All Books Aloud

How has BookTok affected books and publishing?

• Elizabeth Brookbank & Martha Brookbank • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Even if you don't use TikTok, you've likely at least heard of the phenomenon known as BookTok. Individual videos sometimes get millions of views, and the combined hashtags for these videos on TikTok have had hundreds of billions of views. The publishing industry is paying attention - and so are we! 

Is BookTok really driving book sales? Or is it just creating yet another thing for people to envy online and feel bad about in their real lives? Is it lowering the quality of writing in books, turning them into fast fashion? And how is it affecting indie authors? Is it truly something new, or is it a new version of an old trend? And if it's encouraging young people to read more and see reading as something that's cool - does anything else really matter? Join us!
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Books we're reading in this episode:   
The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West by Sara Ackerman
Clara Reads Proust by Stephane Carlier
The Gentleman's Gambit by Evie Dunmore
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Sources: 

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Intro and outro music: "The Chase," by Aves.

Do you have thoughts, questions, or ideas for future episodes? Email us at allbooksaloudpod@gmail.com. And if you want to learn more about the podcast, visit our website at allbooksaloudpod.com.

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And if you'd like to see more bookish content from Martha & Elizabeth, follow us on Instagram and TikTok @allbooksaloudpod.

Read on!

[All Books Aloud intro and theme music]

Martha: Hey, Liz.

Elizabeth: Hi, Martha.

Martha: How are you today?

Elizabeth: I am doing well. It's a Friday. That makes me happy. It's sunny.

Martha: Yep, it's sunny here, too. It feels like spring, finally. We'll see.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I feel like every year Oregon has a fake spring that psychs me out a little bit. It's it's spring! And then, no. Actually, that 

Martha: Mm [00:01:00] hmm.

Elizabeth: but we'll see.

Martha: Yeah,

Elizabeth: so what are you reading right now?

Martha: I am reading a book called The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West. It is a new release by Sara Ackerman, it's a historical fiction. They flip back and forth. Between two time periods, 1927 and 1987, and it follows the lives of two women, Olivia West and Wren Summers. And Olivia is part of an air race from California to Hawaii, crossing the Pacific. And it's inspired by real events. So I'm excited to see how the two stories are intertwined and what happens and see if Olivia makes it to Hawaii.

Elizabeth: Cool.

Martha: Yeah

Elizabeth: a little different for you. , well, you do read historical fiction, I guess. Lately, you've been in a romantasy hole.[00:02:00] 

Martha: Mm hmm. Yeah, it's either  romantasy or Romance or whatever. I'm reading for book club. So this one is a little bit of a departure, but it's good so far I'm liking it and I'm in between Audiobooks right now, so I don't really have one to talk about

Elizabeth: Oh, wow. That's not very common.

Martha: I know.

Elizabeth: My physical book right now is Clara Reads Proust, which I'm very excited about. We got for free in the 

Martha: Mm-Hmm. 

Elizabeth: publishers, , Gallic books. So we're hitting the fancy pants big time. As far as I'm when publishers start sending us books,

Martha: Mm-Hmm.

Elizabeth: And , the author is Stephane Carlier and. Apologies if I'm butchering that French name it is a French man who wrote it, and it's translated by Polly Mackintosh, who I think, if things work out with scheduling, we're gonna [00:03:00] be lucky enough to interview about that work of translating books into English.

So that'll be really interesting. So I'm excited to get into that. That's my physical book. And I'm also still reading, I know that's driving you crazy because I'm going through, through it so slowly, but I'm making my way through The Gentleman's Gambit by Evie Dunmore, which is Catriona's story, the last friend.

And I, as we anticipated, am definitely liking it a lot more than I did at the very beginning. I think that it took a little while to get into it, but I am really liking it now. The love interest, Elias Houry, is from, I think, what would be today modern day Lebanon. And there's a lot of really interesting history about that area of the world in the 19th century that I didn't know about.

And in the beginning of the book, he is pretty, , well behaved in the sense that he has learned [00:04:00] European British manners in France and England. And hews to those really strictly. And At the part that I'm at is when he first shows a little bit of his true personality and gets angry about something, horrible and imperialist that one of the snooty British men said.

And you see, his real personality and he's very rebellious and sort of fiery. And that was when I feel like I was, , more in on his 

Martha: character 

Mm-Hmm. 

Elizabeth: So I'm excited now because I feel like I'm starting to get to the part of the book where we get to really see who these people are for real and their relationship.

And so I am enjoying that and I'm going through it a little bit more quickly now that I'm now that I'm liking it more. Yeah.

Martha: Now that you're into it, good. Yeah, that's great. I really liked how they. introduced his culture through talking about the food too, , because that wasn't something they really focused on in the other books. It was a way [00:05:00] that Evie Dunmore was trying to show his culture through his food.

And they mentioned how he brought exotic foods and jars

with him. And I thought that was so cool. And they're trying to hide it from the Englishmen and they don't want to be exposed having this exotic food.

And Yeah. I thought that was really cute.

Elizabeth: and the exotic food is like jars of apricots and

Martha: Yeah, yeah,

Elizabeth: and stuff like that. And I was just like, Oh my God.

