What turns a book into a bestseller? Sometimes it happens organically through word of mouth. Other times it can be through successfully marketing the title to the right audience.

Being chosen for a celebrity book club or being reviewed by an influencer on BookTok can also make a book famous. In fact, these elite boosts are the more common ways a book gets put into the spotlight today. But what does it mean for book culture as a whole to have its bestsellers predominantly driven by wealthy non-author celebrities and influencers?

Why Celebrity Book Clubs Are So Powerful

Celebrity book clubs have existed for some time (Oprah’s book club was started in 1996), but they have grown more popular since the 2010s. The most well-known book clubs — colloquially referred to as the “Big 4” — are run by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Jenna Bush-Hager, with Good Morning America’s book club as the fourth club. Of course, there is no shortage of celebrity book clubs. Natalie Portman, Mindy Kaling, Dua Lipa and Laufey have joined in on the trend. Celebrity book clubs have influenced bestseller lists, with highlighted books selling more copies.

The appeal to readers of celebrity book clubs is clear: they serve as an extension to the parasocial relationships that the public feel towards their favorite celebrities. Publishers also benefit from these book clubs because they drive up sales from word-of-mouth marketing. For example, Penguin Random House began its celebrity book club recommendations list of 2025 by saying the clubs are “like getting personal book recommendations from a friend you trust (Stars, they’re just like us!)”.

Book clubs can also advance social causes, with some having a theme or mission to guide their recommendations. Emma Watson’s now dormant book club “Our Shared Shelf” aimed to create a “Feminist book club” that would highlight books related to feminism to its members. Similarly, Reese’s Book Club states it selects books written by or about women. Meanwhile actors Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey partnered with online queer book marketplace Allstora to run a book club focusing on sapphic fiction and nonfiction.

Do Celebrity Book Clubs Further Imbalance the Market by Coordinating With Publishers?

However, the popularity of celebrity book clubs does present problems. Books selected by these book clubs have been shown to outsell similar titles. They obscure the contemporary literature landscape as much as clarify it for readers. In particular, they can overemphasize the already concentrated power of major publishers. A 2024 Esquire article noted that the majority of celebrity book club picks were from the five biggest publishing houses (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette). Only a handful of recommended works were from small or independent publishers. It’s rare for celebrities to recommend a self-published book.

There are also concerns that celebrity book clubs may promote other forms of market distortion, such as artificially creating bestsellers in tandem with the publishing industry via connections, rather than traditional marketing or outreach strategies. The Esquire article, which interviewed staff from celebrity book clubs and the publishing industry, said their selection process came from sourcing books from the publishing industry “much the same way most book-related media outlets do.”

In a 2023 blog post, however, author Kasia Manolas argued there was a deeper connection between publishing houses and celebrity book clubs. In the case of Reese Witherspoon’s book club, Manolas wrote, there is a “book scout” in regular contact with editors from publishing houses. About 70% of the book club picks were pre-selected before the books were officially released in the market.

Film Adaptations and the Ethical Grey Area of Owning a Book Club and a Production Company

Several celebrity book clubs choose titles based on the book’s adaptability into movies and TV shows. Some of these elites own the production company that produces the adaptations.

Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, for example, has adapted several titles that were previously in her book club. Oprah Winfrey also has a production company, Harpo Productions. Jenna Bush-Hager signed a deal with Universal Studio Group in 2022 to set up her own production company, Thousand Voices, to adapt select book series to movies and TV shows. These examples have raised concerns that certain book clubs choose books based on how “adaptable” they would be on the screen or the book club acting as an IP supplier for production companies.

The Esquire article, however, noted that it “found no formal links between book-club selections and a book’s film or television rights,” and cited Hello Sunshine CEO Sarah Harden refuting such speculations: “I hope there’s going to be books that we make into films and TV shows, but we’ve always got to manage that with a really high level of integrity as well, because the minute the book club feels like we’re only picking stuff that we’re making into film and TV, we’re done.”

The Risk of Stamping Approval on a Book and/or Author

On a less serious level, a celebrity book club also acts as a sort of “seal of approval” by being attached to their name. This dynamic can backfire for both the celebrity and readers if a selected book/author ends up becoming problematic. For instance, Oprah’s book club experienced a minor controversy when she selected “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey in September 2005. The book was initially marketed as a memoir about the author’s struggle with substance abuse, but many parts of the book were later found out to have been fabricated. Winfrey herself also faced criticism for initially defending the author on an interview in “Larry King Live,” but later retracted her statements and also criticized the author on her own talk show.

Enter BookTok

Meanwhile, TikTok has emerged as a driving force among the youth for new book trends. An entire ecosystem of social media posts, content creators and viewers related to book reviews and recommendations has blossomed as a distinct subculture on the platform known as “BookTok.”

BookTok’s popularity has translated into tangible sales. According to Publishers Weekly, the US sold around 825.7 million book copies in 2021, a 8.9% increase from 2020. Young adult fiction had the largest increase, followed by adult fiction.

