A few weeks ago, I posted a TikTok asking the BookTok community their thoughts on how PR was done through the use of influencers, advanced reader copies (ARCs) and PR boxes on the app. I received quite a few responses from people active in the community, and today I want to look at them and see if we could make any recommendations on what needs to change to improve BookTok PR, based on what people said.
@lamoralibrary Please feel free to share your thoughts, whatever they are! 😊 #booktok#ukbooktok#booktokpr#booktoker#ukbooktoker#bookish#publishingindustry#publicrelations#prstudent#lamoralibrary♬ original sound – rachel 🌙 (@lamoralibrary)
Many of the responses agreed they don’t have any inclination to trust reviews from BookToker’s where the book has been gifted – unfortunately, this is the main way bookish PR is done! While I don’t think much can be done to change this, I think possibly one change which could help such reviews be trusted more is for the reviewer or the publisher to emphasise that the review is honest, regardless of the gift status of the book. I feel a lot of distrust can come from rave 5 star reviews of books where one has been gifted to a reviewer, either on its own or in a PR box, even if the review is genuine on the influencer’s side, as people seem to perceive this as the influencer trying to keep the publisher happy.
I believe that publishers searching out influencers who are interested in the type of book that it is may also help, such as gifting fantasy book readers fantasy books, as opposed to a contemporary romance, as it already falls within the genre they like and have most likely built their audience around, ensuring there is an audience who will be interested in searching out the book once the reviewer has finished it (or even before, if they make a post of the unboxing of the book).
Other points highlighted in the response was that people don’t seem to believe having a huge following which gets you invited to special book-related events and sent lots of free/gifted items from publishers, necessarily inspires people to trust their reviews and want to look at the books they are showcasing. I think this could be rectified by my prior suggestion of ensuring the events they are invited to and the books they are sent match their reading tastes and audience interests, to ensure it appears authentic. The comments suggested most viewers have a select few BookToker’s who they trust implicitly due to having very similar, if not identical, taste in books, and I can also agree with that as someone who makes and consumes BookTok content. Therefore I think it seems important to make sure books and BookToker’s align.
I had also posed the question of whether smaller creators should be overlooked when deciding who receives popular and highly anticipated books in a series, using the Roots of Chaos series by Samantha Shannon as an example. The first book, The Priory of the Orange Tree, has become incredibly popular on BookTok since its debut, especially among BookTokers who favour sapphic fantasy books. The prequel, A Day of Fallen Night, is due to be published in early 2023 and ARCs were a hot topic when it was first announced Bloomsbury were to be sending them out.
Unfortunately, Bloomsbury, as one of the largest publishing houses, can be quite select with who receives their ARCs and do not send them to those with less than 10,000 followers. This led to many BookTokers who are known to be very passionate about Priory expressing their disappointment at not having received a copy, even though many of them still had thousands of followers and a platform built upon recommending it and other books like it to their audience. Meanwhile, larger BookTokers who had never read Priory were receiving copies of the new book based solely on the size of their platform, while potentially not having an audience of fantasy readers who would be interested in the book.
In the responses I received, there was a general agreeance that smaller creators should not be overlooked, and that they are just as capable of advertising these books, maybe even more so if they are existing fans of the series. As someone who witnessed this myself, it was disheartening to see creators whose reviews I trust and who I know are passionate fans of the Roots of Chaos be turned down for ARCS due to ‘only’ having 5000 followers – which in the bookish community, is actually quite a lot! One response went even further and expressed they would not read the book on principle if the publishers were choosing to exclude creators from receiving advanced copies based on follower count.
I think this shows that while it is obviously important to ensure reviewers have a platform, its influence based on the apparent size of it can sometimes be underestimated by publishers. I do generally agree that even those with smaller platforms can achieve a lot, and that bookish PR practitioners should take notice of them, and allow them equal opportunities to larger creators.
While I am just a PR student who would like to one day tackle working in the PR side of publishing, and I am obviously not going to fix everything BookTok perceives as being wrong with it, it was very interesting to gather these responses! I think it proves that even PR professionals have something to learn from public opinion, and should I come to work in publishing I would be interested to try and carry over some of these ideas to improve the effectiveness of book advertising.
PR in Publishing and Beyond 