Trabajo Fin de Master

Master Profesorado de Enseñanza Secundaria

Obligatoria y Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanza de
Idiomas.
Especialidad: Inglés.

“BookTube: a tool to promote reading. An

education proposal.”

Alumna: María Ramírez González

Director: Raúl Ruíz Cecilia

Escuela Internacional de Posgrado.

Junio 2019
Abstract: In this study an analysis over BookTube, a literary community inside
YouTube, will be developed in order to investigate whether it is or nor a useful tool to
promote reading. We will explore this community that has a lot of literary content,
exists in many countries and gains more and more followers everyday. Moreover, an
educational proposal for Spain Secondary Education will be developed.

Keywords: literature, BookTube, reading promotion, YouTube, social network, 21th

century, online literary resources, young people, Secondary Education.

Resumen: En el presente estudio se desarrollará un análisis de BookTube, una

comunidad literaria de YouTube, con el propósito de investigar si es una herramienta
útil para la promoción de la lectura. Exploraremos esta comunidad, que cuenta con gran
contenido sobre literatura, que existe en muchísimos países y que gana cada día más
seguidoras/es. Además, se desarrollará una propuesta educativa para los centros de
enseñanzas medias de España.

Palabras clave: literatura, BookTube, promoción de lectura, YouTube, redes sociales,

siglo XXl, recursos literarios online, la juventud, educación secundaria.

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 CONTENTS

1. Introduction and Justification 4

2. Objectives 7

3. Key concepts 9

4. Literature Review 17

5. Methodology 21

6. BookTube 25

6. 1. BookTube’s characterization 25

6. 1. 1. Content division 26

6. 1. 2. Booktubers 28

6. 2. Reading promotion? 30

6. 2. 1. Market relationship 35

7. Education and academic application 37

7. 1. Context 38

7. 2. Proposal 38

7. 3. Books choice 44

7. 6. Differentiation 47

7.7. Evaluation 48

8. Conclusions and limitations 50

9. References 53

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 1. Introduction and Justification

It is widely known that technologies and the Internet have had a great impact on
people’s lives. This is probably the reason why each generation is so different from the
previous one and why the world is changing so fast lately. Technological advances have
also made an impact on reading, readers and the literary world itself. Many changes
have taken place at publishing houses and all over the literary market and this also has
affected the way readers relate among themselves and the way the academia approaches
the reading world.
One of the great impacts of technologies and the Internet has been the
development of BookTube, a totally unknown reading community for the academia that
has grown quite a lot in the past decade and that is an essential for publishing houses’
marketing tools. BookTube, which lies on YouTube, has an important influence on
teenagers and young people. Therefore, it is a really interesting phenomenon and the
fact that it has not been studied from academic spheres makes it even more attractive.
There is a lack of information and academic approach it so it is difficult to study it.
However, this circumstance is actually the main motivation for the present
investigation, that is, I would like to explore BookTube from the academic sphere in my
final master project. Further on I will make an analysis of BookTube in order to get
enough information to conclude whether it can be said to promote reading or not. And I
will also elaborate a proposal to apply BookTube to Secondary Education looking for a
new way of reading promotion.
BookTube has many facets and it exists in many languages and countries
around the world. Indeed, it is a tool used by public and private entities in order to
encourage young people to read. Many readers rely on BookTube when selecting a new
reading and this phenomenon has marked the difference in relation to how the reading
promotion system worked long ago.
Choosing a topic to investigate is not easy when you are finishing a
master at university, and personally, I had several options in mind in relation to gender

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and literature, which is the area of study that I am really interested in. However, in spite
of following a comfortable topic I decided to investigate about BookTube and reading
promotion due to the lack of references and academic projects on this topic.

Before choosing this topic I searched for articles and academic references
in order to get a conceptual basis and be able to write this study. In spite of that, I found
myself really surprised as I could not find many references, although it is a really recent
phenomenon that is mainly consumed by the youth. This fact was one of the factors that
made me investigate about the impact that this online platform can have on teenagers.
As it can be observed in the following graphic, in Spain in the last two years, 74% of
the population between 16 and 24 years old has used YouTube and similar platforms to
watch and share videos. This shows the obvious influence of YouTube on the youth and
their need to use it as a tool in many aspects.

Figure 1, Encuesta sobre Equipamiento y Uso de Tecnologías de Información y

Comunicación en los hogares 2016. http://www.ine.es

Actually, I was one of the pioneering booktubers in Spain and I

experienced its strong influence. I started to record videos promoting reading five years
ago, being the only reader of my high school class who looked for a common space
where sharing my reading interests. I have strong personal connections with this
investigation and this leads me to analyze in a more academic way all those experiences
I have seen during these years. I have found teenagers that did not consider themselves

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readers until they started to follow BookTube and became regular readers. I have met
parents, teachers, ministers, librarians, publishing houses, editors, journalists, etc. They
all have proved me that BookTube is an unknown and amazing tool to promote reading,
and that there is just a need to write and investigate about it. Taking into account the
following quote, it is easy to understand why ‘booktubers’ positive attitude towards
reading help young readers,

Research has repeatedly shown that motivation to read decreases with age,
especially if pupils' attitudes towards reading become less positive… If children do not enjoy
reading when they are young, then they are unlikely to do so when they get older. (McKenna,
Ellsworth & Kear, 1995).

The study of BookTube could also give some light on the promotion of
reading plans at more institutional levels, such as public education. Nowadays,
promoting reading is one of the greatest challenges of the educational plans, teachers
and even students. Creating a strategic reading promotion plan will build a stronger
community inside high schools, as reading is also an important factor when building a
sense of community among young people. Gaining a strong reading community in a
school is a tool of integration as teenagers develop a lot of personal bonds when having
common interests.

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 2. Objectives

The variety of possibilities in this investigation could be boundless, as

there is not much information gathered. If we take into account that BookTube is a big
area inside YouTube that does not just simply involve talking about books, but that it is
also an interdisciplinary phenomenon that deals with many issues in relation to culture
and young people, we would understand that it could be analyzed from many different
points of views.
However, on this occasion all the aspects of BookTube related to reading
promotion will be the central ones of this analysis, and, above all, its superficial
characteristics, its classification and its main faces. This is a first academic approach to
BookTube whose intention is to study the main ideas of the phenomenon while also
trying to open lines of future investigation, because I will directly work with BookTube
videos.
There are objectives that are more relevant and central and others that
will be derived from the investigation itself as a consequence.
In relation to objectives:
-To recount the available material: the first objective coincides with the
first step at any investigation, a recount of the available material. This would lead into
drawing up a line in relation to reading promotion: after a recount of the available
material and having discovered and studied it, a first line in relation to reading
promotion could be drawn up. Studying BookTube contents, its relation with publishing
houses and marketing, its activities outside YouTube, such as conferences and other
reading promotion events, would be necessary to do so.
-To prove whether BookTube is a tool to promote reading or not: an
approximation to BookTube’s tools to promote reading. Also to establish the
relationship between BookTube content and the reading reality nowadays, an approach
to a reading reality of the youth.
-To establish a proposal that applies BookTube in Secondary Education:

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a proposal of BookTube application in Secondary Education, making an approach to
reading promotion in Secondary Education in Spain to see where BookTube could be
placed.

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 3. Key Concepts

In order to understand and write about BookTube as a reading promotion

tool we must also describe its theoretical framework. There are many concepts that
should be understood to carry on with this investigation.
First of all, there is a clear generational leap in relation to technology and
the use of it. Technology and the social media itself are used differently depending on
the generation as each generation has grown with different technological advances. In
the case of the social media, the same effect takes place. Actually, according to
Ramasubbu (2015), social media is another area where there is an age difference. Using
the percentage of adults who use social media (72%), which is not that different from
the youngsters (81%), he explains that there is a difference in the type of social media
applications that is favored. He exposes that youngsters (teens and young adults) seem
more prevalent in social media applications such as Facebook and Twitter, they
dominate Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest while adults are largely passive or semi-
active users of social media.
As I mentioned before, there is a clear gap between the generation to
which the reader belongs and his/her use of technology. This is the reason why I believe
a theoretical framework is needed in order to narrow down the investigation. Thus, the
theoretical framework of this study will be divided in several concepts that are detailed
below.

