Every reader knows that bittersweet moment after finishing a good book when the search for what to read next suddenly feels impossible. What was once an hour spent in a book store, debating with friends and straining your neck to read book spines sideways, can now be done in minutes by simply scrolling through social media. BookTok, an online reading community on Tiktok, is one place where readers can find new content for their “to be read” lists. Authors have taken note of this community as well, many having made TikTok accounts to market their own books to this demographic.
Thanks to TikTok’s algorithm, viewers don’t have to search very far to find books tailored to their interests; authors and fellow readers will bring book recommendations right to their For You page. One commonly sung praise about the BookTok community is its greater amount of diversity compared to the traditional publishing industry, which has been making progress but is still lacking in stories from marginalized communities. Is BookTok making a difference?
A majority of books being recommended on BookTok only feature protagonists without an explicitly stated racial identity in their descriptions or cover materials. This makes it difficult to determine whether the stories accurately reflect diverse representations. This reinforces an assumption of default whiteness, where racial identity is often only mentioned by authors when a character is not white. Additionally — romance titles, a popular genre on BookTok — overwhelmingly feature straight relationships despite the platform’s reputation for uplifting queer narratives.
That doesn’t mean that BookTok hasn’t shifted the narrative of publishing: it simply hasn’t changed the landscape as much as it claims to. Tiktok’s algorithm is designed to reinforce user preferences and works like an echo chamber, where users receive content that aligns with their existing interests, identities and behaviors. Staying inside your algorithm leads TikTok to mirror your engagement by showing you books similar to ones you’ve interacted with. This suppresses diversity by narrowing the range of books that appear on your feed, even if the broader community is discussing a wide array of authors and genres.
How people interpret and respond to representation also matters. Literary criticism emphasizes how characters are written by authors as well as how they are contextualized and received by readers. Some representations can be so detached from the real people they aim to portray, such as male authors writing phrases like “she breasted boobily to the stairs.” Another case of this is the “spicy Latina” trope, which relies on portraying Latinas as solely hypersexual and prone to anger. These portrayals may seem humorous, but they ultimately reinforce cultural attitudes that normalize the harassment and fetishization of real women. This is not to say that authors should only write stories involving their own identities; however, it is important to understand that thoughtless representation is harmful. Repeated stereotypes in media simply lead to caricatures, which go beyond just media choices and take root in how people are perceived in the greater world.
BookTok isn’t inherently harmful, nor is it inherently diverse. It’s simply a tool, and like any tool, it requires understanding and critical engagement. If BookTok is your primary source for book recommendations, it’s worth taking a moment to consider what is being recommended on your For You page and where your algorithm is lacking. Critically examine what voices are being uplifted and what patterns you notice. Intentionally seek out the types of books you want and engage with the posts about them, because the more readers actively support diverse authors, the more that platforms like TikTok will reflect that diversity.
Stephanie Morales is a junior studying communications with a concentration in intercultural communication and minors in writing and sociology. In her free time, she likes adding books to her “to be read” list faster than she can read them.