I'm so irritated with the fact that so many people who review books are pressured to be apologetic and ashamed for critiquing books due to being dismissed as “negative” and a “hater”. The perspective of the critic is not an enemy of the perspective of the artist. They go hand in hand and criticism is an important component to art. So much of our thinking of art is influenced by decades and decades of thoughtful criticism. The devaluation and to some degree, demonizing of critical perspectives is such a disappointing phenomenon in our contemporary conversations about art. If you think a book is Bad, it's OKAY. You are entitled to that opinion and you should not have to hold your tongue. An opinion is not a crime!
as someone who works in publishing, post-pandemic has been weird. we saw a massive increase in readership - but it was a very healthy mix of backlist and new releases. now, frontlist titles are no longer bringing readership to the backlist - people only want the new thing. so instead of releasing new books with the intent of building a solid backlist of titles, publishers will start to move towards cash grab books that will "live" for a shorter period of time. and with all other things, keeping a publishing house is becoming more and more expensive (even with the ridiculous working conditions worldwide!!! pay your editors!!!) so for old publishing houses to stay afloat (like the one i work for), even when editors don't want to, we have to publish books like these. we hope that this means that all of this money will be able to be funneled into building a backlist of stronger titles that can live longer, but i'm skeptical.
Another thing about this trend of rapid-releases, I think this trend is detrimental to the quality of books. Considering that we're paying anywhere from 30 to 70 dollars a book (depending on where you live), to have undeveloped plots, half-assed world-building, half-baked characters, and poor writing be the new "standard" (for the lack of a better word), we're getting cheated out our money. Especially when you take into account that fantasy works written by women and targeted to the female-audience, are already looked down upon in the publishing industry and seen as the lesser genre, to have such a cesspool of poor quality filling the market towards female-consumers is only going to add to that belief, which I fear will only hurt women authors and readers in the long run. I don't think publishers should sacrifice quality just for "binge-ability", especially when we're paying so much money since the price tags have gone up.
This is so true. I've read a romantasy series once (I only continued because I gave the author the benefit of the doubt) that was glaringly similar to another popular series. And this is not just about the popular tropes in the genre or some elements common in story telling but the characters have the same descriptions, the same family, the same attitude, even the same names only altered a little bit so it couldn't be called outright plagiarism. I was so uncomfortable reading the whole thing but I felt bad for the author because she was indie and I felt guilty of even thinking she copied from another big name author. I soldiered on and soon found out how much she "borrowed" (copy pasted, paraphrased, let's mash it all up together because no one can prove mosaic plagiarism) from that big name author whom I found out she was a fan of from her old posts. This is because she does not have a developmental editor who would be professional and honest and blunt enough to tell her that what she's writing would land her into waters an inch close to plagiarism. She pumped out two books each year since her debut and this ear she was supposed to release three (all of them were 400, 500-600 pages long and her most recent one in the series is about 900 pages long FFS), but she took a step back after she gained attention (her other book not from this series got signed by a traditional publisher, god help us all) and more and more readers discovered this series of hers which she basically ripped off of another author. The quality of her books were not even good and they were a bore (writing was okay, I guess, nothing special or unique; the characters were straight out of another popular book series; underdeveloped and the FMC was a Mary Sue but meh, too, she's boring; and most of the plot like the characters were copy pasted that it's straight up fan fiction of the original ones). It was passable and again, I think I gave her more leniency initially because she was indie but how many times do indie authors ask to be recognized the same way as traditionally published authors? So this means that they should also be regarded in the same standards, right? Edited: Grammar and spacing.
@@phoenixfritzinger9185 I NEVER THOUGHT SOMEONE WOULD RELATE THE TWO BUT YES Okay, I meant Chloe C. Peñaranda here but I've always called her "the new Cassandra Clare". I was just a bit terrified of the backlash from Cassie's fans T_T Now that you've commented it, I finally feel free to reveal my thoughts XD Edit: When I say, "the new Cassandra Clare", I don't mean in any way, shape or form except: ripping off other author's ideas, not crediting them or citing them as influences, attacking them passive aggressively or otherwise because of guilt, and becoming bitter and spiteful of the readers who are smart enough to notice the "borrowing" done and blame them for low ratings and going as low as villainizing them to their peers and other people who didn't know any better to gather sympathy.
@@BG-wv3vn I think in regard to certain standards, I'm willing to forgive indie published authors for not reaching the level of traditional publishing quality because they don't normally have the same access to resources, like editors or cover artists, etc, and I can give even more leniency for debut indie authors. I'm an avid indie book reader, so I can forgive quote "poor quality" end-quote from indie authors, as long its not first-draft quality, if that makes sense. But traditional publishing, in my opinion, has no excuse for poor quality. They have the money, they're just greedy. I get that manufacturing is expensive, so I think they should be less focused on spending money to make the next pretty special edition, and refocus that money on bringing back quality writing/editing into their books. Don't get me wrong, special edition are cool and pretty and all, especially for those of us who have a library-compulsion and what our shelves to look nice, but sprayed edges and gold foil covers mean nothing if what is in between the pages is not up to par.
@@mariavalie8434 Great point. Traditionally published books are held on higher standards because they have the resources and perhaps people believe there should be no room for mistakes for them. However, there could still be errors in them no matter how miniscule. I was referring to indie books that have, as you called it, "first-draft" quality in them. Too many errors for me to let go, and when it seems like there wasn't any real effort put into publishing them. And I've said what I said because of the book series I've read that border suspiciously on plagiarism (no developmental editor) with plenty of grammatical and spelling errors. No book is perfect and they're all bound to having errors but this shows how important editing is. The author of these books also uses the same tactic these traditional publishers do when it comes to marketing her books. The "special edition" feel in which she'd commission art of high quality to pull in readers. The books themselves are meh and like what I've said bordering on the plagiarism spectrum, but the author has great marketing skills that make people curious... until they've read her books and find out what's in them that is XD I was one of those victims LMFAO the art in her books were just amazing that I feel like the artists should be the ones really getting the praise and all the credits for why her books sell the way they do. The contents don't match the quality of the art and that was why I feel it's similar to the cheap strategy some of these big wigs publishers do like RT. The quality of the story itself was secondary as to what the book looks and it's disheartening that we have come to this. I miss the days when there is no social media and books sell like pancakes all over the world via news outlets or word of mouth. Books that weren't written around tropes and have actual heart and genuineness to them. The positive side, I guess, of social media is that now I get to discover a lot of indie authors who sometimes have even better books than traditionally published ones.
