It doesn’t matter if you’re off social media or chronically online enough to know what “faerie smut” is – if you’re a reader, you’ve probably heard of BookTok.

Reader communities are nothing new. But BookTok isn’t your grandma’s book club or the Facebook fan page of your mom’s generation – in fact, it gave online book communities of days past a run for their money by boosting book sales and birthing an entirely new generation of readers.
But on Friday, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments to determine whether it should block a law requiring TikTok to cut ties with the Chinese government or be banned Jan. 19.

What happens for booklovers if it all goes away?
BookTok has aided both new and seasoned authors

The 2020 pandemic lockdown days and TikTok’s growing popularity primed young adult readers for this online bibliophile’s paradise. Backlist sales soared, especially with romance and fantasy authors like Colleen Hoover and Sarah J. Maas. Hoover’s romance book sales increased 693% from 2020 to 2021, the Washington Post reported. Maas anchored a 75% year-over-year revenue increase in 2024, according to Publishers Weekly. TikTok’s algorithm also became the silver bullet for many independent and self-published authors.
On a platform where anyone could go viral, any book was fair game for discussion, and some authors’ followings ballooned.

“Because TikTok is free, so to speak, it’s a very valuable, cost-effective marketing tool that authors have used,” says Regina Brooks, president of the Association of American Literary Agents. “If you find readers who really value your work, you as the author don’t have to do the same type of pushing because you have ambassadors who will do that work for you.”
Bloom, an imprint of Sourcebooks, became a big name in romance publishing by taking over the distribution and marketing of some of BookTok’s viral self-published authors including Ana Huang and Lucy Score.

“It really democratized social media and it really put voices all at one level, including those of our authors,” says Maranda Seney, the publisher’s senior online marketing manager. “What that did was really facilitate an openness and vulnerability and a new level of connection between authors and readers. And I do think that TikTok and TikTok’s algorithm were incredibly helpful in that.”