#booktok made me read

Reading has become a more popular activity for Dutch young adults aged 18 to 30. The book market notices an increase in book sales and identifies BookTok, an online community for readers on the social network TikTok, as the source for this development. Within this community, BookTok creators, mostly readers themselves, express their opinions, interests and reading behaviour via short videos containing recommendations, reviews or discussions about book-related topics. This research aims to examine whether BookTok influences the reading behaviour of these young adults by asking the question: To what extent does the consumption of BookTok videos change the reading behaviour of (young) adults aged 18-30 in the Netherlands? Additional to the main research question, this research investigated how young adults consume BookTok, if BookTok influences their reading behaviour, whether they are influenced by book social media influencers or by non-commercial BookTok creators and if BookTok fuels diversity and niche products. Respondents were asked to complete an online quantitative survey about their BookTok video consumption, book consumption, and changes in their reading behaviour. Descriptive statistics, Linear Regression Analysis, and correlations helped to find relationships between BookTok video consumption and reading behaviour. Readers in the Netherlands are native Dutch, 24-year-old females who finished a post-secondary education and are full-time employed. They unsurprisingly consume BookTok videos on the platform TikTok. However, most of the (young) adults are also exposed to these videos via other social media platforms. On these platforms, (young) adults are daily exposed to videos posted by random or popular users multiple times a day. They watch about one to ten videos for inspiration, recommendations, and enjoyment. The consumption of BookTok videos is positively related to the number of read books and the reading frequency, meaning that when the consumption of BookTok videos increases or decreases, so does the number of books read or the reading frequency. BookTok video consumption does not affect the diversity in reading genres. However, diversity is noticeable in authors of books; the reading of books written by female authors increased because of consuming BookTok videos. The consumption of BookTok videos fuels the exposure and consumption of niche products; (young) adults consume and are exposed to more bestsellers.