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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.