Creating a More Unique Reading Experience: BookTok & Book Clubs with Zoë

Reading is not an isolated activity. While the consumption of words is between the reader and the page, communities have formed around written work since ink first dripped onto a page. TikTok has exploded onto the scene during the COVID-19 pandemic; and many booklovers have taken to making bite-sized videos about their favorite books, the current trends, and all things book-related. I sat down with Zoë, a “BookToker,” and we chatted about TikTok, book clubs, and creating a bookish community in New York City.

LEX: I’ve been following your account for around a year now, and I think you found that unique niche on TikTok.

ZOË: I’ll be completely candid: it was totally a mistake. I did not mean to create the TikTok account publicly. One of my friends, who was living in Virginia Beach at the time and ironically now lives here, is a literary teacher. Every time she would come visit, we would go to bookstores; and she would say, “Oh, man, I just really wish that I could come along with you whenever you go. I thought, “Oh, I’ll just make videos and send them to you.” But she has an Android phone and video files are terrible to send from an iPhone to an Android, so I decided that I would just make a private TikTok account for her. However, the account was not private like I thought: it was public, and it kind of blew up on BookTok.

But then I deleted the app because I got anxious about it, and I thought that by deleting the app it would delete my account, which is not accurate. My friend convinced me to go back and here we are, which I think is a little ironic. I think book people generally are very introverted and not Internet personalities. But I’m glad that people have been enjoying it. I was in grad school when I started the account, and it was a good way to remind myself not to be working constantly on my thesis. And now it’s a good way to go out for a walk.

LB: Prior to accidentally starting this TikTok account, did you have any other interaction with online book communities, such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Goodreads?

ZM: Honestly, not really. I remember in the early 2010s, one of my friends had a friend who was a really famous book person on YouTube. And that was the first time I had ever heard that you could be on the Internet talking about books as a job or as something you could do just for fun. Now that I’ve been on TikTok for over a year, people will ask me, “Oh, what do you think of the BookTok community?” And I have to be really honest: I go on and will make and post videos, but I’m not really watching a lot. I do follow certain people, and I think those are the only videos that I watch. I hadn't really had a lot of exposure to this, which is why I think I was so surprised when people actually were interested in it. This my first venture into this whole thing.

LB: Then how did it kind of pivot towards book clubs? Because I really love that aspect of your account, and I really don't see that in other BookTok videos.

ZM: I wish I could say that it was something really fascinating, “Oh, I just really wanted to branch out.” But in all honesty, I was just incredibly lonely. I’ve lived here in New York City for almost three-and-a-half years, and people think that when you move here, you’re going to meet a bunch of people, and you're going to be surrounded by so many amazing individuals. And you are surrounded by amazing people but talking to them is a whole other ball game. When I started the account, I had people reaching out and asking questions about bookstores and recommendations on where to go for certain books and author events.

Eventually I started going to author events, where for the first time you see in-person how many people are dedicated to going to bookstores and the literary community as a whole. Then I had a person from a publishing house reach out asking if they could send me a book. It was a girl my age and I messaged her back saying, “Thank you, I loved it. Do you want to get coffee?” And now it’s a great relationship that I’ve had for over a year. Then another person messaged me saying, “Hey, this is really awkward, but I’m also a huge book fan, and I would love to catch up.” I realized that there was this missing opportunity for a lot of people, because we're very introverted. We have to have a reason to get together, and it has to be something that makes us comfortable.

I’m in a book club at the Book Club in the East Village, and it's great. I’ve made a few friends through it, but we were only meeting once every month and a half. I thought it would be really cool to create a book club where there are other opportunities outside of the original for people to actually get to know one another. I started two, because I thought that would be enough. They maxed out incredibly quickly. By opening an email, people could email me and tell me their thoughts. People are asking for genre-specific book clubs, so I made two more, and then the wait list was over 200 people. I then made another two more, and now I’m completely maxed out. All of my friends told me that I’m not allowed to start another one.

