How To Become A Book Influencer (Hint: Anyone Can Do It)
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How To Become A Book Influencer (Hint: Anyone Can Do It)
A lot of avid readers probably have asked themselves if they should become a book influencer but they don’t know how to do it or where to get started.
If you’re wanting to know how to become a book influencer, this article will give you the gist of what is a book influencer and how do you start this influencer journey of yours.
Being a book influencer also has its pros and cons.
Not everything is as glamorous as you see it on social media. However, I must admit – there are some fun parts to it!
And if you take being a book influencer seriously, it can earn you a decent amount of money!
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What Does A Book Influencer Do?
A book influencer is someone who loves reading books and posting about them. They can post about them on any social media or other platforms.
Book influencers posts reviews in the form of pictures, videos, articles, captions and interact with their audience that they’ve build on these social media platforms.
How To Become A Book Influencer (4 Steps)
How do you become a book influencer? These 4 steps will help you kick start your book influencer journey.
Step 1: Pick A Platform
The first thing you will have to do to become a book influencer is to pick a platform to post content. Different types of platforms allow different formats of content to be posted.
How do you decide on which platform to start your book influencer journey? We’ve got you covered.
Bookstagram
One of the most common platforms to be a book influencer is instagram.
How to be a book blogger on instagram? Well, the community is technically called bookstagram.
Combine books and instagram – you get bookstagram.
There’s a lot of bookstagrammers! The platform has more than 72 million posts hashtagging #bookstagram. That should give you a rough idea on how many book influencers are out there.
However don’t be discouraged by the huge number thinking you don’t have a chance to stand out, every bookstagrammer is unique based on their bookstagram name and branding, types of posts and also aesthetics.
Bookstagram is for you if you love taking pictures and creating short videos.
Instagram was primarily a photo sharing app but recently they have been implementing video content features to compete with Tiktok.
That’s something you might want to keep in mind before becoming a book influencer on Instagram.
However, if you’re looking to write long-form reviews then this platform might not be for you. Instagram captions are limited to 2,200 characters.
Can you monetize your bookstagram? If you’re a bookstagram influencer wanting to earn some money by posting about the books you love, the answer is yes you can! There are 6 ways you can monetize your bookstagram.
If you’re looking for more helpful resources on starting a bookstagram, be sure to checkout these posts:
- How To Start A Bookstagram (7 Beginner Friendly Steps)
- 100+ Bookstagram Name Ideas That Make You Stand Out
- 8 Unique Bookstagram Bio Ideas To Gain Followers
Book Blog
Book blogging is the “OG” way of reviewing books. Blogging has been on the internet for a very long time, way before social media platforms came into existence.
Personally, I choose to book blog because I like writing longer reviews. I feel the character/word count on most platforms limits my ability to express myself.
If you like writing and taking pictures, book blogging would be great for you. This is also great if you do not like to take videos or frequently show yourself off on social media.
One reason why most book influencers choose to have a book blog is because their blog is THEIRS. Only for $2.95 a month, you OWN your blog!
Tomorrow, if Instagram, Youtube or Tiktok disappears from the social media world – bloggers will still have their audience, especially if their main income is from book reviewing and posting book-related content.
This is because blogging gets you traffic directly from Google. So you do not need to rely on any social media platforms to build an audience.
FOR YOU: How To Know If Blogging Is Right For You? (10 Signs)
I recently enrolled in this blogging course which taught me how to start a blog from purchasing a domain, host and all the way up to making a full-time income from it.
If you want to take your book blog seriously, I highly recommend for you to check it out.
Wanting to start a blog? Bluehost is having a sale! (just $2.95 a month for a new blog!) This helps you start blogging at minimal cost! Perfect for beginners.
BookTok
Tiktok has been the most hyped up platform in the past couple of years, especially when it comes to reviewing books.
Being part of booktok is quite a promising opportunity to become not just a book influencer, but to be a well-known trendy book influencer.
I say trendy because booktok is all about trends. To be on this platform you must want to create short, fun and engaging videos with transitions.
