As readers form connections in online subcultures, publishers are finding new ways to market with authenticity.
Publishers adjusted to new ways of circulating manuscripts with the emergence of e-books and e-readers. Now, with the development of social media subcultures such as BookTok, publishers have a new opportunity to adjust how they market their books. But what new approaches to social media marketing should publishers adopt?
THE RESEARCH
Researchers Gitte Balling from the University of Copenhagen and Marianne Martens from Kent State University coauthored “BookTok Helped Us Sell It: How TikTok Disrupts Publishing and Fuels the #Romantasy Boom” in 2024. Their research explored how publishers and booksellers are using BookTok to market with greater authenticity. They conducted interviews with staff members at Arnold Busck (a large Danish bookseller) and Barnes & Noble. The researchers also gathered visual ethnographic observations—a method of studying how people interact with media and marketing—by immersing themselves in BookTok, looking at marketing within stores, and reading some of the top trending books on BookTok.
They found that publishers view BookTok as a way to increase authenticity in their marketing. “Where the app does make a difference, is in allowing publishers to forge authentic-seeming and affective relationships with readers (BookTokers or not)” (Balling and Martens 2024, 16). Because TikTok content is typically created as peer-to-peer interactions, viewers tend to trust influencers whose book recommendations appear in their algorithmically curated feed. Employees from both book stores reported feeling like they were authentically connecting with their audiences by collaborating with influencers, promoting influencers’ posts, and mimicking trends.
Where the app does make a difference, is in allowing publishers to forge authentic-seeming and affective relationships with readers (BookTokers or not).”
Balling and Martens (2024)
The researchers also found that mimicking BookTok trends requires rapid content production from publishers and booksellers. They observed that subjects in marketing roles experienced increased levels of autonomy in their content creation. Because trends on BookTok can change daily, marketers were often trusted to bypass higher approval processes in order to create content quicker. In the same vein, Barnes & Noble encouraged individual stores to run their own social media campaigns rather than disseminating the same marketing for all branches.
THE IMPLICATIONS
The researchers acknowledge that the BookTok landscape could shift with the introduction of bans on TikTok in the United States and Denmark. However, they predict that similar social media subcultures like Bookstagram and BookTube will continue to be relevant. Publishers and booksellers looking to utilize these social media subcultures may decide to hire marketing employees who can be trusted to authentically connect with audiences and follow style and brand guides without needing approval so they can quickly create trendy content.
To discover more about how booksellers and marketers are utilizing BookTok, read the full article:
Balling, Gitte, and Marianne Martens. 2024. “BookTok Helped Us Sell It: How TikTok Disrupts Publishing and Fuels the #Romantasy Boom.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. Published ahead of print, November 14: 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/13548565241301271.
—Elizabeth Walker, Editing Research
FEATURE IMAGE BY COTTONBRO STUDIO
Find more research
Read Maya Burnett’s Editing Research article for more background about what BookTok is and how it’s affecting young people: “Booktok: The New Book Club?”
Check out Patricia Ådjers’s (2025) thesis to learn more about how BookTok is influencing its readers: “The BookTok effect: Exploring the intersection of social media and contemporary reading culture.” Thesis. Vaasa University of Applied Sciences. Theseus (897142).
