Is Instagram the new bookshelf for Generation Z?

When the Kindle first launched in November 2007, it was billed as a game changer. Like the iPod before it in 2001, the e-reader was expected to revolutionise the market and herald the extinction of its analogue predecessors. 

The initial response was promising — in the US, the first-ever Kindle sold out in less than six hours — but more than a decade later, it’s experiencing the opposite. Statistics from Nielsen BookScan reveal that sales of physical books are on the rise, with the UK’s print market growing 2.1 per cent in 2018. It marks the sector’s fourth consecutive year of growth, while the Association of American Publishers reports that e-books sales have declined by 3.6 per cent over the same period.

What’s behind this reversal of fortune? Forecasters have cited everything from millennial screen fatigue to concern over the closure of independent bookstores, but there’s another factor at play: Instagram. Since the social media platform’s inception in 2010, the hashtag #Bookstagram has been used over 34 million times. #Kindle appears only 2.5 million times. Scroll through your feed and you’ll see photos of books being held up against stunning backdrops, colour-coordinated bookshelves, reviews of recent releases and — as our echo chambers become smaller still — the same covers appearing time and time again.

The rise of Instagram book clubs
“Kindles have had their moment,” says Jane Curry, owner and managing director of Ventura Press, one of Australia’s leading independent publishers. Although her company’s titles are available as e-books, Curry has seen sales stagnate. “I was never a fan,” she adds. “They’re ugly and the reading experience is transactional.” Most millennials, she believes, enjoy buying beautiful copies from local bookstores and discussing them, either in person or online. “Instagram then influences the curation of literary lists and therefore what we read,” she concludes. This curation often comes in the form of Instagram book clubs, accounts that recommend new titles and encourage debates in their comments sections. From feeds founded by Emma Watson and Reese Witherspoon to communities such as @wellreadblackgirl, they are committed to print books and have gained devoted followings.

One such account is @subwaybookreview, which documents what people read on the New York subway. It was the brainchild of Uli Beutter Cohen, who moved from Portland to the city in 2013 and wanted to connect with people who loved books. Six years later, she has contributors in cities around the world including Berlin, Santiago and Lahore. “Instagram’s changed how we find books and our perception of who’s reading them,” she tells Notably, her photos show people holding physical books. “A lot of teenagers read print books because they know their data isn’t being collected,” she adds. But the aesthetic is crucial, too. “The cover is important,” she agrees. “People tell me they find books one of two ways. Either a friend recommends it, or they love the cover and decide to buy it.” 

Judging a book by its cover
Increasingly, books are appreciated not only for their content but as objects of beauty in their own right. Novelist and bookstore owner Emma Straub described the shift in a article, saying: “Alex Chee’s is a book that people posted pictures of so many times that word-of-mouth became word-of-eye. Not only would someone come in and say, ‘I’ve heard about this book,’ but they’d know what it looked like.” 

Bold designs work best because covers, especially on Instagram and Amazon, are usually viewed in miniature. Curry recognises this new emphasis on design in the publishing world. “Our covers are very much influenced by Instagram,” she says. “In fact, the manuscript for one of our new releases, by Melanie Dimmitt, even came with a mood board and colour palette.”   

Does this mean we’re buying books because we think they’re beautiful and because we’ve seen them on our feeds? Instagram can inspire us, but it can also foster competitiveness and feelings of inadequacy. Last year, a satirical story in was titled, “Don’t have time to read a book? Just pose with them on Instagram”, hinting at the virtue signalling that can come with posting about books, as well as a love of style over substance.

Are Insta novels the future?
If Kindles and simple cover designs are Instagram’s earliest casualties, some fear the novel could be next. In August 2018, the New York Public Library introduced “Insta Novels”, an initiative that allows users to read classic titles such as Lewis Carroll’s on Instagram Stories. “Instagram unknowingly created the perfect bookshelf for this new kind of online novel,” said Corinna Falusi, partner and chief creative officer of Mother New York, the ad agency behind the project. “From the way you turn the pages, to where you rest your thumb while reading, the [Instagram Stories] experience is already unmistakably like reading a paperback novel.”

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In that case, will the return of the paperback prove to be just a phase, ushering in a more digitised era for literature? Beutter Cohen isn’t convinced. “We love holding books in our hands,” she says. “We love underlining sentences that move us. We love handing books to other people and seeing where it takes them. So, no, I don’t think print books will ever go out of fashion.”