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This is not an unequivocal admonishment of BookTok; I admit that there are pockets, albeit niche and limited, of this digital space that are redeemable. My issue lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of BookTok popularizes books that are unworthy of the attention they receive — they are, in short, one-dimensional, tired tropes written for the functionally illiterate. I don’t want to name Colleen Hoover as the face of BookTok, yet she is the crux of its pitfall. In 2022, Colleen Hoover — whose books are frankly glorified smut reminiscent of early Tumblr — outsold the Bible by more than three million copies in 2022, an unprecedented accomplishment made possible through BookTok. Hoover’s novels thrive in BookTok spaces — they are palatable, aesthetically pleasing and mindless, and the potential for aestheticization appears integral to the success of the modern book. Though she has dominated the space, Hoover joins Emily Henry, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Jenny Han, Sarah J. Maas and others as authors who are redefining contemporary literature as poorly disguised Wattpad fanfiction.

Beyond the shallow and simple-minded recommendations publicized by BookTok, the platform’s ability to transform reading into a fetishized act primarily centered on the reader’s social image is concerning. BookTok has evolved from banal recommendations to a redefinition of reading, commodifying the reader as an embodiment of intellect, virtue and a nebulous but undeniable coolness. The readers themselves are made a product subject to consumption where their social value is entirely predicated on the image of being seen with a book. This digital space is dedicated to aestheticizing reading and the reader to the point that the romanticization becomes a fetish. BookTok is functioning to give rise to a new culture of “bookishness” — one that uses the book not as a means of enrichment but as an instrument of curating, characterizing and communicating the self. Thus, reading as defined within a modern context — a definition predicated on its BookTok associations — is concerned with the aesthetics of the act, inextricably linking books to their capacity for performativity.

BookTok has made it evident that looking at books, or rather looking at others look at books, is more important than looking through them and that the book now serves as an accessory to aestheticize and call attention to the reader — the reader that is more preoccupied with how they look reading than reading itself.