BookTok trend born in Mattituck with influencer Cait Jacobs 

When it comes to book recommendations, people of a certain age might turn to NPR or the New York Times. They might ask friends and neighbors. Or they might turn to social media, where an established stable of influencers have rewritten the landscape of where and how to find your next read. The origin story for BookTok, the literary sphere on TikTok, begins in the quiet home tucked away in Mattituck, where Cait Jacobs grew up. 

Jacobs is the accidental influencer behind the BookTok movement. They are now also the author of “The Princess Knight,” a USA Today bestselling YA romantasy novel. But back in the day, they were just an anxious, introverted kid who loved to talk about books. They spent their time watching bookish YouTubers and pestering their loved ones about what they were reading.

“Books have been the center of my life for my entire life. I grew up feeling very isolated a lot and feeling very alone. I was introvert. I was anxious,” said Jacobs. “My friends and I used to joke that I would start an underground library at my high school, where I would just try to give everyone recommendations and bring books for them. So I was just looking for another outlet for this love.”

This passion for literature led to a book blog, where Jacobs would write posts and send them out into the ether, in the hopes that this would satisfy their urge to talk about books. People noticed, and a community of people grew around the blog.

“I’m just going to use the time I have now to just make some written posts and not expect anything from it,” they said. “And from the book blog, I started building a small little community that I loved, and this was in, like, 2017, I want to say. And so I started building this nice small little community and finding my little niche, and I was very happy there.”

Two years later, in 2019, Jacobs was working at the Cutchogue New Suffolk Library doing the children’s programming, which involved working with teens. They were making references to TikTok, and Jacobs wanted to understand what they were talking about. So they made a TikTok account and started posting about books there, too.

“I was fully expecting nothing to come from it. I was expecting this to just be another failure in the list. And for a while, it was as I expected, where not a lot of people were seeing it, but it was just a fun place for me to express my love of books, and discuss different things that I really enjoyed,” said Jacobs. 

This went on in much the same way, until March of 2020, when one of their videos started getting a lot of attention. Overnight, everything changed, and BookTok was born.

“My mentality was like, ‘Well, if people care about my opinions right now, I am going to scream about all of my favorite books for as long as they let me, and then, once people move on, they move on, and I’ll move on,’” Jacobs said.

But so far, people have not moved on, and being a BookTok influencer is Jacobs’ primary source of income. Most of the books they review fall into two main categories that often overlap: fantasy and romance.

“I love to be a very open-minded reader. I say I’ll read anything in reality … and I love to talk about anything fantasy, whether YA or adult. I love to talk about anything romance, and I especially love contemporary romance and historical romance. Those are definitely my favorite areas,” Jacobs said. “When it comes to fantasy or romance, I can read them very quickly, but then when I try to branch out outside of my typical genres, I have to do tricks and game my mind to make sure I can focus.”

BookTok has yielded some fantastic opportunities for Jacobs, not the least of which is a publishing deal with Harper Collins for their debut novel, “The Princess Knight.” While the first draft of the novel was finished in 2018, before TikTok, it needed a significant rewrite. Because of their anxiety, this proved challenging for Jacobs, who ended up tabling the manuscript for some time. It wasn’t until they posted some videos about it that they finally got the motivation to do the deep work the book needed. 


“I was finally able to commit to that, because other people online, after I had teased it a few times, were expressing interest and I was realizing that, ‘Oh, people might actually want to read this,’ which had been something I had oddly never thought before,” said Jacobs.

In documenting their progress on TikTok, Jacobs was contacted by Harper Collins, who had seen their videos and were interested in the story.

“It does make me laugh because I posted some very silly and unserious videos about the book, and I live in fear that it was one of those,” said Jacobs. “I was very excited to see that one of my favorite publishers was interested in the book, and I desperately wanted to make it ready while they still had interest.”

Looking forward, Jacobs is focusing on promotional events for “The Princess Knight” and continuing to connect people with great stories. They are working on a new manuscript and hoping to branch out into different social platforms.

“I want to keep writing for as long as people let me. My goal is to constantly be doing stuff with the book community, with other readers and authors,” Jacobs said. “I have been talking about books a lot, and I plan on always talking about books. No one can ever get me to shut up about books, but I would love to also be able to talk about movies and other things that I really love. I love talking about all things fantasy. I really am the nerdiest nerd in the world.”