BookTok is Not That Bad. Calm Down. REDUX
This is a remake of an older post. As always, as I figure out what I want to do with this website, my older post started to rub me wrong. My old post discussed my frustration with the hate toward Booktok. I stand by almost everything I wrote but, as always, I disliked my tone. It was just too mean. So here I am, refining my ideas into a cohesive solid argument.
I find a lot of the criticisms toward Booktok to be mostly reactionary, misguided, and unproductive. There’s so much negativity surrounding Booktok and I believe most of it is influenced by negative clickbait posts done by YouTubers and other online figures. Booktok is a massive (MASSIVE) online community filled with a wide variety of different people with different tastes. It’s shameful to lump them all under the “they suck” banner just because they use TikTok to talk about their books. As a 24 (almost 25) year old fuck, I’m a bit too old for TikTok so, like many people within my ilk, I get my Booktok information and takes from secondhand sources like Youtubers. Those sources tend to be extremely biased and overly negative. The issues people have with the platform are actually problems that existed in the publishing industry for decades. People are pinning the blame on Booktok as if it’s the root of all evil because it’s the popular thing to shit on right now. I find this silly and misguided. I also think some people just… do not understand how the publishing industry works so they’re spreading hate filled misinformation about things they know nothing about.
Criticisms toward Booktok
Booktok is the book community of TikTok. That’s it. It’s like Booktube or Bookstergram. There’s always a “reading” side of every social media platform. This has been true for years. I, for one, do not have a problem with Booktok because why should I? I’m not on the platform nor do I want to be. It doesn’t affect my reading so I don’t really understand why people are so pissed. Booktok has gotten people to read. That’s a great thing! Booktok is also very supportive of the indie scene, something I absolutely love! It’s so cool small authors are getting noticed! Why aren’t we celebrating that? I am!
Before I dig deeper into my complaints toward the criticism, let’s address what I feel to be valid critques toward Booktok.
Trope-driven marketing: Over the past two years or so, publishers have been marketing books by either comparing it to other popular works or by detailing the tropes within the work. For example, Lightlark by Alex Aster was sold on the tropes it had. It was an “enemies to lovers, death tournament set in a magical world. It’s A Court of Thorns and Roses and The Hunger Games combined.” This book has this this and this in it and it’s similar to this popular thing! I do not like this “compare plus trope list” marketing because the publishers are selling the book on vibes and not what it’s actually about which could lead to misleading advertising. Lightlark is nothing like The Hunger Games in any way. There’s no battle royale competition. No one even dies in Lightlark! There’s no social commentary. Lightlark is not a dystopia. These two books are nothing alike. “Enemies to lovers?” No. That’s not in Lightlark either. It’s just a lie! This false marketing made buyers rightfully upset. They bought a book that was sold on a lie. Plus, Lightlark is terrible! It’s a horrendously written book. Side note: If you want to have a fun time I highly recommend watching Krimson Rouge’s 7.5 hour long tear-down, Julian Greystoke’s chapter-by-chapter dissection, and/or Crow Caller’s 4 hour long rant/review of this godawful book. They’re all excellent background noise material. Because of Lightlark’s shitty marketing and its terrible quality, Booktok tore it and Alex Aster to shreds. This, however, did not/does not stop publishers from marketing books using tropes and comparisons. This is just not a good way to sell a book. Sell a book on its own merits, not what it resembles. This is more of publisher problem. Booktok did not ask for this but because Booktokers used to talk about books using tropes, publishers started to do the same.
Booktok dictates popularity: Booktok is so powerful that whatever is popular on it will rise to the top in record time. Colleen Hoover, the queen of Booktok, had her whole ass career revitalized on TikTok because people rediscovered her work. Her books out sold the goddamn Bible for fuck’s sake! She’s everywhere now thanks to Booktok! All books that are popular on Booktok are heavily pushed in bookstores and whatnot and it’s a bit annoying. Almost every bookstore has a Booktok table filled with so many different books, overshadowing other books within those stores which does suck. It takes attention away, but that’s the nature of popular trends sadly. It’s always been this way. This leads to a question I have that doesn’t have a clear answer:
What even is a “BookTok Book?”
Booktok is not a monolith. It is a MASSIVE community filled with various types of people and tastes. Because of that, if you were to look at lists filled with “Booktok books” you get books like The Song of Achilles, November 9, The Night Circus, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, A Little Life, Persepolis,Throne of Glass, Heartstoppers, The Priory of the Orange Tree, From Blood and Ash, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Six of Crows, Red, White and Royal Blue, fucking Mistborn, and etc etc etc! These are all WILDLY different books and they were all popular on Booktok at some point. Look at this list! Look at this one! Look at all of these! Notice the variety! Seeing this, I ask you again: What the fuck is a “Booktok book?” People look at “Booktok books” with disdain and write them off as garbage just because they were popular on Booktok. This is insane! Persepolis, a nonfiction graphic novel/memoir written by Marjane Satapi, is a phenomenal work! If you think that book is bad, you haven’t read it.The Way of Kings and Mistborn are on one of those lists I linked! The Way of Kings and Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson are two of the most popular and critically acclaimed fantasy novels/series of all time and they too were popular on TikTok. This moniker, this label, “Booktok book” is stupid and nebulous. I hate it and we should stop using it to describe books that are popular on TikTok because damn near every well-known book from the last two decades is/was popular on Booktok!
Now, maybe you don’t use “Booktok book” to refer to every single book that is/was popular on the platform. Perhaps you use it to refer to indie books that got popular and were eventually picked up by mainstream publishers. Ice Planet Barbarians, Zodiac Academy, The Atlas Six, and The Sun and its Moon are some of the many indie titles that grew in popularity on the platform and eventually got picked up. Some people hate this because “Why is it always the bad books that get picked up?” blah blah blah. This has always been a thing. This just happens sometimes. Look at 50 Shades of Gray, After, The Cellar, and a bunch of other fanfiction.net/ Wattpad books. If an indie book gets popular enough, traditional publishers may come by and go “hey, we smell dollar signs. Can we publish your book pretty please?” It’s simple and pretty smart. This thing already has a dedicated fanbase so why not get their money by selling the thing they like? The Martian (critically acclaimed sci-fi book The Martian) by Andy Weir was a book that got huge online and eventually got picked up by a large publisher. I haven’t read that book yet (I will one day, don’t worry), but it’s one of the most beloved sci-fi books of all time. Not all indie books that get picked up from online sources are bad. It happens and I personally think it’s cool. Being an indie author is hard. Getting noticed is hard. Being able to skip the headache that is agent-searching and querying and going straight into trad publishing because of the fanbase you cultivated on your own is fucking rad as hell! We should be celebrating that, instead of being all jealous and bitching about it. Say what you will about 50 Shades and Zodiac Academy (trust me. I have), but the fact that EL James and The Zodiac sisters Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti were able to grow big just because fans found them and hyped them up is so cool to me as an aspiring indie author. It’s a dream of mine to have the exact same thing happen to me.
I’m fine with people calling these indie darlings “Booktok books” because yeah, they got popular because of Booktok. The ones I listed are not good books, but I feel like it’s unfair and dismissive to label all Booktok indies as “bad” just because the really mainstream ones are. The Name Bearer by Natalia Hernandez was a Booktok indie darling and, from what I can tell, it is widely loved and praised for being a genuinely good book. Reads with Rachel, a Booktuber I really like, talked about this book and gave it a favorable review. So yeah not all books on TikTok are bad. We should stop seeing them as such by default.
I’m going to go on record and say that there are only two actual “Booktok books,” those being Lightlark by Alex Aster and Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. These books feel like they were written specifically for Booktok and nothing more.
“Enemies” to lovers? ✅
Fake love triangle? ✅
Lightweight “fantasy?” ✅
Snappy quotable dialogue? ✅
“Deadly” games/trials? ✅
“Steamy” sex scenes? ✅
These are tropes usually enjoyed by some Booktok goers. Both books are poorly constructed messes that feel like they were written in a factory to appease the crowd on Booktok who likes these tropes. Lightlark failed spectacularly in that because Alex Aster straight up lied about what was in her book. Fourth Wing, however, is stupidly popular and beloved on TikTok even though it and Lightlark are the same damn book. They’re both Sarah J Maas rip-offs with shitty non-plots, bad characters, juvenile writing, and horrible worldbuilding. Maas is- and has always been- a wildly popular author who has had a profound impact on the YA/ New Adult (which is just YA but with sex) scene for about a decade now. I hate it, but that’s what’s happening. Fourth Wing is an anomaly to me. I do not understand it. I understand why Maas is popular. She writes these horny, lightweight, character-driven, nonsensical fantasies for people who do not like and/or do not read a lot of fantasy. And that’s cool. I have no complaints. I despise Maas’ work personally, but I have nothing against her or her fans. We all have our slop. Mine is Warrior Cats and for others its A Court of Thorns and Roses. My only issue with her is that she is so damn influential that other mediocre authors are trying to copy her and are failing at it hard! Fourth Wing sucks so bad that it makes Maas look like Tolkien!
