By Iqbal Hussain
Sunshine, sand, sea and all things bookish sounds like paradise, right? Well, for a lucky group of book influencers, heaven is becoming a reality. This summer Brighton is being taken over as Simon & Schuster brings a group of creators together in the name of BookTok.
Followers of the community: do not fret with book envy as all of this will be uploaded for you to enjoy as you recreate your own book oasis. The publishing house will be using its own TikTok account and that of these champions of romance reviews to make sure you do not miss a second of this literature adventure.
With the partnership of marketing agency Rocket, the publishing house is creating a summer buzz full of sunshine, book-related tasks and its latest romance novels. Yes, the jealousy is real.
So, who are the lucky book creators? Well, they include Ella Simps for Books, Library of Lina, Compulsive Book Buyers, Rhys and Baby and Booked Up. Between them, they have almost a quarter of a million followers who will be tuning in for their summer antics full of book highs and the potential task fails.
These lucky chosen few will be given an opportunity to read books like The Long Game by Elena Amras and Wildfire by Hannah Grace. Simon & Schuster will also bring a literature banquet full of old and new books to sample.
This isn’t the first TikTok house that has been brought together to boost sales and discussion of books. Last year, one of the other giants of publishing, Harper Voyager, introduced us to the first BookTok house, bringing together eight lucky members of the community in Hay-on-Wye.
Rocket has organised various activities to keep the book hunger at bay. One of which is a mad dash scavenger hunt across Brighton whilst hitting three bookstores: WHSmith, Waterstones and City Books. It is likely that we may see many of the book community innocently following along by undertaking a local task in their town or city.
It is becoming obvious that utilising the power of social media seems to be the new norm in a changing reader demographic. As Simon & Schuster takes centre stage in the next few weeks, we can see how this new way of reaching audiences continue to evolve. From influencers that can share a video or post on-mass to like-minded individuals, to causing a ripple effect of interest in all things book related, it is likely we will see more BookTok houses in the coming future.
You can follow Simon & Schuster’s TikTok and the creators as stated above by tuning into their social media over Saturday 1 and Sunday 2 July.