In the past five or so years, there has been a continual shift in the way that art has been marketed and consumed. BookTok—which refers vaguely to the online space on TikTok that focuses on creators talking about and recommending books—has recently risen as the mainstream centre for literary discussions and information. As of the beginning of 2024, there were almost 60 billion videos under the tag and almost 200 billion views.
There’s nothing inherently negative about this practice—if anything, encouraging wide audiences to read and providing discussions of literature in free and accessible spaces is a good thing. The problem is that almost anything that ends up on TikTok ends up being commercialised.
TikTok as an app like any business model, works in a way that tries to maximise its profit. To do well, a video has to fit a perfectly curated algorithm which has been created in such a way that prioritises visual aesthetics. The videos that go viral feature brightly coloured bookshelves, books photographed in perfect lighting, to the perfect song that fits the literary topic of the video. Because of this the act of reading has been commodified, with these videos fitting a certain formula with the ultimate intention of selling new products. It is far harder to focus on a piece of art and practise dedication and love towards it when we’re always being directed to the newest, shiniest object—which is exactly what TikTok is built to do.
In her essay “On Micro-Individuality”, Rayne Fisher Quann refers to the space that has become created on TikTok as a place where people are encouraged to fit their identities into easily labelable categories. She writes that “Everyone is a sad girl, a girl’s girl, an it girl”. On TikTok, we are both the vendor and the commodity. By establishing our identities around the things we consume—whether that be products or art or in this case books—it becomes easier for things to be sold to us. The greatest profit is made by encouraging people to establish their identity as a reader, rather than actually reading itself. The image of being a reader, a person who simply owns lots of books, becomes a form of branding in itself, and takes away from the central purpose of why people are reading in the first place.
This problem continues when what is considered popular in online spaces is co-opted by corporate companies. Now when a person walks into any large company bookstore, they will see a section labelled “TikTok made me buy it!” or “Sad Girl Books”. BookTok encourages art to be categorised, ultimately making it one-dimensional and prioritising things considered palatable. Creators on BookTok have spoken about how it’s almost impossible to avoid this—they have to, in an attempt to fit into the algorithm, that is to feed into TikTok’s constant editorialization of our experiences and continue this lack of authenticity.
TikTok, in particular, thrives off selling as much and as quickly as possible and does this by taking people’s passions and selling them as something softened and sanitised. The second that something falls into the mass market, it stops being genuine because it is being curated not out of authenticity but out of necessity to sell. There is nothing intrinsically negative about the concept of something like BookTok, but the genuine passion for reading is often distorted and damaged when presented in such a space that is built to commodify the practice. BookTok is developed as a space that profits off the efficiency of short bursts of interests and quickly moving trend cycles, which is entirely antithetical to the practice of reading and why people enjoy it. This fundamentally contradicts how literature should be viewed and approached, as art can not be genuine if it is solely designed to be sold.
“TikTok on iPhone” by Nordskov Media is marked with CC0 1.0.