Content creators provide an opportunity for affordable marketing and a way for publishing houses to extend their reach online. In doing so, they are influencing what audiences are seeing online and creating hashtags to increase the visibility of their own videos. Online platforms and their algorithms make the formation of micro-communities easier. Content creators and viewers can come together to discuss and bond over their shared interests. This is what happened with #BookTok, an online community on TikTok, where creators, authors, reviewers and viewers create and interact with content about books without much input from the publishing houses’ publicity teams. There is no one perfect way to promote a book and each campaign is unique. The intersection between book publicity and BookTok represents a relatively new relationship, and each publishing house has its own budget and plan for publicity. This has resulted in a ‘try anything’ attitude, where the success of each promotion is determined by the audience of the creator, the viewers and the algorithm of the platforms.

‘Reading in the age of influence: an analysis of the impact of BookTokers on book consumption intentions’, collaboratively written by Tyson Antonio Alves da Silva and colleagues, argues that BookTok does affect reading behaviour. They conducted surveys and explored how reading becomes social, and how influencers impact the book market. It was found that BookTokers have a strong influence on users’ intentions to read. However, they surveyed only viewers, and by excluding the voices of influencers and publishers, we can’t entirely be sure if their work had anything to do with the readers’ responses. A similar area covered in the literature is the connection between online platforms and their effect on young people’s reading habits. The existing research fails to dive deeper into the specific posts influencing the readers and finding out whether they are, in fact, marketing techniques designed by publishers. Online platforms impact the way audiences select and read books, while also shaping how publishing houses advertise their books, leading to the necessary question of how the publishing houses utilise bookish influencers to build and shape communities.

Text Publishing’s social media strategies

Text Publishing Company is a small Melbourne-based publishing house that publishes fiction and non-fiction books. It was recently acquired by Penguin Random House but still maintains full creative control over its publishing. We note that, as a smaller publishing house, Text’s approach may differ from Australia’s larger publishers and global arms, such as Hachette Australia and HarperCollins Australia. Followers of Text’s Instagram accounts will see that they regularly post promotional content for new book releases, upcoming events and reshares of user content in which they’ve been tagged as the publisher of the book, or books in the image. In comparison, followers of local (Melburnian and wider Australian) bookish influencers may notice that Text seems to utilise these influencers’ accounts more than their own to promote new publications.

Advanced Reader Copies

A prominent strategy that Text employs is providing Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) to bookish influencers, in hopes that the influencer will share positive reviews with their own audiences. Text maintains a spreadsheet in which bookish influencers are logged, along with engagement rate, follower count and genres. The process of deciding which influencers should receive ARCs seems to rely more on intuition than on a process that can be taught (which may mean that this knowledge is lost when team members move on). It requires the publicity teams to be active consumers of bookish influencing crowds themselves. Influencers are not required to post reviews in return for receiving content. It’s not known whether influencers post reviews to maintain rapport, although Text’s representative theorised that creators with fewer followers are more likely to post reviews in order to stay on the publisher’s ARC list. With a focus on The Strength of the Few by James Islington, we can see the three major ways Text Publishing utilised bookish influencers to find audiences and create community.

I. Community Building

An example of community-building video is a TikTok by bookish influencer Jordan, who uses the handle @SirBooksalot, where he films himself reading one of the copies send by the publisher. In Jordan’s video, the text at the top of the screen states: ‘Finish the last 50 pages of my most anticipated read of the year with me.’ The video portrays a form of intimacy between the creator and the viewer. The camera positioning and eye contact with the creator establishes a scenario similar to that of a video call with a friend, creating a sense of community and a parasocial relationship between the creator and the audience they cultivate.

II. Reviews

Another common type of content made after receiving an ARC consists of early reviews. Similar to community-building content, these reviews generate hype for the book’s release without spoiling the content. An example of this form of content is the video by creator @lauraplusbooks. In Laura’s first video, she states, ‘honest thoughts on The Strength of the Few as someone who thought The Will of the Many was a bit overhyped’. In the description of her video, Laura goes into detail, giving overall positive feedback, without revealing any elements of the story that might spoil or ruin the book.

