In August 2020, Kate Wilson, a 16-year-old from Shrewsbury, posted on the social media video platform TikTok a series of sentences from books she had read. Set to a piece of soft music, the short video plays out as Wilson holds up copies of the books. “You have been the last dream of my soul.” from A Tale of Two Cities. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” from Wuthering Heights. It has been viewed more than 1.2 million times.
These posts, called BookTok, can attract millions of views, and light an appreciation of books in young readers again. “I started reading again after six years when I came across BookTok for the first time last October,” says Mireille Lee, 15.
Adam Silvera’s 2017 novel They Both Die at the End is one of the books to have benefited from the BookTok effect. In March, it shot to the top of the teen fiction charts, selling more than 4, 000 copies a week. The book has sold more than 200, 000 copies in the UK after thousands of posts about it.
Publishers are watching with interest. Publisher Horrox says, “There’s something about the fact that it is under a minute. People who are consuming this content watch a 32-second video and someone’s like: ‘This book has romance, and it’s really heartbreaking. Thankfully, it’s only a fiction.’ And then the viewers think: ‘Oh, OK, those are all things that I’m interested in. I’ll go buy it.’” By December 2020, Wilson was being contacted regularly by publishers, who had realized that TikTok “really does sell books”.
Jenny is 22, and says, “I thought TikTok was ridiculous last year before the first lockdown. I really did think it was just for 14-year-olds, but BookTok is such a lovely community. There are people who like the same books as me, and I can talk about the books that I like. It just seems a little bit magical.”
【小题1】Why does the author mention the story of Kate Wilson?| A．To make a prediction. | B．To clarify Tiktok. |
| C．To present some posts. | D．To introduce BookTok. |
| A．It is fiction intended merely for children. |
| B．It has become the bestseller in the UK. |
| C．It has made profits from the posts on TikTok. |
| D．Over 200, 000 copies have been sold worldwide. |
| A．People like to advertise on TikTok. |
| B．TikTok is the best platform to sell books. |
| C．BookTok videos are short but very effective. |
| D．Publishers started to contact Wilson regularly. |
| A．Approving. | B．Critical. |
| C．Objective. | D．Uncaring. |
