In recent years, there’s been an increasingly growing trend of book to screen adaptations, with the success of series such as the newly released Off Campus and Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivals’, there’s been an increase of selling of the rights for on-screen adaptations, such as Amazon (Andreeva, 2026). The adaptation of popular books to the small and big screen is not a new phenomenon; there were predecessors that gained a lot of popularity, like The Vampire Diaries, Twilight or even The Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter.

So why is this trend of books being adapted more prominent that ever?

Booktok might be the answer to this question. 

As books’ popularity grows on TikTok, a community is also built. Because of its participatory nature, the gap between the authors, their work and readers is a lot smaller. And contrary to the days before the platform, readers now don’t consume just the books but also interact by writing comments, reviewing and sharing them with other people (Forbes, 2025). While Booktok started as a place where readers would share their love for books, it also showed entertainment companies its sale power potential. In the last few years, the platform became a hub for book to screen adaptation, and because it has a guaranteed audience, the risk of failure is a lot smaller. The platform’s influence in entertainment companies – in this case Hollywood – reflects the growth between the relationship between social media, popular culture and the entertainment industry (Fifth, 2024). The film industry is struggling to maintain its relevance and by taking some of the risks away from producing an adaptation, TikTok became a source of reliable pieces of work.

Furthermore, the rights to adaptation of books that are still not published are also being sold. One prime example is Abigail Avis’s novel Went Ink – a book that is notorious for starting a bidding war between entertainment companies (Savage, 2025). Books that are set to be popular books on TikTok are also being adapted to screen adaptations before being released; that is the case for A Stage Set for Villains by Shannon J. Spann, whose rights were sold to Amazon MGM Studios. Amazon GMG is focusing on acquiring rights for TikTok-beloved books. It is heavily focusing on viral, bestselling romances, with examples such as Fourth Wing by Rebecca Ross, Verity by Coleen Hoover, The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han, and upcoming ones such as Dragon Cursed by Elise Kova and the recently popular Powerless trilogy.

It is refreshing to see books being adapted at such a fast rate, but one question lingers. 

Will this boom of right sales create a Booktok adaptation fatigue, or will it bring new audiences to the literary world?

 Bibliography:

Fifth (2024). How BookTok is directing Hollywood – Fifth. [online] THE FIFTH, Award Winning Social Creative Agency. Available at: https://thefifthagency.com/trends/how-booktok-is-directing-hollywood/ [Accessed 14 May 2026].

Forbes (2025). The Power Of BookTok: Why TikTok’s Book Community Is Driving A New Era In Publishing. [online] Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiktok/2025/04/21/the-power-of-booktok-why-tiktoks-book-community-is-driving-a-new-era-in-publishing/.

Savage, M. (2025). Unpublished ‘Tupperware erotica’ novel prompts fierce contest for TV rights. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/dec/26/unpublished-tupperware-erotica-novel-wet-ink-prompts-fierce-contest-for-tv-rights [Accessed 17 May 2026].