The Inspiration

Booksellers, writers, and readers have increasingly relied on social media since its advent, offering wider reach than ever before. But when TikTok briefly went down in the United States in January 2025, it exposed both how much readers rely on social media for discovery, and how much publishing relies on it for marketing and trend analysis.

This didn’t start from nowhere: amid factors like workplace downsizing, the rise of gig work economies, and the loss of physical institutions like local bookstores and libraries, social media stepped up to take over the roles these spaces performed for book publishing. But the unsustainable nature of this relationship should be a driving motivator to come up with some solution to address this issue, leading me to ideate and develop Bookmarkd.