"In her own words, she's not pro-military, she's anti-war." Bro did she think those were synonymous??? If you're actually anti-war then you're also anti-military, anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist, and anti-colonialism. Things that she very clearly isn't.
I loved watching her try to give us that line when Fourth Wing so clearly proves that's a lie. Fourth Wing's world is perfectly set up to deliver an anti-war message so it's very notable that it goes out of its way to not do that.
Tbh, "special edition" doesn't mean anything to me anymore. It seems like every book is getting a special edition nowadays so it's not really special anymore? Also the trend of getting a special edition of a book you haven't read yet and don't know if you will like is wild to me. Especially because a lot of new releases are pretty bad bc of the lack of editing.
I feel this which is why I'll only ever pay for special editions of books I have already read and I know I love. Like I ordered the litjot crate Neil Gaiman Coraline and stardust because I adore his writing and I would love to have them on my shelf. I also got the fairyloot poison study set because those are some of my all time favorite books. With how expensive some special editions are I will never understand why or how people would just throw money at all of them.
The lack of editing trend, while not universal, is starting to feel very common to me. Which is so frustrating, because that is another barrier for me to overcome when I try to get into a book. Writing quality affects so much and especially character (which is my primary reading motivation) and themes (which is my close second). It feels a bit unfair tbh, because in some ways criticizing writing quality is much more stigmatized in certain areas of the internet. And the “it isn’t a masterpiece but it’s fun” to borderline objectively poor quality is exhausting. Leave me to vent in peace about the dumb books 😭
I literally made a video yesterday on TT too about how I can't stand getting the "it's no literary masterpiece" comment sooooo much. Like... I DIDN'T EXPECT IT TO BE!!!
I have been fighting against "it isn't a masterpiece but it's fun". I get push back all the time. As a writer it really upsets me that I'm consistently put down. People would agree with me if I said XYZ book was good and used my knowledge of explain why it was good, but if I were to use that SAME knowledge and explained why a book is bad, even if people like it, and suddenly I'm being a hater. If a chef said something was cooked poorly people would believe them. But why don't writers get listened to? Why is my craft, knowledge and skill not respected? Is it because I'm a self-published nobody? Is it because I don't have a Big Five publisher backing me? It's really disheartening an annoying.
I mean people have the right to disagree if a book is 'bad' or not just because you think a book is bad doesn't mean they have to inherently agree with you regardless of your skill level. Art is subjective and when it comes to food I feel its different, giving someone a 'bad' book isn't like giving someone a undercooked steak which could make someone ill lol.@@vvitch-mist20
@@marandaed4335 You missed my point. Art is subjective, however writing also takes talent. My bad and your bad aren't the same. I've seen this growing trend of media, in general, on a decline with everyone going "Oh well it's allowed to be bad" and like you "art is subjective". I am telling you, as a writer of like 17 years, that it's bad. Writers tell each other that just because something is popular doesn't mean it's well written. Storytelling is a craft like cooking and people can be bad at it. Rebecca Yarros is bad at it, and her editor is bad at editing.
Not only the quality but the content, too. One indie book just got picked up by a traditional publisher after claims that it had heavily "borrowed" a lot of things from other popular romantasy books came up, and that was why a lot of negative reviewers have issue on the clunky, patched up writing, and the characters, scenes, and lines that readers felt like they have already read before. Developmental editor who? XD T_T
But can't you argue that consumers are the same ones perpetuating these standards? I mean, if as a group, people decided to stop buying badly written and edited books, publishers wouldn't then follow trends that encourage chicanery, no?
@@thefriesofLockeLamorayeahhh i agree that some blame has to go to the consumers when it comes to this issue. it reminds me of how when the idol came out SO MANY CZcamsRS came out with their opinions on how bad it was, but still watched it for content. shanspeare on here has a good commentary on the concept of “hatewatching” and i feel like that can apply to this conversation.
Is there a way to articulate the idea that like….it’s not calling anyone stupid or a lesser reader to note that the people in the general booktok demo are young and haven’t been reading adult-ish books for very long? They haven’t yet put in a decade or two of reading 50 adult books a year to develop that muscle and accumulate the data to start seeing patterns. They might not be discerning, just as newbies to any hobby still have a lot to learn. But to me it seems somewhat new that adult publishers are aiming for that readership where it is. Fourth Wing had writing problems starting in the content warning, and I truly don’t understand how anyone kept going after the info dump on the balance beam.
That's exactly how I feel like publishing is catering more to people who are new to reading and therefore less discerning and we're losing out on books that are more for people who are more seasoned readers and need more complexity in the writing and storytelling. While I think its good to introduce more people to reading it should be balanced because the effect will be that people won't stick to it and the industry will end up losing readers once they get tired of the same basic stuff. I don't know if I expressed that well lol
This is how I felt like what people who read Twilight and FSOG were. Like what you said, not to call those who read these books stupid or a lesser reader but the language was just dumb, simple, easy to understand. Anyone could read it. And come to think of it, Colen Hover books were also similar. They're so easy to read and simple BUT all of these books appeal to the better part of the masses. I wonder if that has to do with the literacy rate. If there are more people who reached a certain educational degree find these books compatible to their Lexile level, that's why they're far enjoyable for them. I'm just pondering here. Correct me if I'm wrong or if I misspoke or misunderstood something.
I don’t think these people are “stupid” they’re just not seasoned readers. That’s not an attack on their intellectual ability because I see reading as a skill the same as people are bad at sewing or drawing when they’d first start. But I do find that the books that are popular are ones that don’t require a lot of interaction to enjoy. The author tells you everything and doesn’t really allow for much interaction which isn’t the reader’s fault but the author not letting readers form their own opinions. I also think there’s an issue with how reading is taught in school. The booktok crowd seem to think that if a book has purple prose than it’s well written when prose is only part of a story. There’s other parts to a good story. I do find that these days when I talk to some people about books they just want to talk about how hot the guy is. They don’t talk about plot progression, what they liked about the prose, dialogue, the world itself, characterization, etc. It’s just “wow he was so hot and daddy!!” Idk. Like I said I don’t blame the consumers as much as I blame editors and agents for this. Lot of agents these days are kind of weird. Some of them shop on AO3 for writers and just have them change up the names a bit.
