#Booktok: Why everyone loves literature on TikTok right now

Karsten Samland, TikTok

What sets this community apart? Are booktokers different from the average Tiktok user?
I would see several aspects that make the Booktok community special. On the one hand, there is the love for good stories and emotional resonance. Because the community is not just about classic book recommendations. The more crucial question is what the book does to its readers and how the fans felt while reading it. The community exchanges ideas about this very lively, not only through the videos, but also in the comment columns. Here the idea of ​​the book club is actually taken to a digital level. And that’s where Tiktok brings its strength to connect people who don’t actually know each other but have a common interest.

A platform that is known for its short format and extremely fast narrative forms suddenly becomes a forum for deceleration and sometimes very long storytelling. How does that work? Is there a special format for how you can tell “Slow” quickly and in an attractive way?
Short and long formats work on Tiktok, but there is no standard formula. Booktok videos are successful when they quickly establish relevance and clearly signal why you should watch the video. And practically any story can be hidden behind it. For example, I was recently on a panel with Tiktok creator Eva Pramschüfer (@eva_elizaa), where she reported that she had particularly good experiences with long video formats. And one of her videos shows me particularly clearly how to create relevance. It begins with the sentence: “You’re reading the classics wrong.” This is simply a hook that immediately arouses curiosity and that the Booktok community is unlikely to swipe away from.

What is the relationship between writers and the Booktok phenomenon? Do authors see Tiktok primarily as a promotional channel for their own work? Does the Booktok community even influence what is actually written about?
Booktok is often equated with the Young Adult genre, which is undoubtedly a huge community within Booktok. But if we look at the numbers, we see that the number of Booktok sales have also doubled in the non-fiction sector. That’s why we also created separate BookTok bestseller lists for these genres this year. And authors like Sebastian Fitzek have also actively discovered this platform as a communication opportunity. Because here you can imagine yourself very authentically as a person and be more than just a name on the cover of the book for your readers. Some – like the author Josi Wismar – even let their community participate in the writing process live.

Nonfiction can cover a whole range of topics in literary terms. Is there a topic area that is particularly successful on Booktok?
I would spontaneously say that these are the topics that deal with personality, emotionality and our current living environment. As a concrete example, I would cite someone like Booktok Creator Ole Liebl (@oleliebl), who is heavily involved in queer feminist and scientific literature and has now even written his own non-fiction book on the topic of “Friendship Plus”. In addition to the popularity of non-fiction, are there other aspects that the public overlooks about the Booktok phenomenon?
Booktok is about more than just book recommendations. That’s why, in addition to authors and books, we also honored the Indie Bookstores of the Year for the first time at the book fair. This year we noticed particularly strongly that the indie bookstores are adding a completely different aspect to Booktok with their contributions. And here too the creators are very different. For example, there is the Willbrand antiquarian bookstore in Cologne. Mr. Willbrand is 83 years old and makes Tiktok videos that have millions of views.

How do you explain that? Shouldn’t an 83-year-old fail as a creator from the start?
We see this again and again on Booktok. Whether the creators are 18 or 80 years old doesn’t matter when it comes to success. What matters is whether they have a passion for their topic that they can convey authentically.

VBut doesn’t this mechanism ultimately change the logic behind the book’s success? Are we entering a world where you first have to be interested in the writers before you are willing to give their literary work a chance?
With Tiktok’s functional mechanics, marketing a person or a face can work well at first. But I wouldn’t see it in black and white. For example, there are many Tiktok accounts in the media sector that work very well even without a face. A wonderful example is the author Mona Kasten (@monakasten). Her bestseller “Save Me” was adapted as the series “Maxton Hall” and was voted “#BookTok Community Book of the Year” by the community at this year’s TikTok Book Awards. In my opinion, Booktok is very much about discovering new topics. A personality certainly provides an anchor to the content to convey interest. But in the end, the content must be convincing with its relevance and quality.

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We’ve now talked a lot about the Booktok community as a communication platform. But it’s no secret that Tiktok is thinking a lot about the topic of social selling. Would it be conceivable in the future that authors or publishers would sell the books discussed directly via Tiktok?
To further develop the platform, we are always experimenting with different signals that we receive from the community. In the past few months we have already introduced various new functions – including a cooperation with Eventim to integrate ticket sales into the platform. So we’re thinking about these topics and seeing if it would make sense for the community. But at the moment there are no concrete plans.

Those responsible for marketing in the publishing industry would certainly already find this option useful.
I can tell you that the exchange on BookTok has already led to a paradigm shift in how people discover books and then actually buy them. The figures for the culture pass show that people not only spend 50 percent of their culture pass on books, but 9 of the 10 books purchased are Booktok bestsellers. And in 2023, 12 million books were sold thanks to Booktok. So the link between Booktok and book sales is already there today.