BookTok Creator Opens Indie Author Only Bookstore

Inspired and funded by her “BookTok” community on social media, an online bookstore owner has opened a brick-and-mortar bookstore dedicated to supporting indie authors. 

Katelyn Matusky opened her bookstore, The Book Nook, in Warren, OH, earlier this month. But just a few years ago, she didn’t work anywhere near the publishing space. As a respiratory therapist and single mom with four kids at home, she said books had always rather been a personal escape for her than a business idea.

“ Books were always my way out,” Matusky told Printed Word Reviews in a phone call. “At the end of the night, to shut out the world, I would always just read to empty my brain.” 

So, two years ago, she started a TikTok account, KMChaosBookReads, where she would post reviews and thoughts about the books she was reading. She focused heavily on indie authors. 

“ I’ve always wanted to support small authors, and I like that self-published books are not changed at all,” she said. “Trad-published books, the publishers can change whatever they want about the books when they publish them, so it’s not what the author authentically wrote. You don’t get as much of the emotion and the rawness of the books in traditionally published books as you do with indie books.”

As she continued posting her ideas, more people followed her, and more authors reached out to her to ask if she would review their work. Matusky soon grew her following to nearly 15,000 people as a “BookTok” creator. 

BookTok is a popular subsect of social media, where authors promote new work and readers give reviews and book recommendations. It’s a driving force in the resurgence of reading as a hobby for young people, and as of last year, it had garnered 370 billion views worldwide. That community support was a big part of Matusky’s decision to open an indie-author-only online bookstore in March of this year. But the operation quickly outgrew her home. 

“I don’t tell any indie author no,” she said. “Because of my following on TikTok, I had so many authors who wanted to support me, which is fabulous, that I needed a storefront.”

Matusky opened her physical store just three months later. She said her biggest challenge, like with many small businesses, had been funding—but her online community had come through there, too. 

“ My only help was through my GoFundMe from my TikTok supporters and Facebook supporters,” she said. “Literally, authors and readers are who helped me with money to get my store up and running.”

Matusky hopes to eventually turn The Book Nook into a coffee-shop-bookstore combo, but right now, she’s busy laying the groundwork. She said she had assembled bookshelves and painted the store herself. She’s still pursuing content creation, too. She will attend an indie book convention in Cincinnati, OH, in August as an influencer, and host a book fair in the town square at home in Warren soon after. 

“I have found a lot of friends through [BookTok],” Matusky said. “ I’ve had local authors who I had met through BookTok, and now, we’re friends and do other stuff together. We’ve helped people get covers done for their books or audio done for their books, and it’s just such a good little community of people who have connections. I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s wonderful.”