It's felt like one of those "we are living in a dystopia and only I can see it" moments when reading comments and seeing videos where people are brushing off MAJOR physical problems with the iron Flame books. Especially because people also (rightfully so) always request a replacement if a special edition/illumicrate/fairyloot book has any kind of dent or dustjacket damage and there has been so much talk about the declining quality (in terms of errors and damage) in book box content. "It's special, it'll be worth lots of money" not when 50% of them have errors lmao
See, this is it. This is the thing. Misprint books ARE worth money, but that's only because when you have a known major misprint, the publisher tends to recall and destroy the stock that's out there, and replace it with non-misprinted items. When most of the stock is suffering some kind of damage and the publisher is not pulling them, the only value it has is as a personal curiosity. Emotional attachment. That's it.
The entretaiment industry in general has been pivoting towards scam territory for a while now. No matter if they sell books, films, videogames or what-not, there's a trend of assuming the product is of bad quallity but must be sold in astronomical numbers anyway. In that sense, tiktok is the perfect tool for advertisement because of its shortness, fastness and capacity to form nuche communities. Is not that tiktok is killing the publishing industry, is that both are tied into a mutually** lucrative feedback loop **lucrative for Tiktok the company, not necessarily its content creators
I agree with this exactly. And like the people using TikTok aren’t exactly innocent bystanders, because of all of these patterns of overconsumption and a decrease in media literacy, but to blame the content creators for these problems above media companies and even TT the company is wild to me.
As a former professional editor, I have zero tolerance for poorly edited or written books, especially at current new book prices. I usually only buy books and authors I love in new hardcover, despite my overall love of beautiful, well-made and designed books as artifacts.
@@mynameismarines Like...maaaaaybe it it were written by a person from Afghanistan??? But even then, I'd be like, there are so many other possibilities that won't make people sprain something from cringing
Thank you for bringing up EDS and the toxic perseverance trope that was so prevalent. As someone who has EDS among other chronic conditions who is unable to work, I was incredibly disappointed by the representation. I know that not every single person with EDS has the same symptoms but I felt like the condition was very oversimplified when it is so much more complex and severe, and I honestly felt like it only played into the inspiration p*rn, toxic perseverance tropes that are harmful to the disabled community as a whole, not just the EDS community. This whole video brings up so many valid points so thank as always for your content!
I agree. The disorder only came up when convenient and sorry but you can't tell me that she broke bones and such in battles and NOT with rough you know what where you're literally knocking furniture down...it was very poorly represented which is surprising since th author suffers from it...seems like out of all the people she would be the best to incorporate it into her writing in a natural, realistic way....
What I want to know is why Rebecca Yarros appears to understand her own disability so poorly. Of particular note is a scene where Violet's told that a hand-to-hand weapon that is perfectly suited for her and her condition is a bad fit and the single worst strategy conceivable under those circumstances is not only recommended, but utilized instead. Kinda hard to get in close let alone move quickly at all when you have to worry about if your ligaments can even withstand your muscle strength, but it sure is interesting how a quarterstaff makes all of those considerations largely irrelevant.
firstly i want to thank you for articulating all of the issues i’ve had with this book especially in regards to rebecca yarros’ pro militarism. secondly, i am a bookseller at a independent bookstore and watching this whole phenomenon unfold was utterly bizarre. i remember gawking and laughing at the dedication with my coworkers the day fourth wing released. after interacting with so many people earnestly gush about how much they love the book it’s made me really grapple with my opinion on it. i can see why people like it from a pure entertainment level, but if you look into it any deeper it gets real dark real fast.
I hear you because I have a hard time even processing like the pure entertainment level, but I know that’s because I had such a bad time reading it. There is so much you have to straight up skim or ignore to make the story even make sense 😭
@@mynameismarines I feel kinda confused that THIS, was the book that got me out of a slump LOL 😂. But I also read it while having a high fever, so it felt more of a fever dream than a book!
Fortunately the people who like Fourth Wing tend to be self-aware about either not looking at it at a deeper level or understanding that it has some very sussy implications when you do look at it on a deeper level. At least in my experience anyway.
@@mynameismarines I thought so too, at first, but as someone who watches and reads a lot of shonen I've noticed that there's a difference between media you can enjoy without thinking about it and media you can ONLY enjoy without thinking about it.
I understand reading is a stress reliever for people, but the amount of consumers shovelling mid down their throats and inflating goodreads reviews because they turn their brains off while reading is frustrating for people (me) who want to find...actually great books to spend their hard earned money on :')...
As someone with a few chronic illnesses, one of them being hyper mobility, I was super excited when Fourth Wing came out. I also really like dragons. I was expecting some good rep seeing as how Rebecca Yarros has EDS, and was super surprised at how ableist this series is. There is a line between pushing through to live your life, and the toxic pushing through and destroying your body. Also, I feel like I am at the point that I want to just ignore the whole romantasy genre because I feel like the majority of them cheapen fantasy by having bad writing and virtually no editing. Which is frustrating cause I love the idea of romantasy and women authors but....I feel like it can be done better. I feel like readers are worth authors and publishers doing better.
Yes! The way the book seemed to just take the stance of all Violet had to do was try harder, even though it gave a couple of nods to accommodations. The fact that homegirl was freefalling off the back of a dragon multiple times a day with little to no consequences was wild to me. There was basically nothing about pain management. Just mostly “push a little harder” and “she knows how to deal with pain.” And I’m with you on romantasy! It should work for me but so often, the fantasy elements are flimsy props to spice up the romance… which also doesn’t work as well as it should.
Another EDS person here! This book bothered me with the rep not only bc it’s ableist but bc pushing yourself with EDS only leads to a systemic breakdown of the body (an emergency situation). Ableism and the people around me in general (aka American society) always tells you to push through your pain and that’s the exact WRONG advice for EDS! It just makes me livid bc not only is this book echoing societal norms but it’s directly harmful to the people it’s supposed to be representing.
