TikTok

Welcome to BookTok. TikTok's book recommendations, reviews and releases have amassed 185 billion views, making it one of the platform's most active communities. According to the Publisher's Association, 59% of 16- 25-year-olds have rekindled their love for reading thanks to the trend.

Jeneva Rose is a whirlwind. When the publishing world didn't work for her, she created her own.

Like most aspiring authors, she first took the conventional route to hoped-for literary success. For her efforts, agents and publishers turned her down a combined 500 times. After she finally connected, she fired her agent before she found a publisher.

TikTok recommendations are driving sales and launching authors' careers as the social media app continues to reshape the industry

At 24 I'm classified as Gen Z, but I'm very much on the cusp. When I was a teenager, everyone smoked cigarettes, not flavoured vapes, I don't have an iced coffee addiction, and as I must warn my friends: no, I don't have TikTok. So for those of us who are Gen Z, but don't have the app, where do we hear about the books we want to read, what's trending?  Read more

"I have only the vaguest understanding of what TikTok is," said Ann Patchett, owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville. So she still doesn't quite grasp how savvily Sarah Arnold, Parnassus's marketing manager, has leveraged the platform to promote the bookstore-or what a microcelebrity Patchett herself has become on the app.