Becoming a Bookstagrammer
In January 2022, I was starting to feel seriously disillusioned by Instagram. It felt formulaic – to appease the algorithm – and had lost any of the old community spirit it once had. Except, that is, for bookstagram. I’d shared a fair few bookish photos on my main Instagram and so stumbled upon the community by chance. And this corner of the Internet definitely felt like a community.
It feels like a giant digital book club in all of the best ways. All of us share bookish memes, hauls, wishlists, reviews and currently reading posts, and it has been the biggest social media joy for me. I’d already fallen back in love with reading post-academia, but bookstagram has completely cemented my bookish adorations.
Bookstagram began as a place for me to document and keep track of what I was reading. I’d often be asked for recommendations on my main account, but this felt like a great way to easily segment the content. It has since become a place of comfort and friendship: I love chatting to my bookish community on there and gleaning allll of their incredible recommendations. It keeps me accountable, too, and I’m far more motivated to actually pick up my books and read. So, a few tips, if you’re considering becoming a bookstagrammer and starting a bookstagram of your own…
Create a mood
Establishing a niche is always useful when it comes to Instagram. Create a mood by working out two or three content pillars for your feed – this will help the algorithm to work out who you are. For instance, mine are reviews, recommendation stacks and everyday reading commentary. You could even make the photos themselves contain a mood. I like to shoot in three key spots, so that my photos are instantly recognisable.
Additionally, my username itself sets the tone and mood – scrolling through Daisybutter Book Café is like stepping into a cosy, dimly lit bookshop café.
Consider making a preset
Speaking of dimly lit, my bookstagram feed is all washed with a custom preset that I created myself with the Lightroom app. I recommend playing around with the brightness, contrast, luminance and saturation settings – these are all I changed for my booksta preset!
You can purchase one from Etsy, or make your own.
Build recommendation stacks and share your speciality
When it comes to creating the bookish content itself, you’re likely to automatically gravitate towards sharing your ‘currently reading’ book, reviews and standalone flatlays. But I also really love it when accounts share stacks of recommendations with different themes! If you’ve chosen a genre niche, then this will work especially well for you. On my own account, I love to share books about or in the East Asian diaspora, as well as my sci-fi and fantasy or witchy reads. This way, you can really establish yourself as a Reader™ of that genre and become somebody that your community goes to.
Utilise NetGalley and the library
My final note – for this post at least! – is that bookstagram is an accessible way to create, even if you don’t own a tonne of physical copies. It can be intimidating to scroll through your favourite accounts and be faced with a wall (literally) of gorgeous home libraries, but you can still create valuable and meaningful bookish content without them.
I’m a big fan of NetGalley, a place where you can request and review digital advanced reader copies (ARCs) of books for free. Their mantra is everyone has influence, and you can easily sign up for an account. The proofs will be available in Kindle or PDF format, but downloading their covers to your iPad or tablet will allow you to capture the perfect photos. Many of my ARCs are via NetGalley.
Local libraries are also a wonderful tool, as I have waxed lyrical about before. They keep up with the latest releases and our one lets you loan books for three weeks at a time. Perfect for adding to those all-important monthly round-up snaps!
Are you over on bookstagram? Drop your handles below so I can follow you back!
