BookTok: the next chapter for booklovers

Q: BookTok reviews are much more about the emotional impact of a book, rather than an author’s technical construction that you might find in a traditional review. Why is that such an effective approach?

A: I actually love it, because how a book makes me feel is how I review books to my friends too! If I was to give a review of Book Lovers by Emily Henry, I'd tell you it was 2 in the morning, I was on a plane and I was laughing out loud. Very few books have made me laugh out loud at all. Or I’ll tell you another  book has made me sob at the end. Others I just can’t stop reading – I read them in one sitting. It's that, 'How do you feel?' approach that is very instinctively human. If you care about the person telling you – and BookTok reviewers have millions of followers who care about their opinions – it works to make other want to read and have those emotions as well.

Q: BookTok leans heavily towards young adult, fantasy and romance. There’s also a bit of a niche for popular self-help titles. What is it about these genres that fits a platform like this?

A: Well, these do tend to be the books that make you feel in a big way. They are also books that skew towards younger readers, who are the ones making the BookToks. They're fun, they're easy, they're fast, they're full of adventure, and they're exciting. 

They're also, I would argue, light-hearted in a world that's been pretty dark for a while. The world has been looking for light, fun humour to feel better about ourselves. In the book world, rom-coms have made a come back, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The more literary and the hard-hitting books are still out there and they're still selling. But we've just got this run for light-hearted books.

Q: Reading is intensely personal but can also be very social. BookTok is almost like a digital book club. What drives us to want to share a book we’ve read?

A: Ah, isn't that why we're all in this industry? I started as a bookseller and now I’m an agent – my job is to spruik books I love. I think it's innate in readers – when you love something, you want to tell other people about it. It's that evangelicalism of bringing other people into your tribe and saying, ‘Oh, this is fabulous, you have to read it as well’. And then we can talk about it excitedly or, if we disagree, we can have that debate of ‘what do you mean, you didn't like this or that!?’ That's why we have book clubs. That's why we read reviews. That's why you pass on the book you got for Christmas to your mum. Sharing what we love is key to any media we consume. It’s not unique to books, but I love that books are getting their moment in the sun.

Q: Finding new readers can be difficult for publishers and authors. How does something like BookTok help?

A: Oh, that's a big question. So, on the one hand, BookTok is wild. You can't make a BookToker pick up a certain author. You can send them copies and hope they'll love them, but they're not beholden to the industry. Publishers are still trying work out if they can control it and how to make it work for them.

But it is grabbing readers and bringing them in, who then hopefully become readers for life. They might pick up The Love Hypothesis – a fabulous rom-com ­– because of Booktok, that might lead them to more rom-coms, or fantasy (eg A Deadly Education) or crime (The Thursday Murder Club) We want people to discover a love of reading, and that’s what Booktok is doing.

Q: Has BookTok changed the landscape for ‘traditional’ reviews?

A: Newspaper space for book reviews has been shrinking for years. It's become such a small part of what sells a book and the gap has been filled more by online reviews on  Goodreads,  Amazon reviews, or Blog. So, I would say BookTok is the next thing in this space. 

However, BookTok is impacting the independent Australian publishing landscape in a significant way. As the most influential Booktokers are generally overseas due to their bigger populations, Australian authors are at a disadvantage. For example, readers in Australia are generally watching US BookTokers and those US Booktokers are reviewing US books. Those American books are doing really, really well – and good on them. But if you look at the bestseller charts in Australia, all of those BookTok books that are driving sales are American titles, and sales of Australian authors are suffering.

We've got amazing Australian authors, who are absolutely writing in those genres that are perfect for BookTok. But we're not cutting through because we're not able to get in with the American BookTokers.  

Q: Finally, we couldn’t finish without asking you for your top BookTok-worthy recommendations.

A: Well, my big new release is Here For The Right Reasons by Jodi McAlister. This is a fabulous Australian rom-com. It's brilliant, and perfect for BookTok. Jodi has her own BookTok – she's a romance academic – and she does these incredible videos that break down the way romance narrative works. So, that's my recommendation, both as a BookToker and as a BookTok book.