They are youtubers – most of them between 18 and 30 years old – who focus their videos on book reviews and recommendations . These videos can reach more than a million visits and some of their channels gather hundreds of thousands of subscribers. What is surprising about the phenomenon is that it is attracting a young and connected audience to reading, a generation that publishers were beginning to consider lost.
As is often the case on YouTube, the key to each booktuber's success lies in their personality or innate gift for being in front of a camera. It is not just about recording yourself commenting on a book, but doing it with your own language and original humor.
The best known booktubers are the VlogBrothers, two American brothers who not only comment on books, but who can be considered as inspiring of the trend. His channel was born in 2007, it has almost three million subscribers and they also review movies or comment on historical curiosities.
There are hundreds of booktubers on YouTube, often focused on specific genres and audiences: fantasy, adolescent literature, crime novels and romance are the most common. In some cases, these videos function as a book club in which a new work is proposed each week to read and comment on together.
Two of the most famous Spanish booktubers are Javier Ruescas (120,000 followers) and Sebastián G. Mouret ("The world collector"), with 162,000, who have shared space on some occasions.
Photo: Javier Ruescas