Now the groundwork that I’m now going off looks like this: there are six book clubs available that people can join, and you can join up to two of them. That way you have an opportunity to meet thirty people one night, and thirty people the other. Then there are one or two events throughout the month, too. This gives people an opportunity not to have the book as their buffer for a conversation but actually interact with and get to know one another.

By now it’s kind of taken over my life, but better this than anything else. I would say it spiraled, maybe not in a bad way, but it definitely is bigger than I anticipated. I do love it, and I have met some really amazing people through it. We have people who have been living in New York for ten-plus years, and there are also people who just moved here last week.

LB: So because of these book clubs, are you spread between six books at one time? How does that work? I’m curious because I’m a one book kind of person.

ZM: At first, the issue I was running into was that I would read the books too far in advance because I was so excited. But then by the time we got to the book club, I was like, “What is the main character's name?” because I had read six books since then. I read vigorously; I read constantly. I have a thirty-minute commute one-way, and it's one train. I have my hour lunch break where I tell my coworkers that I don't want to see a single person or interact with a single person.

So for the next upcoming book club, I’ll probably start that book today, and then I kind of just marathon through the other books. In between, I read whatever Book of the Month I snag. I think I have ninety books on my to-be-read list, but they’re just kind of sitting there. It is interesting, because there are people who are in more than one book club, and they're like, “I literally finished this on the way here.” [Laughs.] I respect the hustle.

LB: Between your TikTok and book clubs, do you think they’ve persuaded people to look at a certain genre or an author—I mean, obviously yes for people in the book clubs, but what about outside of that? But overall, what kind of influence do you think you've had on people's book buying experiences?

ZM: I probably haven't had any impact because I don't tell people what to read on my TikTok account. I think that was one of the things that I really didn't want to segue into.

However, I’ve had two people reach out and send me books. They didn’t ask anything of it when they sent the book, but I do think that I owed them something to talk about it. Luckily for me, both books were things that I felt people would really enjoy, and I felt that they were different than what I was seeing online. The videos I made about those books were more about the reading experience than what the book was actually about. I was basically showing people that it's available but not telling them to read it.

I do think that BookTok has the Colleen Hoover effect: everything is very much a funnel. There are so many books that are published each year, and only a fraction of them is spoken about on BookTok. It's all from people who have a very specific thing that they're looking for when they read because they've been impacted by past BookTok books that then kind of perpetuates the cycle. When I started these book clubs, I decided to just do all debut authors, so it's only their first novel.

For instance, this upcoming month in November, a majority of the books that we're reading have been published within the past week and a half, so they’re relatively new. People have the opportunity to support them. Next month I’m starting a Donate a Book Fund because debut books are not as easily accessible through libraries and some people don't want to buy the book. We do have people who have mentioned, “Hey, I would love to donate to a fund to help somebody get the book if they can't pay for it.” Mostly I just think it's really important to support those debut authors that you're not seeing a lot.

We've been lucky enough that two of the authors have spoken at The Strand and P&T Knitwear. I think debut authors are so much more accessible because they want to connect with their readers. For instance, one of the book clubs is reading A Very Typical Family by Sierra Godfrey. When she saw that we were reading her book, she told us that she would love to Zoom with us at some point and talk to us about her book.

At the end of the day, I want to create a more unique reading experience. If anything, my influence was, I did not like what I was seeing on BookTok, and I wanted to pivot in a different direction.

LB: I love how you try to turn things on their heads and not follow the funneling trend. Do you happen to dive into indie authors, not just traditionally published ones?

ZM: Yes, but I think they're so difficult to find, and that’s one of the issues. I'll listen to debut podcasts, and I’ll go to all of the book blogs that I can find at 2am, and there's just not as much coverage of them so they are more difficult to have access to. I became friends with one of the people who works at Book Club and other booksellers, so I’ll reach out and I’ll ask them, “Have you heard anything about debut indie authors recently, or anybody that I should be looking into?”

We're reading The Bequest by Joanna Margaret, who was published by Scarlet, is a subsidiary of Penzler, which is funded by The Mysterious Bookshop here in Tribeca. They don't really get a lot of coverage because they're a brand-new publishing house.

