𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

How did BookTok start?

While we can’t definitely say who started BookTok, posts under the hashtag began appearing on TikTok around 2019. It really grew in popularity during Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.

The account @kathyellendavis made a series of BookTok videos to recommend books to other users at the start of 2020. The @caitsbooks account says it was the “accidental founder of booktok”, with a video that went viral in March 2020. The creator behind the account, Cait Jacobs, is now a published author.

Today, BookTok is huge – and influential. The #BookTok hashtag on TikTok brings up more than 74 million posts. There are also spin-off ‘toks’ for different genre – for example #romancetok, which has over 150,000 posts of its own.

On Instagram you’re more likely to find #bookstagram, which has 124 million posts, but you’ll also find 11 million posts on the app under #booktok. On Reddit, r/Booktokreddit has 47,000 users visiting the subreddit every week.