Honestly I kind of despise that Lindsay Ellis made it popular to regurgitate that criticizing YA/NA romance is inherently misogynistic. It’s just gross to me because no I don’t criticize these books because they’re written by women or popular with women. I criticize them usually because the writing is bad or there’s something in there that’s just rancid. But of course I just hate women right? 🙃 Edit: and I’ve noticed a theme of these stories is that they put a lot of emphasis on men anyways. The plot barely moves without the man and the woman is just standing around smiling and waiting for instructions. Rarely are there female friends in these stories unless they’re fridged (Crescent City’s Danika for example). So I’m not sure how that’s not misogynistic. Edit 2: I edited her name back in. LE needs to be criticized for that video lol
I literally have a line on the editing room floor of this video about how I will never forgive Lindsay Ellis for that I'm Sorry video lmao. I cut it but I'm glad you said it anyway.
@@mynameismarinesI totally agree. The video just completely ignores the valid criticism of racism throughout the story. The director of twilight wanted to make the cullens more diverse but SMeyer said no 🫠 the black Lurent was the only thing she’d budge on. But sure I’m critical of Stephanie Meyer bc she’s a woman not bc she’s racist lol
That video was literally the first thing that came to mind when Marines mentioned people using that phrase to deflect from actual criticisms people had with a story's problematic elements (not to mention that it only seems to consistently apply to white girlies 🫢)
@@nootnewt9323plus Twilight is just bad. I’ve read one of those books and it was bad. I had to reread sentences to understand what was happening and I was still confused. I hate that people think we can’t criticize Twilight because a lotta women and girls like it even though it’s bad and has tons of bigotry and weird shit in it
i saw some tweet discussing those cringe erotica books that was like "young women are 100% within their rights to explore their sexuality through erotica and read these sorts of books, i just want them to have higher standards" and like that but with how fourth wing relates to YA and fantasy
It seems that more and more books are being published for an audience that is new to reading. But to me that's bad practice because you need balance. Otherwise the industry loses avid readers (loyal customers) who need more complexity in their books. It's not sustainable.
@hyenaedits3460 Samee I spend more time looking for what to read next than actually reading. It's so sad because while older books are usually better in quality they are outdated in many ways so there's no winning. I'm either gonna have to give up reading which I really don't want to do or get used to having mid reading experiences on the regular.
I'm not so sure. If you do it quickly enough the way Red Tower is doing you might be able to successfully groom an audience's expectations within "acceptable" levels. At least in theory.
Your channel makes me feel seen. I have really been aghast by most new releases where I don't really bother reading anything new until I can watch booktubers end of year recaps that I trust (and even still I get burned sometimes). Books are expensive, and we as readers deserve better quality books for the amount we are paying for them.
So I'm in the Indy publishing side of writing and books. Lately I feel like Kindle Unlimited books have slipped into the mainstream. There is nothing wrong with some of these books, though they do tend to be edited less and read like Fourth Wing and other books that have gotten hyped as of late. It's so interesting to me cause in Indy publishing, you are encouraged to write and publish 2-6 books a year, if you can do a book a month you're normally doing very well. That mindset in traditional publishing scares me.
Why are authors so against like buying fantasy languages. Like they make websites for it. You can avoid all of this. You want to make a a new world ,with new languages and new places and new city capitals! Well people will do it for you!!! Consult a damn map maker!! Focus on your story and let someone else worry about that!
@@AHealthyDoseofFran Look up Conlang (constructed language) generators. For the map making, you can use like free websites and or buy a commission on like fiver. So you can have some input on things like capitals and spelling.
I think the publishing industry, similar to fashion, doesn’t know what to do with the rapid change of trends due to social media. But their reaction seems to be more akin to the film industry. They are putting a lot of money into just the big hyped books and designing a tent pole style release strategy. Very similar to what we are seeing with Marvel and that the lack of time between projects results in a worse result and this is coinciding with the death of the midlist like the death of the mid budget movie.
I feel like Yarros using Gaelic the way she did is an extension of how Maas and all use the fae the way they do. It's bizarrely disrespectful to the cultures they're from and I get that its, like, fairies but it's starting to just be really annoying. Type of nerds to be like omg fairy alpha males and then make jokes about the way sean is pronounced. That out of the way, I agree with your points. It's just quick, easy reads for a quick buck during what was a perfect storm. I also believe there's an aspect of the fanfic-ification of books, which is not inherently a bad thing (I'm working on fanfic right now!). Familiar settings, familiar characters, on and on. I'll also never forgive Ellis for setting the whole "its misogyny!" in motion. I remember being the target demographic for twilight while it was coming out. I distinctly people talking about the romanticization of abuse, and the racism, and Meyer's whole mormon agenda. But its become a blank check for people.
Yes, SJM is also guilty! So many authors dip into minority languages like their own personal fantasy stash. I’m absolutely certain people have been calling this out for years, so I’m glad that this criticism got heard by so many more people now. I truly left out me laughing at how I’d never forgive Lindsay for that video, but know that I thought it too!!!
Yet a lot of indie authors ride in the wave of this "success" and use fae so callously and their bad attempts at thwarting comparisons against their works and SJM's by saying SJM was not the first person to write about fae (we all know it) or that she's not the one who invented fae (obviously) only made them seem the more ignorant and just as guilty.
Agents shop on AO3 for writers these days. I won’t name names but there is an agent that specifically looks for Reylo fanfic writers and publishes them. It’s very bizarre to say the least.
