“Enemies to Lovers”, “Love Triangle”, “Dark Academia”, “Fake Dating”. You may recognize these phrases if you’ve ever come across a book recommendation video on TikTok. At first, I thought this was a fun way for creators to give their audience an impression of a book, without spoiling too much. Unfortunately, it has since spiraled out of control; it seems like the overwhelming majority of book recommendations on TikTok consist of nothing more than buzzwords.
The Rise of Booktok
Popular social media platforms often house a multitude of smaller (niche) subsections. One frequently found community is for book lovers. YouTube has Booktube, Instagram has Bookstagram, and TikTok has, you guessed it, Booktok.
When it first emerged, Booktok inhabited a unique position in online book communities. YouTube and Instagram did not have Shorts or Reels yet, meaning TikTok was the place to be for short video content. Video content can come across as more “real” than static posts, as it allows the viewer to feel more connected to the creator. Additionally, creating a TikTok does not take nearly as much time as filming a Youtube video, and it is easier for your video to be seen as For You page videos play automatically, bypassing the need to entice your target audience to click on a video. This, combined with the COVID pandemic, led to a rapid increase in Booktok’s popularity. Nowadays, content creators on Booktok are one of the driving forces behind the book market.
These bookish content creators have become the booksellers of the online world, tempting consumers to purchase their five-star reads as they seamlessly transition between books on video or take a snapshot of stacked books in the morning sunlight.
Katie Nicoll
Trope-based Marketing
A large part of Booktok content centers around the recommendation of books. This is done in a number of ways, from sit-down discussions to flashing book covers on the screen to the sound of a trending “sound”, to videos claiming you’ll love x if you like y and z. A common thread that connects these things is the reliance on tropes (= recurring themes or occurrences within something, in this case, books). On Booktok, tropes are an easy way to catch the viewer’s attention by suggesting that all their recommendations will be books you like, based on the trope.
Even when they are not highlighted, tropes firmly cemented themselves within Booktok. Take the video below for example. Even though Miranda, the creator, does not use the word ‘trope’ anywhere in her video or in the caption, she does rely on them. In the video, she recommends books she rated five stars, as quickly as possible. While she does give brief overviews of the plot, she uses tropes as well. When talking about Butcher & Blackbird, she says: “it’s very very good, I would say like rivals to lovers almost?”. She compares the relationship in the book to the popular Booktok trope of Enemies/Rivals to Lovers, though her hesitance and the use of the word ‘almost’ suggests this is not entirely accurate.
The Problem
This brings us to my main point: tropes are no longer an effective way to market books on TikTok. They’ve gone from a useful tool to just something a creator adds because it’s what the audience wants to hear.
Referring back to Miranda’s video, I personally do not like the Rivals to Lovers trope. Based on this, I would probably avoid Butcher & Blackbird. But what if this trope is in fact not applicable at all? There have been instances where I’ve read and enjoyed a book, only to see it appear in a Booktok recommendation under a trope I usually avoid. This always makes me pause, as I’m certain the trope did not appear in the book at all, or at such a minimal level that it seems silly to focus on it at all. This works the other way around too. Someone may pick up a book based on such a recommendation, and become disappointed when the story is not what they expected. It’s not possible to give accurate recommendations within such a rigid and vague frame – “Sunshine Boyfriend” tells me nothing about the contents of a book.
Largely as a result of Booktok, books have become boiled down to the handful of tropes they resemble most. This discards the work authors put in to create original works of literature and encourages them to instead cater to these tropes. If this trend continues, it may become increasingly difficult to find unique books, and likely increasingly difficult for authors to find a publisher who is willing to publish said books as publishers pander to the trope-driven masses.
I remember when bookstores introduced their “BookTok” or “As seen on TikTok” sections and I believe it is a matter of time until they start separating the books by tropes. Since I have noticed that mostly romance books get described through tropes, Im wondering: doesn’t that spoil the fun for the reader? Obviously when you pick up a romance book, you know that some of the main characters will end up romantically involved with each other, but the trope also tells you how exactly. You might as well give up on reading it since its already laid out for you. As you mentioned, the tropes can also be misleading, as they might not be the central focus or even a significant plot point.
Imagine trying to classify classic literature into tropes. It feels almost disrespectful to reduce complex works to a simple label like “enemies to lovers”.
As this trend grows, I fear that writers might try to prioritise writing to fit specific tropes, rather than focusing on creating meaningful and original stories and that really is quite sad. As much as it might be fun to recommend books to other based on main plotlines, I think that TikTok managed to get yet another thing too far and make it into a oversimplification of literature.
I actually did see someone use tropes to describe classic literature (not in a serious way but in a “please let this show you guys how silly you sound” way). It really illustrates how while tropes may technically be accurate to the story, they definitely can’t replace something like a short summary. I think it also strips away all individualism, and what makes the books a classic to begin with.
I tried to find the post I’m talking about when I wrote this post, but unfortunately couldn’t. I took another look just now and found something though! It’s not the same since the one I originally saw was on Instagram and this is Tumblr, but still fun:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Freviewedbooks.tumblr.com%2F&psig=AOvVaw39aEKbodfz1hiBHOTa7ajt&ust=1729118328620000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBgQ3YkBahcKEwjIrbj6uZGJAxUAAAAAHQAAAAAQBA