TikTok: The New Literary Forum
For the past two years, books have been climbing the charts not because of newspaper or literary reviews or TV deals or some miraculous PR stunt, but due to users on TikTok who deemed it worthy.
Millions of people are getting their book recommendations from TikTok these days. The video-sharing platform has grown a lot and is used by billions of people. That has led to a BookTok community forming on the app and affecting book sales. BookTok — the TikTok community of bibliophiles — helped authors sell 20 million books in print in 2021. In 2022, those sales went up 50 percent. Many of those sales are from fiction novels you’ve probably seen on supermarket shelves and in airport stores: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, and literally anything by Colleen Hoover. The reason you’re seeing them take those spots isn’t lost on literary TikTokkers with a platform.
Authors like Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid have seen their books surge on book charts as a result. And the book industry has taken notice. Now, they are teaming up with TikTok to sell directly to customers.
The Most Read Books of 2022 According to TikTok
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
How to Read Now: Essays by Elaine Castillo
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
Bliss Montage: Stories by Ling Ma
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Babel by R. F. Kuang
Either/Or by Elif Batuman
The Night and It’s Moon by Piper CJ
How to Fall Out of Love Madly by Jana Casale
You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab
Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin
Verity by Colleen Hoover
Bunny by Mona Awad
All About Love by Bell Hooks
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
Tiktok might not appeal to many and although the platform has faced many criticism in recent times but one can’t deny the positive influence its having on literature, as it is encouraging the younger generation to read more and helping authors by buying their books. Colleen Hoover has become a megastar thanks to TikTok and she isn’t the only one.