Martha: yeah, nothing, too exotic now, but at the time

Elizabeth: Yeah. At the time for sure.

Martha: yeah, that's I love that about her books 

 I'm glad you're liking it more as you get further into it.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I am. 

 So what's our topic today?

Martha: Our topic today is BookTok and, or bookstagram. They're a little bit interchangeable, but not quite. We started talking about this topic because both of us are on Tik Tok and we send each other Tik Toks all the time [00:06:00] and Like many people, TikTok is how I heard about some of the really big trending authors like Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros with her fourth wing series.

And so we wanted to talk about the effect of BookTok on the publishing industry. If there is an effect on the publishing industry, or if it's just perceived that way within the social media bubble. I think if you Spend a lot of time on the app. It can seem like the response and if something's trending is kind of make or break. It seems like that could be kind of high stakes for authors these days. So wanted to look at that and then , the effect on indie or smaller authors,

Elizabeth: mm.

Martha: Is it really helping sell more books, or is it changing how people find the next book?

And is it affecting the quality of books?

Elizabeth: [00:07:00] Right. So there's a lot,

Martha: Yeah,

Elizabeth: there's a lot to talk about. I do think at this point that it's mostly TikTok that we're talking about, right? I mean, 

Martha: hmm, 

Elizabeth: There are book influencers on Instagram for sure, but most of the articles that I read in the media about this were pretty much 100 percent focused on TikTok videos, BookTok.

And so the numbers that I have about how popular it is are all about TikTok. And I wonder a little bit if that is partially because TikTok being the newest social media tool, is the one that's perceived as the sexiest most interesting least understood one because it's what the young people are using.

Martha: mm hmm.

Elizabeth: Instagram even though I think that there are still young people on Instagram based on my experience of running social media for my library I try to keep a finger on the pulse of what my students are actually using and have pretty [00:08:00] much stopped using Facebook to talk to students and don't use Twitter to talk to students.

But A lot of them are still on Instagram, but I definitely think that Instagram, as with all these social media tools, is aging up, right? As it gets older and as younger people start using social media, they don't want to use the same, it seems, they don't want to use the same tools that people that they think of as old use.

Seems to be the trend. And of course, this is all only 20 years old, right? Because Facebook. out in 2004, which makes me feel like I'm a million years old because I was there.

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: But for the purposes of our conversation I mostly am talking about tiktok for that 

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: mean that it doesn't apply to instagram

Martha: think it's the kind of content and the way that Instagram seems to be more curated and it's more [00:09:00] obvious when someone's trying to sell something or promote something and the perception on TikTok and I say it's a perception because it is is that things are more authentic or real and people aren't just on there trying to sell stuff, which can be true.

But I think a lot of times people are still selling stuff on TikTok. So I think it's also the content and it's it's probably both. So I think you're right for the purpose of this episode. We should probably just just assume that we're talking about TikTok.

Elizabeth: I think you're right. It does seem like Instagram is a little bit more gimmicky, and TikTok has definitely been trending toward this idea of someone just holding up their phone and talking for two or ten minutes.

Martha: Mm hmm. About what they think.

Elizabeth: yeah, people are certainly making money on TikTok, so let's not get that twisted, but.

Martha: exactly. Yeah.

Elizabeth: So the biggest thing that. [00:10:00] I have experienced before I started really looking into this of people talking about this issue about TikTok and BookTok and publishing, is this critique about the quality of the books that are trending on BookTok. And I feel like this is a really interesting phenomenon.

So 

Martha: hmm. 

Elizabeth: you can tell me what you've seen, but the authors that I really see people talking about when there are these critique videos about BookTok and publishing are the really big authors on TikTok. So like Colleen Hoover both of the fantasy authors that you just named, Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J.

Maas. there other books that you have seen criticized for this quality issue that they're trending and so because they're so popular the quality is suffering because publishers are trying to get them out faster, they're trying to pump out more books, whatever the case may be.[00:11:00] 

Martha: I definitely have, but I can't name them off the top of my head, but it does seem like it's something that's been going around that, there's people who are just so dramatic about I can't even stand to read this. It's so bad and

Elizabeth: Yeah, and of course you just rolled your eyes so listeners can't see your eyes rolling although that eye roll was so epic that maybe they could almost hear your eyeballs rolling out your head.

Martha: into the back of my head. Yeah,

Elizabeth: who cares? Don't read it if you don't like it.

But I do think that there is something really interesting to delve into there because this criticism of bestsellers is not new, especially of bestsellers who are women, especially of women bestsellers who are writing things that are romance or romance adjacent. Which I would say that most of the really big books [00:12:00] on BookTok are, do fall into those categories.

This critique that the writing is bad, this isn't literature, with a capital L, right? That the editing is bad or non existent I'm not going to say objectively that none of this is true because none of it is really objective except for the amount of editing we can talk about what's happening in the publishing industry and a little bit. These are all tales as old as time. And yeah, I just find it really interesting that histories just keeps repeating itself but in a different space. So like these young people that are criticizing these books. I guess this is just what happens, right, it's just this is the world, this is history, this is human beings

Martha: yeah, and I can speak to this a little bit. I , I'm not that much younger than you. , we're both millennials. But,

Elizabeth: you're a young millennial, whereas I am a very [00:13:00] elder

Martha: well, I'm not really a young millennial people in their mid 20s are like young millennials.

