YA writers under 'pressure' to do BookTok, LBF hears

YA authors should avoid the “pressure” of doing BookTok to simply sell books, the London Book Fair has heard.

The Bookseller’s deputy features editor and YA Prize chair Caroline Carpenter chaired the discussion, "YA Spotlight: How To Get Noticed in a Crowded Market", between authors Alexandra Christo, Chloe Gong, Katharine Corr and Elizabeth Corr as part of London Book Fair’s online offering on Tuesday (29th June).

Gong (pictured), author of These Violent Delights (Hodder), warned against following a social media trend just to sell books. “It really shows if the author has the pressure to get on it. If the pressure is making an author get on it then the reader can tell, especially with TikTok. I was on TikTok since this time last year and was just having fun, having a good time and then a month ago the New York Times released an article about how BookTok is selling books and suddenly there was a whole wave of authors on it.

"You could immediately tell who’d read it and thought, ‘Oh my God, I want sales’ and then if they’re uploading videos, but you can tell they don’t want to be there, then readers can really tell. They can tell, ‘that looks like an ad, I’m not going to watch that,’ and then the authors think, ‘why isn’t BookTok selling my books?’”

She added: “The minute the pressure starts, the social media fun of it and the whole angle just goes down as well.”

This was echoed by Christo, author of To Kill a Kingdom (Bonnier Books UK). “They [the readers] don’t want to watch you force yourself to do something,” Christo said of the BookTok trend. “I think there’s a sense of the platforms being for readers - for them to shout about books they like and that’s what helps bring the loyal reader on any platform which eventually spill on to other platforms. Plus no one wants to see you just talking about your books 24/7 and nothing else on any platform. You have to do more.”

Gong emphasised the need for building an authentic audience rather than targeting followers to build sales. “The thing about building your platform is you’ve got to have it first, you’ve got to have a pre-existing audience who are interested in you as a person and then you drop the, ‘Hey if you like my videos, why don’t you buy my book?’”

Christo agreed. “It’s that balancing act of ‘buy my book’ but also let’s ‘talk and interact as a person’ and just being you — that’s a very delicate balance.”

When the panel was asked about drumming up grass-roots support, Bonnier author Katharine Corr said: "We always try to respond to people who contact us, we’ve had a couple of lovely book Instagram tours and lots of people getting in contact about that.”

Her writing partner Elizabeth Corr agreed and warned against approaching influencers cold. “I wouldn’t say we go out there and approach people... It can feel a bit like spamming if you don’t know vloggers for example, if you say ‘Here’s my book, would you like to talk about it?’ but we always make a real effort to engage with people who reach out to us and engage with them, not just about the book but engage on other stuff. You don’t just want endless Instagram posts of your book, your book, your book, your book. I make an effort to put up other things I’m interested in too so we can have a conversation about shared interests like history or other books.”

Corr echoed the need for mutuality. “People in the books industry want a conversation, they don’t just want it to be a marketing platform.”