To me, it and Lightlark are obvious, low-effort cashgrabs that only exist to ride the wave of Booktok. Alex Aster can say that she worked on Lightlark since she was 12 and that it was a labor of love. I don’t believe her. There is no love present in that story. You can usually tell when a book is written out of passion and when it is written to cash in a check. SJM enjoys writing what she is writing. You can tell while reading her stuff that she is having a blast. You can’t tell that in Lightlark. There is no effort in Lightlark. Rebecca Yarros said that she wanted Fourth Wing to be an entry-level high fantasy. What fantasy? You didn’t write a fantasy! You just wrote ACOTAR fanfiction with dragons. These are products, not literature. These are Booktok books and honestly, Booktok users deserve better.
Booktok is not “Overshadowing” Others. The Industry is.
People complain about how “more deserving authors” should be noticed. My reply to that is to hype them up yourself. Get a movement going! If you have an author (indie or otherwise) who you love and you feel they should be noticed too, then hype them up on your platforms, no matter how small your platform is. Someone will see it if you post it. Hell, you may create a crowd that will flock toward that author much like what Booktok does with their indie darlings. Instead of bitching, go out and do it. It’s all luck so you might as well try and keep trying. The same can be said for fellow aspiring authors who want to cultivate a base. Instead of whining about EL James, start posting your shit and market yourself. Who knows?! You might get picked up by Booktok too. Remember: Booktok is fucking gigantic! They all don’t like the same shit. Look at the lists again. Start posting your crap on TikTok. This is such a non-issue but I see it be brought up so much. Stop being lazy and just start pushing things you like/are making. Getting noticed is hard, yes. You just need a bit a luck, but you can’t get that luck if you don’t post.
Believe it or not, Booktok is not stopping other authors from being published/seen. There’s this stupid idea floating around that because of the popularity of “booktok books” (whatever the hell those are), other “good” (whatever the fuck that means) authors/books are being ignored by the big boy publishers. There’s no evidence of this happening plus it is not true. It takes no effort to go to New Releases lists on bookstore websites and whatnot and see with your eyes the wide variety of books and authors that are debuting every month. I think what people really mean when they say this is that these smaller authors or books are not being marketed as hard as say Fourth Wing. And… yeah. That’s an industry problem. Booktok is not to blame for that. That’s been a problem for decades. Publishers will always push books that adhere to popular trends. Let me remind you of the supernatural romance trend of yesteryear. After Twilight, every publisher was vying for their own Twilight so they were greenlighting all kinds of garbage. The same is true for the Dystopian trend of the mid-2010s. We’re just in the Booktok era now, but the big difference between those and this is that Booktok is very wide and dense. As I keep saying (and will continue to say), Booktok is not a monolith. I don’t think you guys really understand just how huge Booktok really is. It’s a foolish thing to try and lump it all under one umbrella of taste. Again, look at the lists! Granted, the most popular genre on Booktok is of course Romance, a genre that has always been popular since forever. So, there are of course a lot of romance/romance-likes that are being pushed to Booktok by publishers. It’s trendy.
Trends come and go. I do agree that it sucks that books that adhere to trends are the ones that are pushed the hardest and other more unique books are pushed aside. My solution: talk about those smaller books then. Of course, make a stink about marginalized authors being ignored. That’s some bullshit that’s been around for too long and needs to stop, so yeah get loud. But in the meantime, while you’re yelling, yell about the ignored books too. Why are you relying on faceless conglomerates to do that for you? They’re not going to notice smaller guys unless they’re profitable. Perhaps, maybe, things will change for the better and publishers may start pushing marginalized authors more but for now, you do it. And stop blaming Booktok for this as if it was the cause of publishers following trends. This has been a thing for a long time. Publishing is a business after all and businesses are going to follow whatever is popular. Do remember though that trendy books are not the only things being currently released. It would be a bad move on publishers’ part to just focus on trends because they would be alienating other sections of their market. Publishers usually release a wide variety of books in order to achieve sales from a wide variety of people.
Also also, Booktok has a tendency to highlight smaller, marginalized authors, doing way more than what publishers do. They’re doing good work and y’all are shitting on it. Again, look at The Name Bearer. If you think Booktok only highlights white authors/well-known authors then you are either not on TikTok and are therefore blinded by negativity bias or you need to change up your TikTok algorithm. Again, Booktok is gigantic and there’s a whole section of people on the platform who push POC and queer authors. They’re there, you just gotta look.