There's, 

Elizabeth: not Gen Z?

Martha: no, there's people like in there.

Well, maybe not mid 20s, late 20s,

Born in the 90s, who are millennials, and I'm 34. So, , I'm pretty solidly a millennial. But regardless, , as we've established in other episodes, I've been a big audiobook user for a long time, but I never really described myself as a serious reader.

So I wasn't really searching out blogs that were talking about. The best new books or, I never really paid a time to the New York Times bestseller list or any of that. I think that the way that we're interacting with this information is different because now the algorithm is just showing us things that it thinks we're interested in and it's working.

It's showing things that I am interested [00:14:00] in. I just never sought it out before to get the information and now it's being fed to me directly. So maybe we're paying more attention. that makes sense?

Elizabeth: Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why social media in every sphere, not just in this sphere of books, is so successful and so popular and is taking over the world.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: of take it over the internet in a, in a lot of ways. It's because of exactly what you just said you don't have to seek it out.

It's just put in front of you.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: it's also that democratizing effect that social media has had. Anyone can just talk about what they think, what they like, what they don't like, what their opinions are, whatever, and they have this microphone to the rest of the world, potentially, I mean, that's the siren song of social media is that if you go viral, you're potentially going to be an important voice to millions of people.

And

Martha: hmm.

Elizabeth: So even something like podcasting like what we're [00:15:00] doing right now, you know, this is a new phenomenon where the old gatekeepers of media or of government or whoever the people who are able to speak and have millions of people hear them,

Martha: hmm.

Elizabeth: aren't able to control that anymore.

That's what the internet and social media has done. And obviously there are pros and cons to that, but that's the whole deal with social media. So yeah, that goes for books too.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: I think that there is something about the publishing industry in this conversation that is important to understand though, and I certainly don't want to position myself as an expert in the publishing industry by any means. But, as a person who is a writer and who wants to be published traditionally, specifically, I did start paying attention to the publishing industry a long time ago.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: I don't even really want to talk about how long ago.

Martha: [00:16:00] Well, and you have an English degree. You've been in this world for a long time.

Elizabeth: Yeah, and before I even decided that I wanted to try to be a writer that gets published, I mean, I always wanted to be a writer, but I had a period of time where I didn't give myself the permission to do that. And during that time, I thought that what I would do instead is actually work in the publishing industry.

So after I graduated college, I applied for a bunch of jobs in New York to work in the publishing industry. And didn't get any of them. 

Martha: Yeah. 

Elizabeth: My life went in a different direction. But it is something that I've been paying attention to basically since that time, which, much to my horror and dismay about 20 years. And I will say that things have changed in the publishing industry in that time. But the publishing industry has always been and certainly is still a business first and foremost. People who I do think of as experts that I listen to and that I read to find out about what's going on in the publishing [00:17:00] industry say this all the time.

Yes, the people who work in publishing, especially the people who work in editorial, really love books and they're very passionate about what they do and they want to create good books and they see the magic of books and the magic of reading, sure.

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: At the end of the day, especially for the huge multinational conglomerate companies that own all of traditional publishing at this point, this is a business.

 It's numbers on a spreadsheet, , how much money are you making for the shareholder's business?

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: And a lot of times people who are outside of it or who are especially authors that want to get into it they hope that it's a little bit more humane and empathetic than that, but it's just not, especially not in the latter part of the 20th century.

Because. There has been monopolizing into a few huge companies. It used to be the big five. I think it might now be the big four. I think that , they might even be trying to merge again a couple of [00:18:00] the companies. I'm going to do a quick plug for a podcast called Print Run, which is two literary agents who do a podcast about the publishing industry and they're very direct and straightforward and have opinions that I agree with.

And so I just kind of love them as people. So if you're interested in a insider's look into the publishing industry, I would really recommend their podcast. But it is the case that the publishing industry has gotten more consolidated, they're churning out books faster, they're spreading their employees thinner than they ever have before, which means each individual book gets less attention.

And so you hear things from authors like what you were saying, Martha feels like they're just being thrown out into the deep end and seeing if they sink or swim. So if they don't get a million views on TikTok or if they don't sell x number of copies in the first week that they're published, they're just left to sink.

And that is true, but that is about the publishing [00:19:00] industry as a corporate run business at this point. It doesn't have anything to do with TikTok. In the sense that it's not being driven by TikTok, so, I think that for people who might not know what's happening inside of this industry, it might be tempting to ascribe responsibility to outside influences like TikTok, but there's a lot more going on that is pretty much driven by the fact that it's a corporate business and that it's a about making profits for their rich shareholders, 

Martha: mm hmm.

Elizabeth: Despite the fact that they're constantly, just like every industry, talking about what a hard time they're having, how they have to cut back, how they just have to lay off employees, how they have to, not pay their bottom rung employees who all have to live in Manhattan because all the publishing industry is there, pretty much.

