Chrissy Ryan at the BookBar

SOCIAL media can help authors rather than leaving potential readers distracted by other things. This is the view of a bookshop owner in Finsbury Park who thinks apps like Instagram and TikTok can help ‘democratise’ the literati world.

Chrissy Ryan has run the BookBar in the Blackstock Road for nearly two years and learned last week that it has been nominated for the “independent bookshop” at the prestigious British Book Awards, run by the Bookseller magazine.

She told the Tribune that customers are now asking for a more diverse range of novels, and that was partly due to social media.

“Instagram and TikTok – there’s a lot to unpick there about how they have democratised book reviewing,” she said. “Young women, and ­anyone really, can take a picture of a book and review it.”

Historically, reviewers had the chance to propel a book to the top of the sales charts but were almost exclusively a circle of white, middle-class, well-educated men.

But Ms Ryan suggested social media means anyone can take up that mantle, reading books that they feel reflect their interests and experiences, and then telling everyone else about them.

The most popular thing to read at the minute is “comedy, I think, comedy potentially aimed more directly at young women,” she said. But then, like, the whole team’s read it and loved it,” said Ms Ryan.

She added that the focus had been on writers like Normal People author Sally Rooney but this was “a very particular educated, white, and middle class experience that is often being written about.”

Ms Ryan said: “Books like Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, or Lustre by Raven Leilani, or Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters show there is a broader lens that’s being written into that in some ways is more exciting than the genre being reported on.

“These books were being written before, but they probably weren’t being given the space, whether they weren’t being published or they weren’t being given reviews, and I just think Instagram has really helped with that. It broadens out what people know is available.”

She added: “The landscape is different, and it’s continuing to evolve and there are many places where it needs to evolve even further. But you know, there is a much more diverse sense of who’s reading and who is being published, and who’s able to see themselves in books and characters, and see their experiences.

“It’s better for our readers, for bookshops, publishing, for our communities and for the world we live in.”

On the award nomination, Ms Ryan said: “It’s such an honour because we work really hard. “The whole team works so hard and we want to make it a really fun and welcoming space. We’re not even open for quite two years, so it’s been a wild ride, and an amazing ride.”