How BookTok Influencers are helping the Film Industry with marketing

Since the 2020 pandemic, there has been a big boom in influencers taking over the Internet. BookTok has been lucky enough to gain influencers of their own community.

BookTok Influencers are changing the marketing game for not only book sales and new book releases but also for books to film adaptations. Over the past several years and months, we have seen an increase in Book to Film adaptations. Why is that and what does it mean?

What is "BookTok"

“BookTok” has taken over the book loving community in recent years. While there is not an exact date of when it found a voice on the internet, it can trace back to as early as 2019.

“BookTok” is like a web based word of mouth platform. It is for book lovers, readers and authors as subsection to TikTok.

The success of BookTok allows the word of mouth campaign to reach a much farther audience. It has allowed people to engage and discuss from your average young adult coming of age story to the next steamy hockey romance.

BookTok Influencers and the BookTok community are why we are seeing increase in book adaptations.

What are book adaptions

“BookTok” has increased the awareness of popular books and allowed television and film to create more book adaptations. Book Adaptations are not a new concept, but the content of the adaptations has evolved.

Some of the most successful book adaptations are The Notebook, Harry Potter, The Twilight Saga, and The Hunger Games. These successful adaptations showed that book adaptations are successful. However, BookTok’s Influencers most talked about series have now book adaptations, such as:

· To All the Boys I Loved Before, by Jenny Han

· Off Campus Series, by Elle Kennedy

· Icebreaker, by Hannah Grace

· Twisted Series, by Ana Haung

· Culpable Saga, by Mercedes Ron

· Boys of Tommen, by Chloe Walsh

· The Summer I Turned Pretty, by Jenny Han

· Verity, by Colleen Hoover

· Regretting You, by Colleen Hoover

· It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover

Seeing the very characters that you picture in your mind while reading on a screen has changed the book community. Readers are now getting excited about not only seeing their characters on the screen but also hearing the soundtrack that production companies are choosing to go with in fit of the scene.

A prime example is how Taylor Swift was very much integrated into The Summer I Turned Pretty. A common theme the fans of the TV series and book series realized was anytime Belly was leaning more towards Conrad a Taylor Swift song would play. BookTok Influencers would talk about this weekly during the season 1 release in 2022 and get fans so Excited for the next week's episode.

Pre BookTok

Most of us are aware of how marketing has changed, but how were book adaptations marketed before BookTok Influencers? Before BookTok, Infulencers, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms took over as major marketing tactics, marketing teams did things differently.

Book film adaptations put the marketing budget to using TV promos, Movie Posters, and targeted screenings. The actors going on late night shows and other talk shows, word of mouth, and opening previews.

Now, films are promoted on social media platforms, streaming websites, author websites, and traditional promotional events.

Why does marketing need to adapt

Marketing must adapt to today’s consumer habits. Consumer habits have changed. A lot of information is consumed through small bits of information found on social media platforms. Plus, traditional ads, like TV promotions, cost money.

Marketing, the never-ending changing cycle. The need to adapt marketing not only comes from cost but also creating a better connection with the audience.

Due to streaming services and people choosing to pay without ads, production companies are having to drift away from traditional marketing. In some cases, that's good because it's cost effective and they can focus more on social media marketing aspects to reach bigger audience but in some cases it's not.

The need for marketing to adapt is comparing how trees are needing to adapt to different environments. It's going to take time it's going to take observance and sometimes it's going to hit or sometimes it's going to miss.

Post BookTok Marketing

Using BookTok Marketing will only expand the audience that sees the new films. After a huge boom in book sales book talk marketing has become influential not just for authors but also the book loving community.

Book talk influencers whether they believe it or not are helping keep reading alive. By just talking about how much they love the Off-Campus series that Prime just released is marketing.

It's that influencer telling their audience who follows them because they like their content or agree with their content, that there's subtly recommending their followers to watch it.

To be in a day and age to find recommendations by just going to the search tab and looking for an influencer to tell you their opinion or read a snippet of a page is rewarding in some viewers eyes.

What does the future have in store

So, what does the future have in store for book adaptations? Hollywood is more likely to page attention to the discussions on social media. Marketing will most likely be more short clips, short interviews that can be forwarded and liked.

Marketing will be able to track how many posts get seen, liked or disliked and use that data to adjust their marketing. Marketing might even have more subgroups to develop content for.

What's next?

BookTok has made an impact on the film industry. BookTok Influencers are changing the game every day. Increased romance and romantscy books are being turned into movies and tv adaptations. Everyone is paying attention to what that mass audience is saying.

We're watching a major shift from what producers and film makers think would sell well to listening to already amazing fan bases across the entire book community. The crazy ride that's about to happen for hopefully a while is one that can't be missed.

Let's hope that the BookTok community and the BookTok Influencers can continue to make as much of an impact in the film industry as they are currently doing now.

🪽 Written by Reagan Kynaston