Book Blogging vs. Booktok: Which One Costs More?

This was an interesting topic I saw a few people on Twitter and their own individual platforms talk about. Which social media platform should be paid more, the veteran book blog or newbie BookTok?

Before we start the discussion, let’s catch up on some posts I had done earlier this month:

Word Association Game: Books Edition

‘With the Fire on High’// Audiobook REVIEW

‘The Kiss Quotient’: 3 AM BOOK REVIEW

My Writing Journey // How I Got Started

My Therapy Journey // What I learned from my first three months of counseling

What the hell is Booktok?

If you’re unfamiliar with the term “BookTok”, it is essentially a community of users on TikTok who talk about books. It has become a current platform for visual and audio presentation for book fans. They share what they are reading, their favorite books, tropes, characters, and more. I’m not on TikTok very often, but when I do occasionally pop over there, it is a bit fascinating to see some new faces and ideas for the book community to connect with.

It’s Not Fair….Or Is It?

Even the publishing world sees the power of BookTok. Booktok videos give the chance to showcase books that haven’t been for a while now, like E. Lockhart’s “We Were Liars”. Studybreaks reported that For the first time since its 2014 release, the novel hit the The New York Times’ Bestseller List. Surprising the author and booksellers nationwide, Lockhart remarked, “I had no idea what the hell was happening.”

However, the blogger in me wishes that veteran content creators such as ourselves were getting flowers like Booktokers, bookstagram (instagram) and booktube (youtube). I’ve been writing for the past seven years and have rarely received pay for my hard work. Taking time to come up with ideas for posts, editing, sharing on social media, making graphic designs for social media, and so on. The receiving end doesn’t always add up when it comes to book blogging. I know it’s an older form of entertainment, but it is still a respected field where passionate readers get together and share their work.

May of Forever and Everly said in an interview about the future of book blogging, “Ever since the explosion of TikTok, there’s something that is difficult for book bloggers to adapt to, and that is the desire for shorter and more visual content. [It is] a desire for less ‘demanding’ content — it’s so much easier to scroll Instagram and quickly double-tap a photo, or to lie in bed and watch a YouTube video before going to sleep than to read a 1,000 word-long blog post.”

How Does It Feel?

All in all of that to say ….. I don’t know how to feel about all of this. On one hand, I don’t think blogging is going anywhere, but it has to adapt to the incoming changes that social media brings, especially for publishing. Which is the biggest competitor of them all. We should be fighting them, not each other.

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Comment below! What do you think? Which costs more: book blogging or booktok?

Thanks for reading!