YouTube

Since BookTube is a section that has its own space inside YouTube and
its own characteristics, it would be interesting to define the latter. YouTube is an online
platform to upload and share videos, and any user even without an account can have
access to and use the website. For this reason, most of the contents of YouTube are
created by amateurs, although there are also professional film makers that manage this

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tool regularly. YouTube is divided by content in different sections, although users can
consume contents from all the different sections. Content goes from wide issues such as
sports, lifestyle, cuisine, literature, culture, cinema…etc. to more specific issues, such as
resolving specific problems or explaining the operating mode of an electrical appliance.
YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in 2005 and
acquired by Google in 2006 for USD $1.65 billion. Nowadays, YouTube is positioned
as one of the most relevant platforms in Google and it has been the most important one
for long time, located at the same level of social media platforms as Facebook. Many
people professionally work at YouTube and it generates income through the positioning
of advertisement at the videos that users upload to their channels. In order to be
renowned at YouTube users have to gain as many subscribers as possible, because
YouTube lets users subscribe to channels so they can follow their content.
According to Lange (2014:233), “posting to YouTube is a choice from
among other video-sharing options, each of which has ramifications on public
negotiation of technical affiliations and identity associations”. Most of the creators of
content of the platform choose YouTube as the easiest and most comfortable way of
creating online videos, and they upload from one to three videos every week in order to
position themselves in the platform. The most renowned ones are the creators who
started to develop a section inside the platform or at least were pioneers in the platform.
Having subscribers is the base to grow and develop a channel.
Subscribers usually translate themselves into “likes”, views and comments in the videos
that a creator generates in their YouTube channel. There is a moment when all that

engagement1 starts to be monetary compensated from the advertisement of their videos

and also from the campaigns that YouTube makes in their videos, advertising products
in relation to their content.

1
Engagement: type of measurement in the social media that usually takes into account likes, comments,
views, sharing and any type of interaction between a content creator and their public.

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 BookTube

BookTube is one of the specific areas inside YouTube dedicated to a type

of content that is narrowed down in order to provide users what they are looking for.
BookTube is a section usually developed by young people, and specifically most of the
creators of this section are from fifteen to thirty years old. BookTube refers to the
specific community inside YouTube that creates literary content, and this area is
dedicated to talk about books and any type of content related to literature. There are a
lot of sections inside BookTube, and different types of videos that promote reading,
create discussion in relation to books and develop a literary community with debates
and a variety of opinions.

There would be a deeper and most detailed definition of BookTube later

on in this investigation, but at this stage it was necessary to give this basic introduction
of the term.

Social media

Defining the social media is not easy as they are changing everyday and
every year statistics modify the perspective that was developed in relation to them. That
is the reason why in this theoretical framework I will use the most current definition.
According to Bryer and Zavatarro (2001:327), “social media are
technologies that facilitate social interaction, make possible collaboration, and enable
deliberation across stakeholders”. These technologies now include blogs, wikis, media
(audio, photo, video, text) sharing tools, networking platforms (including Facebook),
and virtual worlds. Thus, for them, social media are different platforms that make users
interact among them. They are normally used as a way to share part of their lives and to
create specific communities for those who have common interests. Social media is
really important when talking about BookTube, as most of its community uses social
media as a communication channel between them and their subscribers. Readers
nowadays use Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Goodreads as platforms to
share their readings and opinions. Any booktuber must have all those social media in

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order to be in contact with their subscribers. Instagram is a platform just used with
mobile phones as it is an App not designed for computers and its users share photos or
short videos that last 24 hours. In Instagram there is a great integration of the book

community by Bookstagram2, where a lot of booktubers and also bookstagramers share

their readings and opinions about books.

In the case of Twitter, which is a platform used to communicate short

messages called “Tweets” where users can only write 280 characters, the book
community is also integrated. There are many Twitter accounts dedicated to literature
and the book community. In spite of the integration of literature in Twitter, booktubers
have personal accounts in Twitter where they share their lives, not just their reading
interests.
Facebook is also a tool used by the reading community as it has two
different facets: personal accounts and Facebook pages. Although many booktubers
have personal accounts in Facebook completely dedicated to their reading promotion
activity, actually many of them use Facebook pages to share their videos and reading
impressions.
Keeping on with the classification of social media that is related to
BookTube, Goodreads is probably the social platform mostly used by booktubers,
bloggers and all the people that form the reading community. As defined in Wikipedia,
Goodreads is a "social cataloging" website that allows individuals to search its database
of books, annotations, and reviews. It explains that users can sign up and register books
to generate library catalogs and reading lists and that they can also create their own
groups of book suggestions, surveys, polls, blogs, and discussions. Goodreads is the
social platform that was created for readers and that is used just by readers. Its users
have public or private profiles as Facebook with the possibility of adding friends, they
can share their readings, they can review books and even create their own online shelf

2
Bookstagram: A specific community inside Instagram whose profiles are completely dedicated to book
photos or videos. There are not personal implications as creators' identity are never revealed. The
connection between the creators and their followers is purely based on books’ photos and not by their
personal identity.

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with the books they have. Moreover, Goodreads also has the function of creating
debates, groups, challenges… and more functions that make it the most used platform
by readers. According to Furman (2015), Goodreads provides a social experience where
readers can share their thoughts and ideas with others who have read the same book.
Just to finish with the definition of social media, a statistic will be offered to think about
the impact of social media in our world. This is based on the number of active users in
each social media and Goodreads does not appear as it is a very specific social platform
that is not used by billions of users as YouTube or Facebook, which is normal as it deals
with a specific group of interest.

https://www.juancmejia.com/marketing-digital/estadisticas-de-redes-
sociales-usuarios-de-facebook-instagram-linkedin-twitter-whatsapp-y-otros- infografia

Influencers

A very controversial and not yet completely defined concept is that of

“Influencers”. This term is relatively new as this group of people really emerged two

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years ago, most of them coming from YouTube, others from Snapchat and a small part
from Twitter. Although there is not an agreement when defining and limiting what an
Influencer is, the reality is that nowadays Influencers exist, they are very important and
they have a strong impact on society.
The concept Influencer could be defined as that person that developing a
common interest as sports, music, culture, lifestyle, gaming, body positive…etc. creates
an effect on their followers. In other words, Influencers could not be people that
influence their family, students or any person who is next to them. On the contrary, the
influence is developed by social media. In relation to this investigation, the term
Influencers may be introduced in our study, as many booktubers are nowadays also
Influencers. This means that booktubers have an influence on their followers and not
just in relation to books, but also to many other things.

Reading promotion

Reading promotion is the basis of this investigation and it is a really

important concept as on it depends how much reading a society develops. Books and
literature have to be promoted and reading promotion is a very wide exercise.
The promotion of reading could be defined as any action whose function
is to stimulate society to read. It implies many specific actions, such as reading plans for
primary and secondary education, the positioning of books in bookshops and even
common spaces not linked to literature as the underground, squares, public spaces…
with reading campaigns (usually developed and financed by public entities as town halls
or the government itself) and even as BookTube videos.

Graded readers
Graded readers could be defined as books that have been adapted and
simplified so learners of a second language can understand them varying on their level
of the foreign language. They are graded based on their vocabulary, grammar and
number of words. And their grading depends on the level of the learner, so it is easy to
find graded readers for different levels of language. As it is explained by Nation and

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Wang Ming-tzu (1999:356) “Graded readers are books which are specially written or
adapted for second language learners. This involves severely restricting the vocabulary
that can occur, controlling the grammatical structures that can occur, and matching the
length of text to vocabulary and grammar controls”.
Graded readers are commonly used in Secondary Education and
Bachillerato in Spain and in education all around the world. They are a great source for
teaching a second language as part of the reading assessment. And as most of graded
readers are classic books adapted, they are also a good resource as part of the cultural
background of a language, to gain fluency or to learn new structures and vocabulary.

Young Adult Literature

Young Adult Literature can be also named “adolescent” or “teen
literature”. Nilsen, Blasingame, Donelson, & Nilsen (2013:2-3) use the term in
reference to students in junior high and high school, and even those who may have
graduated from high school and “are still finding their way into adult life”. It is a
category inside fiction which public is usually between 12/13 years old and 18 years
old. It is the literature that goes from Middle Grade Literature (for children who are
between 8 years old to 12 years old) to New Adult Literature (which is considered to
between 18 years old and 25 years old). The gap between Middle Grade Literature and
New Adult Literature would be the Young Adult Literature.
There are some scholars who have contributed to define it and there is a
consensus of the characteristics of this new genre.
Young Adult Literature could be characterized as the literature that has
main characters whose ages are between 12 and 18 years old and that deals with
teenagers issues and lives matters. It is a literature that provides a unique adolescent
point of view, that reflects challenges and goals of adolescents with a narrator with their
own perspective. With issues as growing up, making choices for the future, first love
experiences, drugs, family fights and self-knowledge by making mistakes and learning
from them. It is a literature narrated from the point of view of a teenager, with teenager
characters, with hooks, secrecy and surprise and with a deep ideology that could be

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analyzed depending on the author with generally a variety of diversity from the ethnic,
gender and sexuality perspective. It is also characterized by the use of a contemporary
language, usually slang, with a non very complex used of syntax or grammar (Herz &
Gallo, 1996).
Although Young Adult Literature could be defined that way, inside the
genre there are other genres stablished by The National Library as adventure, chick lit,
classics, contemporary fiction, diaries, dystopian, family and relationships, fantasy,
LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender), graphic novels, horror, historical fiction,
humorous stories, mystery, New Zealand authors, poetry, paranormal, romance, science
fiction, short stories, steampunk, and verse novels.

