads wrote, “First and foremost, let’s start with one of the book’s most glaring issues: the writing was genuinely bad. It’s as plain and simple as that.” Imme Van Gorp had previously rated Fourth Wing five stars, but went down to two stars due to the clearly unedited, first draft of the second book. The content was not the only issue with the second book, but the physical book was falling apart, as well. Some of the special release copies of Iron Flame were missing entire pages. In addition to the misprints, it seems like many copies had torn sprayed edges, crumpled hardcovers, and upside-down maps. It really is the literary version of fast fashion, and book lovers are beginning to be concerned that these unedited, thrown-together books will be the new publishing norm.
Aside from the publishing industry, Booktok has started impacting real, live people. A popular book by Hannah Grace, Icebreaker, is about a figure skater and hockey player romance. Luckily for the Booktok girlies, unlike fairies, hockey players actually exist. People, mostly women, began flocking to hockey games to watch the attractive players. Alex Wennberg, a player for the Seattle Krakens, has been unwillingly casted as the real-life version of the hockey player from the book. TikTok is often outspoken when it comes to finding people attractive but, in the case of Wennberg, it crossed the line to an extreme. Wennberg was continually sexualized by the TikTok community, spawning the phrase “Krak my back.” His wife, Felicia Wennberg, spoke out about it, and even showed understanding towards the Booktok community, but politely asked them to refrain from raunchy comments because it was making the couple uncomfortable. According to Business Insider, Flecia wrote, " ’What doesn't sit with me is when your desires come with sexual harassment, inappropriate comments and the fact that with the internet we can normalize behavior that would never be ok if we flipped the genders around to a guy doing this to a female athlete.’” Even after both Flecia and Alex spoke up about the sexual harassment, some Booktok members refused to stop their comments and outwardly stood against the couple’s wishes.
Image of Alex Wennberg by Jenn G on Flickr
A community that had a humble beginning on Twitter and YouTube grew into a much bigger force with TikTok. However, Booktok is creating new trends in sales, publishing, and sexual harassment that the rest of the book-loving community is not happy about. It is hard to say whether or not it is correct to label Booktok as “good” or “bad.” While it has helped many young people get back in touch with reading, parts of the community also encourage unacceptable behavior and change the publishing industry for the worse.
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