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When people all across the globe finally flip their calendars to 2026, it won’t just be the start of a brand new year. For creators on BookTok, the section of TikTok obsessed with everything in the literary world, the changing season will mark the sixth year anniversary of its transformation of the publishing industry — all with the press of the record button.
Like most things kickstarted by the time, space, and vague malaise-induced energy of the Covid-19 pandemic, TikTok’s book community became one of the premiere destinations on the short form video sharing app. BookTok creators — and lurkers — use the platform to pass around book recs, discuss their next reads, debate plot points in bestsellers, and deep dive into the works they can’t stop thinking about. It’s a hobbyist’s dream, but it’s transformed the publishing industry in the process. There are over 59 million print book sales alone in 2024 tied directly to BookTok content, Publishers Weekly reports. And BookTok creators have turned authors like Madeline Miller, Rebecca Yarros, and Sarah J. Maas into international best sellers, sometimes driving thousands of sales from a single video.
One of BookTok’s biggest draws for audiences is how many good and different books are available for people to read. While romantasy thrives on BookTok, everything from literary fiction to body horror to speculative dystopia can still find its audience. This means that even when the market is absolutely saturated, there’s always room for a book someone isn’t talking about. Since every BookTok creator is an expert on something different, Rolling Stone spoke with five creators from far-reaching sections of BookTok to get their predictions for 2026.
AI Fatigue Will Make Book Knowledge Social Currency Outside of BookTok
Hina Sabatine, 29, started posting TikToks about the fiction they were reading as a way to combat some of the anti-intellectual rhetoric they saw popping up on their for-you-page. Now, they share monthly book reviews, recaps, and recommendations about books to their 1.1 million followers, encompassing all genres but especially focusing on speculative fiction. “When you’re reading fiction, you hone and train your empathy and learn how to relate to other people,” they say. “There’s a lot of scary things happening in the world we live in and I like reading speculative fiction and how a lot of the heroes in these stories figure out how to combat a system that oppresses them.”
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november reading recap 🙂 sunburn was one of the most recommended books by you guys this year, so I was happy to finally get to it! let me know what your fav read for november was in the comments 🤍 as always, thank u for watching. also i link all the books I read in my bio so u can buy them from a source that supports local bookstores 🙂 #booktok #lgbt #wlw #bookreviews #books
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One of the concerns that Sabatine notes will continue to be a part of the conversation is the proliferation of artificial intelligence, which the tech industry has heralded as life changing, and many in artistic communities see as a threat to their way of life. Sabatine tells Rolling Stone that as AI continues to remain a major topic in 2026, they think book content — especially topics that deal with speculative fiction or literary classics — will become a defacto way that even general creators signal to their audience that they’re in touch with popular culture and people’s real life concerns. They also point to a revamped rise in celebrity book clubs, like Dua Lipa’s Service 95 and Kaia Gerber’s Library Science, as examples of famous stars incorporating more book content into their social media presence.
“I think the upswing of that [AI] trend cycle will be that people are really, really interested in reading and educating themselves,” Sabatine says. “Woke is coming back. I love woke. I miss her so bad. And I think that is going to correlate with people going out of their way to read, even creators who have never made a book video before. It’s going to be social currency to talk about the books you’ve been reading.”
In BookTok, as in the rest of the creator economy, full-time content creators make their living from a variety of income streams, including direct payments from platforms, sponsorships, and one-off brand deals. But BookTok operates in a nebulous space online, where creators are seen as both content creators and independent critics who are discouraged from accepting any money for reviews.
Ayman Chaudhary, 25, is just below the 1 million mark on TikTok, where she posts a blend of reviews and book recommendations. But much of her content also revolves around discussing adaptations from the perspective of their source material. She tells Rolling Stone there’s a growing sense of frustration among book creators about how little press and sponsorship opportunities they’re given in comparison to beauty or even lifestyle creators. Beauty brands regularly host makeup creators on themed brand trips, send free products, and often pay in five figure sums for the most basic of advertisements or endorsements. Creators that talk about film and television are often invited to participate in junkets, where they interview the cast — which often includes a chance to attend premieres and walk red carpets. Book creators get free books, but when a single video can change the trajectory of an author’s career, there’s a growing frustration that book creators don’t receive adequate compensation.
