Journey into publishing at the time of BookTok: how social networks change books and stories (also in Italy)

A girl reads a book, live on TikTok. In the background, the music flows, one song after another. There is not much movement: the image is still, but users continue to connect. There are thousands of them, even 4 thousand at the same time.

Megi Bulla, the person behind @labibliotecadidaphnethought of this format, which he calls Let’s read together, for personal reasons: “The live shows are born as a moment to put aside the smartphone and concentrate exclusively on reading – he explained to us – Then they became a collective moment, everyone reads a different bookbut knows that that time is dedicated exclusively to that activity”.

The direct readings are only one of many aspects of the BookTok phenomenon, the TikTok trend which has as its object, to put it simply, the suggestion of books to read within the platform. Born as a spontaneous phenomenon in 2020, the hashtag #BookTokItalia sails on figures that reach over 2 billion views, with the global one #BookTok above 140 billion.

A huge phenomenon, with consequences that go far beyond the ByteDance platform. Over the recent years, AIE data confirm growth in the publishing market: expenditure on books, albeit slightly down compared to 2022, recorded +17% in the first months of 2023 compared to 2019.

But the impact is not only on market volumes. According to an article published in Business Insider, BookTok would also be changing the storylines of books and the choices of publishers when publishing. There are genres that are doing better than others and that are also influencing the arrival of new texts on bookshop shelves.

Romance and fantasy: the recipe for success on BookTok

“Let’s say that fantasy and romance are two of the genres that work best – he told us Mariella Ferrara, booktoker with the nickname @attorcigliata – A lot depends on the target: a large portion of the audience is made up of teenagers. Age evidently influences the types of novels that work”.

In short, the demographic characteristics of TikTok have contributed to bringing one closer to reading precise market sharethat of young adults: “Before TikTok, the trend was precise – clarified Federica Magro, editorial manager of Rizzoli young adults, Bur And Blacksmiths Publisher – the younger ones read up to adolescence, to then stop buying a first personal device, which allows them a different form of entertainment. Now something has changed, because that public has begun to have a relationship with books again”.

“He certainly has a role the age of those who live on the platformbut more than anything it is important to reflect on the method – added Megi Bulla – TikTok is built on videos, and this greatly influences the possibility that a book can spread on the platform: the plot must be able to lend itself to become a visual content, capable of capturing attention. It’s not a question of value: anything that stimulates the user to react emotionally can go better”.

There are some, among what Americans call tropes, that is recurring themes in the plots of books or films, which guarantee an almost guaranteed success. For example, books in which the protagonists are first enemies and then fall in love (Enemies to lovers), or those in which, after falling in love, they return to resent each other (Enemies to lovers to enemies). Again: the so-called slow burni.e. when a couple of people get close but it doesn’t all happen right away.

That’s not all: “They can work too the classics, like Gone With the Windthe important thing is to find a way to make them interesting, attractive – Ferrara told us again – Another very effective type of book is the so-called retelling, or novels built starting from known plots, such as The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (one of the most important successes of BookTok, ed)”.

“According to the data, it is not so much the new publications that benefit from the promotion of booktokers as the books that have been in the catalog for years – they confirmed by the Book Fairwhich this year had TikTok as Official Entertainment Partner – Among the most interesting cases Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, One day this pain will come in handy for you by Peter Cameron, A life like many by Hanya Yanagihara or new discoveries such as Felicia Kingsley and Tillie Cole, both present at the latest edition of the Salone”.

Publishing discovering BookTok

It just seems that in determining the success of a book on TikTok two fundamental components compete: on the one hand the genre, on the other the possibility of making that plot an interesting content, capable of capturing attention.

Started spontaneously on the platform, BookTok is now one of the strengths, also in the media, of the social network of ByteDance: “For us it is an engine of quality content – Salvatore Di Mari, head of operations of TikTok Italia told us – Furthermore, it means gathering a new demographic, no longer bringing a young audience to reading but bringing those who he is passionate about reading”.

Again: “In the last year, they have arrived in the app the writers, from Saviano to Zerocalcare up to Erin Doom, but also virtually all publishers”. And there isn’t space only for romance and fantasy novels: “RaiLibri doesn’t publish novels but essays, but it’s having success because it is linked to current issues. For us it is important to make publishers understand that there is room for everyone, not just for a specific genre or target, just adapt the language. We relate directly to publishers to support them in this regard”.

In short, the success of BookTok has turned the tables. From a promotional tool, the increasingly evident entry of publishers has also made TikTok a listening space and the community of readers on the platform a variable to take into consideration when deciding to publish a book: “Already Amazon and its previews have changed the shape of many stories – clarified Chiara Beretta Mazzotta, scout and editor, known on Instagram as @bookblister – which must trigger very early to capture the reader from the very first pages. The BookTok hunts for emotional plots that make you cry: it is inevitable for publishers to take note”.

For her part, Megi Bulla revealed to us that “I have been contacted by various publishing houses asking me to preview volumes in English to understand if they can work on the platform and then decide whether to buy the rights. It is the figure of the booktoker that evolves from the role of content creator who promotes books, to professionalism that arrives even before publication, ending up influencing the market, access to the market”.

Magro confirmed everything: “We look to TikTok, especially the foreign one, for scouting. In this sense, the platform has become another channel for observing the world such as fairs, TV series or sales charts abroad”.

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Promoting books or reading?

On the other side of the coin is reading. Which is a practice, a habit, difficult to measure, even when the sales of the book object improve: “We are aware of the fact that BookTok has a great impact on sales – clarified Pierangelo Cappello, director of the Center for Books and Reading – That this then also has an impact on reading is not we know, it is unproven, and we have no tools to detect it. The risk I see is that these tools lead to superficial consumption: I buy a book because it’s trendy and then I don’t read it or maybe I stop at the first pages”.

According to Istat surveys, in 2022 just under 4 out of 10 Italians they read at least one book in a year for entertainment reasons: it is the lowest number in the last 25 years. It is also true, however, that the largest share of readers is observed among young people up to 24 years of age. In Italy, those who read the most are especially girls up to the age of 24: 6 out of 10 read at least one book in 2022.

We do not know, of course, what is behind this fact, nor can we measure the concrete impact in unequivocal terms of a phenomenon like BookTok. The merit of the phenomenon, net of statistical interpretations, is probably the construction of a narrative around literature, including genre literature. A marketing tool, but with the ability to approach the book, make it equal, the result of the suggestion of someone with your same tastes, your same needs. All by exploiting a shared language, through which to fold the plots, and the distribution capacity of a very effective algorithm in bringing out trends, characters and authors.