Exclusive Interview
From BookTube to BookTok: Christine Riccio & Natasha Polis on Fangirl Content’s Evolution
What To Know
- BookTubers Christine Riccio and Natasha Polis sat down with Swooon to discuss their careers as adult fangirls.
- The duo reflects on the shift from a close-knit, niche community on YouTube to a more dispersed audience across multiple platforms.
- Today, Riccio and Polis have a podcast called Those Forking Fangirls.
For roughly 15 years, Christine Riccio and Natasha Polis, better known online by their YouTube usernames polandbananasBOOKS and Tashapolis, have been at the heart of fangirl content creation.
From connecting with other bookish YouTubers during the very first BookTube panel at VidCon 2014 to amassing thousands of listeners to their podcast, Those Forking Fangirls, today, the duo sat down with Swooon at the long-awaited return of BookCon to take a deep dive into the evolution of content made by and for self-proclaimed fangirls of books, TV, movies, and more.
Riccio, who is credited as the pioneer of BookTube, a subcommunity of YouTube dedicated to content for readers, posted her first book-related video in 2009 on her comedy account before creating a new account entirely devoted to bookish videos in 2011. Looking back at that original video, she told Swooon, “I did it in defense of Twilight and how you’re not stupid if you like Twilight. You could have really great discussions.”
Agreeing that Twilight was “like a drug” at the time, Polis revealed that she created her first content at 16 with the podcast Twi-Nerds United. However, it was at her job as an entertainment writer for Page to Premiere that she first connected with Riccio over their mutual love for another beloved vampire franchise, Vampire Academy.
“I saw that Page to Premiere was looking for new red carpet reporters,” Riccio explained. “So, as a BookTuber, I was like, ‘Oh, can I report for you?'” Instantly, Polis admitted, “I saw her application come in. I was like, ‘I’m taking her.'” Polis then asked Riccio to come cover the 2014 Vampire Academy red carpet with her in Los Angeles. She also invited Riccio, who lived in New Jersey, to stay at her house for the event.
While they never received official confirmation that they could cover the red carpet, they met the writer at a fan event who got them a spot. During that time, they also filmed their first videos together. As they put it, “We were so young, and whatever it was, we were like, ‘we’ll do anything.'”
Of course, polandbananasBOOKS and Tashapolis weren’t the only big names in the community during the height of BookTube. The duo recounted that the core group of BookTubers, including Kat O’Keeffe (Katytastic), Jesse George (jessethereader), and Sasha Alsberg (abookutopia), met for the first time IRL at VidCon in 2013 and 2014. After forming an online book club, called Booksplosion, and doing a live show together, Riccio recalled thinking, “We should do this… Like, make this our job.”
What followed was a major boom in collaborative content creation, with YouTube book tags, challenges, interviews, and readathons, similar to what readers see on TikTok and Instagram today with BookTok and Bookstagram. While authors like Sarah J. Maas, E. Lockhart, and Jenny Han are now more popular than ever, Riccio reflected, “All the YouTube trends and books and games have come back around in short form. And I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, I did that in 2013.'”
During the height of BookTube, 10- to 30-minute videos were all the rage, with bookish communities expanding into other corners of the internet, like Tumblr and Goodreads. While BookTube’s content was long-form, Riccio looked back at the start of the online book community, saying, “It was so small, and it felt so niche.” She recalled, “When I started that book channel, I was like, ‘I’ll be lucky if I get 500 subscribers.'” Now, she has nearly 500,000. “It was just so cool that so many people love books,” Riccio said.
Looking back at the last BookCon, which took place in 2019, Riccio noted, “It was really like everyone here subscribed to our channel. It was like such an overwhelming flood of love. Like, we couldn’t even walk around. I’ve never felt famous like that.”
While BookTube was a “tight-knit” community, bookish content creation has evolved into something more “spread out” across shorter-form platforms. With YouTube, the two explained that it felt like they were creating in a bubble, knowing exactly who they were reaching with their content, and readers knew what to expect from their favorite creators. Today, “when you post on TikTok or Instagram, you just never know who’s gonna see it.”