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 4. Literature Review

BookTube is an Internet community based on YouTube which main and

unique content is literature. Further on an analysis on reading promotion and its
potential use for Education would be develop. But before this analysis a literature
review on the issue will be carried out.

This literature review will focus on what the literacy expresses about
BookTube, reading promotion and its connection to education.

BookTube is defined by many academics, a good definition was made by

Hartman (2017): “a community of rabid booklovers who record themselves fervently
effusing about books” and by Scott (2014): “players who are using youTube to create
their own channels of book review”. Following Ehret; Boegel & Manuel-Nekouei
(2018), BookTube is a community that empowers the feeling of online participatory
culture and develops a specific pressure both to creators and consumers that makes
more complicated to understand the platform itself. To take into account in relation to
online participatory culture is the fact that the youth “demand reference points that
enable them to find and select the most interesting titles” and for doing so it is important
“the opinions of their peers” (García-Rodríguez, 2013) and this probably is what creates
strong online communities as BookTube.

Duque (2019) defended that booktubers encourage their viewers to read

with a high success and as Vespa (2018) said: “The influence toward a younger
generation enables publishers to target trend in Young Adult reading for an audience
that looks toward social media for consumer recommendations”. Weels, Ardevol-Abreu
and De-Zúñiga (2017) reported that each year increasingly people change their
behaviors and opinions depending on the influence of online creators, which could lead
us to the idea of the need of investigating reading promotion in relation to BookTube.
However, also Ehret, Boegel & Nekouei (2018) exposed that BookTube is part of the

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neoliberal movement that promotes reading and consumerism, although it is also
permeated by social critique.
There is a clear impact of technologies among young people due to the
unstoppable growth of technologies and, specifically, the Internet. While generations
before the appearance of the Internet had a vision of life that did not pass through
screens and technological devices, nowadays generations’ lives are totally influenced by
those advances that have marked not just those generations but the entire world. This
was explained by Bennet and Robards (2014:1), when they claim that “since the early
1990s the impacts of digital media have increasingly been felt among different parts of
society in both the developed and, progressively, the developing world”.
BookTube is a very recent phenomenon that appeared for the first time in
February 2010. Since then, it has developed year by year, also changing its form.
Nowadays BookTube is a very expanded community that takes form in many languages
and that has representation in many countries. As a matter of fact, it has gained a large
space in YouTube and it is highly valued outside YouTube.
The first booktuber was a Spanish literary blogger and Young Adult
literature writer, Javier Ruescas, from the channel and the blog Javier Ruescas.
Although the first BookTube video was uploaded to the platform by a Spanish creator,
English ones did not stay behind, but when analyzing BookTube Spanish-speaking and
English-speaking communities (as they appeared before the the Portuguese, French and
the rest of them) it is interesting to check the pioneer ones. Thus, a differentiation must
be underlined as although Javier Ruescas was the first booktuber, the English-speaking
community emerged a couple of months later without any direct influence of the
Spanish ones, as those pioneers from different countries did not have any contact
between them and there is not any mark of influence

Ruescas’s experience (2010) is the one that sums up how BookTube

appeared in YouTube as a community for the Spanish speakers. He had the literary blog
commented before (although he also had several ones before as the Twilight official
page or Laura Gallego’s page) with different sections all related to literature (In my

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mailbox3, book’s reviews4 and Book Tags5). It was Ruescas (2010) who decided to

upload a video to YouTube called “Javier Ruescas - 5º Video Blog (Los Juegos del
Hambre)”. This video was uploaded to be linked to one of the entries of his literary blog
and actually that is the reason why the first name that he gave to this video was “Los
juegos del hambre”, which was a review for a section of his blog.
This experience is the one that represents the entire BookTube Spanish-
speaking community, as all the pioneer booktubers were also bloggers who shared their
videos in their blogs. As Ruescas (2010), Esmeralda Verdú (2010), Fa de las palabras de
Fa (2010) , Raiza Revelles (2011) and Josu Diamond (2011) were also pioneers of the
phenomenon in the Spanish community and they were also literary bloggers who
decided to upload videos to YouTube as a complement of their blog. However, in the
Spanish-speaking community the relationship between their BookTube channels and
their literary blogs disappeared around 2013 and BookTube channels gained their own
identity and importance to their creators, getting to be totally independent from the
blogs they were attached to.
However, and as commented before, the Booktube English-speaking
community emerged five months later than the Spanish-speaking one, which appeared
without any influence from the previous one. This is clear when watching the first
English-speaker booktuber –Christine Riccio (2010) from PolandbananasBOOKS–
who uploaded the first BookTube video in English in June 2010. This video is
completely different from the ones that the Spanish-speaking community uploaded as it
is a booktalk about The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, where she employs a different
type of language from Ruescas (2010) in his book review. Moreover, Christine Riccio
does not speak Spanish, which proves that she did not have any connection with

3In my mail box: also known as “IMM”. It was a popular section in literary blogs that consisted on sharing
photos of books that bloggers received from publishing houses or bought each month.
4
Book Reviews: They were (and still are nowadays) sections of literary blogs where bloggers shared their
opinions about a book that they had recently read with technical details of the book itself as the overview,
the characters, the date of publication…

5
Book Tags: specific challenges with questions related to books.

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Spanish- speaking booktubers. Riccio (2010) was the first English-speaking booktuber
but other ones started to upload videos after her, following her lines as Booksandquills
(2011).

Moreover, when trying to attach education to BookTube online proposal

there are not clear experiences that researchers have investigated but Dawn (2019)
stated that students will be inspired to follow BookTube community or even to create
their own channels when bringing the format to formal education. Also Furman (2015)
declared that BookTube could be a high inspiration resource both for teachers and
students which use technologies and engage students by the use of social media.

Although there are academic approaches to BookTube itself and even to

whether it promotes reading or not (few ones, in deed), there are not records of the use
of the platform in schools or high schools except for some specific moments in some
countries. This investigation is motivated by the lack of resources in this area, and
further on there would be an investigation of BookTube and a proposal to apply
BookTube in Secondary Education.

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 5. Methodology

In this project, the methodology that will be used is bibliographical and

documental research and, also, literature review methodology. Both of them have
processes in common and they both have contributed to develop my investigation. So,
being concerned, they will be developed.
The first strategy could be defined as a systematic and sequential process
based on recollecting, selecting, classifying, evaluating and analyzing the content of the
printed, empiric, graphic, physical or virtual material that will be used as theoretical,
conceptual and methodological reference in our investigation. For doing so, there was a
deep research of articles, books, academic publication, videos and documentaries… and
all the sources that were necessary to carry out the investigation.
The information was classified first on useful or not useful based on
outdated or on time. Afterwards, it was evaluated and analyzed in order to use the one
that was focused on the main ideas of this investigation.
The foundation of this technique is an operational strategy where realities
will be observed, using a large variety of references. The technique consists in
investigating, interpreting and presenting the data and information concerning our
subject matter.
It is important to remark that, as in any investigation process, the search
will be bound to the specific objectives of our project, “as they delimit each one of the
operations and procedures that must be carried out to achieve its general objective”6
(Rodríguez, 2013, my translation).
This type of investigation is characterized by the use of documents, its

6
“en tanto que delimitan cada una de las operaciones y procedimientos que deben realizarse para
alcanzar el objetivo general de ésta”.

