“Bookfluencer” Willbrand: TikTok celebrity at 83

He talks about Kafka, Proust, Tolstoy – and hundreds of thousands of people watch him on Instagram and TikTok. Klaus Willbrand has become famous there in a very short time. And at the age of 83, he is shaking up “BookTok”.

Klaus Willbrand sits surrounded by books in his antiquarian bookshop in Cologne. They are stacked on the shelves up to the ceiling. He has read many of them himself. This is appreciated by his almost 150,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok. The 83-year-old has been posting there regularly for a few months. “He is the only one on social media whose opinion on books interests me,” writes one user. But the whole thing was never actually planned that way.

Klaus Willbrand has been running his modest antiquarian bookshop for 20 years. He lives and breathes literature: as a young man he once took a three-year break just to read, he says. Three years ago he met the editor Daria Razumovych at a book flea market.

The two are 50 years apart, but they hit it off right away. The 32-year-old quickly suggested that he become active on social media, but Willbrand rejected the first suggestion: “It seemed so absurd to me,” he says, “83 years old and on TikTok. I thought people just watch silly things.”

Videos go viral

But then his shop started doing worse and worse. At the beginning of the year, it was no longer doing well: there were hardly any customers. “It never did particularly well. But the pandemic made it catastrophic,” says the antique dealer. The shop was supposed to close. And Klaus Willbrand had nothing left to lose. Daria Razumovych recorded the first TikTok. She was sure: This could work. “But I didn’t think it would be so big,” says the 32-year-old, who works as a social media consultant.

The first video went viral and has over 100,000 views to date. Some others have millions – like one with the title “Must Reads for Young People”. She asks, he answers. Most of the time it’s book recommendations, but now there are also the most important private questions from the community: for example, when and where Klaus Willbrand reads or which authors he would have liked to have known personally.

“BookTok” as an opportunity for booksellers

Klaus Willbrand became a “bookfluencer” overnight. There are a few of them on social media, because books have long played a major role, especially on TikTok. The book community on the platform is called “BookTok”. And what is recommended there sells.

Thomas Koch from the German Publishers and Booksellers Association also confirmed this: “Around a third of young people find out about new books via social media channels.” Among 16 to 19-year-olds, the figure is as high as 38 percent, Koch continued. “BookTok is also a serious and exciting trend for the book industry and shows that it is important that people encounter books where they are.”

What is trending online also sells in bookstores: In addition to bestseller stickers, “Recommended by BookTok” stickers are now often stuck on new releases. Or there are entire shelves full of titles that are currently trending online. For bookstores, this offers the opportunity to get young customers excited about them and books in the long term, says Thomas Koch.

TikTok videos saved the store

Klaus Willbrand doesn’t really fit in there. He mainly talks about old books, classics. You won’t find the latest title in his shop. But he still talks about his success on social media. Many people now come to his shop just to meet him in person and take a selfie. He had to get used to that. “But the interesting thing is that people really do buy books. Even expensive first editions,” says Willbrand.

Business is now back up and running. And he’s continuing with the videos to do what he’s always loved most: talking about literature. Now online. The core of his work? Getting people excited about literature: “You don’t have to read. You don’t die if you don’t read. But most people have no idea how much they’re missing out on. We give them an idea of ​​it.”