The official BookTok scheme is set to launch in the UK | books

The official ‘BookTok’ chart is set to launch later this year in the UK, which provides a monthly summary of the most popular titles on the social media platform TikTok.

The rankings will combine verified retail sales data and social media engagement to track which books resonate strongest with online readers.

The Top 20 charts will be compiled by NielsenIQ BookData, the leading provider of sales data in the publishing industry, working in partnership with Media Control.

To create the rankings, NielsenIQ BookData will identify titles that generate significant engagement on TikTok and rank them by sales volume. TikTok itself will provide data on engagement, while Media Control will apply an algorithm, focused more on book sales than engagement, to produce the official rankings.

BookTok — a community of readers who share recommendations and interactive videos about books on TikTok — has become one of the most powerful forces in publishing over the past few years. Viral syndication can return older titles to the top of bestseller lists and introduce new authors to global audiences, especially younger readers.

Many of the platform’s biggest successes fall into the romance and fantasy genres, along with the romance-fusion genre. Authors like Sarah J. Maas, Colleen Hoover, and Rebecca Yaros have seen massive sales growth after their books were widely circulated on BookTok – and series including A Court of Thorns and Roses by Maas and Yaros’ Empyrean series, starting with The Fourth Suite, have become staples of the platform.

The schemes were first trialled in Germany and are now being expanded to the UK.

“In recent years, #BookTok has evolved into one of the most important drivers in the international book market,” NielsenIQ and Media Control said in a statement. The new graph creates, “for the first time, a reliable, data-driven link between social media buzz and real sales performance.”