YouTube trumps TikTok as the most popular online platform for young people to discover new books, according to a report by Nielsen BookData.
Nielsen, which provides data for the Bookseller’s UK Bestsellers chart, conducted a survey in November 2022 that revealed 34% of people aged between 14 and 25 find new reads using the video platform YouTube.
TikTok and Instagram were used by 32% and 27% of participants respectively, and online book retailer websites were visited by 33% of respondents. This data comes after reports that “BookTok” – the corner of TikTok in which creators share book recommendations – is driving sales of particular authors and genres that are popular on the platform. Its YouTube counterpart, BookTube, similarly features videos of users discussing their favourite titles and “hauls” of books they have recently bought.
YouTube was also the most-used website for any purpose among respondents, with 71% reporting visiting it in the four weeks before the survey was conducted. “With such high general usage it’s not surprising that they would be discovering books” through the site, said Jackie Swope at Nielsen BookData.
However, the survey also asked about offline book research and found that “the top two offline discovery methods were both ahead of YouTube”, said Swope. Some 41% of respondents discovered books through their friends, while 36% found new reads in physical bookshops.
In 2022, the 14-25 age group in the UK bought an estimated 61m books at a cost of £496m, representing 18% of the overall book market. The survey found that 45% of respondents in that age bracket read for fun on a weekly basis, while 17% read daily for leisure. Social media was the most popular daily activity, with 70% of participants using it for fun every day.
“Fantasy action/ adventure stories” was the most popular genre for the age range, with 36% saying they liked those categories. “Crime/ thriller stories”, “Funny stories” and “Science fiction/ fantasy” were other well-liked genres. Just 11% of respondents said they enjoyed books about the world, geography and other countries and cultures, while 12% said they liked books about current and social issues.
Leading factors that participants said would encourage reading were more interesting books (34%), a reading routine (30%) and restricting time on social media (26%), while the main factors influencing the purchase of a book were the description (46%), if they had enjoyed the author or series before (35%) and the cover design (31%).
The 14-17 age group expressed the lowest impact of the cost-of-living crisis on their book-buying habits, with just 17% saying they would purchase fewer books to save money, as opposed to the 18-21 and 22-25 age groups, of whom 31% and 29% respectively said they planned to cut down on book-buying.