Booktok is not Normalizing “Bad Books”
I’ve seen people say stuff like “Booktok is setting a bad book precedent.” This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Bad books have been around forever. Booktok isn’t making the production of “bad books” worse. That’s ridiculous. Let’s discuss negativity bias, a phenomenon that irks me more and more the older I get.
Negativity bias is pretty self-explanatory. Negativity brings more attention. People tend to seek out negative reviews over positive ones. On YouTube, you will see more people ripping into something than praising something because rants get more views. For Booktok, damn near all the coverage on Booktok by Youtubers is negative. If you are not on the platform and all you know about it is the rise of Colleen Hoover and Zodiac Academy, of course you’ll think all of Booktok is bad. You only know about the negatives. I was like this too. I was a part of that “Booktok sucks” camp. It wasn’t until I read The Priory of the Orange Tree, a “Booktok book.” I loved it. I was surprised by how much I loved it. “Damn if this is a Booktok book than they can’t all be bad.” Hence why I’m writing this post. Due to the rampant negativity surrounding this platform, those outside it are quick to shit on it because all they know are the negatives because negativity gets clicks. Negativity sells. You will hardly hear about the good books that are promoted on Booktok because “This book is great!” is not a snappy enough title.
“Bad” books have been around for ages. What’s good and what’s bad is subjective, of course (for the most part). Some people think Ready Player One is great while I think it’s one of the worst things to ever be written by a human. Some people think Seraphina is bad while I think it’s great. Quality is subjective. Publishing houses do not care about the subjective quality of a book. They care about whether or not the book is marketable. This is a business. Does it suck that bad books get published and are promoted by publishers? Sure, I suppose. I mean you can simply avoid these books and read something else. No one is forcing you to read Lightlark. A money-focused business like book publishing is not going to be picky. Besides, not all of the thousand plus books that get released every year are “bad” (whatever the hell that means). Babel by R F Kuang was heavily advertised and that’s a critically acclaimed book and author so…
Under a video about Fourth Wing (I do not remember which one), I saw a comment mention how the lack of quality control is a concerning “industry wide issue.” They also said that they “dislike how people try to turn the lack of quality books into a personal problem when it’s actually an industry problem.” This is the dumbest take, I’m sorry. You read a bad book. That’s it. Sometimes you get seduced by a flashy cover, a catchy title, and a good marketing campaign and then, after you bought into all of it, you find out that book is terrible. It happens. That doesn’t mean the industry is dying. Again, quality is a subjective metric. Publishers are not going to produce a book based on some random’s definition of “good.” They will publish what will sell. What they sell maybe good or bad. It depends on the person. Calm the fuck down.
If you ignore what’s popular and read what you want, you’ll realize that you’ll come across more unique and interesting stories. People spout off this dense crap because they’re so laser focused on the popular thing they dislike and assume that everything within the medium is becoming that thing. That and negativity bias again. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to ignore trends and read what you want. This is not an industry wide problem. “Bad” books have always been a thing and will continue to be because publishers need to appeal to a wide audience with varying tastes. Even small presses who focus on niche genres still have to appeal to many types of people. That means accepting all types of books regardless of subjective quality.
Going back to that commenter, they talked about how they can’t always avoid some of these bad books so it proves that the industry is falling. “I can’t avoid accidentally picking up one of these books because they’re everywhere. This is a problem with the industry’s lack of quality control,” or something like that (I’m paraphrasing obviously. I’m not going to go through the trouble of finding this comment on YouTube again. Make of that what you will). Again, you just picked up a bad book. The industry is not dying because you bought a bad book on a whim. Reading a bad book is disappointing most of the time. Unless it’s actually offensive or spreading horrific messages, it’s not going to affect your life that much. Not every book that comes out is terrible. This is such an awful take. Go to the library if you’re that worried about wasting your money on a book you may dislike.
The “Bad Editing Problem” aka Why do “Bad” Books get Published
“But some of these books are poorly edited! An editor worth their salt would have thrown these books out! The lack of quality control is a sign that the industry is going down the toilet!”
Okay… please read this article by massive publisher Penguin Random House detailing the publishing process. I know Penguin Random House doesn’t represent the entire industry. They even say in the article that other presses and imprints may have different processes. I’m just using them because they have a good breakdown.