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gathering, selection, analysis and presentation through a logical and mental process. It
implies an adequate gathering of information that enables us to make a deeper analysis
to rediscover facts, bring up problems, guide ourselves into other investigation
references, look for interesting information and select adequate materials for form a
theoretical framework (Rodríguez, 2013, my translation).
The essential steps to complete a research following Rodriguez (2013)
will be:
1. In relation to our objectives and subject matter, define the type of
necessary bibliographic references and documentaries. For this project monographs,
theoretical approaches to the phenomena, articles, books, documentaries, theses,
conferences or surveys will be used. Furthermore, taking into account the choice of
subject matter, the main reference will be YouTube channels in relation to literature.
2. The second step will be to define our references with the development
of their classification in relation to the function based on our investigation
3. And thirdly, a register of references will be elaborated based on
established regulations of APA that will be alphabetically listed at the end of this
investigation.
The selection criteria of these references, following Rodríguez (2013),
will be three:
− Belonging criteria, based on adaptation of

references according to new knowledge, theories, concepts

and experiences that will be useful to the investigation.
− Exhaustiveness criteria, which means that

references will be, as it has already been said before, as

many as possible, necessary for justifying this investigation.
− Current criteria, which implies that consulted

references have to be up to date in order to assure that they

reflect the latest progress of the discipline. For this project,
due to the limited material, online articles and videos will be
the main source of information. There is also a use of

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 academic references as technical books that deal with the
issue of the Internet and new media at education.

In relation to literature review methodology for scientific and

information management, it could be defined as a methodology prepared to review
bibliographic documentation divided in three main steps that are interrelated. There are
many platforms that can helped to gather and study data but I have not worked with any
of them. As Gómez-Luna, Fernando-Navas, Aponte-Mayor and Betancourt-Buitrago
(2013:159) expose, “The suggested methodology for the bibliographical review can be
applied to any content of investigation to determine the relevance and importance of
itself and to assure the originality of the investigation”7. This is really useful as this
methodology could be used to any kind of investigation.

Following Gómez-Luna, Fernando-Navas, Aponte-Mayor and

Betancourt-Buitrago (2013), the literature review methodology has three steps:

1. Defining the problem: the first step would be to define the central
problem of our investigation. And to do so it is necessary to take into account that our
problem should be linked to a specific item of investigation and it should also have
entity enough to constitute the main corpus of an investigation. When developing this
investigation several central problems were define that can be found in the objectives,
but that can be also summarized as: does BookTube promote reading? How can be
BookTube applied to Secondary Education?

2. Research: for the process of research investigators should have a wide

variety of sources, such as books, magazines, web pages… etc. Sources should be
selected by their relevance in relation to the investigation, which is really important
to make a difference when researching. In this investigation sources were selected by
their intimate relationship with the central problem and their date so they wouldn’t be
outdated.

7
My translation from: “La metodología propuesta para la revisión bibliográfica puede ser aplicada a
cualquier tema de investigación para determinar la relevancia e importancia del mismo y asegurar la
originalidad de una investigación”.

23
 3. Organizing the information: this step is really important for the whole
investigation as the sources should be organized in a systematic way. In this
investigation they are organized with a thematic perspective.

24
 6. BookTube

6. 1. BookTube’s characterization

Approaching how BookTube emerged on YouTube will help us

characterize the movement. It is not easy to characterize BookTube as a whole, but in
general terms it should be considered a literary movement inside YouTube whose
creators are young people that usually are between 15 and 25 years old. It is true that
there are exceptions of people who are below or over that age, but most of the
booktubers comprise those ages.
BookTube is also characterized by the use of an accessible language and
terminology in relation to literature. There are videos with names created by the
community itself but we will see that in the following section. The terminology used by
booktubers is accessible as it is characterized for being simple and of everyday use.
Describing a book as if telling it to a friend makes the public of BookTube feel near and
similar to the booktuber themselves, and this obviously facilitates a comfortable
atmosphere that will make the audience be open to book recommendation.
Readers need to listen and hear things that connect with them. That is
exactly the way booktubers communicate with their followers, that is, using an
accessible language, common expression and simply transmitting what they feel and
think about a book. Talking about feeling is a great characteristic of BookTube:
booktubers do not have filters and they can recommend a book and describe it as the
best reading they have made in years or in the same video, they talk about another
reading giving it the worst mark and not recommending it. This sincerity and honesty is
probably one of the key features of the BookTube community. Booktubers are also

25
amateurs and they feel proud of that. They do not make videos about books as
professional literary critics, and they do not give their opinion as categorically.
However, they consider themselves readers that talk about books as any other reader
could do, which positions them, again, near the rest of readers. Most of them also claim
to be classic readers who love to read in paper instead of ebooks, which seems to be
surprising as they belong to a generation that has grown with technologies and that uses
technologies to share their reading opinions.
This is a very important and curious characteristic about BookTube as
they are expected by the critics to read classic or other genres, but they mostly read
Young Adult literature and most of the books that are published every month
(something that will be discussed below).
There is another characteristic of BookTube, the feeling of community
that booktubers transmit in their videos. BookTube does not simply imply watching
videos online about books, but also to be part of those videos commenting them and
sharing your opinion. BookTube did not just create a platform for readers to record
themselves talking about books, but also a strong reading community where subscribers
of BookTube channels could also comment those videos starting or participating in
discussions where most of the time the booktuber would also take part.

Creating a community where everyone can participate and discuss, where

there is a feeling of support and friendship, is probably the most important characteristic
in order to analyze if BookTube promotes reading.

6. 1. 1. Content division

Using the video as the format to create content always makes it easier for
access and also for creating. Creating videos for YouTube can also be difficult as not
everybody is prepared to transmit their feelings through a camera. Instead of writing in
a blog or a reading platform as Goodreads, booktubers record themselves and upload it
to YouTube. As Bennet and Robards (2014:1) explained, “not surprisingly perhaps,

26
young people have been fast to acquire digital media devices and incorporate them into
their everyday lives”.
The content that is created by booktubers varies from a language-
speaking community to another. The English-speaking community is the one that does
not follow specific sections (although sometimes they follow the classical ones) but that
creates the same type of content as the French, Portuguese or Spanish ones. That is why
a list of sections that booktubers develop seems necessary in order to understand better
the community itself. So the type of videos that are created by BookTube are:

- Book Hauls: it is a common section, usually monthly uploaded to YouTube.

It was based on bloggers’ In my mailbox section explained before. Book Hauls are
long videos (usually around 10 minutes) where booktubers show books they have
bought or received from publishing houses in the last month. It is a kind of video
list where they show a lot of books just and give some general lines about the plot,
quickly moving into the next book they want to share with their public. This
section has been received by the audience as a catalogue of books they can see in
order to read them later if they are interested. For an example see: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT_IaN4uqB0.

- Wrap up: it is also a very popular section, usually uploaded to YouTube every
month. It is as Book Hauls, a long video, where booktubers talk about all the
books they have read in that month. It is a video where the audience can find short
books’ reviews, as in this section booktubers explain their opinions about each
book they read, giving details and at the end deciding whether they recommend it
or not. As mentioned before, booktubers do not consider themselves literary critics
but common readers giving their opinion about the book they read, so Wrap ups
are videos where they express their opinion in a simple way using everyday
language. For an example see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8DCAjeJ2gQ.

- Reviews: this is probably the most characteristic section of BookTube and the

one that has been more expected from booktubers. This type of videos
consists on analyzing just one book during the whole video, giving details of the
book itself and of the booktuber’s opinion about it. For an example see: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EL6QC50wOA.

27
 - Book Tags and Challenges: this section is based on book games, where
booktubers have a series of questions they answer with books. Book Tags
and Challenges vary in the typology of questions and answers: they can be
thematic (as the Coffee Book Tag) or adapted to any kind of situation (as the
Reader Problems Book Tag). In these videos booktubers can recommend (or not)
any book and discuss elements that do not fit in any type of BookTube videos. For
an example seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGdvB7AIR3c.

These could be the four basic videos that every booktuber records for
their channel, but there are more videos that are created by this literary community.
Some of them are specific and recorded just by one booktuber, and others are
commonly uploaded too by most of them as Top 10 books, where they list books
depending on a theme; Recommended books, where they list books they simply
recommend; or any type of video in relation to books and literature.
Recently, booktubers have also started to upload videos to their channels
that are not just about literature but about themselves. And nowadays we find a hybrid
combination of both types of content.

