Hello, and happy Friday! I’ve read a lot this week, which has been fun, and I just started Immortal Longings, by Chloe Gong, which is amazing so far. I’m also very excited for this week’s LTB topic – it’s all about the many online bookish platforms, and I’ve been looking forwards to talking about it. So, without further ado, let’s get into the post!

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly bookish meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and has been hosted by me since April 2022! Each Friday, there is a discussion topic for bloggers to write about. This week’s topic is all about book platforms!

Book blogging certainly isn’t the only online book platform. From booktok to bookstagram to book twitter, there are many different places to post reviews and other bookish content. Do you only blog, or do you have other platforms too? What platform did you start out with?

Platforms I have:

My blog is my main platform – I started it almost four years ago, in August 2019, and although I’ve branched out into other platforms since then, it’s my favorite of all the online book platforms I’m on.

I have a bookstagram that I started 3 years ago, and although I’m not super active on it right now, I have been in the past. I like posting on it, and it can be a nice addition to the more long form writing I do with blog posts.

It’s very different from blogging, but I really like bookstagram – the photography is fun, and I love taking pictures of my books! I just think I prefer writing, which is why blogging is still my main platform. You can have short captions on Instagram posts, but it’s a much more visual platform, which is a little outside of my comfort zone.

I have a booktok account, but I never post, and I’m overall not a huge fan of tiktok. I spend hardly any time on the platform, and I just don’t think it’s for me. I do know that it has a huge book community though, which is really great!

I also have a Goodreads account, which I post on only occasionally. I publish my book reviews there as well, but for a while now I’ve been tracking my reading on Storygraph, which I love!

Storygraph doesn’t have as much of a social aspect, but you can do buddy reads, follow friends, and see other peoples’ reviews, which are all great features. My favorite thing about Storygraph is probably all of the graphs & data that you can get. It’s fun to be able to look back on a month, or a year, and to see when I read the most, or to look at what genres I read the most.

What differences do you notice between platforms? Are there similarities?

Popular books

There are lots of books that are very popular on tiktok that are recognizable as ‘BookTok books’. While I don’t think it’s a bad thing, I think that sometimes the kinds of books that mainstream booktok promotes can be a bit limited.

I mean, I love Six of Crows, and I’m never going to complain when I see someone talking about how amazing it is. But I also sometimes feel like people are talking about the same handful of new adult contemporary romances over and over and over again.

I’m not on booktok much myself though, so I don’t have as good of a read on it as I do with other platforms, like book blogs.

Book blogs, on the other hand, are kind of at the opposite end of the spectrum. Yeah, there’s plenty of reviews of popular books, but there are also just so many different books that are constantly being talked about.

With bookstagram, I feel like it really depends on where you are. Lots of accounts focus on more popular books, but I’m also always stumbling across amazing lists of unique books.

I’m not on Book Twitter (or X, or whatever it is right now) so I don’t really know what the platform is like. I often see a lot of book drama stemming from there, but I couldn’t say much about the platform myself.

Reviews

The ways that reviews are done, and how they are received, varies a lot across platforms.

On bookstagram, you’ll see a pretty picture of the cover to spotlight the book, and then anywhere from a few short sentences to a few paragraphs in the caption that spill over into the comments.

I’ve also seen lots of video reviews, on booktok but also on Instagram, and those can be fun as well!

Blogs tend to go into much more detail, with longer reviews than on other platforms.

I also notice more reviews of books from self-published authors and books from smaller publishers on blogs. I think that’s because the expectation of bookstagram and booktok can be to have thousands or tens of thousands of followers, and bigger publishers are looking for those larger platforms while blogs are have a very different level of engagement.

Publishers will also send booktokers and bookstagrammers who have larger platforms boxes with a new release + stickers and pencils and whatever other fun stuff makes for a good unboxing video, using that for publicity.

Connection

I also see a lot of posting connecting bookstagram, booktok and book twitter, as many people have accounts on all of those. (And I guess I should probably add Threads in there too – there are so many different platforms!!)

However, the book blogging community can be more isolated from the rest of the world in some ways, because it’s not on a social media platform like Instagram.

The large majority of Instagram users are not on bookstagram. But, anyone could have a personal Instagram account, and then follow a bookstagram account without having one of their own.

That can happen with book blogs, but it’s less common because it’s more work for the non-book blogger to stumble across a book blog.

On booktok, for example, you could post a video about your favorite book, have it go viral, and get two million views. That just doesn’t happen with book blogs.

That’s not to say that book blogs don’t have any reach – you can form such amazing connections through bloghopping, really getting to know other bloggers. Commenting on other posts is a really great way to make friends and to talk about your favorite books.

All the many different platforms just work in such different ways.

Community

One thing that I see across all platforms is the community – whether it’s through comments on a blog post, or on an Instagram reel, there are so many enthusiastic book lovers excited to talk about their current reads.

The online book world is constantly expanding, and I always love learning about other bookish platforms, and how I can use them to connect with other book lovers.

LTB on Instagram

This topic also came around at a perfect time because I just created an instagram account for Let’s Talk Bookish. I thought that it could be cool to bring LTB to more people, and I’ll be posting the August topics over there this weekend, so hopefully next Friday there’ll be some people participating over on bookstagram!

So, if you’re on bookstagram, go follow @LTB.discussions for more bookish everything!

This week’s posts:

Kathryn @ Kathryn Books | Jillian @ Jillian the Bookish Butterfly | Fives @ Down the Rabbit Hole | Raji @ Worlds Unlike Our Own | Alli @ Alli the Book Giraffe | Laurie @ Laurie is Reading | Julie @ Book Flower Path

And that’s it for this week’s LTB!

What bookish platforms are you on? What did you start out with? What differences & similarities do you notice across platforms? What do you think about LTB on Instagram? Chat with me in the comments below!