Social media, something that people can get sucked into and spend hours on. We’ve all heard the negatives to it but there are positives too. For example when it comes to books and social media, there can be more good than harm.

In recent years- particularly since 2020- there has been a rise in social media accounts dedicated to books, content related to books, recommendations for books and so on. These niche accounts can be referred to as “Booktok”, “Bookstagram” “Book-tube” and “Book-twitter” accounts. These subsections of popular social media sites are extremely influential when it comes to recommending books, which is one of the main pieces of content produced by them.

Bookshops these days mostly all have a table or display dedicated to books made popular by social media, like a “Booktok table,” (such as featured in the picture above) proving the influence of social media for book sales even in physical stores.

Social media is also fairly responsible for many people picking up the hobby of reading or restarting that hobby. People come across videos about books, get convinced to read that one book and the rest is history, they now have a new hobby.

Social media also has the ability to change the tide for book sales. The right word from an influential individual on a book account can completely change the way a book performs on the market. Social media can be wielded as an influential tool to hit best selling lists and get books out there. Take Chloe Gong for example, her debut novel These Violent Delights was published in 2020 and it hit best selling lists very quickly. For a debut novel to do so well is impressive, part of, if not the main reason for its success is TikTok, Chloe Gong herself used TikTok to advertise her book not to mention the thousands of other creators who also talked about this book. It was one of those books that was seen all over every social media making social media a key factor for the success of this book.

Although it’s not just new books that do well, books that have been long forgotten also make comebacks thanks to social media. A key example of this being Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us. It Ends With Us was published in 2016 and forgotten about for years until TikTok came along and started to rave about it. This book went from not a word about it for years, to one of the most popular books out there, one mostly everyone who reads has seen, heard of or read themselves. It’s popularity has skyrocketed to the point where it is now being adapted to film.

Social media holds a lot of power when it comes to what books do well and what do not.