@@nootnewt9323 Oh I know. I'm a fanfic author myself- these people have built in audiences and write for dynamics/tropes that are very popular (And are, imo, basically paint by numbers)
I'm also really annoyed by this "fast fashion" comparison that is actually not tied up in any of the things that make fast fashion so horrific? Like the closest this argument is getting to that is "over consumption" which is part of the problem, but the connection between people buying a couple more books and people buying dozens of extra articles of clothing per year is pretty tenuous. That's a bit of a reach. Fast fashion is unethical because of the truly insane labor conditions under which it is produced and because of how incredibly resource intensive it is, and therefore destructive to the planet. As you've noted here, there are plenty of problems with these trends in publishing! But I'm not seeing how that's "fast fashion" per se? It seems like the crux of this argument is "fast fashion = consumer choices I dislike," which is just fucking weird, annoying, and detrimental to the conversation about the *actual harms of fast fashion*. tl;dr "fast fashion" is my new "emotional labor"
It’s a quality comparison. It’s an IG Insta Fashion reference to 1000s of people starting “clothing lines” with the same poorly constructed basics that they slap a Cricut logo onto. I get it. If you’re attuned to urban fast fashion you definitely get the comparison to what some corners of publishing is doing for a cash grab
@@JDris08 Yeah, so I know a lot about fast fashion and definitely *get* the comparison and I'm saying it's a bad one. Businesses make cash grab decisions across many industries because that's just how capitalism works. Fast fashion is *uniquely horrific* because of the implications for both people and the environment. There is a very real human cost for the people performing the labor for unethical wages in terrible conditions. (Etsy sellers in rich countries slapping Cricut logos on t-shirts are not the primary laborers in this industry.) There is a very real cost to our planet, both because of how clothing is manufactured and because of how disposable the garments are. None of these things apply to this larger argument about the publishing industry. My point was and remains: the comparison was made for lazy click-bait reasons, not to actually say anything meaningful.
@@SweeneySays the fact remains that the analogy is fitting. The fact that YOU want it to compute on every level is a PERSONAL PROBLEM. The rest of understand exactly what it means🙄 Like why are we being overly deep?
Real because the last quality book I’ve read is Six of Crows😭 books are being pushed as ‘tropes’ and they have no identity outside of them. Every book I’ve read is just the same book with different names and a little bit of different *worldbuilding*.
If you are into fantasy, there is still plenty of proper adult fantasy published. The key word here is "adult". You need to look beyond YA and fantasy romance. There is a whole genre with a large amount of variety, styles and different sub-genres. Where "adult" means more than just adding sex and some swear words. These books won't gain traction in TikTok, but you can find CZcamsrs discussing them. Never mind including older books that have been released in the last three decades or so.
The first page of Fourth Wing cemented Rebecca Yarros as my 2nd archnemsis. I write Romantasy, and love both fantasy and romance. What Yarros did, and the unforunate trend she started upset me. People will read this, and think it's good. She called her own work "low-brow". Now I write for casual readers, I write short books and I use simple, and easy to understand language. I would never call my work low-brow. I think this kind of "well it's fun" kind of attitude came out because people forgot what media literacy is. In the 2010s we went mad hard online with tearing stories apart, and now we just swung in the other direction and publishers will pump out anything. (and if anyone is curious JJ Abrams is first bc he can't finish stories, which is literally the whole point of storytelling)
I think it’s important to have stories that are fun and written for escapism. Not every story needs to be pulled apart by all readers. I for example mostly read to enjoy myself.
@@LilyEvans1996It is still important for stories that are traditionally published to be polished by editors and come out the other end as coherent, solid works. In this case, it wasn’t.
@@angelaahhh not to mention the fact that stories that are written just for fun and escapism can still contain questionable or problematic elements that should be discussed? it doesn't have to take your enjoyment away from a story. we don't have to be hypercritical but we also shouldn't be complacent and ignorant. both extremes are bad.
@@angelaahhh I agree. There are so many mistakes I have noticed in some books I've read recently. I am still in the middle of Iron Flame so I can't speak for it, but with Fourth Wing I didn't notice anything wrong. Maybe I was really into the story and the mistakes did not jump out at me haha.
I remember hearing from authors early in 2020 that the supply chain issues would mean smaller books would get cancelled so that the presses only get used for the mega sellers- which is why preorders were so important for them. I wonder how much of this rapid release mega seller success will continue to push smaller authors off the presses and lead to a tighter publishing landscape- which is all ultimately super unfortunate
I think A Discovery of Witches was the first Popular Book where I noticed that it needed at least two more editing passes: developmentally, and to correct some egregiously poor sentences, including what seemed to be Google-translated French. (No comment on its sequels, except that the prose was so poor from the get-go that I had to return the ebook immediately lest I have some kind of fit.) The covers are very pretty, to the point of being more intriguing than the books themselves. So I think this trend has been a-brewing for a minute, but COVID's impact on the industry has kicked it into overdrive.
I've thought the same thing about A Discovery of Witches! It needed better developmental editing. I only got halfway through the book, but that first half about 95% of it was honestly just wine, breakfast, and yoga. 5% was actually plot related.
i love that book series but i also love those really slow passages where nothing really happens and if that's not your cup of tea i can see why you don't like the series ^^
Every time you put out a video you say exactly what I feel! 🙌🏽🙌🏽 And yes, I have been saying for so long we need more editing in books. When I critique a book in my book club about the editing, I get responses saying “you’re being harsh” but I’m not it’s just if there’s all these flaws that need to be fixed. We should talk about it and they just say oh I just ignore it. We shouldn’t have to ignore things that can be fixed easily.
My sister has EDS along with quite a few other things and I'm also disabled, we read this book together because she was excited to find a book with a character that has her disability in it. We both ended up hating the book for similar reasons one of them being how EDS was written into the book. I honestly felt like the disability was written from a ableist view point dispite the author having EDS herself. I have a whole host of problems with this book but the disability is what gets me the most. I feel like if your going to write disability you should write it in a way that is beneficial and thoughtful. I do understand that everyone deals with and handles there disability differently and everyone has different symptoms but I would have really liked it if she had given a lot more thought into this part of the book.
I think the "fast fashion" trend has been around for a while now. When I joined booktube I bought so many books that people deemed as amazing, and when I read them they were terrible. It really put me off (particularly ya) of the consumerism of it all. I will say tt has brought such a rapid turn around to it, in a disturbing way. The amount of "limited editions" that dropped so immediately and how quickly the sequel came out was surprising to me - I recall coming across one comment of someone saying they were convinced ot was going to be as popular as hp and they were hoarding as much as they could. So, I think a portion of it is false hype/only involved for the potential of the popularity.