I felt really lucky to have heard about her, and I think that her book sounds really fascinating. We got to hear her speak, and she's incredibly brilliant. But that is something I want to venture more into: the indie paperback debuts and things that we have not heard of at all, but I think my resources have been a bit more limited. So now that I’m branching out a bit more, making friends, and meeting people, I think I’ll have more access to what is about to be published, which should then help with planning in advance.

LB: Where do you see either your TikTok account or these book clubs going? Do you have a future direction you want to go in or are you just here to have fun in the present and not really thinking about the future?

ZM: I should be thinking about the future, especially because more people have been far more interested in it than I anticipated. Due to my job, I haven't had the time recently to go to bookstores, talk to people, make new videos, and everything else. I want to create a more streamlined accessibility for the book clubs; I want to create something where more people are just generally aware of that they have access to.

Last night I was at an event, and I had two girls separately come up to me and say, “Oh, I love your TikTok page!” Every single time I clam up, I feel incredibly awkward, and I don't know how to respond. But that was the highlight of my night: being able to talk to those girls and just asking them, “What are you reading? What are your go-to’s? What is most accessible to you?” It's things like creating the donated book fund and having more opportunities for people to be more engaged.

P&T Knitwear reached out to me via Instagram, and they were like, “Hey, thank you so much for sharing all of our events. Do you need a venue at any point?” And I replied with, “Yeah, I need venues all the time, and that's the most difficult thing, and that's the thing that stresses me out, so absolutely, we would love to use you as a venue.” I’d love to see it evolve into a more cohesive thing, and not just me panicking and running around, wondering if anyone's going to show up. And then every time people do, I’m always surprised and I’m like, “Why are you surprised? You have 400 people in your contact list alone.”

I think that that would be the next step: working with local independent bookstores, being able to support them more, and making them more accessible. We’ll see, though. It was supposed to be two book clubs, and that’s it. Now here we are. [Laughs.]

LB: I have one final question—or request: recommend a book to me. It can be what you're currently reading, a favorite book, whatever. I like to keep this open-ended.

ZM: I’m staring at my bookcase and forgetting how to read words.

LB: [Laughs.] Or what’s the last really good book you read?

ZM: The last book that I read where I want to forget it and read it again for the first time was Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn. The characters are retired assassins, but the agency that they worked for is clearly trying to kill them. There are four women in their sixties, and they're so honest about everything that they're going through: menopause, showing emotion as an elderly woman, and all this stuff. It goes back and forth between the 1970s when they first started and the current day to who they are now. It’s written so well that you feel like you're actually reading these people’s thoughts. It's very unique, and I will recommend it to everyone forever.

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley is super warp-y, trippy, crazy. I was about 70% through the book when I got to go hear her speak. I kind of liked it; it's a really fascinating concept. And then I heard her read a chapter and I was like, “Oh, I’ve been reading this completely wrong—the tone has been wrong.” So, I started again with the audio book, and it was so witty and hilarious and just crisp and new and refreshing.

Those are the two that I’ve been obsessing over. I’m a huge true crime, murder mystery fan—it’s my go-to. I read the new Ruth Ware book The It Girl, and it was all of the dark academia that I could ever want. So I guess those would be my three at the moment. What about you? Do you have anything you would recommend?

LB: I just got to hear Joanna Rakoff speak at my university where she read a few passages from her memoir My Salinger Year. My professor kindly bought me a copy, and Joanna signed it for me, so I’m really looking forward to reading it. And then my boyfriend is making me read the Percy Jackson series because I have never actually read them before.

ZM: Oh, my gosh! My background is in ancient Greek art, and so growing up, those were my books. I literally just rebought the series because the books I have are from when I was a kid, and they're falling apart. But I hope you're enjoying them!

LB: I am! I’m just sad because my boyfriend reads them to me but currently, we are long distance. He’s on the West Coast while I’m here on the East Coast, so he can only read them to me when we're together.

ZM: They are pretty fantastic; Riordan is a hilarious writer. He's so sarcastic and jaded in the best way possible.

You can find Zoë on TikTok at @nycbookhoe, and you can learn more about her book clubs on her Linktree.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.