If there’s something even better than reading, and, of course, buying books, is talking about it or, if you’re the person looking for that kind of content, hearing about it. And where does this conversation take place? That doesn’t matter as long as your favorite bookish content creators are doing their part.
TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or even Facebook have influenced 28% of their users in terms of book recommendations, according to the Reading Portraits in Brazil survey conducted by IPEC in 2022. The same survey showed that digital influencers are the main source of reading recommendations.
Want to participate in a book club? Don’t know what to read? Or do you want to simply hear someone talk about your favorite book? Here’s a list that Her Campus put together of our favorite bookish content creators so you’ll never feel alone anymore in the literary world – and trust us, they really know what they’re doing!
Bel rodrigues (@belrodrigues)
You can’t talk about bookish content creators in Brazil without talking about Bel Rodrigues. Born in 1994, Bel graduated in Social Communication and has also a post-graduation in Criminology. She created her YouTube channel back in 2013 to share her passion for books and, today, she has almost a million subscribers.
Books, however, are not her only topic. In her personal life, she is famous on social media for being one of the most hardcore Taylor Swift’s fans. Professionally, Bel is also an author and her first book, along with other three booktubers, Amor nos tempos de #likes, was published in 2016. Her first solo book, 13 segundos, was published in 2018 and it became a best-seller in the same year.
After five years since her debut without any publication, she returned in 2023 with Teias Mortais, along with four other Brazilian authors. The book is composed of five suspense stories, each written by one of the invited writers. Bel’s story is called “Um Olhar Demorado”.
carley thorne (@uncarley)
Carley Thorne is the definition of an unserious person. Maybe her passion for comedy has something to do with it or perhaps it is just her Communication diploma speaking out loud, but the truth is: there is no one such as Carley that can put together jokes about books like her.
Born in Canada and living there ever since, Carley joined YouTube in 2013, but her first video is from 2020, in which she talks about her thoughts on Harry Styles’ favorite books. After four years in the bookish content creators’ world, she has been doing the same thing with other celebrities, such as Anya Taylor-Joy and Emma Chamberlain, but her baggage is even bigger.
To her almost 400,000 subscribers, Carley makes fun of basically everything: books, authors, celebrities (and their favorite books), movies and TV shows, internet trends, and even her own taste. But, at the end of the day, she strongly believes that reading makes someone cool and would never judge you for that.
digão roque (@digaoroque)
Rodrigo, also known as Digão Roque, is a 23-year-old booktoker. The impressive thing about him is that, among the many who now dedicate their lives to bookish content, he was the one who started the trend to show people’s reactions to receiving books as a surprise in Brazil.
Originally from Rio de Janeiro but living in São Paulo, Digão started as a bookish content creator three years ago. Today, he has over 700,000 followers on TikTok, his main platform. However, the boom of his account came after the São Paulo Book Fair in 2021 – the first time he recorded himself distributing books.
gabriela zomer (@zomerela)
It’s probably a bold affirmation to say that Gabriela Zomer was responsible for accentuating teenagers’ and young adults’ interest in book consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the truth is that, through content produced on her TikTok, Gabriela has become one of the leading bookish content creators for promoting the literary segment on the platform. And all of this is done through a very important tool: gossip.
Gabriela’s videos started to go viral when she joined the “Literary Gossip” trend. This type of content is based on narrating book stories in the first person as if she had lived through the plot, but of course, without revealing the outcome, which is replaced by: “Now you’ll have to read [insert the book’s name] to find out the ending.” A notable example from the creator is the video about The Guest List, written by Lucy Foley.
Paulo Ratz (@livrariaemcasa)
Paulo Ratz is another bookish content creator who grew a lot during the pandemic. According to him, before Covid-19 happened, he had a little over 40,000 subscribers. Do you think that’s a lot? As of the time of publishing this article, he has already surpassed the number of 250,000 on the “Livraria em Casa” channel.
Paulo has been a prominent figure in the Brazilian literary community since 2015, but it turned into his main occupation only in 2021, after leaving a job as a Production Finance Manager at Netflix Brazil. He is known for sharing book reviews, reading recommendations, and discussions about literature and its future.
Liv (@livresenhas)
Lívia Reginato has been a bookish content creator since 2019 when she created a social media account called “livresenhas”, that collects over 360,000 followers on Instagram. Since then, she has been aggregating new projects, such as a book club, reading live streams on Twitch, a YouTube channel with almost 200,000 subscribers, and, more recently, a podcast called Poesia Ansiosa.
Along with her work as a reviewer for more than five permanent publishing houses and, of course, as a content creator, always with the aim of addressing children’s and young adult literature, Lívia is also an undergraduate student in Public Relations at ESPM, in São Paulo, and works as an intern for the university agency, ‘Neuwronio’.
jack edwards (@jack_edwards)
Also known as the “YouTube’s resident librarian”, Jack Edwards is one of the world’s biggest bookish content creators. In his YouTube channel, which he created when he was still in secondary school, he has over 1.3 million subscribers. Born in 1998 and brought up in Brighton, Jack began posting videos about books back in 2020, after documenting student life at Durham University, where he graduated in English.
Jack is the first person in his family to go to university and, now a hit on BookTok, he has two goals: to democratize book reviewing and to explain to his grandparents what he does for a living. “I think they’ve told a lot of their friends that I make videos in my bedroom and put them on the internet. Which sounds a little more exotic than the truth”, he said in an interview for The Guardian in May of 2024. Besides his work as a book critic on the internet, Jack has also a weekly podcast launching this summer and is writing his first novel.
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The article above was edited by Mariana Aguiar.
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