I'm in the UK and have seen literally no difference to TikTok since the change 🤷🏻♀️ except for seeing videos of people saying their videos were blocked, but seeing the 'blocked' videos in my feed as well.
Interesting read, Alyssa. I'm always interested in BookTok trends from an author standpoint, but I never go to TikTok to find my next read.
I've also never thought to go to Romance Reddit, which is where I'm headed next. I go to Reddit for a lot of things, but not books, for some weird reason. Thanks for that suggestion.
This was a fun read! I tried TikTok and didn’t last for even 24hrs. Felt overstimulated, but that’s me being a text-based platform lover😂
Still, I love watching what’s trending on BookTook & Bookstagram on longer vlogs on YouTube and always find it fun to stay relatively up to date with the titles that are trending, or making a comeback.
I can also vouch for prefering standalones over series. If a book series isn’t finished, I won’t touch it. The main reason has to do with me being prone to binge-reading romantasy if I like something, and the pains of wanting to keep binging & having no book-food are real 😁
Me too! I really love watching dance videos on TikTok, musicians at home with their guitars, and anything involving Kevin Bacon. Other than that, I find it tiresome. Like, "where did my time go?"
What strikes me most is how quickly BookTok turned reading into trend cycles, tropes, and algorithms rather than discovery. It created visibility, yes, but sometimes at the cost of depth, where books became consumable aesthetics instead of sustained conversations. I wonder if this moment isn’t a decline so much as a correction, readers moving back toward slower, more relational ways of finding books again. I hope so at least.
I think that more in the market should just recognize that 'smut' and 'porno,' are separate markets that still have demand. I think there are readers tired of smut being packed into every romance, and it being so pervasive, but clearly based on what sells smut and porno (*ahem* dark romance) aren't going away. There needs to be a better way for signaling books that are low smut from books that are high smut, so that low-smut readers don't get smacked in the face with material they don't want. But also BookTok's big win was normalizing books that would have been sent to the book ghetto of 'erotica' before BookTok came around.
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing this! As a British writer about to sign with an agent for the first time, I've been wondering if I need to bite the bullet and join TikTok to eventually promote my contemporary romance, but I feel heartened by this! And it rings true from what I've seen in my reading friends: we want escapism but maybe in a lighter way?
If the TikTok algorithm is broken, they're cooked. I think a lot of folks will hang on there as long as they can, despite worries that TikTok can and likely will be used as a location and reporting tool for US gov't thugs targeting immigrants, trans people, and "antifa" (i.e. anyone they don't like and want to silence). But if the algorithm doesn't work anymore, there's no reason for authors or readers to stay.
I'm in the UK and have seen literally no difference to TikTok since the change 🤷🏻♀️ except for seeing videos of people saying their videos were blocked, but seeing the 'blocked' videos in my feed as well.
Thank goodness! To me, TikTok and the whole "trope" obsession feels anathema to anything I love about writing and reading.
Interesting read, Alyssa. I'm always interested in BookTok trends from an author standpoint, but I never go to TikTok to find my next read.
I've also never thought to go to Romance Reddit, which is where I'm headed next. I go to Reddit for a lot of things, but not books, for some weird reason. Thanks for that suggestion.
I highly recommend r/romancelandia!
This was a fun read! I tried TikTok and didn’t last for even 24hrs. Felt overstimulated, but that’s me being a text-based platform lover😂
Still, I love watching what’s trending on BookTook & Bookstagram on longer vlogs on YouTube and always find it fun to stay relatively up to date with the titles that are trending, or making a comeback.
I can also vouch for prefering standalones over series. If a book series isn’t finished, I won’t touch it. The main reason has to do with me being prone to binge-reading romantasy if I like something, and the pains of wanting to keep binging & having no book-food are real 😁
Me too! I really love watching dance videos on TikTok, musicians at home with their guitars, and anything involving Kevin Bacon. Other than that, I find it tiresome. Like, "where did my time go?"
Ok, but “anything involving Kevin Bacon” is one of the most authentic things I’ve seen here on Substack and I love it! :)
So glad to have come across your work! :)
What strikes me most is how quickly BookTok turned reading into trend cycles, tropes, and algorithms rather than discovery. It created visibility, yes, but sometimes at the cost of depth, where books became consumable aesthetics instead of sustained conversations. I wonder if this moment isn’t a decline so much as a correction, readers moving back toward slower, more relational ways of finding books again. I hope so at least.
I think that more in the market should just recognize that 'smut' and 'porno,' are separate markets that still have demand. I think there are readers tired of smut being packed into every romance, and it being so pervasive, but clearly based on what sells smut and porno (*ahem* dark romance) aren't going away. There needs to be a better way for signaling books that are low smut from books that are high smut, so that low-smut readers don't get smacked in the face with material they don't want. But also BookTok's big win was normalizing books that would have been sent to the book ghetto of 'erotica' before BookTok came around.
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing this! As a British writer about to sign with an agent for the first time, I've been wondering if I need to bite the bullet and join TikTok to eventually promote my contemporary romance, but I feel heartened by this! And it rings true from what I've seen in my reading friends: we want escapism but maybe in a lighter way?
If the TikTok algorithm is broken, they're cooked. I think a lot of folks will hang on there as long as they can, despite worries that TikTok can and likely will be used as a location and reporting tool for US gov't thugs targeting immigrants, trans people, and "antifa" (i.e. anyone they don't like and want to silence). But if the algorithm doesn't work anymore, there's no reason for authors or readers to stay.
This was an insightful read!