book Fair
#Booktok – Tiktok is changing the book world
The author Kathinka Engel is active on Tiktok. photo
© Diane von Schoen/Kathinka Engel/dpa
Under the keyword #Booktok, bookworms, publishers and authors share reading tips and more on Tiktok. This influences the literary industry.
“Yesterday I kissed a famous actor in front of the cameras – and it was so good,” reports Kathinka Engel excitedly in one Tiktok video. The author repeatedly slips into the role of her book characters, retells short situations from their stories and at the end refers to her books.
Each of the videos is tagged #Booktok. Tiktok users use this to share book recommendations, quotes or beautiful book covers. Although the app is known for dance videos and short skits, you can also scroll through book videos for hours.
Some of the videos have hundreds of thousands of likes and have titles like: “Books I would sell my soul for,” “Books I won’t accept criticism of,” or “Books you need to read in your 20s.” Women often sit in front of color-sorted bookshelves filled to the brim and present their recommendations.
“I reach my young target group here and get into conversation with them,” explains Engel. The 37-year-old author also notices that being present on social networks builds up pressure. “You always have to be authentic and stick with it in order to be successful,” she says. “Not everyone can or wants to market themselves in this way.”
Nominations for “Tiktok Book Awards 2023”
And success is not immediately guaranteed: “It brings an element of chance into play,” says Engel. “If a video about an older book goes viral, it can happen that the book suddenly appears on bestseller lists.” But she also sees a limitation: “Not every book can be marketed equally well on Tiktok, there are simply certain genres and stories that do better.” Examples of this are romance and fiction.
The author Jana Crämer is also part of the scene. “You might think that books are dying out, everything is becoming more and more digital. Especially on Tiktok, people are showing that that’s not the case,” says Crämer, who, like Kathinka Engel, is nominated for Author of the Year at the “Tiktok Book Awards 2023”. The first German Tiktok Book Awards will be presented in several categories at the Frankfurt Book Fair on Saturday (October 21st).
Even without “Rainbow Shelves,” Crämer talks on Tiktok about topics that concern her and that she writes about. Partly out of enthusiasm and passion, but there is also another reason: “Nobody is throwing attention at you.” In the past, expensive advertising campaigns were launched, but today everyone has the opportunity to achieve reach with Tiktok. This is also noticeable in the book market: “When real people talk about real emotions and recommend books, no advertising agency can keep up.”
But it’s not just authors who share Booktok videos. Elisabeth Jäckel is a so-called Booktok creator, which means that she creates videos about books. On Tiktok she has almost 54,000 followers as @elis_bookworld. “I’ve always loved books, ever since I was little. During the lockdown in 2020, I posted my first video,” says the 24-year-old trained bookseller. Back then there were still few videos about books, but when they did they mostly came from the USA. Since then, the German scene has grown significantly and become more influential.
New popularity
There are similar movements on other platforms such as Instagram, but they particularly stand out on Tiktok. The short video service from the Chinese ByteDance group is sometimes criticized for its handling of data and youth protection.
“Booktok is changing the book world positively, young people are starting to read more again,” says Jäckel, who is in the running for the Book Award in the “Creator of the Year” category. “Young people often come into the bookstore and ask about books that they have discovered on Tiktok.”
The Hugendubel bookstore is also active in the book scene on Tiktok. “Booktok not only gives new, younger book publications a broad presence,” says managing partner Nina Hugendubel. “Even well-known titles that were first published ten years or more ago are gaining new popularity through Booktok and are clearly in demand in the branches.” She sees a connection between suggested books and sales.
Tiktok has been publishing a #Booktok bestseller list every month for almost half a year. The most successful #Booktok books are presented there, determined, among other things, by sales figures and video views. They want to make current trends visible to the book trade. “We are very pleased about the positive feedback from the literature industry and that more people are discovering the joy of reading again through #BookTok,” says Tobias Henning, head of the Tiktok platform in Germany.