Ten Years On, We're Still Learning How to Work with Book Creators

In 2016, when Bruno Mendes and I started Coisa de Livreiro, one thing kept striking us: there were already plenty of people making excellent content about books online, yet hardly anyone seemed to see it as work. It was the era of BookTube and longer YouTube videos, when creators would write scripts, film, edit, choose soundtracks, and spend hours putting together a piece about a book. Quite often, all that effort was rewarded with a complimentary copy from the publisher.

The contrast with other industries was hard to miss. Fashion, beauty, sports, and entertainment were already beginning to treat digital influence as a profession. Brands were investing in creators and recognizing the commercial value of the relationships they had built with their audiences. In publishing, meanwhile, there was still a reluctance to see those videos as anything more than spontaneous expressions of a love of books. But they helped people discover stories, sparked interest, and could influence buying decisions.

That was what led us to try to build a bridge between creators and the book industry. We wanted to show that their content had value, both because their recommendations helped books reach readers and because of the work that went into every post or video. It wasn't about turning every conversation about reading into a commercial opportunity. It was about recognizing the difference between someone casually sharing an opinion and someone investing time, knowledge, and resources in producing professional-quality content.

I found myself thinking about that experience again last week, at the launch in São Paulo of Brazil's first Mapping of Literary Content Creators, an initiative by Estante Virtual in partnership with researchers Gabriel Mattos, from the University of São Paulo (USP), and Bruna Paiva, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Ten years later, I was once again part of a conversation about the role of creators in publishing, only this time we had more data to help us understand who they are, how they work, and the challenges they face.

The survey gathered 543 valid responses and brought some interesting insights into the people creating book-related content in Brazil. Because it was not based on a probability sample, its findings cannot be treated as statistically representative of all Brazilian creators. Still, it gives us a first structured look at an activity that has grown enormously over the past decade.

One thing that always catches my attention is how this world keeps renewing itself. Nearly half of respondents started creating content less than two years ago. Despite all the changes in social media, new people are still joining in and finding their own ways to talk about books. The respondents are also predominantly women, with high levels of education and interests that go well beyond the familiar image of someone filming a video about the latest releases.

But the finding that took me straight back to 2016 was about money—or, more precisely, the lack of it. Among respondents, 58.9% said they earn nothing from creating content, while 30.2% make some supplementary income and just 5% rely on it as their main source of income. At the same time, 86.7% publish at least once a week. That's a remarkable level of commitment for work that, in many cases, still goes unpaid.

It's striking that, ten years on, we're still talking about something that bothered us back then. The platforms have changed, the formats have changed, the pace of production has changed, and so has the way books gain visibility. Yet the difficulty of recognizing creators' work financially is still with us. That doesn't mean there hasn't been progress. There are now paid partnerships, structured campaigns, and creators who have built careers doing this (Bookster was featured on the cover of Veja São Paulo this week). But the survey suggests that these opportunities are still out of reach for most people making literary content.

Of course, not everyone wants to turn their interest in books into a career. Plenty of people start talking about what they're reading simply because they love books and want to share that experience with others. That's a wonderful thing, and part of what makes this world so rich. The problem comes when the industry increasingly builds creators into its marketing plans while continuing to treat their deliverables as though they were just an extension of a hobby they started for fun.

I'm not suggesting that every book recommendation should be paid for, or that publishers should turn every relationship with readers into a commercial negotiation. But there's a world of difference between someone spontaneously posting about a book they enjoyed and a company asking for a specific deliverable, with a deadline, format, brief, and expected results. In the second case, we're talking about work, and work deserves recognition and payment.

Another number I found particularly interesting is that nearly 70% of respondents have no more than 10,000 followers. For years, the influencer industry has trained us to look at audience size first, as though it were the main measure of relevance. But the world of books works a little differently. Someone who knows Brazilian contemporary fiction, historical novels, or fantasy inside out might have a relatively small community and still be an important voice for those readers.

That doesn't mean having fewer followers is automatically better, or that a smaller audience will necessarily buy more books. It simply means we may be asking the wrong question when we start a conversation with a creator by asking how many people they reach, before trying to understand who those people are and why they pay attention.

And this matters even more when we remember that publishing doesn't revolve solely around new releases. A book can find its audience years after publication, return to the conversation because of an adaptation or a cultural trend, or simply get a second life because someone happens to talk about it at the right moment. Creators help keep those stories circulating, often connecting books with readers a traditional campaign would struggle to reach. In a market with so many titles, genres, and different interests, that power of discovery is enormously valuable.

Looking back, we've come a long way since 2016. Today, nobody needs to give a presentation to convince a publisher that book creators exist and can make a difference. They're part of campaigns, events, book fairs, launch conversations, and increasingly the decisions about how a book is introduced to its audience. But the survey also shows that bringing creators into the conversation hasn't solved everything. We've learned to recognize their influence without necessarily learning how to build financial relationships that reflect it.

Maybe that's exactly the conversation we need to have now. Rather than focusing only on the next BookTok trend, whichever format is performing best, or who gained the most followers last month, we should spend more time understanding how creators work, what they want from this activity, and how publishers, bookstores, and platforms can build relationships with them that work better for everyone.

When Bruno and I started that project ten years ago, we wanted to show that those carefully made videos were more than a pastime. There was value both in the ability to recommend books and in the work of the people making the recommendations. Looking at the survey results today, I can see how far we've come, but also how some of the same questions have stayed with us.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that we no longer need to convince the industry that book creators have influence. The challenge now is to turn that recognition into fairer relationships, so that those who want to make a profession out of it have a real chance to keep creating.

I hope that, as the research continues year after year, we'll be able to look at the numbers and see that we've made progress on that front, too.