When Did Booktok Start

BookTok, TikTok’s ever-growing reading community, began picking up steam in early 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 lockdowns. As people leaned on digital escapes, book content began trending, thanks in part to TikTok’s recommendation algorithm. Viral conversations sprang up around books like The Song of Achilles and It Ends With Us, while the hashtag #BookTok, first used in mid-2020, helped centralize this new literary wave.

The influence became impossible to ignore by late 2020, when publishers saw older titles like Madeline Miller’s novel topping charts. By 2021, big names in publishing, like Penguin and Bloomsbury, started tapping creators to reach new audiences. What started informally with users like @caitsbooks turned into a dynamic movement, driven by genuine reactions, inside jokes, and emotional reviews. With TikTok’s support for longer videos and content discovery features, BookTok’s reach only expanded.

BookTok, the thriving book-centered community on TikTok, rose to prominence around 2020, amid the global pandemic. As people sought distraction and companionship online, TikTok quickly became a creative space where readers shared book reviews, reading habits, and genre-based content. The hashtag #BookTok evolved naturally, often featuring bite-sized videos that spotlighted titles in romance, fantasy, and YA literature.

By the middle of 2021, BookTok had become a massive cultural force, affecting what topped bestseller lists and sending sales soaring for books like The Song of Achilles and It Ends With Us. Recognizing its influence, publishers began working with TikTok influencers to market new releases. The community’s rise was largely driven by TikTok’s ability to make niche interests explode in popularity. Today, BookTok continues to play a key role in shaping the modern reading landscape.

BookTok, a niche community within the social media platform TikTok, has emerged as an unexpected force in the literary world. Characterized by short-form video content, TikTok has become home to thousands of readers—known as BookTokers—who post reviews, reading recommendations, bookshelf tours, and literary memes. The community also includes authors and publishers who have quickly adapted to this new promotional frontier.

While BookTok covers a wide range of genres, it is particularly dominated by romance, fantasy, and young adult fiction. The demographic skews young, with most creators being teenagers and women in their early twenties—perhaps explaining the outsized popularity of young adult titles. Some BookTok accounts focus on niche genres or themes, while others take a more generalist approach, offering commentary across a broad literary spectrum.

The BookTok phenomenon began gaining real traction in 2020, when certain titles—many of them years old—experienced a dramatic resurgence in popularity. Among the earliest and most notable examples was We Were Liars, a 2014 young adult psychological thriller by E. Lockhart. Thanks to viral TikToks featuring emotional reactions to the novel’s twist ending, the book soared back onto bestseller lists. As of late 2023, videos tagged with #wewereliars had accumulated over 172 million views.

Lockhart later credited the BookTok community with inspiring her to write Family of Liars, a prequel published in 2022. While fans had long requested a continuation, the wave of attention driven by TikTok convinced her to revisit the story.

Other titles that have benefited from the BookTok effect include They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera (originally published in 2017), The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2012), and It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover (2016). Hoover, in particular, has become a BookTok mainstay. In July 2022, she had an unprecedented four novels simultaneously ranked among the top 15 on The New York Times bestseller list for combined print and e-book fiction—despite none of the books being newly released.

The BookTok movement has not remained confined to the digital world. Physical bookstores have responded by creating dedicated displays for BookTok-recommended titles, often labeling them explicitly to attract the app’s devoted followers. Retailers have noted that titles trending on BookTok frequently see significant spikes in sales, reinforcing the platform’s role as a powerful new tastemaker in publishing.

For a generation of readers raised on digital media, BookTok has become more than a social outlet—it’s a primary source of literary discovery. In an era when attention spans are short and content is endless, this unlikely corner of TikTok has managed to reignite enthusiasm for reading, one viral video at a time.