The evolution of book marketing platforms: understanding what works in the era of BookTok

Radha Sekar

Cristina Arreola, a senior marketing manager at Sourcebooks Landmark, stated that marketing simply entails selling books: to package a book into something that will sell and to make people aware of the book in hopes that it reaches the right audience. Although the crux of marketing is finding readership for a book, this crucial aspect of publishing is ever evolving. Traditionally, book marketing primarily involved pitching printed books to be sold in bookstores, libraries and wholesalers. Of late, BookTok—the book community on the social media platform TikTok—has been influencing not only which published books will make it to bestseller lists, but also which books will be acquired for publication. So, when did BookTok start making its mark in the publishing industry?

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, BookTok has been taking the book publishing industry by storm as an organic, digital word-of-mouth platform for book reviews and recommendations. The BookTok hashtag had garnered over 127 billion views as of April 2023, more than double the 45.8 billion views observed in March 2022. Consequently, book sales have been steadily increasing like never before on an international scale. The social media platform has helped authors and publishers sell 20 million printed books in 2021, with sales again rising by 50% in 2022. Naturally, publishers have been trying to understand and analyse the trends emerging from BookTok, so that they can capitalise on the platform.

In this report, the evolution of book marketing platforms will be broadly discussed before delving into marketing case studies that aim to answer the following question: What is BookTok gravitating towards? This conversation will be extended to understand how BookTok is responding to initiatives by publishing houses to integrate themselves into the community.

Note that this report will be discussing book content objectively and evaluating engagement based solely on readers’ enjoyment of a book. Further, BookTok is a contemporary platform and limited academic studies have been conducted on understanding the platform itself, as well as the relationship between BookTok and the publishing industry. Therefore, for this report, information has been attained primarily from digital newspaper and magazine articles.

Challenges

Writing a report solely focusing on the Australian market is nearly impossible given the global reach of BookTok. Therefore, trends and data from across the globe have been discussed and analysed in this report to provide a comprehensive overview of the platform’s impact on the publishing industry and readers.

A few limitations to note specific to the case studies conducted are that exact data on the book sales post the virality of the books was not accessible and thus could not be analysed. Further, the impact of the lack of engagement with the content in the case of Lightlark on book sales could not be statistically analysed.

Evolution of marketing platforms in the book publishing industry

Before 1980s
Independent brick-and-mortar bookstores had the ability to turn novels into bestsellers.

1980s
Mass book retailers emerged and started collecting data on purchasing patterns; then, they analysed what was in demand and communicated their findings to publishing houses.

1990s
The Internet helped expand the literary culture and its reach. Online retailers made books more affordable and accessible to readers.

2000s
Printing and distribution became economical, thus paving the way for self-published books. This in turn initiated a levelling of the playing field—in terms of acquisition and marketing—for publishing houses, authors and readers.

2010s
With the introduction of social media, who controls the value of the book publishing industry started changing more prominently. Platforms such as Goodreads, YouTube (the BookTube corner) and Instagram (the Bookstagram corner) helped establish a direct communication channel between publishers, authors and readers.

2020s
BookTok emerged in the early months of 2020 and a spike was observed in book sales as people were actively seeking escapism and entertainment during the pandemic.

Marketing strategies leading to virality on BookTok

A Broken Blade by Melissa Blair and Lightlark by Alex Aster were selected as case studies to understand the marketing strategies that have led to virality—the phenomenon where a book becomes rapidly popular—on BookTok. A Broken Blade was written by a BookToker—a creator who posts content specifically for BookTok—for the BookTok community. Lightlark, which had been rejected by several publishers, became viral on BookTok and was then traditionally acquired and published. Virality, however, does not always translate to success in the BookTok community, as will be seen in the case of Lightlark.

Case study 1: A Broken Blade by Anonymous

Twenty-five influential BookTokers received a package, in it a wax-sealed letter with a unique cipher and a self-published book written by an anonymous BookToker. The mystery? The author’s identity. By laying out an exhilarating scavenger hunt for BookTokers, the author drew attention to her book—which had to be read to uncover the mystery—and soon the book became viral. Readers who didn’t receive the package and wanted to be part of the hunt rushed to order a copy of the book online. For two weeks, a series of videos were posted by the community on finding clues, brainstorming on how they can be interpreted and coming up with ways on how they could collaborate with each other. A gang was formed—the Scooby Gang—to solve the mystery together, and their progress was tracked in a public Google document. The author created an anonymous TikTok account as well, to join in on the fun and drop more hints. Eventually, BookTok unveiled the author to be Melissa Blair.

