Literature - Series (2) Digital phenomenon BookTok is shaking up the analog literary world
Book lovers publish personal book reviews on the video platform TikTok under the hashtag BookTok. This has developed into a worldwide phenomenon that is also shaking up the literary scene in Switzerland.
15.01.2025, 07:00
SDA
Objective criteria or gut feeling: how do you judge a book? On the video portal TikTok, where people talk about books under the hashtag #booktok, the focus is usually on personal feelings. "This touched me so much!" or "I celebrated it, I loved it!", and also: "A book I would recommend to my best friend."
The mostly short videos mainly discuss romance and fantasy novels for teenagers and young adults, so-called young and new adult books, as well as queer literature and psychological non-fiction, but also biographies and classics such as Emily Dickinson and Franz Kafka.
In recent years, the exchange within a manageable community that operates away from the public eye has developed into a global phenomenon. BookTok has made the leap from the digital to the analog world and has become an integral part of the literary world. There are BookTok festivals, bookstores have BookTok corners, publishers pay influencers for posts and send them packages with advance copies, which are then ceremoniously unpacked in so-called unboxing videos.
BookTok as a sales argument
Tanja Messerli, Managing Director of the Swiss Booksellers and Publishers Association (SBVV), is following the trend with interest. "In the beginning, it was simply a hashtag that attracted a lot of attention. It was the bookshops that reacted to the trend first and have since placed books that go viral on TikTok prominently in their stores." What makes the rounds digitally under #booktok often becomes a bestseller, even if the causal link in Switzerland cannot yet be proven with figures. "Caroline Wahl's debut novel '22 Bahnen', published in 2023, is one of the first books in the German-speaking world to make it onto the bestseller lists thanks to BookTok. There was an interaction between BookTok, bookshops and book sales," says Messerli.
"I was surprised that BookTok has shaken up the literary scene so much," says Christine Lötscher, Professor of Popular Literatures and Media at the University of Zurich. "It's about communities that normally operate in a parallel world away from the literary scene. The BookTok culture also expresses a defiant resistance to the traditional literary establishment. A literary industry that has always devalued romance novels and women's fiction." BookTok celebrates the intimate, the exchange about inner worlds. "It's about a cultural position that has long been marginalized and is now taking over the mainstream. Feelings are allowed to take center stage again. That's why it's not just kitsch to talk about feelings. It's a political positioning."
Trend towards reading
Josia Jourdan from Berlin, who grew up in Basel, has over 21,000 followers on TikTok. The journalist writes about literature and LGBTQ+ topics for various print and online media. He uses TikTok to talk about books that are close to his heart. "Thanks to BookTok, reading is accessible at a low threshold and inspires people who would otherwise not have come into contact with books," says Jourdan. "Instead of media companies dictating which books are good or should be read, it's now people of the same age who recommend their favorite books to each other." Josia Jourdan - now 22 years old - was already a bookworm at school. But reading wasn't cool back then, he says. "Today, I'm seeing that reading has become trendy again, especially among a female audience."
Tanja Messerli and Christine Lötscher are also convinced that female bookfluencers are making reading cool, popular and relevant again for young people. "In this way, #booktok has achieved something that schools and politicians have unfortunately not managed to do in recent years: to anchor reading more firmly in society again," says Messerli.
But how sustainable is this reading boom? "Booktok covers various reading modes: escapist reading, where you immerse yourself in another world. The therapeutic function of reading is also repeatedly emphasized on Booktok. Or reading where you have a room all to yourself. These are all reading modes that become part of a life practice," says Lötscher. Once you start, you don't stop so quickly. "For a long time, the main reason for reading was to acquire knowledge and education. But in today's meritocracy, where everyone has to perform all the time, education is no longer something that interests people in the evenings. Many people prefer to binge-watch a Netflix series. And then at some point they end up with a book: here they can progress at their own pace and immerse themselves even better in other worlds."
Book as a fan article
The BookTok community particularly celebrates the printed book, which is seen as a kind of fan article and is treated as such. Dog-ears are taboo, notes are carefully stuck to the edge of the page on Post-its in matching colors.
Reading itself is often discussed ("I devoured it!"), especially the many books and the associated stress ("My 15th book this month", "So many great new books. How am I supposed to manage it all?").
People between 16 and 25 are among the most passionate and high-consumption target groups, says Josia Jourdan. "At the same time, there is so much that distracts us from reading during the school years and perhaps seems more important. That's why I believe that in the long term, it's all about awakening the joy of books, regardless of how much is actually read. "*
*This text by Maria Künzli, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