It seems that way, every walmart or store ive been too has Hollen Coover and Sarah J.Maas. People went crazy for fourth wing but when iron flame came out I haven't seen many reviews on the book. There are still good books out there, alot of indies are starting to gain attention, the publishers want cash grabs, stuff that people will eat up and be hungry for more like romantasy. There so much of it now along with dark romance its annoying. Tiktok plays a huge role, if your a new author wanting to gain a huge audience for your book you have to use it.
Romantasy is becoming the new Contemporary Romance in the sense that subpar writers can pump out these books with little skill or editing, and people will EAT it up.
This reminds me of that book getting picked up by a new publisher written by an author accused of plagiarizing Sarah J. Maas of all people XD so many follow in Maas's footsteps and try to be the next her (WHY) that it's all the same book regurgitated again and again only with poorer and poorer quality, but this time around one copycat author who blamed negative reviewers for her lack of opportunities (when she already got signed by a traditional publisher) actually got through an editor and got her pretentious, trope-filled and mediocre of a "dark romantasy" book got picked up 💀
@@vvitch-mist20 The way some "authors" even justify their outright copying and stealing original ideas as something "that can be found in all fantasy and romance books" is baffling. Yes, tropes can be similar as well as other story elements but exact characters and their backgrounds/histories, relationships, lines and dialogues paraphrased, and scenes? The audacity. All the authors doing this think it's acceptable because there is no developmental editing done. Their friends of course will say anything positive like the servants in The Emperor's New Clothes, so they have no way of coming to the conclusion or the basest realization that they're copying a story that was already out there, one that they have read about and loved. They could write these Walmart books with no talent or creativity because the original authors have already done it for them and it was like they're writing a fan fiction but claiming that the intellectual property was their own. Edited: Grammar.
Girl I feel ya on Walmart I bought 11 new books from there and there is lots of Colleen hoover bks and Sarah j. Maas bks more than anything and I got two hoover bks cuz I've never read her books before I got too late and maybe now by her hopefully they good.
@@BG-wv3vn I wouldn't diss authors in Walmart is subpar since that's more to do with the publisher than the writer plus a book is good regardless if you spend $1 or $15 for it. Just as a book is bad if you spend $1 or $15. I don't think books being expensive that makes people more likely to defend their purchase bc then they would have wasted money. (Even though you should get mad)
I completely agree with what you said about reading an unfortunates number of books that felt like they needed another pass or two of edits. And it’s one of a handful of reasons why I’m now taking courses to become a developmental editor.
my answer is still a yes to me ): but i still dont know if fast fashion is the right word? i was having a discussion with my partner and i said "i feel like bad bingeable content for literature has been inevitable." but tbh i think it's always been here. i remember smeyer being rushed to put out breaking dawn due to the success of the franchise. i feel like the new books section at my job always has the top authors (jpat), meaning they're (with help of ghost writers i know i know! of course, they are actually okay to use surprise to folks) always putting out books every 6 months, maybe less. ive noticed older patrons tend to only read their go-to authors And they tend to be our regulars, so i can only assume theyre also the people publishers target. from what ive read of them, quality tends to meh. But we don't hear often of misprints or "exclusive editions/content" from those authors.... i guess what i see from tiktok is the Instant Demand? that shein and the like brought. shein is cheap but the famous influencers bought hundreds with the whole haul thing, rendering people's "it's good for poor people!" pointless to me. im a real life money down person, i bought once from them and it tore and i was horrified. but the masses ran to defend shein. i left tiktok in jan, so u were the only booktok person i encountered, well you and ur comment section. while i can't assign blame to tiktok users for the downgrade in clothing quality and unethical labor practices, consumer dollars have done nothing to oppose this. consumers with this knowledge still endorse it and proudly too on that app, last i saw. i can only see that being the case for something like red tower, which looks like it already has begun. and criticizing shein/fast fashion also got hit with the "it's misogyny no ethical consumption under cap!" which lol.... so i dont think it's fast fashion in the way of the product itself but the defensive consumer base. publishing companies to me always knew the formula, we see it a lot actually. theyre now printing books that have "as seen on tiktok" "tiktok author" "tiktok viral" marketing stickers, so i do think to me it's the specific tiktok phenomena they've been gunning for. it isn't the fault of tiktok users, but tiktok users are susceptible to it and the algo rewards it. i hope this was coherent 🧍
Some of the points you mentioned about Fourth Wing reminded me of a couple of the criticisms from A Clockwork Reader… who is also called a hater for not always liking popular things! Lol Great video! Super informative.
YES it's really frustrating when criticism of any content enjoyed by women is written off as misogyny. Like, our society does have a huge problem with devaluing art created by and for women - AND ALSO, that kind of art can and should still be criticized!! I feel like this is happening so often with the ongoing attempted rehabilitation of Twilight and it is exhausting
Yeah wrt to the EDS rep, as someone who also has it, a person having a certain disorder or belonging to a certain identity group does Not mean they've done the work wrt internalized ableism, etc. I so hate seeing defenses of the disability rep in this book that uses identity politics to effectively shut down any actual analysis or critique into the representation on page...
You are dead on. I totally understand that even seeing the rep felt important to people, and when you are representation starved that is so real, but the messaging and the unchallenged ableism in the story were… something.
Every single pushback for this criticism makes me frustrated. "You're misogynistic for criticizing women's fiction." No, I'm not. I'm pointing out the flaws in the genre that also perpetuates misogynistic tendencies. Criticizing it is not the same as being misogynistic. "Let people enjoy what they want!" Except these books end up being badly written, overpriced and ridden with racism, misogyny, bigotry and abuse apologism and they get sold to teens in bulk. Teens who are impressionable and gullible. And you can't tell me that those books haven't caused harm yet. Every time I go to booktok, there's at least five to seven young girls who swoon over guys with toxic and abusive behavior and they have no idea. "At least people are reading." You know I would be much happier about it if they were reading something actually good. The problem with trashy books getting popular is that they actively take away the opportunity and platform for ACTUALLY good books. These trashy books get five star reviews, movie deals, NY bestsellers and immense popularity. But good books get pushed to irrelevancy. It gets worse because most trashy books are written by white women and the skilled marginalized authors get nothing.
