By Mark Seavy  

The growth of TikTok’s “BookTok” community (creators who post videos about new titles, share reviews, and create art based on their favorite IPs) has reshaped genre publishing, bringing with it legions of new fans and opportunities for licensing as books expand far beyond shelves. 

In fact, books left shelves many years ago as growing fan communities have fueled eBook and audiobook sales. One author we spoke with said sales of digital versions of his book outstrip paperback and hardback versions by a five-to-one margin. Yet print remains a major popular book format, with 65% of adults having read a print book in the last 12 months, according to Statista. 

That investment in books was clear at last weekend’s BookCon in New York, where thousands of showgoers came with their hard copies, many seeking author signatures along with licensed merchandise as evidence of their fandom. Attendance hit 20,000 for the two-day event and tickets sold out within hours after they went on sale in December. The audience was overwhelmingly female, with significant focus on romance and fantasy titles. 

For example, interest at the event was in part was driven by the popularity of Heated Rivalry and its author Rachel Reid. The book, which is part of Reid’s Game Changers series, was adapted into a hit television series on Crave in 2025. Reid appeared for the first time on a panel at BookCon with series producer Jacob Tierney. There were also dozens of t-shirts featuring the faces of series actors Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie at the show, along with team jerseys of Heated Rivalry’s Boston Raiders, Montreal Metros, and New York Admirals.  

The emergence of BookTok, where content creators share short-form videos about books they read, has helped develop a community known as BookTokers that produce unfiltered, emotionally charged content ranging from tearful reviews and dramatic readings to character analysis and curated reading recommendations. The result has been a #BookTok hashtag, which emerged as a subcommunity of TikTok in 2019, that as of January had grown to 370 billion views and hit 77 million videos. BookTok’s popularity has been underscored by the 59% of 16- to 25-year-olds in the U.S. that reported the service helped them discover a passion for reading. 

The communities that have grown around BookTok and other social platforms have helped lead to soaring book sales for authors like Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses), Rebecca Yarrows (Fourth Wing), and Navessa Allen (Lights Out). But they also have led to an array of licensed merchandise tied to the authors and their books. 

Con Quest Journals, for example, fields licensed products featuring Maas’ Court of Thorns (enamel pins, world maps, banners, journals, and other items) as well as mugs, throw blankets, and tabbed journals featuring Fred, the cat character from Allen’s Lights Out book. Con Quest, which has been a Harry Potter licensee for eight years, worked to get publisher Bloomsbury Publishing to provide Court of Thorns assets in advance of release day—a strategy that is de regur in the film industry. The company received a license and assets in April 2025, five months before the book’s release on October 1, said Shelley Harper, President and Chief Commercial Officer at Con Quest. 

Yet while Con Quest targets emerging best sellers, it also has licenses for author Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and has its own Waiting for the Night brand. Now, authors just starting out already have merchandise in mind.  

Authors F.R. Moore and Livy Yvonne, for example, launched Bloodbound Books last fall, to promote their books The Alpha’s Destiny and To Die For, respectively. But they also developed a line of perfumes, candles, and teas.  

“It is all about creating an experience people want more than just the book itself, something in addition to a dark fantasy novel,” Moore said. 

Britnee Braun Designs was also at BookCon with a show-special Wuthering Heights leather-bound clutch that doubled as a book cover as well as a line of pleated skirts that featured Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter, Cat in the Hat, and other characters. And Tea & Absinthe displayed a number of teas inspired by IPs, including one paying homage to Disney’s Loki Disney Plus series (Tea V.A.) and another for the long-running series Supernatural (The Road So Far: Supernatural). 

With the increasing number of books being sold digitally and via direct-to-consumer for print versions, retailers are increasingly hosting events or book clubs and bringing in related licensed merchandise to draw in consumers.  

Some retailers are installing BookTok sections for books recommended by the community’s creators. The popularity of these viral titles has also raised the profile of brick-and-mortar stores, with Barnes & Noble forecasting opening 60 stores—a major expansion for a chain that was nearly written off a few years ago. Books-A-Million (290 stores) has also started an expansion, a change for an industry that has seen the closing of the likes of Borders Books, Waldenbooks, B Dalton, and Hastings Entertainment. 

“The bookstores are still mainly about the books, but they have to start thinking like a movie release,” Harper said. “It is all about customer demand and merchandise, and they are catching on. It is getting better but there is a learning curve.”