Can BookTok Do It Better? A Free Bookish Conference Takes the Spotlight.
In a direct response to authors getting scammed at the A Million Lives Book Festival, Author Shawn Amick and a small team of authors have set out to organize a free online book festival aimed at celebrating the booktok community, connecting authors and readers, and put querying writers in front of publishing professionals.
The Booktok Festival, slotted for August 24th 2025, will be structured like any book conference, but will take place entirely online on TikTok. It will be free to attending talent and guests alike. Though the schedule has not yet been determined, the event plans to offer author pitch sessions and publishing panels with literary agents and publishers. They are hopeful to also offer genre specific panels, panels with industry voices, and keynote speakers.
Taking Action
To me the Booktok Festival represents a strength of the indie author world, community self-regulation. Rather than simply voicing criticism and warning others, members of the BookTok author community are taking direct action to address harms they’ve witnessed in failed book conferences and events, as well as a call for a cultural shift with transparency, with peer accountability.
Pitching and Publishing on TikTok
The Festival promises panels and author pitch sessions— opportunities for indie authors to share what their book is about and answer would-be reader questions. These types of sessions can be found all over social media already, so naturally the Booktok Festival is following suit with a tried and true method of supporting and marketing independent authors.
They’ll also host pitch sessions with literary agents, a newer concept I certainly haven’t seen it on BookTok before. But like authors, agents are increasingly visible online, and putting themselves in front of would-be clients (the way authors do with their readership) just makes sense in the evolution of the industry.
Attending this event, authors will have the opportunity to pitch their book in two directions: to their readership and to potential agents.
But Proceeding with Caution
Following the backlash against A Million Lives, any new festival faces burden of proof. Organizers must not only deliver a functional event but do so with clear communication, visible planning, transparency, and so much more. For example: Who are the agents participating? What is their expertise? How were panelists selected? Is there a contingency plan if things go wrong?
Transparency will be necessary to attain community trust.
With The Booktok Festival, being organized in a fraction of the time of a traditional in-person festival, they have not yet been able to release such details. And with only two short months to go, there are a lot of questions brewing about the event’s quality, proper vetting of experts and panelists, and how event moderation will be handled.
Which brings me to my next thoughts about the platform choice itself.
Platform-Centric Festivals: A Double-Edged Sword
TikTok’s structure offers creators real-time engagement with new readers and the chance to go viral. But it also limits the depth and pacing of traditional literary discussion. Discourse, had half in video and half in text (with limited characters to convey the desired point), will make the event’s moderation a challenge.
And if the Booktok Festival is well attended, the fast-scroll nature of TikTok’s comments may overburden even a well organized team of moderators. Context will be lost in the feed, and it will become impractical to prioritize questions or create a system of equitably answering commenters.
One silver lining is that Amick’s crew has brought in at least one booktoker, Momma D as she is known on the app, who’s made herself known for hosting these exact kinds of events and very successfully.
The burden of proof. Bringing experts in to do what they’re experts at.
However Momma D will only be hosting one hour of the all-day event. I can only hope the rest of the day follows her style which includes a queue system and several moderators available to assist.
I also worry about the professionalism of the event. Anyone who's attended a TikTok live will be all too familiar with the messy backgrounds of participants personal spaces, of spouses cooking in the background while children playing in the foreground, of participants speaking over one another and, of course, dogs jumping up at the worst possible moment to say hello to their owners on video.
Will the Booktok Festival have standards of decorum that give the polished feel of an in person book festival? Or will the casual energy of TikTok live be maintained? Will it feel well organized or will it feel chaotic and unapproachable to some regard?
But while I'm worried about the structure and organization, I also wanna talk about accessibility.
Event Accessibility
I’m left wondering if the organizers have thought about or acknowledged access to this event— devices, reliable internet, digital literacy, time zones and the social capital needed to navigate there hosting platform of choice, TikTok, should all be considerations leading up to the event.
While a free, online event may be more accessible than a paid, in-person one, having the event on TikTok limits the audience size to those already on the platform. The event won’t reach everyone and I know that’s not their goal necessarily, but it creates exclusivity none the less.
While I understand the intent being to celebrate the community where it was made, on TikTok, I am surprised organizers aren’t considering more accessible platforms like YouTube, which is more universally understood, provides shareable links, and doesn’t require viewers have an account in order to participate. Further it’s a platform on which panels can be recorded and viewed after the fact, with captioning and/or translation and other accessibility measures to broaden their reach.
And I raise these concerns not because I expect perfection. No event is flawless, especially one organized in a short time by a volunteer team. I bring these concerns up because this festival was born as a response to mismanagement and harm seen in other events, and thus the bar must be higher.
Transparency, communication, and clear planning are the path to protecting their mission. They are the proof that this community can do better.
The Booktok Festival is a huge undertaking and represents a movement, a refusal to be sidelined or scammed, and a commitment to building literary spaces that actually serve the community. I’m hopeful, cautiously optimistic, and looking forward to the event being a success that will lead to more in the future.
What are your thoughts about the event? Let’s discuss in the comments and I’ll see you August 24th for this first-of-its-kind event!