In the past couple of years, reading and books have acquired much higher numbers in sales and popularity. From 2020 to 2024 now, unit books sales have increased tremendously. In 2021, unit book sales reached a high of 837.66 million sales in the United States alone which is the highest it has been in a whole decade.
Although reading has become a much more popular hobby, only 40% of readers are teenagers or preteens in middle or high school. But even 40 percent is good, it’s definitely better than the 32 percent from 2005. Clearly reading rates have been going up, even if it isn’t by much and so have book sales. In 2020, book sales averaged out to 13 million worldwide, and in merely one year, those numbers jumped up to 27 million.
The most popular places for books to be read, bought, or viewed is Barnes and Nobles, a book company that resides only in the U.S, Amazon Prime is also a great place, and most definitely Goodreads.
The specialty about all of these bookstores, whether they are online or in person, is that they all keep up to date with the popular reads for young adults, teens, and seniors. All three sources of books have a TikTok and Instagram account. Allowing the companies to keep up with the popular books, trends, and interests of their buyers.
The most popular platform for digital marketing would be TikTok. Since TikTok has its own subgenres for the hobbies and interests of their viewers, most readers go to something called “BookTok” for what to read next. As an avid reader myself, I too go online on TikTok for other potential reads and to find books that might interest me.
As of December of 2023, the hashtag “BookTok” has over 200 billion views on TikTok, making it one of the largest online communities. This platform has gone on to become so popular that certain bookstores (Barnes and Nobles included) have their own sections dedicated to the books on “BookTok”. And as the popularity of books rises on book sales and bookstores, the authors are able to benefit much more from the height of these new numbers.
Sarah J. Mass was lucky enough to be one of those authors whose books were adored by the community of “BookTok” giving her a lot of new attention and praise. Although Mass was very lucky to become popular due to “BookTok” some other authors, gained the bad end of it. Tanking their writing careers and causing chaos on the platform.
Colleen Hoover was once a very much adored author of “BookTok”, before the community grew larger in numbers. In the first couple of years that “BookTok” had begun to evolve, Hoover kept up her career, some of her books also became fan favorites. But then after a misfortunate turn of events, Colleen Hoover was pushed back to the bad end of “BookTok”.
Although many of Colleen Hoover’s books are of the romance genre, which is the top book genre of “BookTok”, she is still shunned for her writings and books. For some more personalized opinion, I interviewed Mrs. Insell, an English teacher here at Pitman, on what she thought about Colleen Hoover,
“Do you think there are any kinds of books (From Colleen Hoover) that you’ve seen/heard kids reading, that you would find inappropriate?”
Her response was, “Oh yes. Definitely. I noticed some of my students reading some of them before and I didn’t think anything of it. I thought that since she is a popular author, they (the books) were all about little cute romances. But going deeper into some of those books I was like ‘Woah! You guys should not be reading these right now!’”
Apparently, Colleen Hoover, despite the backlash from the last couple of months, remains a top author of “BookTok” and the most popular book on the platform being one of hers, “It Ends With Us”. Finding this information very interesting, I asked Mrs. Insell,
“How do you feel about Colleen Hoover and her book, ‘It Ends With Us’ being top in the ‘BookTok’ community?”
“I think the domestic violence in the book is very prominent, and having kids exposed to that can be triggering. Depending on their relationships with their families, and reading about it can sometimes make it, (the abuse) seem glorified, when really, it’s not.”
Although Colleen is still the top author of “Booktok” and “It Ends With Us” is the top book on “BookTok”, she is facing lots of competition from other authors such as Sarah J. Mass and Ana Huang. Even though all three authors have their own specialties and writing styles that people seem to love so much, they’ve got one thing in common. Their book genres.
Colleen Hoover, Sarah J. Mass, and Ana Huang all write romance stories. Although they all may write romance, all three have their own unique styles of doing so. Sarah who writes mostly fantasy romances, better known as, “Romanasy” and she has great series like, “A Court Of Thorns And Roses” and “Throne of Glass”.
Ana Haung also writes romance, but more so on the modern era timeline, and Hoover also follows that timeline. But the difference between these two authors is that Hoover deals a lot more with domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and lots of other problems that she portrays through her books.
And despite writing such different stories, all three authors are the most successful on “BookTok” and most well-known. The three authors do have their own special sub-genres that they write about mostly, but the generalized genre that all three fall under is romance. Why? Because it is the most popular genre in the community of “BookTok”. Out of the top 8 books in the community, 6 of them are listed as romance, the other two are listed as being for young adults.
I asked one of my own peers Sydney Parkinson, whom I know to be as much of an avid reader as me, if not more,
“How do you feel about the books on ‘BookTok?’”
“I think there are some books on ‘BookTok’ that deserve the publicity, they are genuinely good and have a beautiful story. While others aren’t really something I myself would read and I wouldn’t recommend them to kids or high schoolers due to the content.”
I also asked, “Do you think there should be an age limit to ‘BookTok?’”
“I do think there should be specific parts of ‘BookTok’ that are restricted. There should be some more guidelines and transparency with the kinds of things that are within the books being recommended.”
Although it is important to let kids and teenagers explore books, and let them read what they want, sometimes a couple of safety measurements wouldn’t hurt. As someone who enjoys books dearly, and would love to see more people reading, it is always important to make sure that what you are reading is one worth the while.
But at the end of the day, what matters most is that people are reading again, whether it be Colleen Hoover, Ana Huang, or someone totally different like Frieda McFadden. Reading rates have gone up, book sales have gone up, and whether you are reading historical fiction, or romance novels, what matters is that you are reading.