Hot book summer
How one Bellingham book influencer is making reading cool again.
The covers of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” “It Ends With Us” and “They Both Die at the End” // photos courtesy of HarperCollins Publishing
Written by Olivia Hicks
Mando Surita first remembers becoming hooked on reading at 13-years-old from Stephen King’s “IT.” Little did they know that 25 years later, they would be a local celebrity promoting books on social media. Surita, the assistant store manager and in-house social media expert at Barnes and Noble, graces the local Bellingham location and occasionally the national Barnes and Noble TikTok accounts with sharp eyeliner and infectious book recommendations.
The book side of TikTok is known for its influence in resurfacing old novels, promoting upcoming books and kickstarting the careers of self-published authors. Referred to as “BookTok,” this section of the platform dedicated to book lovers has provided a space for self-expression, the rise of new genres and, most strikingly, the emergence of reading as “cool.”
Celebrity book clubs aren’t anything new or shocking, but the pandemic saw a rise in celebrity book culture: a distinct aesthetic promotion of books as something associated with being cool, hot and popular.
Following Oprah Winfrey’s book club that began in 1996, models, actors and musicians in the limelight — including Kendall Jenner, Reese Witherspoon and Kaia Gerber to name a few — have either created book clubs or shared their refined taste in literature with their fans. This is where BookTok creators have stepped in to critique, psychoanalyze and deem celebrities worthy in the literary sphere based on the books they recommended or have been photographed carrying.
Some TikTok users have critiqued celebrities’ superficiality when it comes to following and influencing book trends.
The emergence of celebrity book stylists, or assistants hired to curate the best books for celebrity bookshelves and photo-ops, caused several BookTok-ers to question whether the popularity of certain titles was genuine.
“Why as a SOCIETY have we aestheticized what we read? It used to be just reading in general that was quirky and different but NOW??? It’s not just that we are reading, it’s WHAT is being read,” saidone user on TikTok.
In reference to a New York Times article that unearthed the mysterious Hollywood book stylist, TikTok user @hira_again said, “Book styling feels nefarious because reading is an interior activity and this makes it about being seen.”
BookTok’s influence has stretched out of TikTok’s “For You Page” feed and onto bookshelves. Some sellers, like Barnes and Noble, even have tables dedicated to books trending on BookTok that week. BookTok-popular titles not featured on special tables can be found in almost every genre section from “Love is a Mix Tape” in memoirs and “Trick Mirror”in poetry, drama and literary criticism to “The Midnight Library” in the special section for Mother’s Day and “The Song ofAchilles”in Fiction which have all been featured on BookTok.
“What do you like? What kind of TV shows do you like? What video games? Fantasy, fiction, nonfiction?” are just a few of the questions Surita asks typical customers who aren’t sure what to look for when they walk into the store. While Surita complained BookTok can lead people to have tunnel vision and refuse to venture outside of their comfort zones, it can also make the overwhelming choices of books seem more manageable when walking into a bookstore with a list of recommendations.
Standing taller than the store’s five-shelf-high bookcases, Surita recounts one of their five weekly reads. Surita explains the plotline of “Daughter of the Dark” by Maryna and Serhiy Dyachenko like they are experiencing everything for themselves, a high-speed roller-coaster ride with a new twist at every turn.
“They stick their Rottweiler on this girl. And the Rottweiler runs, and she’s like, ‘Oh, no, he’ll take care of us’ and then they hear this big chatter when the dog is torn in half. Oh my gosh and then it happens again. He gets robbed and the robbers get murdered and there’s blood everywhere,” Surita said.
It’s not hard to see why viewers are drawn to their recommendations.
Numbers in the form of likes, views and comments weren’t the only forms of feedback Surita received. Their star persona became fully realized in Downtown Bellingham when a woman tipsily shouted, “the Barnes and Noble guy!” in excitement.
Surita’s not only a BookToker on the company accounts. Surita has now amassed over 1,000 followers on their personal TikTok account reviewing books.
Several of the books trending on BookTok and garnering fanclub-like support are surprising booksellers like Surita, along with publishers and authors. Why? Because they aren’t new books.
“That’s what I find so interesting. When we first got that? Nobody bought it,” Surita said while pointing a black-painted nail at the stack of Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” piled high atop the BookTok table. “Now all of a sudden everybody wants to buy it. So I ordered a bunch because I had like three people want it in one day.”
Trevor Boffone, a lecturer in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Houston and Spanish teacher at Bellaire High School, noticed the same pattern with Adam Silvera’s“They Both Die at The End.’’ The novel recently regained its spot as a best-seller because of its prevalence on BookTok, despite launching in 2017.
