It's Official – BookTok is Over and Literary Newsletters Are Where It’s At

...and according to a national newspaper yesterday mine is the one you should be following

New readers to White Ink might not be aware of my bookshop journey and so I’ll give you a little precis as introduction to this piece. Back in the Autumn of 2022, my local health shop closed down which left me very disappointed because I dropped at least £50 a week in there. I walked past the empty unit for weeks and weeks feeling sad and then thought, oh wouldn’t it be nice if someone opened a bookshop there, and then… wait, maybe I should open a bookshop there!

By the time I enquired I was already too late and one of those Turkish barbers popped up (you know, the kind that never has any customers).

Anyway, what I did have instead a few weeks later thanks to the local baker was a space to open a pop-up bookshop in the florist next door. In exchange for some money for rent I found myself with half a shop and a window in the eight weeks leading up to Christmas.

I quickly went on a course on how to run a bookshop and documented all this over on my other substack The Book Room, everything from the branding which my friend (and since then Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2024 artist) Sam created for me, printed cotton tote bags that my friend Rob bought for me on the insistence I give them to every customer, and a website which my brother-in-law, another Sam, built for me.

My bookshop window the day I opened

I wrote about the good times, the bad times, the days when I stood there all day and earnt not a penny, and the ups and downs of being on the very other end of the book production line. It was a fascinating journey and I learnt so much, but as planned eight weeks later on Christmas Eve I took down my window and all the leftover stock was put away in my under-stairs’ cupboard.

It all felt like a dream.

My Christmas bookshop window by then with my branding in place

I have tried several times to open a bookshop since – that particular bit felt like a nightmare (I wrote about trying to get a commercial lease over on my The Book Room substack too!) And so since last December, I have been focused over here on White Ink and I’ve left my old substack in retirement, waiting – hoping – that I will be able to revive it someday with a bookshop of my own. I came close to something near hoping a few months ago when someone who was moving shops offered me the chance of theirs, but sadly it amounted to nothing and I was left disappointed again.

So imagine my curiosity yesterday when suddenly I started getting loads of new subscribers to The Book Room. Curiosity and sudden panic because of course, I’m over here now. I knew something must be up – someone somewhere must be talking about The Book Room, but who?

And then came my answer late on Sunday afternoon when a friend, Em sent me a message saying: “Have you seen this?”

The Mail on Sunday’s You Magazine had proclaimed that BookTok – the book corner of TikTok - is over and taking its place instead are literary newsletters, and not only that, but mine was the one they suggested to their readers.

I was staggered – and rather flattered to say the least – to be mentioned. How had this happened?

Do, for a laugh, picture me telling my almost 12-year-old daughter that a national newspaper had declared me involved in something ‘cool’

Could it be true that BookTok is over? I know that publishers have had their eyes on that particular corner of TikTok for the last few years, and as a result have employed many Gen Z-ers who are, I am told, the new gatekeepers of publishing houses – apparently ideas have to get past even the most junior members of staff. But what has always confused me is whether it is Gen Z-ers who are the ones actually buying books when they have been brought up with the internet and the short attention span that comes with that. And, in this current climate, do they have the money to spend keeping the Sunday Times Bestsellers chart afloat? In my short experience in my bookshop it was not Gen Z-ers but the Boomers who would think nothing of bringing £50 worth of books to the till during a Tuesday afternoon browse.

Could it be that we, on substack, are slowing turning the ship around? If newspapers are noticing us how long before publishers do? (In my opinion they’re already a bit slow off the mark here.) I hope that the Mail on Sunday is right on this occasion.

And in other matters, where does this leave my dream of a bookshop and bringing my The Book Room substack out of its retirement? So many times over the last couple of years when various attempts to open a bookshop have failed I have tried to take it as a sign from the universe that it is not for me. But if that is the case, what is this? A sign that I should?!

It’s a tough gig running a bookshop, I know that after just eight weeks of running one, and I think these days you need to be a bookshop plus something… plus wine and cheese, plus an events space, plus a place to buy art, plus takeaway cakes (I mean I love baking so this isn’t an impossibility). But I’m also first and foremost a writer, and so getting the balance right is important.

Anyway, all we need to know now is that according to a national newspaper BookTok is over and it is all about the literary newsletter, and apparently mine! And so if you are reading this you can rest assured – as a subscriber of mine according to You Magazine you are already ahead of the curve!

• This is one of my few free posts as all my work is behind a paywall now as I explain here, but if you would like access to all my essays including my new series Sunday Shelfie where authors give us a snoop around their bookshelves, my personal essays, and to join my monthly creative writing workshop on zoom, upgrade here: