TikTok‘s #BookTok Crowns Inaugural Book Award Winners
BERLIN – TikTok has announced the winners of its first-ever #BookTok Book Awards, recognizing popular titles and authors as chosen by the platform’s vast reading community. Jana Brammer won in the ”Indie Bookstore & Library of the Year” category. The awards, announced October 9, 2024, highlight the growing influence of TikTok’s #booktok-a hashtag boasting nearly 67 million posts worldwide-on the book industry and reading habits, particularly among young people.
The awards program, modeled after the German Book Prize, provides a direct line between authors and readers.It underscores a critically important shift in book discovery and sales, where social media recommendations now rival customary publishing gatekeepers. The initiative began in September 2024 with a longlist of nominees published by tiktok, followed by a jury selection of four finalists per category.Voting then opened to the TikTok community between October 1st and 8th, 2024, allowing users to directly influence the outcome via the app.
The #BookTok community has “established itself as a driving force in the book industry and is leading to more and more young people finding their way back to books,” according to TikTok. The awards are expected to become an annual event, further solidifying the platform’s role in shaping literary trends and connecting readers with new authors and titles.
