How Does BookTube Work: Bookworms, rejoice! The BookTube community has some fantastic news to share.
“BookTube’s Ultimate Reading List Through The Years,” a compilation of some of the most well-liked books that have appeared in YouTube videos centred around books since 2012, is exclusively revealed by Today. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Spare by Prince Harry are two current favorites among the many novels and memoirs on the list, which also includes John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars.
Book lovers have been using YouTube for years to discuss what they are reading and what is happening in the literary world. Since then, the BookTube community has grown to become one of the most established on the social media site. Videos titled “BookTube” have received over 350 million views as of early 2024, according to a YouTube statement shared with Love.
Madeline Buxton, a culture and trends manager at YouTube, says that the company created the Ultimate Reading List to better understand what books were discussed the most on the platform. “BookTubers really filled a void that we maybe did not even know was there,” Buxton says.
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Two BookTube content creators, Cindy Pham (@withcindy) and Jack Edwards (@jack_edwards), released an exclusive video within which they disclosed the titles and provided an overview of the evolution of the BookTube community.
Edwards started his YouTube channel in the beginning to share his experiences as a first-generation college student. He says that he added those videos to his channel because he wanted to discuss the novels that he was not reading for his literature degree.
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He claims that the ability for internet artists to function as both book critics and book fans has “democratised” the book industry. Nowadays, Edwards is well-known on the internet for his specialised BookTube videos, where he rates every book Lisa Simpson reads on The Simpsons and ranks how age-appropriate it is, or he reads books he bought on Etsy that he bought for decoration (where he later discovered a new favourite book).
He declares, “I think the weirder, the better.” With over 1.3 million subscribers, his YouTube channel has gained him the moniker “the Internet’s Resident Librarian” and has opened doors for him, including the opportunity to interview the well read Dua Lipa and broadcast the livestream of the famous Booker Prize.
“To become a digital creator with entry to those rooms…Since I am not a book journalist or trained in that capacity, I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to accomplish that, Edwards says. “I have just been sharing it online out of pure passion.”
In 2018, Pham started her own YouTube channel. Pham was looking for a venue to express her ideas after finishing Melissa Meyer’s young adult science fiction series The Lunar Chronicles. She claims that YouTube served as a platform for her to meet more bookish people as well as to review the books she was reading.
“I thought it was great how different people were using their creativity to create different kinds of BookTube videos, like book reviews or other types of videos,” the speaker adds. Pham’s channel has changed over time to reflect her interests and now includes vlogs, longer-form videos on scandals in the publishing sector, and her opinions on book-to-screen adaptations. She met her girlfriend through the online book community and was even invited to propose marketing ideas for the screen version of Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy in Netflix’s writers room. She also conducted an interview with David Sedaris.
For Pham, “that was a big thing.” “I was not even conscious of queerness until I joined the book community because they are so socially conscious and progressive.” She goes on to say that, overall, BookTube is in a new phase when content makers are being more deliberate and inclusive.
“People are much more conscious of who is creating the work that we are reading, who [we are] choosing to amplify and boost,” the woman continues, “so I feel like we are going to continue going that direction.”
New types of BookTube content are already on the rise, even though the reading list expires in 2023. According to Buxton, more individualised reading recommendations and silent book reviews—in which readers discuss books based solely on their feelings—are becoming increasingly common. It is also becoming common for creators to link book recommendations to popular culture events, such as the Charli xcx-inspired “Brat Summer” trend.
“I believe that a wider range of books are being read by BookTubers than in the past,” adds Buxton. “You can find pretty much anything these days, and a lot of videos that are really tailored to particular interests, even though it may have started out in YA literature.”
Pham offers some guidance to people who are interested in launching their own BookTube channel. “The beauty with books is that there will always be new books to read and new books coming out,” says Edwards. “So there is always something fresh to make content about.”
“Ultimately, it is still necessary to pursue this because you have such a strong passion for books, rather than attempting to profit from it or secure sponsorships,” she asserts. “Because there is a tone of other things you could do if that were the case. It is primarily motivated by a passion for books.
BookTube’s Ultimate Reading List Over the Years is shown below:
| Year | Book Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Twilight | Stephenie Meyer |
| 2012 | The Harry Potter Series | J.K. Rowling |
| 2012 | The Hunger Games | Suzanne Collins |
| 2013 | The Fault in Our Stars | John Green |
| 2014 | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao | Junot Díaz |
| 2014 | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Rebecca Skloot |
| 2015 | The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime | Mark Haddon |
| 2016 | A Court of Thorns and Roses | Sarah J. Maas |
| 2018 | Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic | Alison Bechdel |
| 2019 | Americanah | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
| 2019 | She Said | Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey |
| 2021 | The Vanishing Half | Brit Bennett |
| 2021 | Normal People | Sally Rooney |
| 2021 | Half of a Yellow Sun | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie |
| 2023 | Spare | Prince Harry |
| 2023 | Fire Rush | Jacqueline Crooks |
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