Popular BookTok Influencers and the Authors Users Follow Most

Not my thing, but if it gets more people to read and more authors discovered then it's a good thing to me.

BookTok got my wife reading again.. exclusively fairy themed erotica lol

I feel like people in this thread aren’t acknowledging that you can curate your booktok experience. My booktok experience is nearly 100% recommendations on Latin American literature now. I just had to sort through the sexy hockey player TikTok’s to get to the ones I really wanted.

I personally love booktok! Finding it (and also starting language learning) made me realize how much I used to love fiction. Years ago I was once a teen girl obsessed with terrible fiction about terrible relationships. And I loved it. Then as an adult, there were so few adult fiction readers around me I switched to only non-fiction, mostly self help. It totally halted my reading.

Maybe this mass of girls loving reading and finding community in it will eventually turn into more mature readers that help out the adult book industry.

I tried tiktok for a couple months and hoped to find some good recs. I didn’t get very far into it admittedly, but the whole scene seemed to be YA and fantasy. Nothing wrong with that. It’s great that they’re finding a reading community. For me it didn’t work out

Booktok turned my 18 year old daughter back onto books. She loved them as a kid, grew out of it for her teens and is now going to a book store weekly. I love it.

Pretty sure it means "For you page". Essentially it's the feed on the app that the algorithm has tailored towards you, based on what you watch, like and save.

Our Barnes and noble now has a tiktok book section. Some pretty good titles on it

The closest I can think of would be the communities for YA fantasy lit on Tumblr back in the day, and even then Tumblr was always kind of regarded as a site that got a big share of its traffic specifically from 'geeky' fandom culture. How has 'Booktok' come to exist the way it does on what's the current biggest/most ubiquitous social media platform in a way that wasn't the case on platforms like Facebook back when they were the biggest social media apps?

Unpopular opinion but I genuinely don't trust BookTok creators that are getting paid for their reviews on TikTok because it makes them less credible. Have they even read the book they are giving 5 stars ??. There are so many times where I see influencers will speak to speak and get money from saying "this is the newest/ best !!" but it's all BS.

That is not an unpopular opinion at all.

Hi there!

I'm a digitally published author (not sharing which works here to avoid self-promo) just getting started with my TikTok, and was curious if anyone has any personal experiences with authors who just really nail it with their TikTok presence? I'd love to review their feeds and get a sense of what works and what doesn't based on community perception. :-)

Thanks so much!

ARC reviews aren't paid and they can be chancey, as an author. I've had people request ARCs from me who don't read my genre (fantasy) and then review the book poorly (claiming it's a copy of GOT, which it isn't, not even remotely).

Otherwise, yes. Why trust paid reviews? Those reviewers likely want repeat customers, so they're not likely to leave a bad review.

I don't trust paid reviews period. Sure, if it's a Tiktok with a shoppable link and they're SHOWING the product, it can help (though I've seen some people rave about the quality, meanwhile the comments are talking about how bad something looks.)

I also barely trust book reviews period. Haunting Adeline is popular enough to get a movie, and I thought it was awf*l.

Meghan Quinn and Abby Jimenez.

I read over 100 a year but I'm not an influencer. I do remember them well and read a fair number of books that are heavy on narration and light on dialogue, and a decent amount of nonfiction. I've just always been a fast reader, though, and it was a huge help in grad school. 

I really love Jodi Picoult because she has a lot to say about the world today and is not afraid to speak on it. Her books also explore topics others do not always discuss. Jeneva Rose is really silly most times. I have only read one book, but I truly like her silly personality. Cassandra Thompson/Quill & Crow Publishing House has this whole aesthetic that I love. Aron Beauregard his splatterpunk work is not everyone's cup of tea, but he's out there doing his thing. From a marketing (its what I do) and author (under a pen name) I find I enjoy a variety for different reasons. I may not like the genre someone writes in or their story in general, but I can aprecciate their social media campaigns.

Elizabeth Wheatley.

Book Goblin is the best and she’s super wholesome and fun.

I'm not a booktoker but I regularly "read" 100+ books a year. I say "read" because about half of that is audio.  It's really not an unfathomable number. 

I listen to audio books at 1.5 speed. So that comes out to about 8 hours per book. I can do that in a week just by listening to books while in my car. I read about 1 page per minute. So if I read for about an hour a day, I can finish a novel in a week. An hour might sound like a lot but I used to spend more than that just doom scrolling on my phone.

I'm not saying everyone can or should read 100 books a year but it's not some impossible number if you prioritize reading. 

I read about 200 books a year and I read every word, either by listening or reading. I don’t really post on booktok. But it’s possible. I don’t watch TV bc I prefer books and audiobooks.

If people are just reading dialogue they can’t understand the whole plot of the book. But surprise! People lie on the internet to sell things.

I'm an avid reader and love this type of content. Getting book recommendations and hearing opinions and perspectives on books is awesome to me, but why do people lie about reading insane amounts of books? This is the most recent egregious example: This woman has a full time job, reads exclusively (no audio books), and claims to have read over 400 books last year. Also, many of the books she's reviewed in the year are 500+ pages. If she didnt have a job I might believe it, but this is such a lie

Recently found out that some of the booktok influencers who read over 100 books or so each year just read the dialogue in the book. If this is you are something you have done before do you actaully feel like you are actually understanding the story by the end? This has been stuck on my mind ever since i found out.