The year twenty sixteen gave us one of the most popular social media sites among the world, TikTok. This platform allowed people to create their own fifteen second videos that range from comedy, cooking, storytimes, tutorials, and so much more. With the growth of TikTok and its widely diverse audience, many trends have stemmed from the creators found on the app. TikTok has single handedly influenced our fashion trends, wiped feta and tomatoes off shelves for the notorious feta pasta, brought songs to number one on the charts, and most importantly, this app has had the biggest influence on book sales. What is known as BookTok, is a community of people on TikTok who have an interest in books. Here you will find book recommendations, book reviews and discussions. With this growing community, authors have started to notice just how powerful TikTok can be, seeing as the audience has the power to revive an old book and put it on the number one seller list. TikTok is a great platform to promote books and prove that reading is a great hobby. 

TikTok allows its audience to connect with things they relate to. With booktok the audience gets to be exposed to books that they may share experiences with. We see many stories containing themes about love, abuse, adventure, and culture. Having a platform where millions of people have access and can create content makes it easier to access different types of books, which allows people to connect to many of them. Mother Tongue was written by Amy Tan who  is an American author and novelist who graduated with a masters degree in linguistics. In her personal essay, Mother Tongue, published in 1990 addresses the topic of language barriers and argues that everybody has different versions of English that they speak, and no one should be judged for not using the standard version of English. She argues that because of her various versions of English she is able to translate those skills into her own work and make it more enjoyable for the reader. Tan supports this idea by giving her audience her personal experience with language, and how her mother impacted those experiences. Tan’s purpose is to normalize not speaking the “proper English” that Americans are used to. She wants us to realize that every single version of English is useful and those who use it should not be shamed by others. To get this point across Tan uses a light hearted and comedic tone throughout her personal essay, which helps the immigrant audience relate, and helps the American audience understand the immigrant experience a little bit better. As mentioned before, tiktok is an immensely huge platform that allows creators to share books from every type of author and genre. This can lead to many people connecting with certain books due to their personal experiences, or languages. Amy Tan’s work is one which many people can relate to, since she makes sure to use her different versions of English that she grew up with. “I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with: the English I spoke with my mother… the English she used with me… my translation of her Chinese… and what I imagined to be her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English… I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts” (Tan, pg 4-5). In this paragraph Tan is mentioning how she has begun to write as if her audience were her mother, in doing so it allows her to be more creative with her work because she is not limiting herself to a single version of English. She mentions that writing with more freedom allows her work to reflect her mother’s speech which she describes as having more intent, more imagery, and better rhythm. This decision can have a great impact on the reader since many immigrants can relate more to the writing, and it can serve as a sentimental value since it can remind them of their own roots and family. We can connect this to our idea of TikTok and how it allows readers to find books that they share a connection with. Booktok can allow Tan’s work to be spread throughout the platform for Asian Americans to find and connect with, as well as daughters of immigrant families who have gone through similar experiences that Tan writes about. 

The community of BookTok has made reading fun once again. We typically see a trend in kids where at first they really enjoy reading during their spare time, but as they continue to grow up they start to diminish their reading times and start focusing on other things. Some may say that during that stage of life books are considered uncool, nerdy,  and boring. But with the help of TikTok, kids get to see that reading can be cool and it can be fun. Kelly Jensen, author of the article AS SEEN ON #BookTok: Inspiring young readers, TikTok is a boon to books claims that the BookTok community on TikTok has impacted young kids by allowing them to see the fun in reading and allowing them to discover books that peak their interest. Jensen supports this idea by providing a school’s personal experience with their students and explaining just how much students have changed all due to TikTok. The author’s purpose is to explain just exactly what TikTok is, she acknowledges the good that comes from the app, and just how impactful it can be on the youth. Jensen wrote this article in an informal tone to accurately explain what BookTok is and remaining consistent with the audience she is writing about, this allows for the older audience to have a better understanding of TikTok and helps the younger audience connect with the writing. With this article we see that not only has BookTok impacted the audience virtually, but it has created a huge impact on schools and its students. According to Jensen’s article “BookTok has done a lot to highlight the pure joy of reading and has introduced many extremely engaging titles that have helped high school students read for fun… many students who might otherwise not have set foot in their libraries are doing just that”. With this quote we see how students are changing their old pattern of reading, and it is all thanks to BookTok; Schools’ libraries are becoming hot spots again and not just a place to avoid. With this trend continuing we can see school and public libraries receiving more support and funding. This influence that TikTok has had on schools and its libraries, is the same influence happening on the book market. Authors have taken notice of the serious impacts TikTok has on their sales and the success of their books. Sophia Stewart, author of the newspaper article How TikTok Makes Backlist Books into Bestsellers claims that TikTok has allowed marketing managers the ability to share their books in hopes of it landing to the right audience and increasing sales. Stewart supports this idea by providing the opinions of marketing managers, as well as providing charts demonstrating that TikTok does actually work in increasing sales. Stewart created this newspaper article with a very formal tone, due to the fact that her main audience is marketing staff. In her article she explained how multiple marketing managers “jumped on the TikTok trend as soon as possible’ said Fredman. To leverage the app’s influence, the marketing department has created an @Atriabooks account and is building relationships with BookTok influencers’ hands, but they are also strategic, ensuring that they are tailoring outreach to their tastes and interests”. Here we see how beneficial TikTok has been not only for schools, but for the authors and book agencies themselves. This article also provides the reader with a chart to demonstrate just how much TikTok influences book sales. The chart displays the number of sales for the book It Ends With US by Colleen Hoover, we see that throughout the first five months of twenty twenty-one the book sold under eight thousand units per week. We then see a huge increase in sales starting in June and surpassing twenty-four thousand units per week, this correlates to the date when the book started trending on BookTok. This shows just how powerful TikTok can be. These two sources are a lot alike even though they are looking at BookTok through different lenses. Both articles point out how TikTok has influenced their audience, how it has become beneficial to them as an institute and a business, and both articles ultimately do a great job at explaining what TikTok is and how it has become relevant in their fields. These two articles relate to my idea that TikTok has become a great place to not only find new hobbies, but it has become a great platform for marketing various things, in this case it is books. 

TikTok has created a household name in the world of social media. A place where people would create funny little videos has now developed into this incredible app with many subcommunities. For this essay I decided to focus on the BookTok community and how it has helped young people get back into reading and helped authors revive their old books. Due to the amazing power of social media and content creators, we have now witnessed an exciting new boom in our public and school libraries. Not only that, but we have paved a new creative path for marketing managers. As TikTok continues to grow we can predict higher book sales and many more young teens starting to read on the daily. 

Sources

Tan, Amy. “Mother Tongue.” [Threepenny Review 1990; 1989.] The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues across the Disciplines. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 11th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill ,2011.

Jensen, Kelly. “AS SEEN ON #BookTok: Inspiring young readers, TikTok is a boon to books.” School Library Journal, vol. 68, no. 2, Feb. 2022, pp. 28+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A692875590/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=79b83ba0. Accessed 27 Nov. 2022.

Stewardt, S. (2021). How TikTok Makes Backlist Books into Bestsellers. Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/87304-how-tiktok-makes-backlist-books-into-bestsellers.html.