the fast fashion-ification of booktok
words by sadia khan
The year is 2020, and amongst the chaos surrounding the world, you find yourself immersed in a community rising on TikTok, where reading is the ‘norm,’ and you effortlessly discover books that will stick with you for the rest of your life.
‘BookTok’ is the literature division of TikTok, a flurry of literature-centered Instagram accounts swapping recommendations and reviews. It was a place filled with comfort, and became a safe space for many readers, including myself. Reading two/three books a month was ordinary and no book was seen as superior because of the content it contained.
But, since then, it has become evident that this is no longer the case.
This last year, I’ve felt overwhelmed with BookTok. It feels like there’s an unspoken feud between book influencers on who can read the most, with monthly reading counts of twenty plus and book hauls reminiscent of unnecessarily gigantic Shein orders. It’s caused an underlying bitterness in the community, and frankly, has turned books into fast fashion.
The new sensation has caused readers to buy and read as many books as they can in the shortest amount of time, instead of enjoying reading for the sake of it. Reading being just a hobby has been replaced with it being a burden for people, who believe they need to read more than they can cope with.
This has affected me as well. It has become exhausting to keep up with the latest trends and read a whole series, just to find out that we’ve moved past these books weeks ago.
One of the first series I read, recommended by BookTok was A Good Girls Guide to Murder. The angst, protagonists, and writing had me hooked, and made my love for reading grow even more. Despite being the first, it also became the last recommendation I enjoyed from the app.
The events of mass buying books have not gone unnoticed by authors either. I have seen the quality of books that are recommended on BookTok decrease over the years. Authors have become focused on quantity over quality. And these leads to my biggest grievance with BookTok — the obsession with ‘spicy’ books.
Romance novels have transformed completely, the focus being less on the romantic aspects and more on porn. And whilst there’s no issue with sexual content in books (if anything it’s a great way for someone to understand their own sexuality), it feels concerning that all romance books recommended on BookTok have to be somewhat sexual, because people won’t bother otherwise. The romantic lines written have shifted from, “you have bewitched me body and soul” to “crawl to me…”
This has affected the market, and books have been contaminated, with a lack of heartfelt storylines and instead, chapters made up of smut. Authors include these so they can gain popularity — but who can blame them?
The online reading community has been a safe space for me in the past, yet the drastic changes make me wonder what the future holds for the book community.
Words by Sadia Khan
Edited by Lucy Eaton
Posted 19 February 2024