The publication attributed the increase in fiction sales to BookTok boosting the popularity of certain titles. The New York Times reported in 2022 that BookTok helped authors sell 20 million printed books in 2021. “No other form of social media has ever had this kind of impact on sales,” book data firm NPD BookScan told the news outlet. In the United Kingdom, bookstore chain Waterstone also cited the popularity of BookTok partially driving its increase in book sales and revenue in 2025.

The publishing industry has since jumped in to capitalize on BookTok’s popularity. Barnes and Noble officially partnered with TikTok and popular BookTok content creators in 2022 to promote “#BookTokChallenge,” a campaign where users were encouraged to post their reviews and reactions on books and authors. The Barnes and Noble official website also now features a BookTok section where it showcases books that have gained popularity on social media. Multiple publishing houses’ sales teams have started to carry out marketing campaigns on TikTok. Some companies gift prominent content creators with “swag boxes” of books, according to a 2022 Business Insider article.

Problems with BookTok

On the surface, BookTok may appear to resolve some of the concerns people have about celebrity book clubs affecting which books become bestsellers because the community is driven by individual social media users who are not as directly connected with the publishing industry sharing their favorite books.

However, as BookTok grows, it is beginning to show the same problems that celebrity book clubs have been criticized for. The aforementioned “swag boxes” of material gifted by publishers to prominent BookTok creators is likely to have an impact on how publishers and content creators determine which books to promote and how, if it hasn’t already happened. Additionally, as stated previously, young adult and adult fiction — especially in the romantasy genre — have seen its sales increase due to BookTok. This market trend may lead to publishing houses prioritizing books and authors in certain genres over others to maximize profit.

The popularity of BookTok has also negatively influenced the quality of books and authors at times. Nova, a literary and arts magazine run by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, pointed out that authors are often pressured into releasing sequels or additional books under tighter deadlines to meet market demand when their book gains popularity on BookTok, often at the expense of the writing quality.

On a broader societal level, BookTok has also been consistently criticized for its lack of diversity in what becomes popular. A 2022 article from The Cut asserted that the vast majority of the authors who gained six-and seven-figure book deals thanks to BookTok popularity had been white. The article, citing Leah Koch, owner of Los Angeles–based independent bookstore the Ripped Bodice, said Gen Z cared the least about racially diversifying their reading. Though a partial reason for the lack of diversity seems to be a reflection of the publishing industry as a whole, which is still predominantly white.

Yet the bigger problem appears to be that BookTok is a social media where content visibility is at the whim of the algorithm. TikTok’s algorithm is primed to show similar content to what users have previously watched, creating an echo chamber of amplifying what is already big and popular. In BookTok this function translates to books by and about white people, or content made by white creators.

POC BookTok creator Breana Newton told The Cut that her videos perform better when she works with or mentions a white creator on her videos “because it’s a white person that they see first, and then they see me.” Ultimately she needs her videos to perform well to get paid and continue her work. “It gets a little sad sometimes to see how it’s always propping up white authors and sort of letting the chips fall where they may for any other marginalized group,” she added.

On a less insidious level, the algorithm causes BookTok content creators to emphasize entertainment over substance. Author Stephanie Danler shared on Bustle her experience creating content for BookTok. She also noticed a lack of diverse reading recommendations and tried to curate her algorithm through her own videos and engagement, but it only resulted in a “surprising amount of Dostoyevsky in the hands of startlingly beautiful women with cutting captions about angst and reading-in-the-corner” rather than content actually involving different literary discussions. She mentioned a number of other authors feeling pressured to have a presence on BookTok, and their efforts to promote their work cutting into their time to write, which The Cut article also mentions.

How Can We Meaningfully Expand Book Culture?

So where do we go from here? It appears that any organization, whether it be celebrity book clubs or BookTok, will inevitably run into the same problem of its popularity influencing the publishing industry toward a biased direction that may not be ideal for a diverse literary landscape. Barry Pierce’s 2023 GQ piece mentions that there had been a brief popularity of “BookTube” in the 2010s, a community of book enthusiasts on YouTube that provided a similar niche to today’s BookTok, and mentioned how it gradually transformed from the once “cozy and wholesome corner of the internet” into a platform “overrun by commercialism”.

“Near the end of the 2010s, many of the major BookTubers had essentially become pawns in the hands of publishing houses […] Actual reviews became few and far between, and many of the smaller, genuine readers on the platform jumped ship. It feels like BookTok has got to the same place, only much faster,” Pierce said.

Celebrity book clubs, BookTok or future organizations formed around book recommendations are not inherently good or evil, but they are just as vulnerable to market forces that try to capitalize on the zeitgeist. Ultimately individual readers will have to be proactive to meaningfully expand one’s reading list beyond what any given organization or platform offers.

One of the few ways people can do so is to find multiple “tastemakers” or expert recommendations when looking for new books. That way readers can eventually contextualize other people’s thoughts and develop their own sense of taste.

Local libraries and independent bookstores still remain great resources for different book genres and authors. If you are a student, you could even seek out advice from academics in your educational institution. Our newsletter at The Rauch Review suggests “hidden gem” books almost every week.

Most importantly, one must go beyond receiving recommendations. Develop your own interests and stay curious to sustain a meaningful and deep reading list.