6. 1. 2. Booktubers

Booktubers should also be characterized in order to understand better this

reading phenomenon on the Internet. Booktubers are readers that share their reading on
the Internet; but, specifically, they are readers who love and enjoy reading and who are
able to share this enjoyment with the world. Taking into account Willingham’s words
(2015:232), “If you are a good reader, you’re more likely to enjoy a story because
reading it doesn’t seem like work. That enjoyment means that you have a better attitude
towards reading; that is, you believe that reading is a pleasurable, valuable thing to do”.
This is probably the best way of characterizing booktubers, that is, they are readers that
have always enjoyed reading and that need to transmit the love they feel for books.
Booktubers also started to share their readings as a mechanism of defense from being

28
alone and of feeling part of something. Most famous booktubers claim that they have
felt alone being readers before jumping into YouTube. This could probably explain the
development of the reading community around them, as when creating their BookTube
channels they were looking for reading company, for a community who could share
their reading habits and opinions.
It was also mentioned before that there is no contact between these
communities, as they speak different languages and live in separated parts of the world.
This does not mean that there are not concrete cases of contact between an English
booktuber and, for example, a Portuguese one. But the reality is that there had not been
common physical spaces, like conferences, symposia, etc. in which booktubers from
different languages can meet. What has already taken place are events with booktubers
that share the same language but who live in different countries. There are common
spaces for booktubers from The United Kingdom and The United States of America or
from Spain and South America. It is really interesting to study these common spaces as
there are cultural differences that are overcome in order to share this reading passion.
In order to finish this point of analysis, the most famous booktubers in
the world can be found in the following list, which is organized based on number of
subscribers:
-PolandbananasBOOKS: North American booktuber with 380000
subscribers.

-Abookutopia: North-American booktuber with 366.000 subscribers.

-Las Palabras de Fa: Mexican booktuber with 351000 subscribers.

-Clau Reads Books: Mexican booktuber with 316000 subscribers.

-JesseTheReader: North-American booktuber with 251000 subscribers.

-Katytastic: North-American booktuber with 250000 subscribers.

-Javier Ruescas: Spanish booktuber with 250000 subscribers.

-PeruseProject: North-American booktuber with 230000 subscribers.

29
 -El Coleccionista de Mundos: Spanish booktuber with 220000
subscribers.

-Abriendo Libros: Mexican booktuber with 197000 subscribers.

-Fly Like a Butterfly: Spanish booktuber with 183000 subscribers.

-Little Book Owl: Australian booktuber with 175000 subscribers.

-Booksandquills: British booktuber with 173000 subscribers.

-Josu Diamond: Spanish booktuber with 180000 subscribers.

-Andreo Rowling: Spanish booktuber with 150000 subscribers.

-Ariel Bisset: North-American booktuber with 137000 subscribers.

-Tashapolis: North-American booktuber with 120000 subscribers.

-May R Ayamonte: Spanish booktuber with 120000 subscribers.

-Ben Alderson: British booktuber with 54000 subscribers.

6. 2. Reading promotion?

One of the big problems when talking about BookTube is the question
about reading promotion that the community arises. Should BookTube be considered a
tool to promote reading? Should booktubers be considered part of the movement that
saves the youth and motivates them to read? Do young people read? If so, do they read
for pleasure or as part of the curriculum? These are some of the questions related to this
reading phenomenon.
Taking into account that it is very difficult to get information about
BookTube unless you are part of the community, and that there are not statistics in
relation to it neither reliable sources outside the community itself, the best way of
getting to know whether BookTube promotes reading or not is to directly treat the
audience and the content creators.

30
 Before analyzing which elements would make us think that BookTube
promotes reading, I got statistics from three of the top BookTube channels in Spain so
we can have a general idea of the public whose has been influenced.

Andreo Rowling’s, Josu Diamond’s and May R Ayamonte’s demographic

statistics.

As it can be easily observed, most of the BookTube public are women

between 18 and 24 years old, who are still young but not teenagers anymore. In general
we could say that the BookTube public are women between 13 and 34 years old, as
below and over that age the percentages are minimum. Analyzing the age of the
followers of the BookTube movement, we can also find that it is true that women
between 18 and 24 years old are not as easily influenced as teenagers or children.
However, the MEC8 declared than in Spain, young people between 14 and 25 years old
are the ones who read the most in the whole country, which is a statistics that can help
us understand better this online literary phenomenon.
There are many elements that lead us to think that BookTube does
promote reading and does have an influence on its audience.

8
MEC: Ministerio de Educación de España.

31
 If kids are able to get engaged in reading by the development of book
talks (which are not a specific section of BookTube but it is indeed part of the whole
content that is carried on by this community), why would not young people be also
influenced and get engaged in reading by following and watching booktubers on
YouTube? Let us analyze those elements.
The first thing that needs to be underlined is the fact that BookTube is up
to date, that is, usually booktubers are reading and talking about books that have been
recently published by big publishing houses and that everybody is expecting to read.
The fact that booktubers select readings that are worldwide known (or at least they are
very famous in their countries) also positions them as references for the YouTube
audience. In spite of expecting BookTube audience to be readers, much of it firstly
approach their channels with no interest in reading. It is curious to receive experiences
of booktubers and their audience that show how many followers of BookTube did not
regularly read when they started to follow this type of YouTube channels but did it after
sometime watching them. However, as mentioned before, a key factor on BookTube
influence is the fact that they read commercial books that are up to date.
There are other elements that contribute to generate the idea that
BookTube is able to promote reading, like the fact that booktubers are the same age as
their followers.

The secret behind the success of BookTube stems from the fact that these
vloggers fall into the same, if not similar, demographic to those they aim their videos at. This
means that they are creating visually appealing content that their audience are guaranteed to
enjoy and engage with. (Digital Publishing. 2016).

Thus, booktubers can connect better with their audience than other
subjects that promote reading (as literary critics, teachers, parents, etc.) just because
they have the same age as the people they want to influence and they share experiences
and expectations of life.
Another interesting element to comment is the fact that booktubers use a
channel to communicate with young people that is used by them all the time. The first

32
thing to take into account is that they spend most of their time at home, and as explained
by Sullivan (2009, chapter 8), “we must all —teachers, school administrators and
librarians— acknowledge that children spend more time at home than they do at school.
They are more influenced by the home environment than they are by the school
environment”.
So, taking this reality for granted, young people are, as Sullivan (2009)
exposed, more influenced by the home environment than the school one. BookTube
belongs to the private sphere as although in the public sphere there can be exchanges
between booktubers and their public, the reality is that booktubers record their videos at
home and the audience usually watch them from home.
But, in relation to this and going a little bit further on, booktubers use
Internet and YouTube as medium to communicate and talk about books. This channel is
the one used by young people, as we saw in previous statistics, so booktubers can get to
their target audience more easily and influence them to read more quickly than critics in
newspapers, literary criticism books, TV programs or any other channel that they use.
And this basically happens because the youth do not usually read newspapers, do not
watch TV and do not read literary criticism books. On the contrary, they watch YouTube
and spend hours on the Internet, as was explained by Bennet and Robards (2014:1): “As
a feature of the digital media landscape situated at the centre of young people’s
engagement with different digital media devices, the internet continues to have a
profound effect”.
I will explain below the relationship between BookTube and the
publishing houses, but it is important to comment this relationship as another element
that facilitates the reading promotion in BookTube. As booktubers openly declare that
they receive books from publishing houses and that they get privileged information
from them, it is not difficult to imagine that BookTube’s followers take booktubers as
referents in relation to information of publishers and writers. If a Young Adult literature
(which is the literature consumed by booktubers) reader wants some information about
a book that is going to be published or that has been recently published, they will turn to
any BookTube channel. The fact that BookTube is a reference in the collective

33
imaginary also contributes to its task of reading promotion.
Actually, I have mentioned interaction and engagement in this study
before, but it is important to underline the relevance and impact that the former has on
the BookTube public. As Lange claims (2014:233), “When kids posted a video that
communicated a message, and others responded by posting response videos or text
comments, such moves resulted in interactions”.

This explanation is useful to also understand the importance of

interaction for a community. That is, on the Internet humans can be social, they can be
social on YouTube and indeed, there is a need of being social even at YouTube as
interaction is important for everyone. This interaction exists in BookTube and it is
another element that contributes to its reading promotion because BookTube’s audience
does not just receive passively information and books recommendation; they can also be
part of that community by recommending books in the comments below videos or in the
social media, engaging further with booktubers and their audience.

Indeed, booktubers encourage their public to debate with and between

them. Booktubers usually finish their videos arising debates in relation to the books they
have mentioned before and asking their audience to intervene in those debates
commenting the video, answering to the rest of the audience and interacting between
them. This clearly facilitates the audience’s feeling of belonging of and also affects the
influence of the booktubers over their public.
BookTube was characterized before as a phenomenon whose basis was
accessible language and content so that anybody can participate of the community, and
this is, again, another fact that contributes to the reading promotion.
Finally, although there are many articles that claim that BookTube
promotes reading, it was not until 2017 when Amazon Spain made public a statistics
that proved this. This information has to do with affiliations and income traffic from
other web pages, and it came as a surprise for many, and not so much as a surprise for
others, as they claimed that each time a Spanish booktuber recommended a book its
sales increased 20%, which is a very interesting result. This statistic was published by
Gómez (2017), “Amazon’s numbers assure that a positive review from a booktuber can

34
increase the 20% of a book’s sales”9 .

