A TikTok ban means losing the one platform making Americans want to read books
After an action-packed weekend of tearful goodbye videos, “Titanic” memes and one act of arson in protest, TikTok received a stay of execution from President Trump. The newly inaugurated executive signed an executive order to delay, for 75 days, the enforcement of legislation that would ban the platform if it is not sold to an American company.
As much as TikTok’s critics argue that the platform has made Americans “dumber and slower,” TikTok also catalyzed a renaissance in reading for pleasure. If TikTok goes dark for good, it will be consequential to readers, writers, booksellers and the publishing industry.
As a novelist, I sometimes worry there are more aspiring writers in America than book buyers. When the National Endowment for the Arts conducted a survey in 2022, they found that slightly fewer than half of adults had read a book in the preceding year. Novel reading declined 17 percent over the preceding decade.
It would be easy to blame smartphones and social media for why we read fewer novels than ever, which is why it’s all the more surprising that TikTok — whose algorithm is designed for addiction — is home to BookTok, a community of readers who rate, review, recommend and discuss books with the dedication and fervor of cult fandoms.
BookTok started in 2019 but really took off during the pandemic, when teenagers and young adults were banned from gathering in-person, for proms and parties, graduations and college classes. Young women couldn’t go on dates, so they read romance novels. The author Ana Huang started self-publishing romance novels with college-age protagonists, and promoting them on TikTok; she was scooped up by a publisher and has sold 15 million copies in English to date.
According to BookScan, which tracks data of book sales, the top 90 authors on BookTok sold 9 million units in 2020, 20 million units in 2021, 33 million units in 2022 and 46 million units in 2023. There’s nothing else — Bookstagram, BookTube, the New York Times Book Review — that comes close to BookTok’s power and influence (full disclosure: I provide consulting on TikTok to the publishing industry). Across the country, Barnes and Noble and independent bookstores have dedicated BookTok shelves and tables.
But it isn’t only genre fiction, like romance and fantasy, that is popular on BookTok. My neighborhood on BookTok is loyal to literary fiction, classics and work in translation. One of the creators I follow is currently hosting a book club to discuss Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot.” Another creator I follow is reading Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” and recently made a video encouraging his followers to read books that are challenging and not just escapist. The last time I was in a bookstore, I bought Julia Armfeld’s “Private Rites,” an update of “King Lear,” because of a BookTok recommendation.
As a teenage girl in the late ’90s, I belonged to an email listserv fan club for the YA author Francesca Lia Block, who wrote modern fairy tales set in Los Angeles. At school, I felt depressed and alienated; the listserv was my magical escape, my wardrobe to Narnia. We sent mix tapes by mail. I discovered Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Tori Amos and Bikini Kill through the group. Cloistered away from the adults who misunderstood us, we were girls who built our own world, and I’ve watched users do something similar on BookTok.
If you’re old enough to remember reading alt-weeklies, turning the newsprint pages to read the latest film or book review by your favorite up-and-coming critic, that’s the kind of influence and cachet these creators have. In aggregate, their recommendations and reviews can turn books into massive hits — it happened for Gabrielle Zevin’s novel “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” for Jennette McCurdy’s memoir “I’m Glad My Mom Died” and for feminist icon bell hooks, whose 1999 book “All About Love” hit the New York Times bestseller list in 2021. The publishing industry has no alternative to the marketing power of TikTok.
What happens if reading is no longer trending? If we lose TikTok, creators and readers will scatter across various platforms, and it will be harder for publishers (and self-published authors) to market titles to key audiences. Twenty-somethings who discovered the pleasures of novels again thanks to TikTok may find that without the ongoing conversation and community of BookTok, they aren’t as motivated to read. If sales decline for the reigning queens of romance and fantasy — like Colleen Hoover, Emily Henry and Rebecca Yarros — those effects will inevitably be felt downstream by the imprints that publish literary fiction, which is financially riskier.
Reading will return to its former status as something you’re supposed to do, like getting enough protein.
As the Atlantic reported in October, students are showing up at elite colleges without the attention spans necessary to complete their reading assignments, after reading hardly any books in high school. Our educational system is not creating, building or shaping readers. BookTok is.
But instead of getting curious about what makes it so effective, or listening to the users who describe why they fell back in love with reading for the first time since childhood, many dismiss and deride bookish content creators as stupid, shallow and performative.
It’s not too late for anti-TikTok pundits, politicians, professors and parents to seize this opportunity to be good students and actually learn something from the most dedicated community of readers in America.
Leigh Stein is the author of six books, including the novel “Self Care,” and the creator of the Attention Economy Substack.