By using this unique approach to market and promote her book, Blair earned back her investment to self-publish in just five days and sold 4000 copies in the first two weeks of the book’s release. Adding to her success, Union Square & Co. acquired the book series—Halfling Saga—after a Barnes & Noble employee passed A Broken Blade along to Laura Schreiber, Blair’s current editor. The author, a BookToker even before A Broken Blade, studied the community and then wrote a book for the community as a hobby/experiment. According to the author, BookTok is all about connecting over books: to share relatable content about reading and books, discuss book theories and have debates about tropes. A Broken Blade embodies several aspects of community, and naturally, BookTok fell in love with the action-packed lush, romantic fantasy that explores colonialism and systemic violence. As of April 2023, A Broken Blade hashtag had around 5.8 million views.

Case study 2: Lightlark by Alex Aster

Aster signed her first book deal with Sourcebooks for the Emblem Island series. The series was released during the pandemic and sales were slow; the series did not make it as big as the author hoped it would despite being traditionally published. To add to her dismay, her next submission, Lightlark, was rejected by several publishers who claimed the book wouldn’t sell well and that the market was oversaturated with similar books. However, Aster did not lose hope and instead turned to BookTok to market her novel. She posted a video on BookTok, posing a question to the readers: ‘Would you read a book about a cursed island... to survive, Isla Crown must lie, cheat, and betray—even as love complicates everything’.

Overnight, the video gathered over a million views (as of April 2023, the video had around 2.5 million views) and thousands of comments expressing interest in buying and reading the book. Leveraging on this success, Aster presented the data to publishing houses and a week later Lightlark was auctioned off to Amulet Books with whom she signed a six-figure book deal. Adding to the glory, Aster secured a movie deal with Universal Studios.

During the publishing process, Aster and Amulet Books used BookTok to market Lightlark, even allowing BookTok to choose the cover of the book, which was then shared on a massive billboard in New York’s Times Square. Creating a buzz and aura around Lightlark helped the book become a bestseller at Barnes & Noble even before the book was released and debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. Aster stated that despite the attention the book had already received, she intended to ensure that the readers got a book they would enjoy and signed up for. To quote the author, ‘Ultimately, everything I’ve done—the social media and stuff—would be for nothing if the book actually wasn’t good’.

Ironically, once the book was released, it received backlash from not just the BookTok community but also Goodreads reviewers. The community was surprised and felt misled as several scenarios and quotes alluded to in marketing videos were not included in the published book. Daily Trojan even goes so far as to call Lightlark the first-ever clickbait novel. Many accused Aster of false advertising to gain readership and pre-orders. Further, according to readers and reviewers, the love triangle in the final version of the book did not live up to the hype, the writing style was dry and there was a lack of representation in the book. The author defended the book by claiming that the advertised content did not make it into the published version due to routine editing but will be included in the special edition of the book or its sequels.

In this case, BookTokers did not connect with the content of Lightlark and vocalised their opinions honestly, despite the book’s virality. Controversially, although publishing houses were initially not interested in the content of the book, it’s virality seems to have swayed their opinions on whether they should acquire the book. This exceptional aspect of BookTok—its authenticity—will be further explored in the following sections.

A fearlessly vocal community

The BookTok community appears to be unabashedly vocal about their opinions, not just in the case of Aster, a relatively new author as discussed above, but also in the case of an author who rose to fame because of BookTok, Colleen Hoover.

Hoover’s It Ends With Us was published in 2016 by Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books and its marketing entailed a nine-stop national book tour as well as blurbs from bestselling authors. In one month, the author sold around twenty-one thousand copies of the book after which sales flatlined. Thanks to BookTok, the book shot to fame during the pandemic in 2020 and remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for eighty-two weeks. Further, in 2022, Hoover sold more copies of It Ends With Us than the Bible, according to NPD BookScan. Ariele Fredman, senior associate director of publicity at Atria Books, stated that the virality of It Ends With Us on BookTok is potentially owed to the emotional intensity of the book, as it deals with domestic abuse and the emotional turmoil associated with leaving and staying in abusive relationships: a topic BookTokers extensively discuss in relevant posts.

However, when Hoover announced an adult colouring book for It Ends With Us, her readers accused her of being insensitive to the heavy themes discussed in the book and for taking it too far to capitalise on the book’s popularity. Several of these posts garnered over 1 million views on BookTok. In response to this outrage, Hoover and Atria Publishers ceased the project and apologised. The community won’t even cut the ‘Queen of BookTok’ any slack, and this ruthlessness and authenticity is why BookTok is having an unprecedented impact on the publishing industry.

BookTokers wear their emotions on their sleeves and provide authentic, honest reviews, which is why most readers gravitate towards the platform. BookTokers seldom talk about plots or authors, but extensively ponder over and share their emotional journey while reading a book. Their vulnerability is perceived to be authentic, enabling emotional engagement with BookTokers as well as the books being recommended. Further, BookTokers do not receive monetary compensation from the authors or publishers and often reject books from publishers as well, if the book is not one they believe they would enjoy.

