The world of TikTok is huge, and regardless of your personal opinion, it is impossible to deny the global reach it manages to accomplish.
BookTok refers to the community on TikTok where users create and share short videos about books. It’s one of the platform’s biggest reading communities and has a huge impact on publishing and book sales. It can rapidly turn a relatively unknown book into a bestseller because viral TikTok videos spread quickly. Many bookstores now have “As seen on BookTok” tables.
It’s not hard to see how BookTok can be a powerful (and free) discovery engine for authors - whether you’re traditionally published, indie, or somewhere in between.
First and foremost, however, you need to understand how it works and if you are new to the world of TikTok this can be quite a task. You see BookTok isn’t just a marketing platform - it’s a community with its own language, trends, and emotional tone.
The learning process involves following fellow authors and readers, observing what and how they post. Unfortunately no amount of watching will turn you into an expert overnight, rather there is a substantial amount of trial and error involved in learning what posts garner traction. In short, you need to spend time watching BookTok to understand what readers engage with before posting heavily.
Sometimes the most well thought out, polished, choreographed posts receive minimal hits whilst an off the cuff half arsed posting will send you spiraling close to the viral stratosphere. It is quite bizarre.
Still, there are key elements that the most successful posts share such as authentic reactions, emotional hooks, aesthetic vibes, and transparency. There’s a certain irony to an online culture reacting most positively to sincere and real human reactions.
BookTok values emotion over polish. You don’t need high production; you need a compelling hook. Short, impactful videos provide this. Think of them as a teaser or a mini trailer for your work. BookTok is all about aesthetic mood boards, dramatic quotes from your book, and behind the scenes writing clips. The other thing it leans heavily into is tropes.
Every reader looks for specific elements in the books they select to read. Tropes are a way to provide them with the ingredient list of the book. By announcing your tropes in both your videos and captions you are providing a hook to your target audience, and it makes your content instantly searchable. As an example, the tropes that aligned with my first book, From the Other Side, are dark fantasy romance, enemies to lovers, paranormal suspense, betrayal and graphic violence/language. These tropes tell the audience exactly what to expect when selecting their reading material.
The use of trending audio is crucial on TikTok. When you create a video the system will analyze your post and select appropriate music to match the vibe. Taking note of and adapting popular formats, for example: “books that will emotionally destroy you,” “books I wrote because no one else did,” “POV: you meet the villain,” are also an extremely effective tool in attracting views.
For inspiration, and to keep up with the current trends, I suggest following users such as @media.alacarte, @mirandabookmarketing and @saleemaishq.
It is imperative to understand and effectively use hashtags. TikTok limits each post to just five. Of these five you need a generalized one, for example #BookTok, #ReadersofTikTok, a genre specific one, for example, #Romantsy, #Fantasybooks, a couple of tropes as just mentioned, and something that relates to the writing community such as #AuthorsofTikTok #IndieAuthor.
The final elements to consider are engagement and consistency. Engagement boosts visibility, but it also builds real reader connection. I try to abide by the rule of five. Each day I like and comment on at least five posts. I am also careful to like the comments I receive and respond to at least a couple of each.
Analytics help you assess which posts work well by giving you the watch time and average view duration of each post. You have access to data that tells you which topics/tropes get the most engagement and just as importantly which do not.
Consistency is paramount. You don’t have to do multiple posts per day, set a target of 3-5 per week and build from there. It seems like an impossible task at first but trust me it gets easier. Mix up your posts. Remember people want to get to know you, so not every post needs to be book related. Jumping on the latest trends, sharing funny stories or special moments provide fantastic opportunity to open the door on your life and personality, allowing others to make those all-important connections. Because much like in real life, that’s all anyone is really looking for.