Regardless of personal preference, longtime creators like Riccio and Polis have had to evolve with social media. In turn, the duo has had to admit that it’s impossible to post consistently on every platform. “You can’t do all of them,” Riccio explained. “If we’re doing short form, we can’t do YouTube. For YouTube, I’ll make one video, and it’ll take me, like, two weeks to edit it. With short form, I’ll have a day of editing, and that’s just more doable juggling multiple jobs.”
The shift from YouTube to TikTok has also given longtime creators a chance to rebrand. Polis revealed to Swooon, “I always wanted to do fangirl content, and I kind of moved into books because that’s what all my friends were doing. I love books, and I love reading, and I feel like I’ve been able to explore the other facets of what I love to do, like being creative, making dresses, sewing, and doing hair. It’s the different platforms that have allowed us to explore and renew some of these interests that we had in the past or have found now as we’ve gotten older.”
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In 2022, Riccio and Polis started their own podcast, Those Forking Fangirls, in which they chat about “all things nerdy pop culture and how fandom factors into adult life.” The duo explained, “Just having the umbrella of adults talking about fandom has opened up so many different topics we can discuss.” Laughing, they confessed, “It’s also something we can do weekly that doesn’t take two weeks to edit.”
Riccio shared, “We also missed the community of YouTube because we would be reaching all these people weekly who were in the same bubble.” With their podcast, they’ve been able to return to that feeling with their Patreon. “Now it’s so nice that we meet with them on Zoom, and we know their names, and they’re in the chat. It feels like we have that beginning-of-BookTube community.”
At the return of BookCon, Riccio and Polis were able to bring together their longtime fans and current podcast listeners by recording a live podcast at their panel, “Are We Still Single Because of Fictional Characters: Hot Takes on the Most Iconic Book Boyfriends of Our Time.” Reflecting on how their careers have changed since the last BookCon in 2019, where BookTubers were celebrities to nearly everyone in attendance, Riccio shared, “So much has changed in seven years, it’s hard to even conceptualize. I have put out three books since then: [Better Together, Attached at the Hip, and Thirty, Flirty, and Forever Alone].”
At the same time, Polis revealed, “I changed my career, like three times, literally. I remember the last time I was here: I flew in from my full-time job in fashion, then quit it. I started a whole influencer management company, and I quit that to become a hairstylist.”
Today, Kat O’Keeffe, Jesse George, and Sasha Alsberg have also spread their wings beyond BookTube. However, the group stays in touch as much as possible, regardless of the distance between them. Riccio shared, “Kat and Jesse, they’re so introverted. I don’t talk to them as much as I like to, but I’m in contact, and we’ll check in.” According to Polis, “Sasha’s in London. So she’ll call and FaceTime me random times during the day.”
When readers learned that Riccio and Polis would be returning to BookCon with them, they took to the comments section, calling them the “OG Queens” of BookTube and thanking them for inspiring their love of reading. “It never gets old to hear that you made an impact on somebody’s life because of the stuff you talked about,” Riccio shared. “It’s so nice to just be validated that all the work that you did mattered.”
“It’s also interesting to take a step back,” Polis added. “The content creation world and influencer world are very different today. The type of community that we were able to craft because we were filming all the time, with long formats—like you were sitting with us for 20 to 30 minutes a day, once or twice a week. You don’t get that with TikTok unless you’re filming vlogs every single day.”
The biggest takeaway? Creators like Riccio and Polis, who have fully embraced their love for books and other fangirl content, have inspired an entire generation to follow suit. “I get to meet people from all around, and they all have the most amazing reading-related jobs and will be like, ‘I did this because I saw you doing it,'” Riccio admitted. “And that is like—I will start crying because I just keep hearing it. All of these amazing women are working in all these bookish jobs, and like I was why they had the courage to do it. And it’s just been the most rewarding.”