6. 2. 2. Market relationship

As a tool to promote reading and as a big online phenomenon, BookTube

has also been observed by publishing houses and other public and private entities that
have decided to contact booktubers in order to establish working relationships.
Although booktubers have many videos where they explain the relationship they have
with the market, many critics still arise the question about booktubers being bought by
publishing houses. This is not related to our topic at all, but it would be necessary to
explain that this does not happen between BookTube and publishing houses. However,
there is a clear working relationship between both that will be explained below. The fact
that BookTube is successful as a marketing strategy for publishing houses is
symptomatic, as there is a clear success also in the reading promotion actions that they
develop. According to the Digital Publishing (2016), “The BookTubing community
creates user-generated content which has contributed significantly to the success rate for
the publishing industry in regards to online marketing.” From the moment publishing
houses hire booktubers to give visibility to their books, a clear statement can be made:
BookTube is able to sell books, which deeply means that booktubers promote reading
and encourage the book selling market.
Before analyzing small details of the relationship between BookTube and
publishing houses, this relationship must be explained. Booktubers started
independently and with no interest and expectations in the market. Actually, at the
beginning booktubers were common readers with no followers who bought their books
to review them in their BookTube channels. The truth is that after a couple of years and
when they started to gain a name, publishing houses contacted them and started to send
them books for free. The exchange was based on the idea that booktubers received
books for free and publishing houses received in exchange a public visibility of the

9
My translation from: “Los datos de Amazon aseguran que una crítica positiva de un booktuber pueden
llegar a aumentar el 20% de las ventas de un libro.”

35
books they wanted to position on the market.
Although at first this relationship was not very successful for publishing
houses, they used (and still do) to send books anyway to press, so they had (and still
have) a number of books of every edition that was (and is) set aside to marketing
activities. As Asheley Brekelmans comments (2017), “The growing BookTube
community has become a powerful marketing tool and publishers are beginning to take
notice”.
There is a clear and public image of the relationship between BookTube
and publishing houses. This exchange that takes place between both sides does not
mean that publishing houses expect or ask for good opinions. In fact, most of them
declare that the relationship with booktubers is totally free, which means that
booktubers can receive books and say whatever they think about them. This relationship
also has its limitations, as booktubers cannot give visibility to all the books that are
published every month and they can neither read them all. This obviously makes them
choose between the offers they get, which has a clear consequence: the market is
governed by big publishing houses as Penguin Random House, so that small publishing
houses do not have enough spaces in BookTube, as booktubers prefer to read and work
with big presses that offer them more possibilities. This is just a general idea of the
relationship that BookTube has with the market in order that reveals the importance that
this online phenomenon has even at publishing houses stages, where publishing houses
with Young Adults collections totally depend on booktubers for their big books’
campaigns.

36
 7. Education and academic application

Taking into account that governments are all the time looking for new
strategies to promote reading among the youth, and that even at secondary education
level they still do not know how to promote reading beyond mandatory readings and
exams, BookTube could be, and sometimes is nowadays, a good tool to intervene in
education. For Willingham (2015:20), “We want our kids to read because they have a
positive attitude toward reading, because they find the activity itself rewarding”. In my
opinion this is the main basis of reading: reward. If reading has to be rewarding, forcing
teenagers to read books that do not connect with their personal experiences may not be
the best strategy to encourage reading. Indeed, the main idea behind BookTube is
connecting with the public by showing personal emotions in relation to their readings. If
BookTube is about fun and reward when reading, would not a strategy based on those
ideas be a good one to promote reading at education?
Although this could be just simply an idea to take into account, the
reality is that booktubers professionally work as lecturers for public and private entities.
All around the world, booktubers give lectures at universities, high schools and schools.
Actually, a lot of private entities hire booktubers when they have a cultural event, and
many of them teach at Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) levels, which
clearly proves the importance that they have nowadays in reading promotion.
Could BookTube improve reading promotion actions in the countries
where it is implemented? These experiences have a clear answer: yes. They do it,
indeed. But, can BookTube have more academic applications? As claimed by Furman
(2015:42) “Video book talks are one of the simplest ways to use technology to get kids
engaged in reading. There is a plethora of book talks online (YouTube, Scholastic, and
similar sites) that can be a great source of inspiration both for teachers and students”.
BookTube is still starting to be considered at high academic levels. During the past

37
eight years BookTube has been seen as a phenomenon for teenagers trying to reach
literary critics position, which was totally incorrect. Nowadays, more and more public
entities such as book fairs, universities, high schools, cultural events, etc… hire
booktubers to invigorate readers and young people. However, there is still a big gap in
relation to BookTube and a need to keep on investigating about this phenomenon so that
it can be included at academic levels. My study is just a small approach that tries to
open new investigation paths for future scholars.
In order to develop a purpose for education there will be an analysis
over: proposal, books choice, competences and differentiation.


7.1. Context

Before analyzing a proposal for education applying BookTube, it is

necessary to give a context. This proposal could be really developed in any course of
Secondary Education or Bachillerato as it could be easily adapted but it would be
centered in Secondary Education.
There won’t be a concrete course of ESO as it was said, it could be
adapted. The structure could be applied to any course of ESO changing the content, the
readings and the questions of the activity 3.
It should be necessary to underline that it could be apply to any high
school of Spain in the English subject. This implies that there will be diversity among
students: students with higher levels, lower levels, special needs, even students that
come from foreign countries and neither speak yet Spanish or English. This is the
reason why there is further on a section about differentiation.

7.2 Proposal

For the proposal some initiatives that have already been developed have
been analyzed in order to find a good way to implement it in high schools. Proposals as
the one developed by Fundación Musol in Spain by which booktubers from Spain move

38
around the country and carry out workshop by students and readers, as proposed by
Fundación Musol (2018:102): “Libraries and high schools can work with booktubers to
reinforce their activities of reading promotion, and also to reflect on sustainable
development”10.
First of all, it would be appropriate to look for authors who agree on the
fact that reading could help students to learn a foreign language or even their own
language. As this TFM is prepared for the English language, the following proposal
would be also prepared to be used in the English class taught as a second language. So,
could reading enhance students to learn a foreign language? Based on Hedge (2000)
“Reading has been widely recognized as a complex yet crucial activity for foreign
language learners. Reading written texts extensively helps to enhance the process of the
learners’ language acquisition”. So, this proposal takes for granted that reading is very
important in a foreign language acquisition.
Instead of selecting books for students that they have to read at home for
preparing an exam. Finally, in most of the cases ending as reading summaries online
and memorizing the information, what about trying to debate about books and making
fun of reading?
Whether in the English subject at high schools or in any other subjects
where students have to read books, it is not hard to find how students pass books exams.
When they are tested by trying to know if they have read the book carrying questions
that ask for detailed information instead of common sense or opinion, students don’t see
the point in reading those books. This can be clearly counter-productive because at the
end students don’t like reading. This is based on Gallagher (2009:6) who created the
word Readicide defined as: “the systematic killing of the love of reading, often
exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools”. Also on Allington
(2009:6), “… In which lessons are focused primarily on improving reading tests
scores… it11 demonstrated no improvement in actual reading achievement and instead

10My own translation from: “Desde las bibliotecas e institutos se puede trabajar con los y las booktubers
para reforzar sus actividades de fomento de lectura, así como para reflexionar sobre el desarrollo
sostenible”.
11
My inclusion to have a coherent paragraph.

39
show a disturbing potential for fostering readicide”. They both concluded that reading
tests just simply kill students’ motivation towards reading. Maybe teachers should also
question how to mark a reading exam with a grade that is variable between a zero and a
ten or between an A and an F or any other rubric for evaluation. If we teach our students
that reading a book consists on a mark and not on a “you have read the book” or “you
have not read the book” then maybe we do not promote reading but meritocracy. Who
can decide that some gets a six from ten if they have read the book? In many high
schools the way to approach reading in Spain is based on this method.
Looking for a new way to approach reading promotion to students there
are many that can be used as preparing a theatre with students, doing a quiz about a
book they have read, writing their own endings for books or even writing poetry. Any
approach on reading promotion could be used in schools just adapting it for the subject
content and reading can be approached from many different perspectives.
This proposal, as I said before, is based on other experiences that have
been carried out in high schools using BookTube which is the basis of this TFM.
The main idea will be preparing a Book Club and introducing new
technologies that can develop several skills and competences (which will be detailed
further on). The unit of work for a day session will be the following one:

Lesson Name: Becoming a Booktuber. Course: any of ESO Time

Objectives • To produce a book review.
• To understand general vocabulary in relation to literature.
• To exchange opinions about their readings.
Pre-task / • Speaking and Listening: to start talking in circles about 10’
warm-up the book each of them should have read for the session.
activities

40
 Main • Listening: to introduce what is BookTube and how its 10’
activities content work. Watching a book review or a Book Tag.
• Speaking: to talk in a video answering the questions the 30’
teacher has prepared for the video talk.