They can't possibly pay them more than 50, 000 a year. That would just bankrupt us. Right?

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: The people at the top are making a ton of money, and that, again, is just the story in every [00:20:00] industry. And,

Martha: society.

Elizabeth: exactly. And, at the same time, however, which I think is related to BookTok and the rest of this conversation, people are buying a ton of books, especially since the pandemic.

Publishing has had since the pandemic, some of its best years ever. I think 2020 was maybe the best year ever and then it slightly dipped and then was back in 2022, just like the most print books, the most books sold ever in its history. And , certainly part of that, I think could be ascribed to BookTok.

BookTok started being a thing in 2021. I saw when I was reading up on it. So that I think is an important thing to understand, the things that are happening in publishing that mostly hurt. authors and hurt books and hurt their employees. Those are being driven by, like you said, the capitalist values of the huge corporations.

BookTok is mostly making money for those corporations. So [00:21:00] there's,

Martha: , it might be increasing the volume of books sold potentially, but not at this point influencing what's being published.

Elizabeth: yeah, I mean, it's hard to say, because publishing is also notoriously opaque. They don't like to share information about their Strategy for selling books or how many books get sold. There was a trial that happened recently about I think one of the mergers that they were trying to do and so they had to testify in court about what they pay authors for advances and how they decide how much marketing to put into different books.

And some of the executives that had to go on the stand and talk about this basically said that there's no way that they could possibly know what makes a bestseller. It's just an ineffable quality that they can't possibly quantify. And this is again, something that I was listening to on [00:22:00] the print run podcast.

And they were like, Come on,

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: come on, you know, but they say this because they don't want to, they don't want you to see how the sausage is made. They want to maintain this era of it's all magic, it's all mystique, because that protects them from having, know, change anything about their business practices.

Martha: Yeah. Or for authors to get paid what they deserve and that sort of thing.

Elizabeth: Exactly, exactly. So it's hard to draw a straight line from TikTok and BookTok videos to sales, but it is undeniably a large force in that business space, in that industry. So the numbers that I found in the research that I was doing One article said BookTok videos have been viewed 240 billion times with a B.

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: And that was counting videos tagged with hashtag reading, hashtag books, and hashtag literature. So that doesn't even include the actual BookTok hashtag. Which I read in another article that [00:23:00] that one hashtag has 175 billion views on its own. So, , those are big numbers that obviously publishing is paying attention to.

But again the idea of visibility and needing word of mouth from readers to sell books is not something that's new. That's something that, for the last 20 years that I've been paying attention to publishing, they've always talked about. And they talk about it as platform. So what is your author platform?

And it used to be a blog had a certain number of readers, when blogs first were really popular. And then , once social media came around, it moved into that sphere. And for a long time, it was about Twitter and Twitter followers. And now it's about TikTok and TikTok followers. And it's just, I don't want to say that it's, that TikTok isn't important to the publishing industry, but I also feel like it's important to put it in context.

It's not the first time that this has happened. It probably won't be the last.

Martha: It's probably not going to be the end all be all. It's just [00:24:00] what's happening at this moment in time.

Elizabeth: Yeah. It's the big new thing. Like I said, it's only been a thing since 2021. It probably has a few more years before the next new thing comes along. But one of the things that you were talking about was about when you were first getting into audio books and the way that you weren't looking at the New York Times bestseller list for books that you might want to read.

You weren't looking at any of those traditional, like I said, gatekeepers of these are the books that you should read. And I really do think that when we're talking about the influence of TikTok, this is where it is, is in that democratization where. Especially young people who are , mainly the users of TikTok, although now there are a lot of old people on it, too.

But they're able to find out about books from their peers in a way that you never were able to before on the scale, you and I could talk about a book or you could talk to a friend about a book, but the scale of , those conversations that you could [00:25:00] have before is just so much smaller.

And we've talked about on the podcast before, people, any people, but especially young people talking about books and reading, I mean, that's an unalloyed good. There's nothing wrong with that. So I kind of love it just for that reason.

Martha: yeah. I think a lot of people love it for that reason, and they think it's a great way to find their next read, especially if they find like minded people that they follow and they see often on their For You page, and they can, , come to rely on, oh, I think we're into the same kind of books and the book she reads or he reads or whatever.

I will want to read too. And it's just the way of the world. a lot of our socialization is moving to social media. And so it just kind of makes sense that book recommendations might follow that trajectory.

Elizabeth: Yeah, but I, I mean, it does make sense on the one hand, but on the other hand, [00:26:00] I actually think that there was nothing to say that it would become as huge as it is, right? I think that it's actually , awesome that books and reading got the social media bump in a way that I feel like they haven't really on other social media platforms on TikTok.

Martha: I think it has a lot to do with people. niching down, or trying to in the age of influencers, where for a long time, all you heard is find your niche, find your niche, find your niche. And some people probably thought well, one of my hobbies is reading, I love to read that could be my niche.

And then it caught on.

