Queen could join TikTok to become book influencer

The Queen may join TikTok to become a book influencer with her reading charity, it has been suggested.

Following the explosion of “BookTok” – in which millions of people share their love of books and literature on the app – the chief executive of The Queen’s Reading Room has hinted it could be the next home for the royal book club.

Speaking to The Telegraph ahead of an appearance at the Braemar Literary Festival this weekend, Vicki Perrin said: “Never say never. I’ve been so pleased at seeing how BookTok has exploded.

“To my mind, there’s nothing more important than trying to get the message across that books are for everyone.

“What’s so wonderful about BookTok is that you have people from all different walks of life saying, ‘This is a book that has moved me’, and that is so much more important than anything else.”

She added: “For us it doesn’t matter what you read … I think BookTok has done such an amazing thing in breaking down some of those barriers, and whether we’ll end up there, who knows, watch this space.”

If the Queen, 77, was to join the platform, she would become the first member of the Royal family to do so publicly.

The move could be the latest platform to which she turns her hand after establishing The Queen’s Reading Room Podcast, which ranked among the top 1 per cent in the world upon its launch.

Each episode of the podcast features a segment from the Queen, as well as an interview with a different guest – among them Sir Ian Rankin and Dame Joanna Lumley – who speak about some of the books that they cannot live without.

The series has resulted in the Queen fostering a love of reading among a new audience, and a move to TikTok could do the same with a younger generation.

“We now reach about 12 million people in about 171 countries around the world,” said Ms Perrin, adding that “it’s been such a joy to see the appetite for the work we’re doing and to see people’s connection with reading and books”.

The charity’s mission is to celebrate and promote the power and benefits of reading as well as introduce literature to more people worldwide.

The Queen, a lifelong voracious reader, established the Reading Room in January 2021 after an overwhelming response to recommended reading lists that she posted on Instagram during lockdown.

Three years on, the charity is now working with a team of researchers at Cambridge University to assess the lifetime effects of reading on the brain.

“It will be a groundbreaking study looking into the connection between brain health, mental health, social health, and regular reading and really understanding what happens in the brain when we read,” Ms Perrin said.

She added: “We’d love to learn across the course of a human lifetime what effect it has if you read regularly on those different things.

“It will change the way we think about reading, not just for ourselves as a charity, not just for the general public, but when we truly understand the science behind it, this will affect the whole of the scientific community.”

It comes after the results of her book club’s first scientific study were hailed by the Queen earlier this year, when it was found that five minutes of reading a day is as valuable to mental wellbeing as walking 10,000 steps and eating five portions of fruit and vegetables.

This coming weekend, The Queen’s Reading Room will produce two sessions at the third annual Braemar Literary Festival, held at the Fife Arms in Aberdeenshire.

Ms Perrin will host two conversations with the authors Jessie Burton and Ken Follett, and will join a line-up that includes the actor Alan Cumming, the Queen’s son and food critic Tom Parker Bowles, the best-selling novelist Kate Mosse and Simon Armitage, the poet laureate.

Speaking to The Telegraph before the festival, Ms Mosse said that “it’s a glorious thing that there has suddenly been this enormous explosion in young adults reading novels” thanks to BookTok.

“It’s a really huge phenomenon… So for me, the TikTok, BookTok [trend] and the idea that young people are talking to young people all over the world about reading all of these types of books – are they my cup of tea? Most of them, no, but then, the books I read are not their cup of tea.

“But there shouldn’t be a kind of hierarchy in books… a classic book will be a book that endures, and partly that will be because people love it or value it, or think it’s important, or think it makes a difference to them.”

During her talk, Ms Mosse will be discussing the 30th anniversary of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, which she founded.

She said: “Every year, [we] honour, amplify and celebrate excellent writing in fiction by women in English from all over the world. It does what we set out to do, and it puts brilliant novels by women into the hands of men, women, everybody who loves them.”

Last year, the author set up a sister prize to recognise women in non-fiction, which was awarded this year to Naomi Klein for her book Doppelganger.

“I’ll be talking a little bit about this, about how times have changed, about the need for a prize celebrating women and all of those bits and pieces,” Ms Mosse said.

“I’m very glad to say that despite everything, despite technology, when you ask people one of the dreams of their lives, still right up at the top of the list is to have a book with your name on it. And I think in 2024 that is a wonderful thing,” she added.

In 2022, James Daunt, the head of Waterstones, said that the rise of “BookTok” had been driving teenagers and young adults into bookshops in numbers not seen since the Harry Potter years.

Sales of new books soar after being recommended by influencers on TikTok – with some classics also becoming unlikely viral sensations.

The #BookTok hashtag has had 37.4 billion views, while popular influencers tend to be young women, mostly recommending books by female authors.

The same hashtag has 37 million posts, with novels that go viral also often being turned into Netflix and Hollywood blockbusters.