I'm going to disagree, I believe that TikTok and Social Media as a means of mass marketing, and the algorithms which encourage more engagement to things that are already getting engagement has certainly encouraged Publishers to jump on any project with even the smallest momentum in order to get onto or ahead of the trends, and readers are enticed to buy into it because it has a traditional publisher. And then, since they want to get the book out before the hype has begun to fizzle, they skip the editorial phase (or at least speed through it), we get unpolished products, and people who want to justify their purchases rationalize the low quality as 'unique' or 'stylized', when the fact of the matter is, it's just messed up. It is and is not the fault of the consumer. They don't set the standards, but they normalize them by accepting the low quality rather than demanding proper editing or high quality prints. They need to stop buying into the hype of the newest thing, start putting their money where their mouth is. The Publishers will not go above and beyond the minimal effort if they sell the same number of books either way. They will not seek out a book with good representation if people just eat up whatever is new and well promoted. You can blame the Publishers, but they just want your money. Make them work for it.
I mean, we aren't really disagreeing as I also talked about how consumption and the fact that RT's approach worked on readers is something to consider, but ultimately, turning this back more on the consumer than the company ain't gonna be me. Particularly because TT and all other social media are primarily community-driven in that readers congregated there to interact with each other, not be marketed to. And to go "well, the company is gonna fleece us anyway, so let's blame the consumer" just feels like the wrong conclusion to me.
Watch Bramble take note from Red Tower T_T they're new-ish but they're already following with the limited edition spayed edges trend and the acquisition of indie authors who already established themselves and have a following, those who already can market themselves as well.
As always great video! Your videos always manage to make me think more critically! I'm not shocked at all by these special editions coming out with mistakes. I've seen many recently not just Iron Flame. It is a result of this 'fast fashion' type of business where publishers just want to release more books faster to make more money. I can't help but think about where the materials are coming from to produce these books - usually the global south - and the majority of those who have access and can afford to buy them - usually the global north. I think this conversation is part of a larger conversation on consumerism and the capitalist system that pushes us to think we need 13 copies of the same book.
This whole rapid release was so poorly planned. Iron flame was rushed out within months of fourth wing and had a PLETHORA of printing issues that wouldnt have happened if they had tool the time to quality control. Also Rebecca has supposidly reported she hasnt even started book three. How on earth is a 600 page book going to be written, redrafted and edited all for release in a few months? They need to be more careful moving forward or theyll crash and burn.
😂 Funny thing, I got generally enthusiastic feedback for slagging off Fourth Wing, but I guess that goes to show how different my demographic is from a whole lot of book content creators.
I absolutely LOVE that more people are reading. I love that there has been a boom in the unfettered consumption of books. But publishing houses churning books out just because they’re trendy, without care for quality in either the physical product itself or in the writing is cheapening something I’ve find solace in. I fully believe people should read what they love and write what they want but publishers have destroyed the meaning of quality. I’ve wasted so much money and time on books that seem like unedited Wattpad stories that I’ve found myself enjoying my favorite hobby less and less.
The thing that really upsets me with all the misprints is when they are missing literal pages of the story because now that book is basically unreadable. When I think of the environmental impact of useless, unreadable books, it makes me sad. Also, wasn't it a few years ago because of covid that there were issues with there not being enough printers to keep up with all the releases? I don't think I've heard if they've fixed that, so I can only imagine these fast and messed up books are taking space away from other, better books....
The book to me just lacked substance(and was also very confusing for no reason). It was fine and I can understand where it appealed to a certain audience, but for that audience to label you a hater for simply pointing out clear flaws is bananas.
Also, as someone not on TikTok, I appreciate you posting longer videos over here! Bindery seems interesting. Question for you: What is an imprint? You mentioned wanting to launch one.
Something that I’m interested in is having a conversation about the rate of diverse books being released lately and it’s relation to this under editing and quick publishing change. Because something I’ve noticed is that these books being churned out are (as was briefly mentioned in the video) are pretty white cishet worlds. Historically speaking diverse books have always taken longer to publish (and they’re harder to get accepted) so will this “fast fashion” esque publishing cause a massive decrease in diverse books? And I’m mostly talking about diversity in terms of inclusivity, but there’s also something to be said about diversity of plot and characters. Truly all the protagonists of these super popular books blend together in my head they’re basically copy and pasted
We are currently in “late capitalism” soon to be “post-capitalism”.. it’s all moving so fast there is zero point in holding on or even participating within a conformist based society .. an alternative route could be investing in self sufficiency and tactile survival strategies. Js 💖
🤚🏻 another reader that really disliked Fourth Wing. Bare minimum world building. A book peopled by NPC’s . But yay for dragons, too bad we weren’t given more of that.
Very well put together. I agree with all of the points you have made, even though you've said that some of them may be subjective. It's okay to have the same opinions as another person and I would even go as far as referring this video to someone when I'm asked about what my thoughts on the matter is because you have articulated what I mostly struggle to express. I sympathize with you about the hate negative reviews get. My reviews have been reported and deleted a lot of times on platforms because I have listed proof of my claims about an author's books. My account on Goodreads has even been deleted because I was having serious discussions with reviewers with similar opinions about the allegations against this author. The same author who asked negative reviewers to think twice before rating her book low after heavily implying that it affects her author opportunities (when she already got a traditional publishing deal because of her book going viral on TikTok and gaining traction). The way Chloe C. Peñaranda implied that the negative reviewers were to blame for not only her but other author's lack of success truly soured my stomach. It didn't help that the little followers that she gathered as her support system went willingly in a one-star review of the book, The Stars Are Dying, and outright called the one-star reviewer wrong about her thoughts on the said book. Her closest circle even went as far as stating that all negative reviews in Goodreads were untrustworthy because of how readers only piggyback ride opinions and don't even read the book; they only give negative reviews and rate the book one-star to hate on it and on her. This is not the case, however, when negative reviews of her book were by people who have finished it. She made it about her when it had always been about her book. The Stars Are Dying was picked up by an up-and-coming publishing house, Bramble, new to the business. They were collecting indie authors already established, has published books, and has already gained a decent amount of followers like the author of Gothikana, and Carissa Broadbent. They are now doing the same thing Red Tower is doing with the scarcity of limited edition print runs of their first edition books. They also have vouch-able authors (Olivia Blake, Sarah Beth Trust) in their line up mixed in with their indie authors and unfortunately, Chloe C. Peñaranda was picked up by them. Now, I have not read a book they have put out yet because I'm skeptical and if they chose to acquire the author who I was having trouble with then I'm having a hard time trusting them. They didn't even research this author before signing her. And I feel like she was picked up by them as well because she already did most of the marketing of her book. She paid hefty amounts for the dust jacket cover, the characters art, and even the map of her book. For me, the content inside didn't match the quality of the overall design of her book, but people will buy anything pretty specially when it was advertised as having a digitally signed limited edition first print run that would only be available two weeks after its release (surprise, surprise, the books being sold until now were still digitally signed, I've gone ahead and checked after purchasing a hardcopy when I've only read this book in Kindle Unlimited). Watching this video of yours made me think that Bramble is the next Red Tower. Tor's response to the inevitable growth in the romantasy readers demographic. I have read The Stars Are Dying and it is sub-par, a diluted version of all other popular romantasy books already written that failed to emanate the factor that made its predecessors beloved by its readers despite everything else questionable about them. Reading The Stars Are Dying felt like I've read it before... because I have. It was an uncomfortable feeling, seeing characters and scenes and lines jump out at me that I've already read before from other books. A lot of readers think the writing is confusing and clunky, and we all agree that it was not a good book for us. I'd never had beef with the author, I don't know her personally. But apparently she has with negative reviewers.