Post task • Listening: to watch all the videos that have been recorded 10’
activities in that session and evaluating their classmates.
Differentiatio • Support students with special need with an adapted activity.
n • The workshop will be developed with the group as a whole.
Content • Production and understanding of oral communication.
• General comprehension of written texts.
• Production and understanding of expressions such as: statements,
exclamations, negations, existence (such as for example there could
be in high levels), quantity, degree, and interrogations
• Understanding and use of general vocabulary in relation to
literature, words as: character, book, cover, summary, environment,
dialogue, author, chapter, biography, science-fiction, fantasy,
romance, comedy, classic adaptation, outcome, style, genre, novel,
protagonist, antagonist, trilogy, saga
• Production and understanding of modality (in higher levels) and
simple tenses both in present and past.
Materials
• Camera for recording, computer and projector to see the videos.

Competences • Linguistic competence: Oral communication, written

communication vocabulary (in relation to literature), grammar.
• Cultural awareness: literature and culture.
• Social and civic competence: respect to other opinions and
reading promotion.
Assessment • Observation of participation and corresponding ‘positive’ scores
• Correction and feedback from the teacher.
Observations Depending on the time it takes, it is possible that this session may continue
(if any) into the next class.

When reading these sessions many doubts can be raised: how can
students communicate in English in such a high level needed for a book review? How
can they know the vocabulary or grammar needed? This is a basic proposal very

41
schematic just to see a general idea. All those issues will be developed further on.
First of all, a developing the proposal. The idea of this proposal is to let
students read the book in English during a couple of weeks as it is usually done in high
schools. If there is time in some classes, even to comment how their readings are going
and if they need some help with comprehension. Moreover, during the unit of work that
the reading is being carried on, the teacher should be working with their students on
literary vocabulary and cultural facts. Also, students should know before developing the
activity what is going to be done in class so they can prepare several ideas for their
videos.
Activity 1
This activity would be de pre-task warming up for the session. It would
be carried out during ten minutes to create an atmosphere before developing the main
activities.
The session should be presented as a book club for the class. Letting
them know the idea that reading can be fun and that there are many strategies to see
whether students have read a book or not
This activity would be developed with the whole class in a circle, talking
about the readings they have done before the session. The teacher should ask them
question in relation to their opinions, whether they have finished their books or not,
even a summary if there is time enough. The idea is to give all of them an opportunity to
say something in relation to the books.

Activity 2
This activity of ten minutes consists on introducing what is BookTube
and how it content works. The teacher should prepare some information about
BookTube before the class and bring all the material that is necessary for the session.
Students can remain in a circle while the teacher explains all the information. After a
short introduction, a Book Tag from a booktuber selected by the teacher can be watched
so students can have a general idea of how the community works and how the third
activity would be developed.

42
 Giving an introduction of what is BookTube could be really helpful for
several reasons. First of all, as it is said before in this TFM, it is proved that BookTube
promotes reading for many reasons, and showing them what is BookTube and watching
some videos will probably raise their interest on the activity. Students as any teenagers
watch YouTube, they are probably more used to the platform that even teachers
themselves and seeing that there are “famous youtubers” that love reading and that have
thousands of followers just because they talk about reading could be a good motivation
for the activity.
Examples of videos that can be watched in class, they could be subtitled
by the teacher if necessary before the session. They are shorts enough not to take a lot
of time and that are easy to understand in English for students levels:
·Rapid Fire Book Tag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx4LehsoVes
or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-46EzDWdSY
·The elements Book Tag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdaVBrZ-
Mck&frags=pl%2Cwn

Activity 3
This activity would consists on recording a video answering questions
that the teacher would have prepared before.
Further on, recording a video could be very easy or very hard. Probably
many students wouldn’t want to record the video itself so giving the possibility of
recording it or not, could be a good idea. So students that don’t want to record the
video, can just answer the teacher’s question without been recorded but as if they would
be, so they can act as booktubers and speak about the book that they have read.
The video can be recorded in pairs or individually, it depends on the
teacher choice. Doing the activity in pairs would promote good relationships between
students and would make them work together creating a good atmosphere. But it can be
adapted to the teacher’s choice.
In relation to grammar, this activity can be adapted to lower levels and to
higher levels as the content of the video. It could be a video with basic questions that

43
just needs for some general ideas or with complex questions when dealing with higher
levels. The fact is that it depends on the teacher.
Which questions can be asked for the video? Many. Teachers can ask
whatever they want and prepare any format for the video talk. This investigation based
on other experiences propose two formats. One of them, asking them to make a
summary, present the book and the other and giving a detailed opinion. This way is for
higher levels as students of lower levels are probably not ready for speaking for a long
time in English. The other one would be to prepare a Book Tag about their book.
Teachers can prepare questions in relation to their readings, questions in relation to the
plot, the character, their opinion or any other fact and see how students answer them.
For example, if we are dealing with The Treasure Island (or any graded
reader) the question could be as:
1) Surprise: did this novel surprise you? In which part?
2) Love: did you like the story? Why?
3) Hate: which character should have died?
4) Adventure: what would you do if you have found a treasure?
5) Fantasy: imagine you can change the ending of the book, what will
happen in your new ending?

Activity 4
This activity is the post-task to consolidate the ideas that students have
developed during the session so it would consist on watching the videos in case that
they have been recorded or on discussing how they have seen their classmates.

7.3. Books choice

Books choice is obviously not an easy one. Meanwhile there are some
high schools in where the books to be read by students are selected by the department
and some new teachers have nothing to do or change in that decision, there are some
other high schools where teachers should be part of that decision. So taking the situation

44
where the teacher who is going to implement this proposal has to choose which book or
books students have to read the following ideas will be developed.
First of all, the debate around graded readers. There are two main
positions in relation to this debate.
One of them is to choose graded readers when dealing with students as
they are books that are already prepared for them (Bamford, 1984; Wodinsky & Nation,
1988; Hafiz & Tudor, 1990; Nation & Wang Ming-tzu, 1999). Graded readers have the
great benefits of being already worked by a professional team of people who are
specialized in levels of the English language when it is taught in high schools.

Their purpose was to confer greater facility in the use of vocabulary already
gained, to give the child a sense of achievement and a taste of the pleasure to be derived from
his accomplishment… (West, 1955:45)

So the teacher doesn’t have to be worried about the level of the book and
to be adapting other stories or even creating glossaries as many graded readers already
have glossaries and even extra activities for them to work on the book. Teachers don’t
have to be concerned whether those books are ready to be read by their students.
Another benefit that could be underlined is the fact that teachers don’t have to read a lot
of books every year that their students select, if students are given graded readers it is
likely that the teacher has already read them.
But graded readers can also have their disadvantages as students don’t
have a wide range of books they can read. Moreover, most of the graded readers are
classic books that are part of the cultural heritage of the second language students are
learning. Which is also an advantage of graded readers, opening a cultural awareness of
the English language. But it can also be seen by them as a disadvantage of the book as
they usually reject at those ages reading classics and prefer to read contemporary
novels. In fact, the difficulties for teenagers to read classic literature have been
discussed by many experts, Stover (2003:77) explained the gap between high school
readers and books assigned in the curriculum. Causes for this gap include “lack [of]
appropriate skills, motivation, time, interest, or trust in the education system; or they

45
just might not like school, the teacher, or the way a textbook makes them feel
inconsequential and dumb”. As for example he analyzed Romeo and Juliet (2003:78):
“For example, without adequate knowledge of the setting of Shakespeare’s 19th Romeo
and Juliet, with its masques, arranged marriages, and class hierarchy, many details of
the storyline may be confusing and frustrating”.
The other main position in this debate is usually selecting books that are
not graded readers. Which also has its advantages and disadvantages. Selecting books
that are not graded readers opens a possibility of reading it without a first rejection.
They watch contemporary series and movies, they generally read Young Adult
Literature, so they are going to easily connect with the book and be interested in the
activity that is going to be developed in class. They could freely choose which book
they want to read.