Many people think being on TikTok is easy because it’s just a 60 second video content creation platform but in reality, it takes a lot of effort to produce each content.
If you like video content more than anything else, I would definitely recommend TikTok.
Booktube
While you can get away with not so proper lighting and simple editing on TikTok, starting a booktube channel may require the opposite.
According to a booktuber, to grow a booktube channel takes a lot of upfront time and energy.
Videos are longer, you’ll have to edit them. Plus, you will have to invest in a good camera, some basic lighting and audio equipment.
Just like any other social media platform, Youtube has its own algorithm. So that may also be a learning curve for some.
You might enjoy starting a booktube channel if you like talking to the camera, getting creative with editing and don’t like to do much writing.
Step 2: Start Reading
Next step, read!
As a book influencer you obviously must read and post content around the books you read.
Sometimes we can get carried away creating other bookish content like TBRs, stationery review, aesthetic reading nook/space type of content.
There’s a lot of different types of content book influencers can create besides just posting about the books they read.
Which is great! But don’t lose sight of the main thing here – book reviews.
Books can be costly at times. They also take up a lot of physical space (ebooks are great option if you are worried about shelf space).
So as book influencers, how do we get free books to review?
- Reach out to local publishers or book distribution companies
- Reach out to authors
- Apply for ARCs on Netgalley
Book influencer programs you can join to get review copies:
Step 3: Start Posting
You read, you write or record your review, now it’s time to post!
Posting a book review is not as easy as you think. Depending on the platform, there’s a lot of time and energy that goes into it.
An Instagram post might require you to take several shots and photo editing. It might also be challenging to write the review within the caption character count.
Booktube takes up a long recording and editing time. Whereas book blogging can take you an hour plus to write a good book review with proper images.
And finally, booktok might look simple but you’ll have to research trends, sounds and sometimes pray you’ll get lucky enough for your post to go viral.
What i’m trying to say is that every platform has its own content creation process and challenges that come with it which you must take into consideration before deciding where and what to post.
As a freelance social media manager, bookstagrammer and book blogger, I can confirm that the best way to keep things on track would be to create a content calendar!
You can create content calendars on your Google calendar, Notion or any other planner app. You can even use a physical planner to jot down your content plan.
Social media expert and Youtuber, Katie Steckly teaches us how to batch and create content on multiple platforms so we don’t feel burdened by having to create different content every single day for different platforms!
Step 4: Monetize
Yes they do. No matter what platform you use (TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Blog) you will can make money from being a book influencer.
For all the platforms mentioned in this article, you can monetize with sponsorships and affiliate marketing.
As for Youtube and Blogging, you can monetize with not only sponsorships and affiliate, but also ad revenue.
Ad revenue plus affiliate revenue can be pretty passive which is a great long-term income generating strategy.
Checkout some of my favourite affiliate programs for book influencers:
- Awin
- Etsy
- Amazon
- Involve Asia (Shopee, Lazada, Sephora, Kinokuniya and more)
- ShareASale
How much do book influencers make?
Honestly, it depends on how well you monetize your audience.
Someone with a 1000 follower count on bookstagram might make more money than someone with 10,000 followers.
This is because the number of followers, subscribers, viewers does not really matter as much. What matters is true engagement!
Building a community that actually cares about what you have to say as a book influencer and are willing to invest in whatever you recommend.
To understand more about book influencer tiers, this article might help you.
If you’re still wondering on how to become a book influencer, know that anyone can do it and you do not need to be someone who reads 100+ books a year or get famous really quickly on any of the platforms.
As long as you like reading, posting about the books in your life and connecting with other like-minded readers, you will enjoy becoming a book influencer.
Wrap Up: How To Become A Book Influencer
I hope these steps on how to become a book influencer helps you find the right platform for you to create bookish content!
Such an informative post! Being any kind of bookish content creator comes with a lot of work and needs a lot of research to do well. I’m sure so many will find this super helpful in getting started 🙂
Thank you! When I first started blogging about books and posting on bookstagram, I had very little resources to refer to. I really hope this guide is helpful! 🙂