Elizabeth: Mm. Yeah, because we know from other topics that we've talked about that young people, read a lot. We saw that news article I can't remember if we talked about it in the episode where we were talking about my research or if I shared it on social media afterwards, but it was about how Gen Z and [00:27:00] Millennials visit libraries more often and more frequently than any of their older generational counterparts.

And then speaking of my own research, 94 percent , of the college students that I talked to said that they read for fun in some amount. And , most of them would fall into Gen Z. Some of them would be millennials. So yeah, maybe it is a combination of young people are reading more.

And so then when they're on a platform that is asking them to, like you said, focus on their interests in that way, that just sort of the perfect combination. I also read an article from The Guardian that talked about BookTok inspiring young people to read. It talked about a poll that was conducted by the Publishers Association of A little over 2, 000 16 to 25 year olds.

So I think That is probably what we're talking about when we're talking about Gen Z. So 25 and above, I think is maybe a millennial. So 16 to 25 year olds they talked to and 59 percent of the [00:28:00] people that they talked to said that BookTok had helped them discover a passion for reading. So not that it had helped them discover books, but that it inspired them to read and to love reading.

Which that was enough to make me just think, okay, any of the criticisms that I might

Martha: Yeah,

Elizabeth: I don't have anymore.

Martha: No, even if it did decrease the quality of the writing somehow, it's Okay, I, that's a small price to pay for all the benefits, I think.

Elizabeth: Well, especially when we've talked about on past episodes that, to a certain extent, the literariness of the writing doesn't matter , in terms of the, of getting the benefits, right? So on that, where we were talking about reading, increasing empathy and increasing academic achievement and all that stuff, that was the case for just reading period.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: The studies , that said that it was attributable just to certain genres, we sort of debunked because we found multiple studies saying it about different [00:29:00] genres and they were all using that same test of, the eyeballs. So yeah, I think in that sense, it doesn't matter. And there's always going to be an audience for, literary language driven, you know, language doorway.

Martha: Yeah. 

Elizabeth: And there's always going to be an audience for books that are not focused on language and are more story driven.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: And, you know, who cares?

Martha: Yeah, whatever you're into, it's, it's fine.

If you're someone who's so into the language and the literary value, so to speak, and whatever that's fine. But , you don't have to ruin it for the rest of us.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Don't yuck other people's 

Martha: Yeah, exactly.

Elizabeth: And I feel like I can say this because I used to be one of these people, but it's like specifically people who enjoy that sort of highbrow culture that feel the need to pee on other people's parades.

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: just let other people like what they like, it's fine.

It also brings so much to mind what we talked about [00:30:00] in the romance episode, because like I said at the beginning, so many of these books that are getting critiqued for this are by women and are romance or they're, young adult or they're fantasy or, they're something that mainly is written by women or, , non binary people or , various different

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: non dominant groups for those non dominant groups.

And are, those are also the people that are buying books. So what is the problem?

Martha: have some recent thoughts on this topic specifically because I have been reading books by a male author who's big in the fantasy world. And I didn't read them for the purpose of comparing them necessarily, but along my journey of reading these books, I definitely noticed you know, there's a lot [00:31:00] of criticisms of Sarah J.

Maas and Rebecca Yarros on the quality of the writing and the plot holes. And, you see a lot of those videos on BookTok, but I will say there were a ton of similar plot holes and what you could call mistakes, and all of that in these very famous books by a reputable male author in the same genre.

So you just have to stop and ask yourself.

Elizabeth: Why? 

Martha: And I would, 

Elizabeth: course there are.

Martha: right, right, because of course there are, and

 Obviously it's subjective, but. I enjoy the ACOTAR books more. I mean, it's

Elizabeth: Right.

Martha: funny. So yes, the critiques of the women and non dominant authors is very obvious to me and to you, hopefully it's obvious to other people.

Well,

Elizabeth: mean, I think it's not obvious [00:32:00] to everyone, but it certainly should be. The people who it's not obvious to have blinders on, in my opinion.

I mean, yes, it's subjective. And that made me think of those TikTok videos that we've shared, where people are like, I didn't say it was good. I said, I liked it. Right. And it just doesn't matter.

Because it's, it being good is just as subjective as you liking it. So, But also if we were going to try to make an objective judgment about things like typos or plot holes or, purple prose instead of something being really literary and 

Martha: Mm hmm. 

Elizabeth: cliches, like the things that people point to as bad writing, quote 

Martha: hmm. 

Elizabeth: Those things definitely exist in books by men like Brandon Sanderson you know, Stephen King. 

Martha: Mm hmm. 

Elizabeth: the Stephen King book lately? God bless him. I don't have anything against him. And his stories are great. But come on, no one's criticizing, you know, 

Martha: I mean, anyone who's pumping out that many books like Stephen King or Brandon Sanderson, or Sarah J Mass, who's [00:33:00] pumping out all these books, Rebecca Yarros, there's gonna be mistakes.

Elizabeth: yeah because it's not language focused, right? , it's not a language doorway story. That's not why people come to those books. It's not why they come to a Nora Roberts. It's not why they come to the name of that man that's escaping me 

Martha: Nicholas Sparks. 

