Despite the rise in social media in the early to late 2010s, there are people that review books and talk about them on the internet, proving that books are still popular and have not faded into obscurity with regards to more popular media such as film, television, video games and the internet. Conventions such as BookCon and Yallwest are some of the outlets where readers, writers and publishers collide, as well as new outlets such as Instagram, Youtube and TikTok, shine the spotlight on people talking about their favorite books.
According to a New York Times article published in 2018, booktubers are considered to be “celebrities in the book world” in conventions such as Yallwest or BookCon. Also, Youtubers such as Jesse George (known as Jessethereader online) and Christine Riccio (known as polandbannanasbooks online) have 402K and 412K subscribers respectively, making them some of the most recognizable people on the platform.
Other internet platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and TikTok have also spread the love of books far and wide through small accounts connecting readers with other readers, creators and even authors. From small “bookstagram” and “booktok” accounts, readers connect through talking about their favorite novels, characters, and tropes. Within the platforms themselves, the hashtags of bookstagrammer, booklover and booknerd, just to name a few, have garnered more than 56,146,528 posts each.
When talking about how her Youtube career began in a podcast interview, Sasha Alsberg opened about how she started her channel, abookutopia, when she was just fifteen years old after a tragic personal event.
“When I thought about what I wanted to do,” Alsberg said. “I thought, well I love reading, but I feel that I can’t talk about it with enough people, because my friends read books, yes, but I want to talk about it with a wide variety of people.”
Now, her channel abookutopia has more than 352 thousand subscribers on Youtube. Also, she has often documented her own experiences as an author on her channel and throughout her social media accounts, as well as revealed an inside scoop on her publishing process in a video entitled "Conversations with Writers" that can be watched on Mary Reads Books' channel.