Join us for the first ever
a virtual event hosted by author Shawn Amick on TikTok Lives.
We’re bringing together bookish folk from all corners of BookTok, connecting indie authors with avid readers and querrying writers with industry pros.
August 24, 2025
Subscribe to Shawn Amick’s Substack for The BookTok Festival updates.
Are you an Author, Publisher, Literary Agent, Editor, Narrator, or other bookish professional?
Want to get involved?
Sign up to be considered for author and publishing panels, keynote speakers, sponsored giveaways, an indie book database, and much more!
The first part of this event will get authors and their books in front of readers ready to fill their TBRs. The second part will connect writers with industry pros to help get new stories into the hands of readers.
Our main goals
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Celebrate the BookTok community with a free event accessible to all
Help indie authors get their books in front of eager BookTok readers
Connect querying writers with publishers and agents open to submission
Tentative Event Lineup
Schedule & panelists TBD
The elevator pitch session is a great opportunity for a few authors to pitch their books to an audience of readers and industry professionals.
Keynote speakers will have a wide appeal for reader and author inspiration.
Genre panels will focus on showcasing authors to readers, and publishing professional panels will aim to introduce writers to literary agents and publishers actively seeking submissions.
The schedule with include breaks. We’re all human after all.
Opening remarks & team introduction
Elevator pitch session
Fantasy Panel
Dark Romance Panel
Keynote Speaker 1
Science Fiction Panel
Horror Panel
Keynote Speaker 2
Literary Agent Panel
Publisher Panel
Keynote Speaker 3
BookTok Socials (on multiple TikTok Lives)
Meet the Team
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Shawn Amick
PRESIDENT OF AWESOMENESS
Shawn is the thought leader of The BookTok Festival, always keeping the desire to lift up authors and publishing professionals at the center of this event. He is a champion of connecting authors with publishers, indie services, and dedicated readers.
He’s the author of the epic fantasy series, The Cruel Origins, and is a huge supporter of other authors and professionals in the publishing industry. Previously he hosted an author interview podcast.
Now, he partners with Conquest Publishing to publish articles on Medium to give authors experience with professional editors and writing credentials.
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Nander
ORGANIZATION WIZARD
Nander is our PR Queen, using her advocacy and media skills to get the word out and keep us all on track behind the scenes.
She has worked as an ICU nurse, activist, social media influencer, and union organizer. In early 2023, she reconnected with her passion for reading and writing as a means to cope, finding a new favorite genre of spicy romance.
Wanting to spread her imaginative wings and share her passions for teaching, empowering, and storytelling, Nander put her knowledge and creativity to paper. Now a mother, wife, and author, Nander brings her genre-hopping, rule-bending preferences to the table in original written works.
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Kirsten (K R) Solberg
DOODLE & WORDSMITH DIRECTOR
Kirsten is the “man behind the curtain” for all things marketing and technical for The BookTok Festival. She is glad to use her extensive graphic design and marketing experience to bring authors and readers together.
She writes epic fantasy with her mother. But mostly they argue about homophones and the minutia of line editing. The Palimar Saga, a flintlock fantasy series, takes up way too much of her time and voice note space on her phone.
Kirsten is also a freelance visual artist, lending her stylized cartography skills to other authors and table top game masters to bring their worlds to life. She really just wants to sit on the back porch and draw mountains all day.
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Pebbles
MASTER OF MODS
The ball of personality known on TikTok as “Pebbles” has been a tireless supporter of authors and readers since the early days of Shawn Amick’s author interviews. And The BookTok Festival is no exception. You’ll find her guarding the integrity of the comment section and lending her amazing artistic skills to all things marketing.
Pebbles is the relentless cheerlead and honorary “group mom” of this little BookTok corner. She’s a gamer wife and a mom of 6 huggable minions. She is one part sunshine, two parts sass, and prefers a book in a cozy chair after touching plenty of grass in the military.
She’s also an artist specializing in bookish chibi characters and other cartoon style projects.
FAQs
If you don’t see your question here, please reach out to Shawn Amick via email or DM. We plan to expand this section as event planning continues.
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The BookTok Festival is a virtual event broadcast live on TikTok, mainly hosted by fantasy author Shawn Amick.
The date is TBD, but will likely be a weekend (Sat/Sun) in late August or mid September.
The planning team is working hard to fill the event roster with amazing authors and bookish pros. So sign up for Shawn Amick’s Substack to stay updated.
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We choose not to feature or promote any stories or art created using AI. We feel strongly that, while responsibly sourced AI has a place, it’s not in replacing or supplementing the process of art creation.
We have team members experienced in detecting AI, but we can’t always be certain, so please be gracious if something slips by. We do our best to showcase a diverse lineup of authors and their stories while maintaining the integrity of human-created material.
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Readers and writers of all genres are welcome to attend The BookTok Festival. Because this is a single day event specific to BookTok, our panels will center on the genres most popular for readers and writers within this community.
Our panel genres will be:
Fantasy
Science Fiction
Horror
Dark Romance
Would we love to do it all? Absolutely. We want to do our best with our limited resources, and we know that focusing on everything means we really can’t focus on anything. We are committed to making this a wonderful event for everyone attending in hopes that we can continue to improve and expand The BookTok Festival in the future.
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Yes! You don’t have to pay a penny to tune into event lives or to be considered as a panelist or speaker. We are volunteers leveraging our experience and skills to put on a relatively simple, single-day virtual event to give back to a community that has done so much for each of us.
Authors selected to participate in panels have the option to provide one of their books for a giveaway, but this is not a requirement and will not affect anyone's chances of being selected. We also welcome anyone else to donate a book or bookish item to be part of the giveaway lineup. We’ll have clearer direction on that as we get more organized.
We are working hard to create a way for people to sponsor indie author book giveaways leading up to and during the event. We are also vetting bookish organizations to select one as our featured non-profit, which you can donate to directly and receive a tax-deductible receipt. Any additional funds from the book giveaway program will go directly to this non-profit. And yes, we will provide receipts and plan to stay under any tax thresholds.
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You mean A Million Lies…? Sorry, let me say that more professionally: No, it’s not. The creator of A Million Lives presented a false front of having an experienced event team, financial backers, and professional oversight, all of which turned out to be false. While the negative financial and social fallout for many participating authors motivated us to put a date on the calendar, we have no intention of “capitalizing” on the AML situation.
For one, this event is free for all participants and we are not getting paid. We’re volunteering our time and resources to lift up the BookTok community in a way that fosters reader participation and gives small authors and writers opportunities to get their stories noticed.
This event carries on the spirit of Between the Pages author interviews, where Shawn gave authors the opportunity to talk about their stories on a free virtual platform, where K R and Nander bantered in the comments to boost engagement, and where Pebbles kept a close eye on those mod buttons.
Really, this is more like “getting the old band back together but not burning out this time” than any kind of piggybacking.
That being said, events cost money. We’re choosing to run a free event knowing it will personally cost us countless hours, a bit of money, and a dose or ten of frustration. There are thousands of book-related events going on in the world at any given time. Every one of them costs money. The risk an industry open to all must naturally take is that some people moving in that space are predatory.
We do our best to be fully transparent with the intentions of this event, who’s involved, and its financial reality. It’s not “predatory” to charge for an event so long as you deliver on your promises. It’s also not “a scam” to make a profit. We all have bills to pay. But for now, we’re committed to putting on a virtual event that is inclusive, fun, and free.
Press Images
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