Elizabeth: books a year.

Well, Nicholas Sparks, but no, he writes, this person I'm thinking of writes thrillers and has A whole staff of people that basically write the books with him and then he slaps his name on them.

Martha: Mm.

Elizabeth: He has like a whole empire. Oh,

Martha: It'll come to you.

Elizabeth: kill me. What I just googled is man thriller author multiple books a year.

Martha: What did it come up with?

Elizabeth: David Balducci, who is one of them, but that's not the one I was talking about. Oh, James Patterson, of 

Martha: Oh, right,

right, right, 

Elizabeth: love that that Google search was successful. Thank you very much. Those are my [00:34:00] library skills,

Martha: amazing.

Elizabeth: but you know, yeah I mean, maybe those same people would criticize those authors if given the chance, but , why aren't they the ones that are being pulled out constantly as examples of this?

They're just not, , It seems like it's always the women that are being criticized.

Martha: Maybe that's just what comes up on our For You

Elizabeth: Yeah, possibly. It does feel skewed though at the very least. 

Martha: So,

self 

Elizabeth: that and the fact that it's encouraging young people to read, I basically feel like I've persuaded myself I'm totally a BookTok fan. And you know, I'm not gonna say that there are no cons, but I think that the pros.

mostly outweigh it. I will say that in terms of people really breaking out from TikTok and becoming bestsellers, it's mostly a question of outliers as far as I can tell, there are some examples of unknown or self published authors that make TikTok. And , Colleen Hoover is one of those.

She's [00:35:00] self published. and was not nearly as big as she is before TikTok got a hold of her books. But she was, yeah, she's, yeah I think it's possible that some of her self published books that were originally self published got picked up by traditional publishing. I'm not 100 percent sure about that, but she definitely started as self published. sort of famously. So there are some books for whom that happens. Another example that I came across in my research was a book that we both love, which is The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, was a TikTok, huge success. It was originally published in 2012, and had an initial print run of 20, 000 copies, which is not , a tiny print run, something like 5, 000 copies would be a tiny print run, but it's not big. And the month that this New York Times article was published, which I don't know when it was, but it was within the last year or two Song of Achilles had sold 2 million copies worldwide, all its formats. [00:36:00] And one of the publishing, people that they interviewed about it was like, This never happens.

I mean, this book is about the Iliad, and Madeline Miller doesn't even have TikTok. It's just something that, it's again, that democratization piece. Some people loved that book, and they were able to have this microphone to the world.

And because it's such a good book, it just took off.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: But, those are certainly the exceptions that prove the rule. As far as I can see, anyway, and

Martha: at this point.

Elizabeth: it's mostly helping authors who are already big and successful, which is the case with most of these big visibility things, authors that are already well known, are already celebrities, already have a big platform, are the ones who are more likely to get TV interviews, who are more likely to get a big display in the front of the bookstore,

all of these things are more likely to happen if you're already successful, and I think that the same goes for TikTok.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: [00:37:00] But Because of that, I don't know, I just keep coming back to that democratization piece of social media, because that means that there is a chance, right? Like you sent me that video a couple days ago of that author, that indie author,

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: Natalia Hernandez, The Name Bearer, is her book that the video was about. And You know, I didn't know her before that video, but it sounds like TikTok has really helped , her books do a lot better than it seems like they would have otherwise, given the fact that she wasn't already well known.

She wasn't already someone with a huge platform.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: So I feel like the possibility of that happening is great. It's just that it's not, it's not a likely thing

Martha: Right.

Elizabeth: for an author to have happen, it's not That's definitely going to happen if you just are on TikTok talking about your book.

Martha: Yeah. And self publish

Elizabeth: Yeah. It seems like it really is about the word of mouth piece.

That's what it comes down to with [00:38:00] BookTok.

Martha: And going viral just like anything else, any other trend that just happens to go viral.

Elizabeth: Right.

Martha: And even if you jump on the bandwagon while something is going viral, it doesn't necessarily mean that your content is going to be seen.

Elizabeth: Right.

Martha: So

Elizabeth: But even with the ones that go viral, It's so hard to directly say this is increasing book sales. One of the articles that I read, which was in The Economist that talked a lot about the numbers of it, said that the direct impact of TikTok on book sales is small. Video platforms drive only about 3 percent of sales in 2022, in Britain specifically.

, that's talking about the sales that you can trace directly from a TikTok video to a sale, whereas most book sales, you just can't do that, 

Martha: yeah, you can't do that.

Elizabeth: If someone buys a book on Amazon or walks into a bookshop to buy it, how do you say, why that person bought it, right?

So that visibility and word of mouth is really the thing that [00:39:00] is the biggest power of TikTok and is the biggest thing really that gets people to choose to read books. In any case, 

Martha: Mm 

Elizabeth: in my research, people getting recommendations from their personal connections was the most common way that they found books to read.

 Personal connections like family and friends. their university instructors, their librarians, co workers, bookstore employees. One person talked about talking to people on the bus about what they're reading when she saw them reading a book. So before 2021 when BookTok was a thing, that's still how people got those.