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Chaudhary’s prediction? That more BookTok creators, especially those who helped drive conversations about projects, won’t be forgotten when these books become fully realized projects.
“Sometimes it feels like you get lost in the shuffle,” she says. “I hope, whether it be companies or people that work in the film industry, recognize and acknowledge the book creators, especially since that’s where the fandom started for so many adaptations.”
That’s something that’s been on Eden Yonas’ mind as well this year. The 25-year-old discusses book content galore with her 400,000 followers, but a lot of her content has also expanded to include film and television. The theatrical and television calendars for 2025 were filled to the brim with book to film adaptations, a trend that is only growing in 2026 with additions like the Emily Henry’s People We Meet On Vacation, the Ryan Gosling led Project Hail Mary, Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis, and Colleen Hoover’s Reminders of Him and Verity.
“We have so many screen adaptations of books coming out in 2026, and BookTok plays a big role in that,” Yonas says. “There’s already a built-in audience. There’s people you know will love the story and will go to the theaters and watch and support it. So as the popularity of books grows, I think we’re going to continue to see momentum.”
Trope Marketing Won’t Be Just For Romance Anymore
There’s a semi-secret language that’s permeated book marketing in the past year — and its popularity came entirely from TikTok. It’s known as trope-driven marketing, two- or three-word phrases often derived from fanfiction that clue an initiated reader into some of the biggest plot points and character descriptions in a book. Some of the biggest examples are terms like, “grumpy sunshine,” “dark academia,” or “only one bed.”
These titles and descriptions have become popular for use on BookTok because of how fast they get basic points about the book. Now, publishers are including these tropes directly on the books themselves, selling points that directly remind readers of the BookTok creators that made them popular again. Creator Lexi Anunson, 25, constantly thinks about how BookTok videos take the solitary experience of reading and transforms it into a community activity. It’s why she shares short and long form video content with her over half a million followers. But Anunson notes that it can be frustrating when the nuanced and multifaceted space gets reduced to just one type of book — something trope based marketing only enforces.
“It can be difficult for outsiders to accept that BookTok could possibly be a space that has so many different, vibrant personalities and opinions,” she says. “And if we’re following this to its logical conclusion, as more readers are expanding the base of their taste in terms of genre, you might see more BookTok-ified descriptions of other genres too, for better or for worse.”
Creators Will Become More Involved In the Publishing Process
Even if you don’t personally consume content or videos about literature, it’s hard to disregard the real life impact BookTok creators have on book sales. In 2022, the New York Times reported that BookTok had become a “market anchor” for the publishing business, continuing to increase sales year after year. With over 768,000 followers, Jaysen Headley has loved how his job as a BookTok creator can have a real life impact on book sales, especially for indie authors. But the 37-year-old tells Rolling Stone that what BookTok can’t change is the inherent way publishing picks what books get sold in the first place.
“Traditional publishing is looking for something very specific. They [say], ‘This is what we want to publish. This is what we know makes money, and this is what we are going to really work towards acquiring. And if your book doesn’t fit, we’re probably not going to look at it,’” he says. “Whereas people on BookTok are reading these indie books that don’t fit into any of those niches and indie authors are selling so many copies of their books because of the hype they got on BookTok that then traditional publishers are picking up those indie books and republishing them.”
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For Headley, this has always forced BookTok to interact with publishing as a middleman, when many people follow book creators as their primary source for what to read. Headley’s prediction is that BookTok creators will become more directly involved in the publishing process, mostly by the development of BookTok first imprints with reads chosen directly for publication by influencers. Headley works with Bindery, a company that gives book influencers their own imprints, complete with an in-house publishing team. Headley’s second choice for his imprint, was Of Monsters and Mainframes, a comedic sci-fi about a spaceship with a mind of her own that has to battle paranormal monsters. The book was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award this year, competing against traditionally published bestsellers like the Hunger Games prequel Sunrise on the Reaping.
“Giving that power to content creators to find those books, and not only uplift them so much that they start to sell off the shelves, but to actually help to bring them into the world — it’s a natural next step,” Headley says.
