Thanks to BookTok, authors are the new 'rock stars.' And Hollywood is taking notice

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Starting with the 1969 premiere of the “ABC Movie of the Week” anthology (remember “Brian’s Song”?) and continuing through 1970s “event” TV including movies “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “The Execution of Private Slovik” and landmark miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man” and “Roots,” bestselling books have regularly served as the basis for Emmy‑winning programming.These days, the upsurge in streaming television and its hunger for content has made books an even more ubiquitous source of intellectual property for the small screen.And this TV season has been an apparent bonanza for the book adaptation business.“I think books have never been more important, more respected,” says Sylvie Rabineau, senior partner & co-head of literary media, WME.

“I think authors have never been more respected.”Bryan Unkeless, producer of “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” the Netflix film version of Shelby Van Pelt’s odd couple-meets-octopus drama starring Sally Field and Lewis Pullman, agrees.“With the advent of BookTok, it allows you to have so much social chatter around these authors.

They’re becoming new rock stars, in a way,” he says.Unkeless has an additional theory.“The streamers are newer.

They don’t have established libraries of ’80s and ’90s movies to reboot, and yet they’re still looking for familiarity of titles,” he says.“It’s one way to compete at an IP level.”For all its pluses, Megan Gallagher, creator and showrunner of Peacock’s suburban thriller “All Her Fault” (from the novel by Andrea Mara), considers this craving for books “a double-edged sword.” She says, “I think broadcasters feel a certain safety when there’s a book, and I’m all for it if it helps the story get told.

That said, I do worry a bit that as we rely more on IP, we are shortchanging writers who have original stories and tha...