William Shakespeare and Agatha Christie have each sold an estimated two billion copies of their works. They lived centuries apart. They wrote in different genres. Yet their stories persist.
Today, books travel differently.
A viral video on BookTok can revive a forgotten novel overnight. A short clip can introduce millions of readers to a story published decades earlier.
The medium changes.
The mechanism remains the same.
Stories move because they resonate.
Shakespeare endured because his characters wrestled with ambition, jealousy, doubt, and love. Christie endures because mystery satisfies our desire for order and revelation. BookTok thrives because readers want to share the experience of being moved.
What we are witnessing is not a replacement of tradition. It is continuation.
From stage to print to algorithm, stories have always found ways to travel.
The question is not how they spread.
The question is why we still need them.
Because every era, no matter how technologically advanced, still asks the same human questions.
Who am I? What matters? How do I make sense of this moment?
Books do not answer these questions permanently.
But they help us refine how we ask them.