BookTok’s indifference to date of publication

Generally, bestsellers are said to have a two-year effect. In other words, they do well the year they are released and the following year or the year the movie or TV adaptation is released (if popular enough). However, BookTok appears to be proving this theory wrong with not only It Ends With Us, but also several other titles. The most prominent books on BookTok have gained popularity several years after their publication. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller written in 2011; We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, 2014; They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera, 2017 and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, 2017 are some of the books that unexpectedly became viral on BookTok during the pandemic in 2020.

This trend is being observed, again, because BookTok values how much they enjoy emotionally engaging with a book above all. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was revived years after being published because many queer social media influencers identified and emphasised the book’s sapphic plot line, an aspect of the book that initially hadn’t been focussed on during marketing.

In line with this observation, Arreola stated that marketing teams need to understand the books they are working on and be okay with sometimes being wrong and having to alter their course of action to engage with readers. For instance, when marketing In My Dreams I Hold A Knife by Ashley Winstead, early reviews were particularly raving about the romantic relationship in the book—a dark academic thriller—consequently, the marketing team emphasised the romantic element in the following marketing campaigns, which helped pique readers’ interest.

Publishing houses working with BookTok

BookTok is where the buyers are. Around 25% of the users have purchased books after coming across them on BookTok (Wolfe 2022). Arreola stated that for the same follower count on BookTok and Bookstagram, affiliate links on BookTok are observed to result in better commissions. Naturally, from a business standpoint, publishing houses want to capitalise on BookTok.

However, Lauren Le Faci, creator and communications lead at TikTok, said that no one can predict what the next big thing will be. The virality of books depends on TikTok algorithms, which are hard to decipher, and publishing houses often find it challenging to understand what makes a book viral. Further, sponsored content does not appear to do well on BookTok; BookTok influencer Kendra Keeter-Gray claims that paid advertisements take away from the authenticity of BookTok. In fact, TikTok suppresses posts that are sponsored.

Maddy Marshall, senior marketing manager at HarperFiction, said that marketing strategies are being revisited to ensure engagement with the BookTok community. Publishing houses are hiring influencers familiar with the BookTok community to create posts for their accounts and are looking for BookTokers who match the aesthetic of the authors and books they are marketing. Further, Marshall stated that content creators should have as much creative freedom as possible because they understand how to sell books to their viewers.

Penguin Random House took a unique approach to engage with the community and collaborated with TikTok to launch a new feature; users can now find information for a book and all the videos created around the book in one location. Alyssa Castaneda, head of social media at Penguin Random House US, claimed that the intention is to make discovering books easier and the reader’s community stronger. However, several BookTokers call this feature a cash grab and an attempt to exploit BookTok, as you can only link to books published by Penguin Random House. Some other concerns are that this feature will lead to the exclusion of self-published authors as well as writers in independent publishing houses, and that BookTok content could be used without appropriate compensation for its creators.

Concerns about BookTok

Keiran Rogers, the sales and marketing director at Affirm Press, stated that BookTok has unintentionally created an American cultural hegemony in Australia, due to several popular titles being American-authored as most TikTok users are located in America. Further, according to the Dymocks annual Top 101 online poll, 39% of the listed books were titles popular on BookTok and only 39% were books by Australian authors. Although BookTok is considerably influencing titles being sold across the globe, the community does not seem to be as inclusive of titles and voices across the globe.

Concerns also revolve around how BookTok is shallow and how BookTokers focus on creating an aesthetic around reading, books and bookshelves, instead of critically engaging with the text. However, as extensively discussed in this report, BookTokers value content they can engage with.

Furthermore, BookTok has gotten people to start reading extensively, learn about new genres, have literary discussions on their favourite content and, most importantly, foster a close-knit community of readers passionate about reading and books. When publishing houses try to infiltrate the community or focus on monetary benefits over engaging content, the community resists, as seen in the case of Lightlark. So, in the era of BookTok, it would be prudent for publishing houses to prioritise publishing books that align with their values and editorial standards, without seemingly getting sidetracked by virality and profitability. Then, giving out advanced reading copies and creating marketing campaigns that have the potential to pivot in response to readers’ reactions will be all that publishing houses have to do to monetise authenticity.

Conclusion

From readers learning about new releases primarily from bookstores and libraries to bookstores and libraries setting up shelves dedicated to books recommended by readers on BookTok, book marketing platforms have come a long way. However, that is not what BookTok originally set out to achieve. Readers just want to gush about their favourite books, characters, tropes and content, irrespective of when the book was published—or even if it is not published yet—without being bogged down by commercial success.

Jeanne-Marie Hudson, vice president and deputy publisher at Berkeley, stated that ‘Nothing guarantees success better than readers falling in love with a book and generating grassroots support for that book—both online and off’. This couldn’t be more applicable to BookTok, a community that has reiterated that word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing strategy.

About the author

Radha is an Aries and loves getting lost in a good story. She finds baking therapeutic, and well, it helps nourish her sweet tooth. She likes when the weather is gloomy, so she can stay in with a mug of hot coffee and a book.