When shopping for books, you may have noticed that some stores such as Target have started to display sections marketed specifically as “booktok.” Just recently, the book Onyx Storm was released, a part of one of BookTok’s popular series. During its first week of release, the book sold over 2.7 million copies, according to New York Times.
BookTok is an online community of book lovers and reading enthusiasts. While there are many different types of content shown, some common ones appear to be book recommendations and book hauls. Most of the books recommended are all some genre or subgenre of romance, most of the time featuring sexual scenes. Book hauls are similar, in the sense of people going to bookstores and buying stacks of books and showing it off on camera.
Speaking of the romance genre, two specific subgenres have emerged from BookTok: “romantasy,” a genre that combines fantasy and romance, and dark romance. However, dark romance can hardly be considered as “romance.” The genre romanticizes stalking, abuse, and other problematic behavior.
In addition, these kinds of romance fiction fall more under the category of lust rather than love. Readers have been pushing for “smut,” or sexually explicit content. This trend has been apparent, with people giving out book recommendations based on how “spicy,” or explicit a book is. While people have the right to read whatever they want, this push for reading smut is starting to become unhealthy.
When it comes to the books being marketed on social media, they all tend to follow the same characters and relationship dynamics. Authors capitalize on these to hook readers, and the book becomes a dumping ground to see how many tropes can be included before the end of the story. This results in a book lacking an actual plot line, where the story covers whatever is trending at the moment.
The rise of social media on books has also led to overconsumption of buying books. People often joke that buying and reading books are two different hobbies. Many people buy multiple versions of the same book, trying to collect all the different editions published, and getting all formats of the books.
This excessive buying is usually done to show off the aesthetic of reading. BookTok creators like to show off their limited editions or special editions of books they collect. They end up equating reading with book buying. Rather than focusing on what exactly they’re reading and the content, the focus gets shifted onto how their books look. This makes it easier to make reading look more desirable, but reading should focus on the activity itself.
There are many problematic things in the BookTok community. Social media capitalizes on the aesthetics of reading, rather than prioritizing the quality of books and what they are promoting.