One of my favorite ARCs I've received from Penguin Teen; Both Sides Now by Peyton Thomas.
Booktok
(n.) The world of books on TikTok​
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I was an avid reader throughout middle school, but I am ashamed to admit that from 2016 to 2019, I only read about 10 books. Embarrassing for someone who calls themselves a reader, but can you blame me; high school was a busy time!
I regret to say that my reading habits didn't get much better once I moved across the country for college, but everything changed in the spring of 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic exploded in height and power. When spring break of my freshman year ended, I was sent back home to California and didn't return to Boston for another half a year. I finished the school year inside my childhood home, attending my university classes during the early hours of the morning (I thought an 8 am class would be easy until that translated to a 4:45 am wake-up call on the west coast). I was left with free afternoons and an empty social calendar, and like many, I turned to TikTok for entertainment, where I discovered a rapidly growing community — BookTok. Armed with the latest trending novels and series, these BookTokers reignited my long-lost love for reading.
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Forced to stay indoors with all the time in the world on my hands, I finally picked up a book that had been collecting dust on my shelf for the past three years — Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. I had seen people raving about it on TikTok and figured I'd try it. That led to a binge-read of the book in a matter of hours, and an immediate order of the rest of the series. I then sped through her other series, Six of Crows, before moving on to more BookTok staples and revisiting old favorites of mine like Harry Potter and The Da Vinci Code.
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I slowly began to fall in love with the BookTok world. I was learning about so many new books and meeting people to talk about them with, and they seemed like a friendly and inclusive crowd with a passion for reading that rivaled my own. I'm not an extremely extroverted individual (on a MyersBrigg test, the scale of my outgoingness is a game of musical chairs between extroversion and introversion vying for that 51% ). But at the end of the day, I figured, why not join? Posting content on the internet, especially of myself, was a terrifying concept, but I thought it could be fun or at the very least up my confidence.
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Fast-forward a year later, and @angelasbookshelf on TikTok gained over 13,000 followers. I entered Penguin Teen's Influencer Program and was allowed early access to hundreds of new releases and the chance to promote titles on the online platform (and I sometimes got paid too!). I've also had the privilege to read and review ARCs (advance reading copies) from a variety of other publishing houses and imprints like Simon and Schuster, Andrews McMeel, Celadon Readers, W by Wattpad, and Entangled Teen, to name a few. It sounds cliche, but the best part of this whole experience is the people I've met along the way. I've had the opportunity to connect with book lovers from around the world that I would have never met otherwise.
Another one of my favorite books from Penguin!
TBR video.
Social media can get exhausting sometimes, and I did take moments to step back for a few days (or weeks!) and take breaks from the constant scrolling and hard work of content creation. It's harder than you might think! But my break stretched a little longer than expected when I went abroad to London for a semester and sort of forgot about TikTok—I was busy making new friends, traveling, and living in the moment. After summer and I entered my senior year of college, I was working multiple jobs on top of classes and personal content creation faded from my priorities.
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So what's next? I'll probably use my account every now and then down the line because of course, where else am I going to promote my own book once I finish writing it? It was a great experience while it lasted and taught me a lot about content creation and social media management—from practicing trend spotting to catering to social media algorithms. It also solidified my love of books and great storytelling.
Months and months ago, I met an author at a book signing and we had a chat about BookTok. She asked me what advice I had about creating content or what I had learned about the platform. I couldn't think of an answer then but I've thought about that question for a while now, and my answer is this: at the end of the day, you can't predict creative success (especially with algorithms). What is entertaining, funny, or beautiful to one person or a small group of people might induce an adverse reaction in the masses. There was a book I loved in middle school, The False Prince, and the main character could roll a coin over his knuckles. I thought that sounded amazing and obviously committed hours to learning how to do it, and later on filmed a TikTok of me doing it, referencing the popular heist novel Six of Crows in the caption.
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An idea like that seemed silly, and I only posted the video because I had just flown home and didn't want to film anything else.
It ended up becoming my most-viewed video ever at over 500k views. I have access to all my account data and analytics, but if you asked me why it was so popular I genuinely don't really know—but it proves how random algorithms can be and how you can't predict success. It took me under five minutes to make that video, and I've spent multiple hours on videos that only got a few hundred views. Maybe it was the sound, the hashtags, or my account's interaction with the right community—who knows!
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From what I've learned from all I've seen and done, the most important lesson to key in mind is this: authenticity. Being yourself is always the best route when you strive for success.