TikTok, one of the most popular social media platforms, is able to be a home for many sub-communities with its endless content. One of these niche groups, “BookTok,” focuses on books and literature while creators post videos buying, reviewing, and discussing the books they read. These creators discuss many genres, but tend to focus on young adult fiction, young adult fantasy, and romance. 

This community is good and lighthearted at first glance, since it creates a space for readers to connect and support authors as well as bookstores. Unfortunately, it has an underlying harm of straying away from diversity. 

There is an extreme lack of diversity on BookTok as popular TikTok creators continue to recommend lists of books that are all about white people, written by white people. These popular creators are at the outer layer of BookTok, so therefore reach the largest audience. While it is perfectly fine to read what you want to read, it is extremely beneficial to read BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) books and these creators struggle to acknowledge this. 

Many of these creators are just ignorant when it comes to reading diversely. But others ignore the comments of people who recommend BIPOC books and discredited the work of amazing BIPOC authors. They continue to read the same books and recommend the same authors while refusing to give BIPOC authors a chance. This later goes on to harm these authors in the publishing industry, since their books aren’t in high demand or well known. This also causes a lack of BIPOC books on bookstore shelves.

Since these popular creators are at the forefront, they have the biggest impact on newcomers. Their content shows up on readers’ for you pages and creates a list of popular mainstream books. It also pushes somewhat of an assumption that if BIPOC

books and BIPOC authors aren’t being recommended, like mainstream books are, then they aren’t worth reading.

This is an extremely harmful assumption for the BIPOC community. Readers and content creators must make an effort to read books that are outside their own communities, and to diversify their shelves. There are countless BIPOC authors whose books deserve to be read and

put on shelves.

Diversifying your shelf has surplus benefits. It supports BIPOC authors and expands your knowledge. While staying in a tiny bubble of books written almost entirely by white authors is plausible, it does nothing in the long run and does not help you be the best reader.

Also, there is not enough representation in bookstores. They supply what’s popular and what’s in demand. TikTok usually pushes these trends and creates a selection of mainstream books that are not diverse. A lot of BIPOC books aren’t found on shelves and are definitely not

usually on the BookTok tables displayed in bookstores.

Books are used to learn, books are for understanding others stories, books bring people together, and books can be just for fun. However, you can’t truly achieve this without diversity.

There are so many people who don’t read diversely year round and this needs to be changed. It can start off small by popular BookTokers reading and recommending BIPOC books. And eventually one day, bookstores can become diverse and readers will have an equal chance of randomly picking up a book by a white author or a book by a BIPOC author.