And so BookTok has just exponentially expanded the number of people you can get recommendations from?

Martha: Yeah Which I think will always be the case Not necessarily on tik tok like we said tik tok might just be for now But there's just so many books you just have to have a recommendation from

Elizabeth: Yeah, right, right. And as a librarian, I feel that so hard because [00:40:00] I do try to keep up with more I try to know about more of the books that are being published than I would if I were just looking for things to read myself. And it is overwhelming, 

Martha: Mm hmm. 

Elizabeth: you know, my TBR, I can't even quantify I don't even want to know.

I do think TikTok is especially, I think it'll probably be big for a while. That's my, I was going to say hot take, but it's not a take, it's more of a prediction, my librarian prediction.

Martha: yeah

Elizabeth: Because of the visualness of the medium, because of the fact that the BookTok videos are so pretty and they can showcase the physical books, they can showcase the beautiful bookshelf, the beautiful library with the ladder, , it's just such a visual medium.

And by and large, the book business is still a physical business, it's still print books, in my research, I talked about this 79 or 80 percent of my interviewees preferred print for reading,

Martha: Mm hmm Yeah,

Elizabeth: It's still mainly print books that the industry is selling.

And so for that [00:41:00] reason, I think, again, it's that confluence of factors that makes TikTok so. Impactful in this area.

Martha: so powerful. Well, I

think 

Elizabeth: mean.

Martha: one thing that could threaten it is obviously the talks of banning it, and I just saw a headline today that President Biden said that he would sign a bill or he would, he would support or make happen.

A TikTok ban unless the Chinese owners of TikTok sold their company. to a non Chinese owner?

I don't know. It's so absurd.

But

Elizabeth: I think that's a campaign thing.

Martha: yeah,

Elizabeth: I don't think that that is ever really going to happen. I would be really surprised because it's just such big business. become such big business in so many different areas, and our, two party system. At the end of the day, they're both serving capitalism.

 I don't feel like it's [00:42:00] really going to happen. It is interesting that you bring that up though, because related to that, I saw a headline when I was doing research for this about TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, launching its own book publisher. Have you seen this? It's reportedly planning this and is in discussion specifically with romance writers, to sign romance writers.

There's very little information available about it publicly that I could find, but it's, it's potential name is Eighth Note Press. And that's the word on the street that it's going to get into the publishing business.

Martha: Now that could directly impact indie authors and self published authors if one of their books takes off on BookTok, and then Therefore, they get published by TikTok.

Elizabeth: Yeah, 

Martha: could be , a very direct and blatant effect of BookTok.[00:43:00] 

Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely. And that you are going to be able to draw a straight line between TikTok and book sales.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: And, think about, I mean, honestly, there aren't enough details about this for me to say yes, I think this is a great idea or it's not. But again, just in general terms, I feel like anything that comes in and creates more competition for the publishing industry is a good thing because constricting and constricting and constricting number of companies that are in control of all of these millions of books that are being published is not serving anyone well.

It's not serving the writers well, it's not serving the readers well, they don't have as much incentive to do that because there's less competition. , think about some of the writers that maybe aren't able to get published by traditional publishing for various reasons. And not all of them are going to be, because their writing isn't good enough.

In fact, most reasons you don't get published don't have anything to do with your writing.

Martha: [00:44:00] Right.

Elizabeth: And a lot of times, might have to do with someone's identity or the type of books that they write. , the publishing industry is notorious for saying that they want to diversify, but then Saying to, authors of color or LGBTQ authors, Oh, well, we already have our black book this year.

We already have our gay author. And you can't have more than one,

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: right? So, those people could have more of an opportunity with a new publisher , that knows that its potential customers, the users of TikTok, knows exactly what kind of books they want.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: Those are the books that you write.

You might have way more of a chance of getting published.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: It'd be a great thing.

Martha: Definitely. I agree. So if we're talking about pros and cons of BookTok, one of the cons that I see is that it could potentially put unrealistic expectations on people as far as how many books they quote unquote should be reading and [00:45:00] comparing their self to other readers.

Yeah, I

Elizabeth: absolutely. And I think that's a really important one.

Martha: Yes.

Elizabeth: because we both see that, right? And we talked about this a little bit on our episode where we talked about , do you set a yearly reading goal? And, I mean, my take on this is, as with everything on social media, this is the way, 

the whole, thing with social media is that there are big accounts, there are influencers that are presenting a version of their lives. In this case, they're reading lives, but whether it's wellness or weight loss or whatever, they're presenting a version of their lives that is purposely unrealistic and unattainable for most people.

But that also is really attractive, so it fuels that envy and shame and, aspiration cycle that keeps you consuming it.

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I should be reading more, I should [00:46:00] be reading these specific books, I should have a library that looks like that, I should have a bookshelf that looks like that.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: And so yeah, that comparison and, unrealistic expectations definitely happens in that space, just like it happens about everything with social media, because it's how social media makes its money, it's how the people. that are in those positions to be influencers make their money.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: So I definitely think that's happening. And I think that it is something that people should, try to either avoid or guard against mentally. It is definitely a con to this whole thing

Martha: Mm hmm. Yeah. All reading is good reading. If you're reading one book a year or a hundred books a year,

Elizabeth: or whatever books, you don't have to be reading the trending books. You don't have to 

Martha: Mm hmm. 