III. Book giveaways

The final form of promotion that we saw Text Publishing participate in was a publisher giveaway. The house teamed up with bookish influencer @perusewithjess to, as she states in the video, ‘share some copies with all of you.’ This sort of description paints the relationship as altruistic, which deepens the connection between the creator (and publishing house) and the viewer. The way to enter the giveaway was to like the post, follow the creator and Text Publishing, and comment their favourite fantasy read of the year or anticipated fantasy release. This content is a win-win deal for both the creator and publishing house, since both receive followers, as well as boosting the video in the algorithm, so more people interested in fantasy would find the book and become prepared for the second book’s release.

These types of content, while varied, all operate similarly. They build excitement for the upcoming release of the novel, as well as promote the bookish influencers by building community and trust in their reviews, which can be seen in the content and examples above. There is a definite shift from traditional to online promotion, and the full effects of this shift are yet to be known or understood. Influencers have the ability to creatively advertise in ways that rely upon community and connection.

Online review culture

Without interviewing more publishers in Australia, it’s difficult to ascertain whether Text’s strategies are indicative of other publishers’. However, publishers sending ARCs to influencers and book reviewers is not a new practice in the publishing sphere. In the interview, we touched on Goodreads (a book review platform) to users (including those who have received the book as an ARC) and the culture of online reviews. Text said that the potential downside of online book reviews is that the reviews may be negative and that there is no way to avoid this with certainty, other than focusing on sending books to influencers who read the genre and similar books. We agreed that influencers sharing honest and authentic reviews, both good and bad, are important for maintaining audiences’ trust, so it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Lack of proof

There are limited metrics available to publishers to help them define a ‘successful’ social media campaign, particularly one resulting from bookish influencers posting about new releases. Text’s representative mentions that currently they take note of engagement metrics of posted content but also states that this is an ongoing conversation within the publishing house. The result for the publishing house is a potential lack of proof of which campaigns are working. There is no definite way to link book sales directly to social media posts by bookish influencers—a post with a high engagement rate is only an indication of a potential contribution to increased sales.

The future for publicity

Other strategies that Text utilises include online giveaways, online forums (Reddit-specific) and events. Events are an avenue that Text confirms they hope to explore more in the future, inviting bookish influencers in the hope that they will post about the events and thereby create hype surrounding new releases.

Events have been gaining traction in the publishing sphere, with many prominent online book clubs and community-building accounts hosting events such as book swaps. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the popularity that these events are gaining speaks to both the desire for connection in an online era as well as the voyeuristic culture of social media. Social media users can gain access to events that they would not ordinarily have the opportunity to attend through influencers' posts and stories on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

Bookish influencers

Australia’s publishing industry is seeing a growth in marketing, with increased funding going towards content creation. Professional interviews were conducted with Cameron from @slaggybookclub and Charley from @book_smut to learn more about Australia’s bookish influencers and their views on the publishing industry.

I. Genres

Creators who focus on book content have their own audiences that are extremely specific to the genres that they post within. A closer look at these creators shows that the novels they receive from publishers don’t always fall into these genres. This suggests that publishing cannot afford to be so narrow and specific to audiences, particularly in terms of content creators and the genres they share.

The interviewees highlight the point of view that there isn’t enough funding in the publishing community for publishing houses to conduct thorough research into the creators to whom they are supplying complimentary copies of novels. There is a need for publishing houses to understand the creators they work with and their audiences.

II. Integrity

Influencers do not want partnerships with publishers in which they find themselves getting paid to say positive things about the novels they receive. These creators work full-time roles outside of content creation, and when offered free books to speak positively about them in exchange for money, they decline. There is a sense of integrity within their community, where they speak with complete honesty about these novels and expect the same from their fellow content creators. To speak about the payment for reviews, there is a blur of dishonesty and a breach in their relationship with their audiences.

