A Conversation with Dakota Warren on All Things BookTube

Gitanjali spoke to Dakota Warren, a YouTuber, about the trajectory of her social media and how she balances it with being a published author. Originally published in Cosy Land.

“Dakota Warren is an Australian author, poet, and YouTuber, known for her bookish content. She has 70.8k followers on Instagram and 91.3k subscribers on YouTube. In less than a year, she has already accumulated over 1 million views with her most popular video titled 10 *actually good* classic literature books for *actual* beginners garnering over 351k views in 9 months.

She started her YouTube channel during the pandemic. The influence of the pandemic on her content, she recalls “was the catalyst for my content even existing in the first place. I’ve always been quite vocal about my obsessions with literature and language which just so happened to come to light when everyone was scrolling their phones in lockdown, desperately looking for ways to distract themselves or chase the insatiable pursuit to better themselves. Luckily for me, the things I rave about — reading and writing — filled both of those voids. I quickly gathered a small cult following hanging on from one book recommendation to the next, so the progression into YouTube seemed to flow quite organically.

Known for being the Internet’s dark-academia-Pinterest-board brought to life, her authenticity in the realm of BookTube is welcomed and appreciated. A comment on her latest YouTube upload states:

"I make sure to watch your videos because this seems like one of the very few channels out there that actually understands literature. So many people approach reading like its a television show or a meal and don't reflect on any of the abstract concepts or hidden messages. Anytime I feel discouraged I watch one of your videos and I immediately feel like picking up reading again, so thank you."

As a self-proclaimed lover of words, she describes BookTube as “wholesome, predictable, and imperative”. Despite reading plenty, her career as a public reviewer of books and a writer has led her to genres and books that she would not have gravitated toward; “I’m really grateful for my career pulling me out of this box and motivating me to read incredible works from all kinds of genres and parts of the world that I can proudly showcase and cultivate a love for, even if I do inevitably resort back to my personal taste.”

Read more here: https://cosy.land/article/interview-with-dakota-warren-on-booktube