BookTok’s 2023 Stats: A Closer Look

There is some evidence in the US that the BookTok bubble is bursting, but the platform still remains vital for breaking out new authors.

According to Publisher’s Weekly, sales of around 180 BookTok authors in July fell for the first time compared to the prior year.  According to the report ‘BookScan analyst Kristen McLean estimates that monthly BookTok author sales comps for the rest of 2023 will be at or below 2022 levels, and that final sales will be close to the 2022 totals when the BookTok authors tracked by BookScan sold about 47 million copies. In 2020, the first year BookScan tracked BookTok authors, sales for the group totalled 13 million copies, which then skyrocketed in 2021 to 27 million copies.’

But McLean said that even if BookTok sales are softening, the platform still remains the industry’s most important platform for discovering new writers.  “BookTok is really, really important for book discovery,” she said, adding that in today’s social media–driven world BookTok is especially important as a place to find books for younger readers.  However, she noted that not as many new authors are making the type of splash that new authors did in 2021 and 2022.

The report concluded: ‘The top 10 BookTok authors continued to sell in big enough numbers that their sales through July 2023 are equal or slightly above sales in the July 2021–July 2022 period. But sales of other BookTok authors, including newer authors, are not selling at the same pace, which suggests to McLean that the BookTok community is becoming less efficient or engaged in surfacing new authors overall.’