BookTok must die

BookTok is not only bad for business, it's also plain bad. But it may already have reached critical Maas...

Last week, I was at the London Book Fair and, inevitably, quite a few of the conversations I had were about BookTok.

We spoke of the grim inevitability of BookTok; of the unavoidability of BookTok; of the inability of publishers to stop staring into the void of BookTok.

No one much liked it. But nor could anyone see a way around it.

Are we, we asked each other hopelessly, stuck with this thing?

What is this thing?

Just in case you don’t know, BookTok is a small part of the gigantic video playing platform TikTok given over to the discussion of books.

Around about five years ago, as we all experienced the strange version of reality imposed by the pandemic, millions of people started watching posts on this platform in which (mainly) teenage girls enthused about romantic quotes from Brontë novels, explained the unsettling magic of The Secret History and wept over the ending of The Song Of Achilles.

The books they recommended started selling hundreds of thousands of extra copies and a lot of publishers decided to jump in hard; setting up their own channels, trying to influence the influencers on the platform, bringing out special editions at the request of influencers and chucking every egg they had into a basket that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t have, a bottom, a handle, or even sides.

As I say, it is a void. They’re throwing their eggs into the void.

A quick caveat

I’m an avant garde publisher. I am an outsider by definition and by volition. My opinions are not shared by most people in the industry. The conversations I have at the Book Fair are not representative of the book trade as a whole.

The London Book Fair, meanwhile, is a huge thing:

Olympia in London. So much Book Fair - and this is only a small part of one wing of the thing…

I’m guessing that when most people at this gigantic corporate shindig talked about BookTok they had far fewer worries than me and the people I met.

The truth is that most publishers have continued to direct a large percentage of their marketing budgets at TikTok, that increasing numbers of the of the books they sign are written by TikTok ‘stars’, and that many publishers have even rushed to start producing books for a TikTok shop, thus allowing themselves to be entirely wrapped into the platform.

An air of gung-ho enthusiasm remains around the whole thing. I don’t know, but I’m prepared to wager that many of my colleagues in the industry would think I’m hopelessly eccentric for not liking BookTok when it has so much potential to bring in quick and easy money.

It’s hard to blame those colleagues. Or, hard to blame them entirely.

BookTok can make a huge difference to the bottom line - and at least initially, it felt like a good thing. It felt like a warm and sincere community of book-lovers who could do wonderful things for a novel in beautifully unexpected ways. All those early videos of people weeping at the end of Song Of Achilles were delightful - and helped a very good book reach huge new audiences. BookTok has even been credited with a rise in fiction sales in the UK. And surely that’s not bad?

Except, of course, since those heady early days of weeping and loving, things have soured. The spontaneous outbursts of emotion have given way to cynically planned publicity campaigns. The mutually supportive groups of teenage enthusiasts have been elbowed out by self-promoting influencers. The sense of discovery and surprise has been replaced by an increasingly narrow concentration on a few genres and authors; predictable, conservative and unchallenging.

The fascists have moved in too.

And that’s before we get to the problems that were already inherent in this particular platform. Like the fact that it was probably designed and certainly used to spread Chinese state propaganda - and has since proved equally adept at promoting rightwing parties like the AFD in Germany, The Republicans in America, Reform in the UK.

Like the fact that its endless scrolls of short videos are addictive and its algorithms are designed to keep you chasing an empty buzz.

Like the fact that it has a terrible impact on attention spans (even more than regular social media).

According to James Marriott, TikTok have even produced an internal report that says regular use of their app causes: “loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, [and] conversational depth.”

In other words, TikTok makes people less literate.

Which doesn’t feel like a good strategic investment for people who hope to continue selling books in the future.

You might even say that the fact that publishers have lashed themselves to something so inimical to their long term business model is absurd.

History repeating

Absurd, but not surprising.

UK publishers have form when it comes to fattening-up the monsters that intend to eat them.

In the 1990s, they got behind the Milton Friedman nonsense about the power of “market forces” and allowed the Net Book Agreement to disappear. It was treated as inevitable. Even though it wasn’t.

In the 2000s, they did endless deals with Jeff Bezos, blithely ignoring the fact that he was clearly a devil. One who had even declared that his demonic minions should approach publishers “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” Amazon opens up new possibilities and new ways to reach readers we were told, even as those readers were snatched away from them, pummelled and abused for their data, and locked into a dismal course that has ended in (yet more) fascism.

In the late 2010s and early 2020s, publishers went all in for identity politics. They caved in to the illiberalism, the censoriousness, the threats against freedom of expression, the contradictory demands we should simultaneously listen to “diverse voices” and that those voices should only allowed to say the same things. We have to get on the “right side of history,” we were told. Even though history doesn’t take sides.

And now, it’s BookTok. It’s another sea-change in the industry. And who would fight the sea?

Critical Maas

The day after I went to the Book Fair, I had the privilege of teaching a class of 21-year-old students about publishing.

I told them about my experiences and some of the conversations I had and my personal cynicism about BookTok.

I was aware of how sour and out-of-the-loop I would have sounded to many of my colleagues at the Book Fair. But I also quickly began to realise that that particular loop was a closed one.

Because my cynicism was nothing compared to that of my students - nothing compared to a group of people who were, in effect, the target audience for those publishers who have invested so much in BookTok.

This is anecdotal evidence I know - but it also feels like the kind of story that will soon spread far and wide. Because there was real force in what those students were saying.

They hate BookTok.

For them, it’s over. Five-years ago, it was interesting. Some of them were even posting. Now, it’s dull. It’s past. They look on influencers as a cynical racket. They read stories about TikTokkers “losing their minds” about the forthcoming dreck from Sarah J Maas and wonder what minds they have left to lose.

Which leads me to wonder that while I might have been outnumbered at the London Book Fair, I might actually have more in common with the book-buying public than most publishers would be prepared to admit. The temperature within the industry, especially during the overheated excitement of London Olympia, is not the same as that on the outside world.

Publishers have always had a habit of only talking to themselves - and not realising, until it is too late, what their customer base has been saying. They have a bad habit of listening to gigantic evil corporations rather than the individuals that buy the books. The addiction to BookTok is the latest symptom of that malaise… And if publishers don’t find a lifeboat that gets them away soon, BookTok will drown them.

Other matters…

My increasingly irregular, regular feature, Links tips and suggestions will be back soon - apologies for the interruption. Please tell me what you’re reading and enjoying and will share your recommendations soon.