For Colleen Hoover, a formerly self-published author, BookTok’s cult-like following of her novels has led to a 693% increase in her print sales between 2020 and 2021, according to NPD Bookscan. Her most popular novel on BookTok, “It Ends With Us,” was the second top-selling book in March 2022, despite hitting bookstands in 2016.
Book-loving communities and clubs — whether on or offline — aren’t groundbreaking.
So, what makes BookTok so unique?
“You can actually hear people talk about the book and what it meant to them,” Surita said. “You just get to see more people’s reactions because you’re not reading an article you get to see their emotions. I think this is a kind of community and [you can] connect with people about a book that you like or don’t like.”
It also stands apart from other platforms because of the strength of its algorithm and amount of audience interaction. With a maximum video length of three minutes, BookTok-ers get straight to the point and have limited time to make their recommendations memorable.
“I don’t spend much time on BookTube or Bookstagram but what I do know that makes BookTok really unique are the sheer numbers,” said Sarah Jerasa, a literacy scholar and researcher at the University of Houston.
“Billions of views have happened on BookTok and the ways people find community are really powerful,” Jerasa said. “People have shared how they have gained confidence as readers to read books outside of their comfort genre or trope.”
Bookshops are finding community circles, as well, by connecting with other booksellers in the neighboring town or across the nation.
“Having the opportunity to be involved in the book community online and just interacting with different bookstores from, like, Michigan or wherever that you normally wouldn’t get the chance to see or know, is really exciting,” said Sarah Macpherson, a bookseller at Village Books and head of their TikTok account. “Even from a non-bookstore employee perspective [it’s exciting], because it’s like ‘Wow, like I didn’t know that bookstore existed and now I do, and I want to go there.’”
Just as Surita is able to recommend their favorite books, BookTok allows bookstore employees to share their love for literature.
“It gives booksellers an opportunity to kind of get their opinions out there as well because what’s funny, is the least asked question to a bookseller is: ‘What are you reading?’” Macpherson said.
From fan groups to hate circles, BookTok has created a tight-knit online book club-like feel. That’s why it’s hard to remember that at the heart of it, whether prompted by free books from publishing houses or simply the love for a certain book, BookTok influencers have begun selling a product to an audience.
And as sales pitches go, BookTok-ers have become quite skilled in their art.
“This book has the very specific vibe of getting into an air-conditioned subway car on a hot day and wearing short shorts and having your legs stick to the plastic seats,” @literaryvibes on TikTok said to describe Marlowe Granados’ “Happy Hour.”
The same BookTok-er categorized the sensation of reading “A Touch of Jen” by Beth Morgan as “getting murdered in the Glossier store” and “laughing at a funeral.”
Hooking readers using descriptions ranging from the mundane and universal to the extreme and uncomfortable, it’s understandable how viewers’ “to be read” lists are becoming longer each time they open the app.
But with criticism of TikTok’s tendency to speed up the lifespan of trends — such as fashion trends that used to stick around for decades or years now remaining all-the-rage for mere months or weeks — how will BookTok fare?
Boffone doesn’t necessarily think this trend cycle always applies to books.
“If you look at “They Both Die at the End,” the book’s BookTok success pushes against the argument that TikTok has sped up the trend cycle,” Boffone explained. “The book has been a BookTok-mainstay for over two years, riding this success to the #1 spot on the New York Times Young Adult Paperback Bestseller List for 13 straight months.”
But there are some downfalls to the rise and fall of certain authors and genres, Jerasa pointed out.
“While I think the rise of certain genres, authors and books is inevitably good, I do see that there are lesser-known authors or books, particularly authors of color who do not get as much recognition or virality as other texts,” Jerasa said. “I think there are particular BookTok creators who center on celebrating a wider range of diverse texts that speak to readers’ identities, experiences and cultures.”
This coolness attached with reading, or more specifically what titles people are seen reading, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, Surita said.
“I don’t think it’s a bad [type of] trending. We went from a generation that really thought TV was everything. My generation, millennials, thought TV was everything,” Surita said. “But I think Gen Z is really getting into reading and finding out that books are so much better than TV shows and will keep you occupied so much more.”
Surita’s influence, along with the numerous other creators, seem to be driving this sustained consumption of novels. Their outlook is a positive one; one where reading may dip in popularity, but never in relevance.
“I think [Gen Z] is going to start teaching their children to read and their friends to read and then their mom and their dad and maybe get their older brother back into reading because they are so passionate about these books,” Surita said. “I don’t think [reading’s] ever going to end. I think it might slow down. I think it’s gonna move to the next social platform.”