What defines the popularity of a book? Certainly, one of the biggest criteria these days is how many people are talking about it.

Whether you’re a reader or not, if you have TikTok or have ventured into a bookstore before, chances are you’ve heard about BookTok.

A subcommunity on TikTok focusing on books, reading, and literature, BookTok has gained immense popularity as the latest and most trending platform for influencing, discussing, and reviewing books. Its growing popularity means that BookTok now has a significant influence on the literary world. The young adult genre, one of the most popular on BookTok right now, has seen a dramatic increase in sales in recent years. BookTok has also helped promote the rise of romantasy, which has become the defining genre of the platform. But there’s more to BookTok than just reviews and bringing readers together.

A single scroll through BookTok reveals a world of perfectly styled bookshelves and aesthetic photos of books. These posts are often about being a reader and highlighting the reading lifestyle. Instead of just discussing and critiquing the content of a novel, BookTok has made attractive annotations, emotional journeys, and other visually appealing aspects of reading popular. There’s been an increase in focus on the fun book-related experiences, such as book-tabbing and stylizing books. This approach has prioritized the experience over the actual reading. 

One of BookTok’s most central themes is to hype trends, rather than books. This almost always translates to a focus on tropes (such as enemies to lovers, sports romances, fake dating, etc). While a good enemies to lovers trope makes for a great book, BookTok often focuses only on the tropes or trends, when there could be much more to a book. This is contributing to a shift from plot-focused books to trope-focused books. At first, the distinction between plot based and trope based books might seem little, but there’s a big difference between a strong plot that includes some fun tropes and a plot that's just made up of tropes. 

This trope-based reading has also led to a dramatic increase in the popularity of books that follow the most beloved trends on BookTok. In recent years, it seems like many books have been published just for the BookTok community. Many of these books are not meant to be long-lasting or have strong impressions on readers, but instead are for capturing an audience’s temporary attention before the next popular read comes along. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with a collection of books geared specifically towards popular genres, it ends up flooding the bookish market with many similar books, and they all seem to follow the set trends.

While BookTok certainly gets people reading, it also leads to the prioritization of being a reader over what is being read, focuses on tropes rather than plot, and leaves out a lot of varied content and genre diversification. While I can’t deny that it’s fun to scroll through aesthetic, eye-catching visuals and maybe get a book recommendation out of them, it’s also important to remember that there’s a lot more to reading than what BookTok has to offer.