Although the choice to participate in a book club is important, the freedom to

select books read by book club members is central to success. It is important that students at all
ranges of reading ability be given the opportunity to select book that stimulate their inrerest
based on their own personal criteria. Choice in text selection empowers readers and thereby
promotes literacy development. (Whittingham and Huffman (2009:1)

So it would be very motivating for them to choose the books they want to
read. However, selecting books that are not graded readers can present more
disadvantages than advantages. If the teacher gives students the possibility to choose the
book they want to read for the subject, how can a teacher know whether the book is
adapted for their level or nor? Or how can the teacher know if they have read the book
they have selected? Giving them the opportunity to choose give them autonomy and
engage them more with the activity, but it is impossible for a teacher to read at least 25
books for just one class or even to have a look and see the level of the book they have
selected. If they choose, then there would be plenty of books prepared for the activity,
which would be from my perspective the best idea but not the most useful in terms of
time and possibilities.
Secondly, which graded readers or books should the teacher select to

46
develop this initiative? There are many books teachers can select but a good idea would
be to match the initiative with an education based on human values so for a debate a
book that promotes those values and make them reflect on issues as the climate change,
gender, diversity… would be a good book to implement this proposal.
Examples of graded readers:
-1st of ESO: The Phantom of the Opera. Jennifer Basset. Level 1. Oxford
Bookworms Library. 2016
-2nd of ESO: The Canterville Ghost. Oscar Wilde. Level 2. Burlington
Books. 2009.
-3rd of ESO: The Picture of Dorian Gray. Oscar Wilde. Level 3.
Burlington Books. 2005.
-4th of ESO: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Robert Louis Stevenson. Level 4.
Oxford University Press. 2016.
-1st of Bachillerato: The Importance of Being Earnest. Oscar Wilde.
McMillan Readers Upper Intermediate. 2010.
-2nd of Bachillerato: Agnes Grey. Anne Brontë. MacMillan Readers
Upper. 2015.

7.4. Differentiation

Also when developing the proposal another question can be brought, how
can it be adapted to diversity? It depends on which diversity is found in a class.
Diversity is a wide concept that can vary from students who don’t speak the language of
country because they have just moved and they are having an adapted curriculum to
learn the language for example in an ATAL12 class, to students with special need that
can come in very different ways and manners. So depending on which diversity the
student has, the teacher could adapt the activity.
As an example, when dealing with students that are able because of their
skills to read a book but not to talk in public, maybe this activity can be recorded in

12
ATAL: Aulas temporales de adaptación lingüística.

47
private with the teacher or just ask them to prepare their scheme of what they would
have said in the video with not forcing them to record it. So many solutions can be
developed depending on the student diversity and special needs.
With students that are not able to read, another strategy of reading
promotion could be developed, maybe preparing a theatre with them or debating about
key issues in relation to literature.
Also, controlling the class and students is important when dealing with
differentiation and diversity. The teacher must be paying attention to students with
special needs at the same time that he/she is working with the rest of the class.
Motorizing the class is an important action to help students with special needs and if
some of them is lost, the best thing would be to approach them and resolve their doubts
so they can feel comfortable in the class.

7.5. Evaluation

As any proposal, this proposal should also have an evaluation program.

There would be a differentiation between the evaluation of students themselves and the
evaluation of the proposal.
Dealing with student’s evaluation there could be a rubric, but several
facts were important when deciding not to develop a rubric. When talking in public
about a book and even discussing it before as a book club is very easy to see who has
read the book and who hasn’t. Teachers would easily see who has done the task and
who has not. As it was said before, maybe the best idea is not to mark and evaluate with
a graduated mark as it could make them reject reading itself. So maybe a good way of
marking the activity could be with a simply 1 or 0, taking into account that 1 means that
they have read the book and 0 that the have not.
It is also an oral activity and requires of the oral competence. It could be
discussed whether it should be also marked as an oral exam. It is probably not a good
idea to mix reading promotion with marks of oral or listening assessment. Although it is
logic to think that is activity could also be used as part of an oral exam, even marking

48
the reading apart from the oral mark so it would not be mixed for students and so their
oral skill do not make lower or higher their mark on the reading activity itself; it is
probably not a good idea to do it. One of the main ideas of this proposal is that students
just find reading fun and rewarding for themselves not as part of other types of activity
that give them mark for their competences as the basis of this proposal is to develop a
way of reading promotion for the English subject. Maybe mixing their marks for
competences with the activity would make them reject the activity and, again, reading
itself.
Giving the rest of the class the power also to decide whether their
classmates have read the book or not can make them pay attention to the activity itself.
The teacher would be the one to decide is they have read the book but contrasting their
opinion with the students’ one in front of them could be a good way go giving them
autonomy and power in the class so they can be part of it because as it was said by Deci
and Ryan (1985, 2000): “satisfying leaner’s psychological needs for autonomy,
competence and relatedness would motivate them to regulate their learning behavior
positively to achieve their goals”.
And, finally, when dealing with evaluating the proposal, it would be
interesting to evaluate whether had a good impact or not on student’s reading habits by
observation in time. Implementing this proposal during a year, having at least one
reading per term, could be enough so at the end of the course the teacher could see if
students have found the activity and their reading rewarding.
Having in mind that the main purpose of this proposal is to promote
reading in the English class, it could be useful to wait until the end of the year and ask
students how they have felt meanwhile the teacher have realized if they have improved
in the activities and have changed some of their reading habits.

49
 8. Conclusions and limitations

After all that has been mentioned in this project, we should review if the
objectives of this investigation have been achieved. My main objective was to study the
BookTube phenomenon by means of reviewing all the available and reliable material in
relation to it, which I believe has been done successfully, although with some difficulty.
This material has also been classified in order to use the one that was really useful and
that gave some lights about the lack of information of the phenomenon.
An analysis and characterization of the youth’s reading habits in relation
to BookTube have also taken place. This was a clear objective of this investigation as
there are not academic approaches to this characterization, and this is basic in order to
study whether BookTube promotes reading or not.
Also, an analysis of BookTube as reading promotion tool has also been
done. There cannot be a clear statement in relation to its reading promotion as there is
not enough information to be categorical, but at least some light has been given to the
issue.
Finally, this investigation also wanted to prepare a proposal for
Secondary Education and Bachillerato that could be apply in Spain in order to promote
reading using BookTube and all the tools this community could give a teacher. This
objective was also achieved probably with less difficulties as there are some projects
around the country that are being carried out that have helped to develop this proposal.
Similarly, I would also like to comment in this final section of my study
all the limitations I have had when carrying on this investigation.
The first and the most difficult limitation to overcome has been the lack
of information available in relation to BookTube. There is information on the Internet
but it was difficult to find reliable bibliography, as anyone can write something to be
found on the Internet from blogs to Wikipedia. Moreover, when looking for information

50
in relation to BookTube at academic levels, as universities’ libraries, there is no much
information available. As mentioned before, there are few academic approaches to
BookTube and not finding information at public libraries in relation to BookTube
almost forced me to leave this study and change the topic of my project. It was really
hard to find statistics, theoretical approaches to the phenomenon and reliable
experiences that would help the general framework of this investigation to be more
solid. Although the truth is that while I was carrying my investigation, I received several
mails to my professional mail from investigators of Spain from Madrid and Barcelona
that wanted me to answer several questions as they were at that moment investigating
BookTube for their thesis or even some articles they were preparing to publish. So at the
same time I was writing this TFM there were people doing things related to my
investigation. I tried to reach them to see whether they have found academic
approaches, but all their experiences were very similar to mine and they wanted to start
a path on this issue as me.
Furthermore, looking for information about reading promotion was also
difficult. Most of the academic books and articles that I found were really outdated, and
I spent hours and hours looking for reading promotion strategies that had something to
do with BookTube characteristics, but everyday I came back home with nothing in my
hands. It is understandable that there is almost no approach to reading promotion
actions that were based on the Internet and technologies, as it is a really new
phenomenon, but my expectations were the opposite when I started to carry out this
investigation.
There were more limitations when carrying on this investigation, such as
the impossibility to contact English-speaking booktubers because they live in other
countries, they do not have time to answer emails as they receive dozens of them each
day and they do not really have close contact with Spanish-speaking ones. Getting
information from Spanish-speaking booktubers was really easy, as I am one of the them
and I have professional relationships with all the BookTube Spanish-speaking
community. Carrying on this investigation with no direct contact with English-speaking
booktubers was also difficult as all the information that I got was through English and

51
North American publishing houses, apart from the Internet, articles and videos.
In spite of having a lot of limitations, we can conclude that BookTube is
a solid literary phenomenon whose basis is the youth and it has all the necessary tools to
promote reading and also that BookTube could be consider another tool more to
promote reading in Education. Deeper investigations should be carried out on counting
with statistics from governments, bookshops and publishing houses to keep going
deeper in this issue, but this investigation is open to contribute to offer a preliminary
academic approach to BookTube.

52
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