How BookTok influences book choices in Australia
In Australia, TikTok’s book community — BookTok — influences how readers discover new books and which genres gain popularity. According to ABC News Australia, the #BookTok hashtag brings together an international community whose members have created more than 85 million videos about books.
The Understanding Australia Reads survey found that about 80% of Australians read at least one book a year. Of those who read, 8% searched for books through themed social media. Canberra novelist Sally Thorne noted that her debut novel, The Hating Game, published ten years ago, initially became popular thanks to readers’ recommendations, while social media advice now plays a similar role.
Algorithms and recommendations
Mark Chong, a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, explained that recommendations on social media differ from advice from friends or book clubs. According to him, platforms use videos that users liked or commented on, demographic data, and information about people with similar interests to keep audiences in their feeds and show them advertising.
Chong noted that this mechanism may contribute to the spread of books with similar genres and plots. Video creators use hashtags such as #slowburn and #rightpersonwrongtime so that users and the algorithm can find books by tropes — recurring plot patterns. BookTok frequently discusses romance fiction, romantic fantasy, and crime novels.
More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.
Impact on the publishing market
Eleanor Spencer-Regan, an honorary senior fellow at the University of Melbourne, said that TikTok’s main audience consists of young women, teenage girls, LGBTQIA+ people, and culturally diverse communities. In her view, this partly explains the popularity of certain genres on BookTok.
Spencer-Regan named Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, the first book in the Empyrean series, as one example of a BookTok bestseller. Before the novel’s release in the United States in 2023, an initial hardcover print run of 315,000 copies was approved. According to the researcher, for a trade publication, a print run of more than 75,000 copies is usually already considered very large.
Thorne also noted that online communities give independent authors an opportunity to find readers more quickly. According to her, thanks to BookTok, her novel continues to sell ten years after publication.
