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Have you ever been in a book slump?

However much you love reading, there will come times in your life where you just can’t quite find the motivation.

But there are people who want to help you find your passion for reading again, and they’re making videos on TikTok to do so.

These videos make up what’s become known as BookTok, a place where people can come together to share their love of reading, and recommend new books to each other.

Tolu and Abby are both booktokkers who create regular content about reading. As Tolu explains, “not everyone in real life has people that they can talk to about books”, so people are flocking to TikTok in their droves to find others to share their passion with - the BookTok hashtag currently has almost twenty billion views.

Abby first came across BookTok when she was scrolling away during lockdown - and the more she saw, the more she wanted to make her own. A lover of reading and an English lit student to boot, Abby knew she had loads of books she could make content about, so she gave it a shot. It paid off, as she has amassed almost 409,000 followers since.

Tolu came across it as she started to create content. She would do room tours, and in them she would show her bookshelves, never thinking that her viewers would care about her opinion on what she was reading. But they did - people would comment asking about books they could see, so she started making videos replying to them, and the rest is history.

Only seconds to grab them

So how does a 10-second video make you want to read something?

Popular video formats are ones that appeal to your emotions, such as ‘books that made me cry till I couldn't breathe’ or ‘books that kept me up to 2am reading’. Abby says these tend to grab her attention because the visceral reaction is something she’s looking for.

Tolu also uses her platform to encourage people to diversify their bookshelves: “I've always been passionate about diversity within books… because I feel like the curriculum, at least when I was growing up, wasn't always reflective of my background, and probably many other people's backgrounds. And I think that was probably a contributing factor as to why so many kids probably don't want to read, because they can't see themselves in these books. But I think I think the world is changing right now.

“I think one of the first times I saw myself was reading like Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses. And I was able to imagine a world where racism didn't exist in the same way that it does now. And I was able to just kind of escape a little bit.”

But she stresses that content talking about race doesn’t have to be heavy: “I think when people hear that when people hear the fact that I read from books from authors of marginalised backgrounds, they start to think that this is like, a very serious thing, and all we talk about is very serious topics, but we can also do that whilst having fun and making jokes about the content of the books.”

Fans, fantasy and found families

Both Tolu and Abby are huge fans of fantasy, which is a genre that is very popular on BookTok.

Tolu says: “I think it has actually opened the door for many young kids of colour to see themselves in books, because it allows authors to imagine a world without racism, without sexism - without all of these types of discrimination. And they can literally do anything.”

While Abby says that at the start of lockdown she was reading almost exclusively fantasy, now she’s reading a bit of everything - Regency pieces, books set in Norway and mythological retellings. She says she’s a "mood reader" - it’s all about what takes her fancy on any given day.

There’s also loads of videos about particular ‘tropes’ that you can find across lots of different genres.

Tolu says she’s partial to the ‘found family’ trope, which is where characters who are unrelated come together and form bonds that are close to, or even stronger than blood relatives. She says that throughout the pandemic people have come together to support one another through really difficult times, and so it’s something “a lot of people can see in their lives right now.”

Abby on the other hand has a “bit of a thing for the enemies lovers trope”, which she says is an automatic selling point for her in a romance novel.

Making a difference

Both Tolu and Abby say that, on the whole, BookTok is safe space, although they also say that just by virtue of being online you'll come across the occasional troll. Tolu explains that there is also a particular type of trolling that can come with being a content creator of colour, but that by using her platform to promote diverse reads, she thinks she can educate people without “dragging them down”.

Abby says she loves seeing new authors come through TikTok, as it's an accessible way for them to gain a platform. She's seen indie authors be picked up by BookTok accounts that then "spread like wildfire".

Tolu loves that it smashes through stereotypes about reading - not just that it’s uncool, but that there’s only one way to do it.

As she explains: “There are so many different ways to read - braille is reading, [listening to] audiobooks is reading as well. And if that's the way that you consume your books, then that's good as well, that is valid.”