At the end of November, we hosted our very first TikTok book club, discussing Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score. Here’s a look at how it went and what we loved most about the event.

In collaboration with Dutch publisher Zomer & Keuning, we ran a BookTok book tour for the translated edition of Things We Never Got Over. Ten talented BookTok creators made engaging videos about the book and promoted the upcoming TikTok book club. To celebrate the conclusion of the book tour, we hosted a live book club discussion via our collective TikTok account @boektokkers, dedicated to showcasing Dutch books and connecting readers with authors.

Our first TikTok book club: how it went and what we loved

For the first 30 minutes of the live, two Dutch Booktokkers Sanne and Beatrijs joined to share their thoughts about Lucy’s book. We discussed the characters, how their past influenced their behavior and we talked about the themes that appeared in the story such as family ties, trauma and dealing with your past.

In the last 30 minutes Jacodine van de Velde, translator of the Dutch edition of Things We Never Got Over, joined the live as well. Our community loved the conversation we had with her and they asked a lot of questions in the live chat. Jacodine told us about how she became a translator, how she makes choices during the translation process and translating spicy scenes with the right words.

This first book club was really successful with attendees from both our existing community as well as new faces.

What we want to achieve with our TikTok book club

Almost all book influencers that participated in the book tour also watched the live. One of our goals with our book club is to strengthen our reading community and reach new readers. We would like to reach many more people in addition to our existing book influencers to encourage others to buy the book and read with us. We also want everyone to feel connected to our platform and TikTok Collectives.

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Our statistics

PR videos leading up to the event gained 39.2K views, 1186 likes, 146 comments and 30 saves. This first online book club lasted just over an hour and there were a total of 530 viewers (of which 447 were unique). The average viewing time was 2 minutes 39 seconds, but followers of the Boektokkers account watched an average of 9 minutes 2 seconds. On average, 29 people were watching at the same time and the booktokkers who had received the book were present on screen or in the chat and interacting with us. 5.8K likes were given out during the broadcast.

What I loved most about the online event and next steps

I personally loved the engagement with all the viewers that joined our TikTok book club. I was blown away by how much discussion there was during the book club in the chat and how many questions were asked to the translator.

In 2024 we are going to host more online book clubs. These will be hosted not only by me, but also by booktokkers Sanne from The Netherlands and Fem from Belgium. For the Dutch collective we plan to have a book club featuring a Dutch author where readers can ask them questions.

We’re really excited about our upcoming book clubs, watch this space for the next one!

To see more about this tour, as well as others, check out our Book Tour page: https://bookinfluencers.com/book-tours