III. Parasocial relationships

To help gain the trust of their followers online, creators need to post more of their lives as a part of their content, rather than solely posting book-related reels. The audience of a content creator will find themselves trusting ‘faceless’ creators less, as they can’t be sure if they’re a real person. When these creators post other content as well, such as ‘a day in the life’, the audience can relate to this and will therefore trust this creator more, allowing them to then trust their book reviews.

Publishers do not delve into how much an audience trusts a certain creator, but it is clear which creators’ audiences trust based on what the publishing houses are really looking for: engagement. Bookish influencers who show their face and personality online will also get invited to book-related social events. Due to the nature of their content, these events will be shown online for their audience to see, creating a cycle that these stakeholders can continue to build on. A publisher reaches out to a content creator; the content creator posts their novel or attends their event; the content creator posts about it online; their audience and the people holding a parasocial relationship with them engage with the content; the publishing house is aware of this and continues sending novels to these content creators and inviting them to events.

A positive correlation was found between how often a content creator shows their face in their content and the number of views the content receives. Cameron’s two most recent videos on TikTok, both tagged #BookTok, have received different levels of engagement. The content featuring her face received four times as many views as the post featuring solely the book. When the audience is able to see the content creator, this builds relatability and the level of trust that the audience is willing to present, resulting in engagement.

IV. Engagement

There have been positive outcomes highlighted from the limited communication that has taken place, though these are hard to measure. There is no set way for a publisher to know if a customer is purchasing a book because they saw it posted online by a bookish content creator. Cameron said that she bases a post’s success on how many people told her that they have read the book because of her review. Publishers do not follow up or ask Cameron about this, so it is possible to hypothesise that the publisher is not basing their success on that. Basing success solely on engagement is inconsistent and cannot be generalised.

Charley highlights how a publisher has never gotten back to her about how a book has performed after publication. She bases the success of a novel on how many saves a video has, inferring that the audience is saving the video to come back to it later, rather than just liking it. Despite the anecdotal evidence suggesting low funding within the publishing industry, this is not something that publishers consider when working with content creators. Considering how new these relationships are between publishers, content creators and different marketing techniques, these areas require more attention for this relationship to be utilised to the best of its abilities.

How to improve

There is a large gap between publishers’ expectations of bookish influencers and vice versa as this relationship is still new in the wider context of the book publicity field. It is important to note that social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are beholden to an algorithm that favours virality and new forms of content. For publishers and content creators alike, this means a constant revaluation of what works and what doesn’t.

There is a discrepancy between the expectations of publishing houses and how they utilise content creators. Content creators build on the parasocial relationships within their own communities, but this is not something that publishing houses are taking into account. It is clear that publishing houses are sending out ARCs of novels to bookish content creators but are doing no further work than that. This means that content creators and publishing houses engage in only short conversations, and this needs to go further in order for publishing houses to utilise content creators to their full extent. Publishing houses are not using content creators to find audiences, as there isn’t enough research going into the established audiences that content creators have built themselves. Publishing houses also aren’t doing enough to engage audiences, as they are unable to ask their desired content creators to engage with their audiences without providing payment.

To improve this relationship, publishers need to put additional work into defining their expectations, as the provider of new book content, for their dealings with content creators. Rather than sending out ARCs to bookish influencers based on hunches, it would be more valuable for publishers to engage with a smaller set of bookish influencers among their respective genres and focus on nurturing these rapports. This relationship could include ARCs, giveaway posts and as Text suggested, inviting them to exclusive events—perhaps bookish influencers who are invited to publisher-hosted events could be encouraged to post their experiences on social media. Event content specifically speaks to the current landscape of social media in which users are participating in parasocial relationships with content creators, and the increasingly voyeuristic culture of viewing their posts as a way to experience the exclusive events and public relations (PR) gifts that the average person is not privy to.

A redirection of resources towards a smaller subset of bookish creators may also give the publicity teams space to explore different ways to promote upcoming releases and continue to create unique campaigns for books. Successful social media campaigns can’t be manufactured; publishers must attempt to take more control of these new relationships to engage audiences and find readers.