Featuring bookstore hauls, book reviews and "spicy" recommendations, BookTok is one of the biggest communities on TikTok. It's also an unlikely savior of America's largest brick-and-mortar book chain, Barnes & Noble.
Barnes & Noble opened 57 stores in 2024 and plans to open at least 60 in 2025, thanks in part to a boost from BookTok, Axios reports. That's a significant improvement from 2020, when only three new Barnes & Noble locations were planned, according to Axios.
If you’ve visited a Barnes & Noble recently, you might’ve noticed #BookTok shelves near the entrance, a space specifically cultivated from current BookTok trends. And even if you’re not a "BookTok girlie," as the online community often calls itself, chances are you recognize some of the titles and authors on display. That recognition is a big part of what drives book sales— after all, if you kind of remember someone praising Sarah J. Maas online, surely it can’t hurt to give her books a try?
By following trends and openly embracing online book communities, Barnes & Noble has accomplished what it's tried to do for years: become relevant. According to Bloomberg, the chain has made several unsuccessful attempts at staying popular but leaned too far into unconventional markets like games and toys. It seemed to always fall short of what customers wanted.
“The trouble with Barnes & Noble is it just ran really bad bookstores,” Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt told Bloomberg.
The chain spent a decade closing 150 stores and started ramping up again in 2023. Another factor contributing to its growth is a business strategy of handing control of each bookstore to its local booksellers, Fast Company reported.
The future of TikTok in the U.S. is uncertain; the app is trying to find a way to stay past April, when a ban on it could be enforced.
But Daunt isn’t too worried about the impact of potentially losing BookTok's impact on brick-and-mortar stores. With or without it, book lovers have always ended up back in bookstores.
“Most of these book phenomena are actually embedded in the bookstore infrastructure,” Daunt said.
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