With the innovation of social media, comes the ability for many people to share basically anything they are interested in, such as makeup, fashion or art. In the seemingly never ending abyss of the internet many people have begun to post about their favorite books or authors, over time creating Book-Tok, Book-Stagram and Book-Tube. All of these refer to the popular platforms (TikTok, Instagram and Youtube) but the topics in the videos are specifically about books.

These different platforms create a space that is comparable to an online book club. With certain books becoming more popular, people have taken an interest in being a part of the reading community. When a video about a certain book pops up on someone’s feed over and over again, it influences them to read it so they understand what everyone else is talking about.

It is similar to how people want to be a part of trends online or watch a certain show because everyone is discussing it. They want to be able to add their opinion on the book and feel included when different plot points or characters are being mentioned.

Along with that, readers want to have a good time reading the book since everyone claims it’s so amazing across these different platforms.

A video featuring a specific book will usually contain what they are about, or interesting things that happen in the plot, influencing the viewer to read it because it looks compelling and something they would enjoy reading.

These online communities allow readers to branch out into different genres they never would have considered. The more popular genres on social media include romance, fantasy, dystopian and mystery, so if a person that reads exclusively nonfiction are on these platforms, they are able to see books they never would have seen otherwise. This sharing of books makes it easier for anyone to get recommendations for their next read and authors to market their novel.

According to The Association of American Publishers book sales went up 18.1 percent in July 2024 from July 2023. This resulted in 1.3 billion dollars in revenue back to the authors. The more revenue authors can get, the more they are able to publish more books for readers to enjoy. With a greater number of books in the world, it is more likely for people to know the author, making their fanbase grow.

In a Q&A Lynn Painter, the author of the very popular book-tok book “Better Than the Movies”, says that her books are much more popular after a youtuber Haily Pham posted about it on her social media.

After the book got a lot of attention from Pham’s fanbase it ended up becoming one of the most prevalent books online. People read her book because they saw on social media how much other people liked it and how many videos about it there were.

This increase of readers also makes talking to other people about books a lot easier. Since mostly all the same books are popular across the different platforms it is easy to have a conversation about one.

“Shatter Me” by Tahereh Mafi, “Powerless” by Lauren Roberts, “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas and “The Cruel Prince” by Holly Black (along with many others) are all books that are extremely well known in the book community on social media, making them ones many people have read.

If you have read one of the very popular books, there is a high likelihood that another person would have read it too and this creates an even larger community where people are able to discuss and compare what they thought about the book. This constant talking of books and discussing ideas encourages new readers to join the conversation by reading the book.