Elizabeth: the fantasy books that are popular if you don't want to.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: And there are a ton of TikTok videos that talk about specifically that, that talk about, I read these books.

I think that these are underrated. I think that [00:47:00] this book that came out, , a long time ago is something that you should read. And so there are those videos, again, talking about getting into your niche. There are niches within the niche of 

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: Where if that's what you want, you know, I don't really see very many videos about Sarah J Maas or Rebecca Yarros' books because those aren't the videos that I've interacted with on the app.

And again, because the algorithm is so sensitive, it 

Martha: Mm 

Elizabeth: really mean those to me very much. The BookTok videos that I see tend to be about , other books. 

You know, that's how that happened with the Madeline Miller book, for example.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: And to add to this. topic. You've sent me examples of videos from TikTok where BookTokers are talking about how they're burnt out on reading, right?

They never want to read again, how reading has become a chore, and that's just so sad. You don't want that. That's not something to aspire to. Right.

Martha: it is sad and it's like we talked about before in one of our past episodes we're not [00:48:00] judging those people because this could be how they're making their living if they're, , getting partnerships or deals or whatever. But yeah, that's not something to aspire to. You don't need to read 100 books a year if it's gonna burn you out on reading.

That's not productive and remember that one TikTok that you told me about? I think we talked about this before too, where she said, she said she was reading. a book while she was listening to an audiobook and you were like, I couldn't figure out if she was being sarcastic or not and it was kind of horrifying.

Elizabeth: But , it didn't feel like a joke. It didn't have the tone of a joke. It had the tone of this is how I am the most efficient that I can be with reading. And I'm just like, Oh my God, stop. Don't have to be efficient with reading.

Martha: No.

Elizabeth: It makes me think about that book that I just read the 4, 000 weeks time management for mortals book, or there are lots of other books that are in [00:49:00] that genre.

Do Nothing, uh, Celeste Headley, I think is the one that wrote that Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving. Or I think the original one is How to Do Nothing, Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny O'Dell. But this whole genre of books that we've had to create,

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: because our society has just gone so far in the direction of optimizing our time, and everything has to be planned.

Everything has to be efficient. Everything has to be productive. Like we talked about on that goal setting episode with that quote, time that I enjoy wasting is not wasted time or something, it's okay to just Read as much as you enjoy.

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: So if the videos that you're seeing on TikTok are making you feel anything other than that, I would say, either take a break or intentionally engage with videos that aren't doing that to try to, push the algorithm in another direction, because there's just no reason to bring that into your life.[00:50:00] 

Martha: 100%. I

agree. 

Elizabeth: Don't let TikTok ruin the joy and love of something that you do for fun with your. Precious free time in this one life.

Martha: You're one wild and precious

Elizabeth: Yes, Mary Oliver, please. Yeah. But, as we've been talking about for the most of the rest of the episode, if it's giving you something positive, if you're finding books that you love to read from it, if you feel like you're finding a community, that's great

Martha: yeah, I love that and hopefully it will continue to have a positive influence on people and encourage them to read more and read more books that they enjoy.

Elizabeth: Yeah, I love it. I enjoyed looking into it. I will say that most of the articles that I was able to find that had information about it were all popular media articles, some of them were publishing industry publications like Publishers Weekly.

And then there was the New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian. Big news organizations that [00:51:00] talk about topics like this and I did try to find some scholarly research on it But it's just such a new phenomenon 

 There just isn't any everything I was able to find was theses or doctoral dissertations, it just takes so long for scholarly publishing to do research on things 

Martha: maybe it's the topic of your next research

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. I should probably remind people that the interviews that I've talked about through the whole episode, I did those in 2019. I wish that I had asked about TikTok in those interviews, but it just wasn't 

Martha: It didn't really exist. Yeah.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So that just goes to show you how fast this can change and how long it takes scholarly research to catch up. So maybe at some point in the future there will be more rigorous research on this and we can come back to it. But for now it's mostly just what the popular media reports that we have to go on.

Martha: Yeah. I do love thinking about that, too. [00:52:00] How our podcast could be a time capsule that we can look back on in 20 years and be like, Oh, yeah, that's what was going on.

Elizabeth: Hopefully not feel embarrassed about what we said at the 

Martha: Well, yeah, well, Only time will

tell. We just do the best we can with what we have.

Elizabeth: Yeah, so true. Wise words as always, Martha.

 If you want even more bookish content from us, you can follow us on our own TikTok at allbooksaloudpod Or on Instagram at allbooksaloudpod. If you have any recommendations or feedback about our episodes, you can send us an email at allbooksaloudpod at gmail.

Martha: com. Make sure you subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a positive rating and review so it helps other people find us. 

Elizabeth: Email us your topic ideas. We need , some fresh topics. So if there's something that you've been wanting us to talk about, now's your time.

Martha: Yep, now's your chance. And read on, my friends.

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