On November 17th the social media giant announced the launch of a books category within TikTok Shop UK.
TikTok Marketplace is a section of the app launched in 2019 with the aim of allowing app users and creators, to sell their content and collaborate with brands and businesses. This lead to TikTok Shop, a shopping feature launched in 2021 in collaboration with Shopify, a leading online commercial shopping destination founded in 2006, to allow users to shop within the entertainment app.
The aim of this books category is to enable users that follow and discuss book on #BookTok to then purchase them all on the same app. This will be in collaboration with UK partners HarperCollins UK, WHSmith, Bloomsbury and Bookshop.org.
No doubt this inclusion of books made popular by #BookTok – the label given to a trend of content on the platform containing bookish content made by users – will continue to further drive sales for writers such as Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid. This content has taken both the social media and real world by storm, even resulting in the emergence of ‘BookTok’ sections in physical bookstores.
The in-app marketing for this new launch contains a pop up with the text ‘Book Club’ with an illustration of hands holding a novel. This automatically pops up on the user’s feed and leads to a colourful explanation of the new book section. This text encourages following BookTok Laureates (creators on the app), purchasing novels from Amazon Books, and gaining rewards by sharing links and posting videos with the hashtag ‘BookClub’.
The version of TikTok familiar to us today launched in 2018 after Chinese tech company ByteDance merged their service ‘Douyin’ with Shanghai based app ‘Musical.ly’, leading to the globalisation of TikTok.
This announcement is just the latest in e-commerce news and encapsulates the platform’s emphasis on consumerism. The Marketplace and TikTok Shop build upon the trend of entertainment combining with e-commerce, following the likes of Instagram Shop, a section in which users are shown products directly aimed at their shopping and viewing habits which was launched in 2020.
Words by Evie Miskelly
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