Books-A-Million is sponsoring the inaugural BAM! BookTok Film Festival & Awards Ceremony next year, tentatively scheduled for the weekend before the Oscars at what the company describes as a "cool venue" near its corporate headquarters in Birmingham, Ala.
The festival weekend will feature public screenings of nominated BookTok videos by leading influencers, along with author signings and q&a sessions. The awards celebration, replete with a red carpet entrance, will honor the finalists and name winners in several categories.
More details will be released at a later date, but a BAM spokesperson said that a "highly qualified" committee, who are "already deeply engaged in the BookTok space and fully aware of leading #BookTok influencers as well as emerging stars," has been assembled to monitor social media posts for the rest of 2026. There will be no submissions process. Category finalists will be named in January 2027.
The bookstore chain, which operates 245 stores across 37 states, has been committed to the BookTok trend for years with in-store displays, a dedicated BookTok section on its website, and more. In 2023, BAM hosted a BookTok Summer Sizzle event at its Books & Co. store in Beavercreek, Ohio.
"We keep waiting for it to slow down. It hasn't slowed down yet," Alan DuBose, senior v-p of planning and data analytics at BAM, said in a recent interview, adding that in embracing the BookTok trend early, the company has expanded both its physical footprint and the range of titles carried in stores as the customer base has shifted to people in their teens, twenties, thirties, and forties.