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In:Children’s Literature Across Media: Concepts and perspectives of transmedia narratives
Edited by Nina Christensen, Ute Dettmar and Sarah Mygind
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 21] 2026
► pp. 90–108

Chapter 5
Transmedia book love

Young people’s digital creativity on the Bookternet

This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
The ‘Bookternet’ (McArdle 2016), including BookTube, Bookstagram, Bookterest, and now BookTok, has changed the way books are produced, promoted, and consumed (Martens 2016; Murray 2018). Yet these platforms provide creative ways for readers to engage in the books they love in online reading communities. BookTokers use the affordances of the app (Bucher & Helmond 2017) to make DIY book art including: (1) rebinds of fanfics, publisher’s mass market editions or rebellious rebinds, (2) thematically linked ‘book nooks’ (book-sized dioramas), or (3) miniature editions. In this chapter we present the BookTok sub-community, focusing on crafty bookish participatory activities and social reading culture (Reddan 2022), and discuss how the materiality of books (Pressman 2020; Baulch 2022) merges with digital technologies within BookTok’s reading community.
Article outline
  • The affordances and trends of BookTok
  • Bookishness, materiality, and participatory activities
  • Paratextual rebinds
  • Book nooks: World-building reading environments as interior design
  • Miniature books: Participatory TBRs or bookish trophies of digital reads
  • DIY book love in a transmedia landscape
  • Author queries
  • Note
  • References
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