Laura Carew
I’ve had a book under my arm since I could walk. I still swear that my sister taught me to read, and that my mother is the reason my heart skips a beat when I walk past a bookstore. I never noticed how lonely the act of reading could be until I got to high school. English class was the least sought after, and classmates opted to watch a film adaptation rather than read the book itself. As I made my way through college, the landscape of reading changed again. People who once scoffed at my admiration for literature now host a library within their bedrooms. Other avid readers have lost their passion for cracking open a book. I look around and realize that as a nation, we’re witnessing a reading renaissance—now it’s up to us to redefine what reading truly means.
Over the last ten years, the perpetual growth of social media platforms has fundamentally changed the ways we interact with books. Within spaces like YouTube and TikTok, bookish “corners” exist on the internet for readers to congregate and find community amongst fellow readers, no matter where they may be across the planet.
While BookTube (YouTube’s corner for books) truly began in 2013 and continues to flourish today, BookTok (TikTok’s answer for literary content) has grown exponentially since the pandemic of 2020, giving us the large faction of readers on TikTok that continues to get larger, one video at a time.
Centered around creating a space for readers to share their favorite books, praise their favorite authors, or find recommendations for new books, BookTok offers a wide range of content to enjoy.
This phenomenon has even come home to the Chippewa Valley, felt especially by Margaret Leonard, co-founder and owner of Dotters Books.
“I think that people have genuinely found community on social media. I’m so mystified by it, but I think it’s really genuine for some people to go online and talk about books that way. I want to believe that this is the hopeful way forward.”
“I think that people have genuinely found community on social media,” she says. “I’m so mystified by it, but I think it’s really genuine for some people to go online and talk about books that way. I want to believe that this is the hopeful way forward.”
The rise of literary social media began in the COVID-19 era. As libraries and bookstores shuttered their doors, millions of people found ways to combat cabin fever and isolation through alternative ways to enjoy reading.
For several years following a peak of 778 million print books sold in 2008, US book sales don’t see a significant increase again until 2020, growing once more to 843 million copies sold in 2021, per this Words Rated article. With BookTok emerging during the height of the pandemic, readership in the US grew exponentially, and has remained at staggering heights.
As the way we engage with books has changed, so, too, has the identity attached to it. In the 21st century, reading looks more different than ever.
Leonie (who goes by The Book Leo) is a prominent BookTuber and TikTok enthusiast who took it upon herself in a video essay to discuss her experience on BookTok and how she sees this online forum as both a benefit and hindrance to readership.
In her video, she opens up a wider discussion about the intersection of a hobby that requires little to no internet use, and a platform that fundamentally lives and breathes in technology.
“Finding people who identify as readers, or who openly say that they read, is more difficult than finding people who, say, watch movies.”
“Finding people who identify as readers, or who openly say that they read, is more difficult than finding people who, say, watch movies,” Leonie shares. “An online community like BookTok offers this sense of belonging.”
The difficulty of finding friendships as a reader is something that many young people have faced during the 21st century with the rise of technology, where hobbies like video games and movie-watching have perhaps overtaken reading.
Not only is reading a traditionally solitary activity, but it attracts predominantly introverted individuals. When readers want to share their love for a book they’ve just read, who can they talk to, if no one in their physical environment also identifies as a reader? Where can they go?
BookTok fills this void for so many readers. With millions of videos tagged #BookTok—some from right here in Eau Claire—people can find their corner of the internet where readers of all authors and genres coexist, creating a unified front within a solitary hobby, unlike anything we’ve seen before.
While finding a sense of belonging is undoubtedly a great benefit of BookTok, we cannot ignore the potential pitfalls that involve readership entering the social media arena.
Barry Pierce—a former BookTuber himself—wrote an article for GQ that reflected on the uses of BookTok, ultimately calling it a “shallow world,” and asking if, given the time it takes to curate their videos, “any [BookTok creators] have the time to read.”
Pierce shares a valid criticism. Many videos under the hashtag #BookTok feature beautiful bookshelves sprawling massive rooms, and colorful spines peer out for the viewer to feast their eyes upon. An alarming number of videos will also feature the creator admitting that they haven’t actually read most of the books on their shelves—some, none at all.
The romanticization of reading has existed for decades. But Pierce poses an important question to young readers: has owning books, thus sounding more “intellectual” than one’s peers, overcome the appeal of actually reading?
Has identifying as a reader turned into a lifestyle aesthetic rather than a hobby for people to enjoy? Dotter’s Margaret Leonard feels similarly.
“Books are beautiful, and they’re getting more and more beautiful,” she says. “If we think that that’s not because of social media, we’re wrong. There’s definitely a certain level of aesthetic that’s necessary to [BookTok].”
“As much as we hear the age-old rule of not judging a book by its cover, we can’t help it.”
As much as we hear the age-old rule of not judging a book by its cover, we can’t help it. Book covers are the first thing that engage a potential reader, so it makes perfect sense that content creators on BookTok attach to that engagement by sharing the gorgeous covers of books they own, whether they’ve read them or not.
This effect is a direct result of United States consumerism, which includes a rise in materialism surrounding books. As a reader, I’ve got plenty of books on my shelf that I haven’t read yet. But as countless videos show on BookTok, some readers have shelves boasting hundreds of unread books. So what’s the point of having them? Is it a trophy case? A boast of wealth?
“As a bookseller,” Leonard continues, “there’s a real disconnect there. Am I selling books to people who want to take pretty pictures of them? Or am I selling books to people who want to read them and learn?”
Countless debates have occurred over the last fifteen years that denote reading as a “dying art,” but what’s getting in our way from celebrating an unmistakable uptick in book sales and readership nationwide? And who’s leading the charge? The 25-and-under demographic, better known as Gen Z.
As a member of Gen Z myself, I have long witnessed my peers lose their passion for reading, one new technological advance at a time. It was mystifying as a kid who’d grown up on books. But now, we are witnessing the intersection of two contradicting entities—literature and the online world.
Due to the exposure that books get through social media, BookTok has become a necessary outlet for recommending contemporary titles by diverse voices, working to subvert the white-dominant culture of the publishing world.
“[The goal and intention of Dotters] was to highlight traditionally marginalized voices,” Leonard says. “I feel like so often people are left out of those conversations [who] shouldn’t be. As a reader, I want to hear from the people who haven’t been amplified. I want to go outside my own experience.”
Thanks to the charming shop that brims with books of the popular and unheard-of variety, Dotters has been a space for readers to explore outside their own lived experiences since 2018, when the shop opened at its first location on Hogeboom Avenue.
With books like these at young readers’ disposal in Eau Claire, it’s not hard to see how Gen Z is at the front of this changing readership culture. Books of all kinds are becoming more and more accessible thanks to places like Dotters and social media, inspiring young people all over the country—and right here at home—to crack open a book again.
“Through [the lockdown in 2020] social media was our sole way to communicate with people,” Leonard reflects. “I do think that [the pandemic] created this space for people to read and spend time with books in a way that they hadn’t been able to before…we’re seeing people prioritize keeping that as part of their world now.”
Leonard’s sentiment is proven over and over with each recent year of record-setting book sales. Through social media, reading has come upon a brand new wave of popularity, proving that it is anything but a dying art.
It might feel counterintuitive that technology so closely aligns with the modern reader. But the world is always evolving, as is our relationship with literature. A love for reading among young people is returning in droves, so why criticize how someone chooses to enjoy an age-old hobby? Nothing can whisk readers away from their reality quite like a book. With our phones in our left hands and a book in our right, Gen Z is saving—and redefining—literature as we know it.