As you can see, “editors” in this process are not developmental editors aka the ones who tell you how to write a better story. They’re the ones who check to see if your book is sellable. They may send back small suggestions but they’re not going to sit you down and discuss your worldbuilding in detail. By the time a manuscript is in the hands of an agent, that book has gone through and completed all of its drafting phases. Now all it needs is possibly a few tweaks to make it marketable and then it’s sent out to stores. They are looking for marketability, not quality.
It is the author’s job to hire a developmental editor before they send the manuscript off to an agent. When people complain about a book not being edited, they’re usually complaining about the book’s plot and structure. A developmental editor is the one who combs through your book line by line and checks for plot holes, continuity errors, out-of-character moments, bad lines, wonky worldbuilding, etc. Beta readers and sensitivity readers should also be hired by the author before they send it off to an agent just to make sure their book is understandable and doesn’t have any harmful tropes or stereotypes. As far as I know, publishers do not hire developmental editors or beta readers for their authors. You, as the author, should have already done these steps way before you sent your manuscript to an agent.
Once again, publishers do not judge books on their quality because what is “good” is too subjective. They cannot afford to be that picky. They are looking for books that will sell. This is a business.
Now that you know that, can we please stop whining about how poorly edited books are somehow ruining the industry? They’ve been around forever. They haven’t destroyed anything before and they won’t now. By the time a publishing editor has their hands on the manuscript, that book is done. They are not going to ask the author to change their entire story once they accept it. That’s not their job. They may ask for a few small changes but nothing major. They would have rejected it if they didn’t want it. If they do accept it, that’s that. Book’s done. Now it’s up to them to find a publisher.
It is not the publishers’ job to developmentally edit your damn book. Their job is to sell it! If your book is poorly constructed, that is your fault for not hiring an editor during the drafting phases before sending your book to an agent. Always have someone triple-check your book before you even write a query letter. That’s one of the hallmarks of a great author. Be critical of your work. Have a team who helps you perfect your book before you even think about sending it to an agent. This is not a problem with the industry. This is a problem with lazy as fuck authors.
I can see people saying “Well, that’s still not good! Publishers should be judging books on their quality not whether or not they can sell.”
Once again:
Quality is a subjective metric. It differs from person to person. It will be bad business to only sell books based on some random’s idea of “good literature.” It is the author’s job to work on their book during the drafting phases. Once the book is in the hands of an agent, that’s that. Good lord, I hope you people understand my point now. The publishing industry is fine. If you don’t like this, then I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you. You’re never going to escape poorly written books. It happens. Accidentally grabbing a bad book doesn’t mean the industry is dying. It just means you read a bad book.
Like seriously? What do you people want? Censorship?? Do you want publishers to be more picky and stop authors from getting their stories out there? If publishers were picky about “finding good books”, we wouldn’t have as many books. The fact that publishers actually take on so many books from a wide pool of authors is a good thing. We get more stories, and more voices that way. It’s already borderline impossible to get your shit traditionally published anyway so why are y’all complaining? DO YOU WANT GATEKEEPING?!
Everything is Fine. Go Read.
I know I repeated myself a lot throughout this, but I really need you guys to understand what I’m getting at. Everything is fine right now in the book world. Booktok is not killing the industry. It is not setting some sort of “bad book precedent.” Bad books existed way before Tiktok and the Internet. Booktok books are not “overshadowing” other authors. To think this is to admit that you do not pay attention. Publishers are pushing new authors all the damn time. Just pay attention.
Booktok is perfectly fine. It’s getting people to read and it benefits the indie scene. All kinds of people are on Booktok and they all have unique tastes and interests. It is not a monolith. If you think all books today are nothing but trash then I feel bad for you frankly. You clearly live in a bubble, too afraid to leave its comfort because new things scare you.
There are plenty of excellent books out there right now. They’re there, out in the open! Booktok books are not all bad and the ones that are are not overtaking the market. The publishing industry as a whole has genuine problems with diversity and who gets marketed, so how about we discuss those issues instead of pretending like society is going to collapse because teenagers on Booktok like SJM?
Stop being elitist and go read.
11/27/23: I also want to add that Booktok does have legitimate problems too. Overconsumption, literature commodification, and the fast-fashion nature of it all are legit issues with the platform. I’m currently working on a separate post that goes over this and Fourth Wing. I feel that the positives outweigh the negatives but the negatives are present. Also Fourth Wing is so fascinating in its badness. I’m currently reading it and will write a sequel post to this post discussing it when I’m done.