I've commented to my book club several times that it seems no one is editing books anymore. Had the same experience reading Divine Rivals... a book with tons of buzz that was a big dud with big "first draft" energy.
Yes yes yes. Tiktok made community and reading more accessible and enjoyable for a lot of people, and capitalism has a habit of leeching accessibility and using it to turn a haphazard profit.
Love this and it is so sadly true. People forget that BookTok started as a reader community? And that the way people have tried to capitalize that is actually terrible and not primarily that reading community’s fault.
This is Twilight all over again, but make it dragons and dragon riders and fast forward because 💵. Unfortunately, the only thing the big 5 Publishing companies care about is 💵. So quit buying the "fast fashion" style books. 🤨 I'll cross my fingers, but there still seem to be a heck of a lot of H&M stores out there so I think these books will probably continue on as they are. Luckily for me, I don't have Tik Tok and I don't follow their cues.
I read the first couple of books, and loved Twilight as a kid. The difference between Fourth Wing and Twilight is Meyer can actually write. She's not great and Twilight has a TON of problems, but I will give credit where credit is due, Meyer is a MUCH better writer. Twilight is better of a read than Fourth Wing. (And again the series has PROBLEMS)
@@vvitch-mist20 I don't actually think I would go this far... Meyer's work was ultimately plotless. Her sentences were like clown cars, so packed to the brim that they were often nonsensical. She had grammar issues coming out of everywhere. And Meyer's work is even more overtly problematic. I mean, if you held a pew pew to my head and told me I had to either reread Twilight or Fourth Wing, I would say goodbye cruel world.
@@mynameismarinesinteresting 😊 I never read Twilight but I actually listened to the audiobook in German. I kinda liked it. I assume the translators took care of bad grammar and nonsensical sentences in all the translations to make sense out it... Wonder sometimes in how far a translation might actually improve upon a book 😅
Publishers trying to make books “bingeable” meanwhile I’ve been binging bison bludgeoner books since middle school well before binging media was popular and they’ve actually been y’know…good 😅
Learning about red tower from you, and having just read fourth wing and starting iron flame… might avoid red tower in the future! FW was entertaining enough but I agree that it wasn’t strong enough as a fantasy or a romance. I’m 100 pages into IF and am finding so many holes… big yikes! Thanks for contextualizing all this!
this development with bindery is very cool for you, and i am looking forward to see which manuscripts you find. i will however miss access to bonus content, since bindery doesn't take paypal and it's uncommon to have a credit card in germany :/
Marines spot on with the Iron Flame weaknesses predictions. Yup. And with the quality of the product--I saw so many people whose sprayed edges just...flaked off.
I'm so over the "you don't like (name of extremely mediocre book with a lot of internalized misogyny troops) because you are misogynistic!" arguments". If anything, the fact that so many women like this books just highlight how pervasive internalized misogyny is and their complete lack of self awareness and media literacy. Just ask them why they like the book and they either come with a very shallow answer, start getting defensive, answer with their own headcanons or just laught at your face feeling superior. I think it is time for us to give a ling hard look at ourselves and ask why we romanticize abusive relationships and immature protagonist always coddle by the narrative, hype extremely mediocre writing and act like it is the best thing ever
I think poorly produced books is here to stay. With the rise of self publishing, the quality is very mixed. Some authors are diligent in getting their books properly edited and produced, while others are more cavalier with respect to these qualities.
Gotta admit i have a soft spot for misprints but only because theyre usually rare/uncommon. If its happening at that frequency it stops being a silly little mistake and starts being a quality control issue. There arent many publishers i avoid outright but red tower is now one of them.
I am glad I am not the only one who did not like how Yarros portrayed EDS in Fourth Wing. I did not realise Violet even had EDS until I watched author interviews and how it was advertised as the book has diversity with the main character having a disability. It came across to me that Violet was just small and had brittle bones, not that she has EDS. To be inclusive of disabilities, it has to be explicitly stated and addressed, however, it was not in the book and it came across as false advertising.
A few comments like this have popped up under this video and honestly it’s so affirming!! Over on TT, I got so many “well we can’t criticize fourth wing because of the rep” comments. I’ve also come across more people with EDS who were grateful for the rep, which I totally understand particularly when you are representation starved, but I’m glad other people saw what I saw!!
I keep getting fourth wing recommended on Goodreads since it’s always trending or it’ll be like since you enjoyed this other book, but earlier I clicked on it and saw they already have listings for books 3-5 which is so crazy. I don’t think people should be allowed to rate them when they’re not even out yet first of all, but second I wonder how far apart they’ll be released. The third says December 2024 which is a lot better than the fourth wing and iron flame gap, but is that enough time for it to be at least somewhat decent? Is that too far for people to still care as much as they do now? I talk about Tracy Wolff a lot but she released a 6 book series from 2020 to 2023 (not to mention that book 4 claimed to be the conclusion of the series and yet it kept going) but I can’t help but wonder if some authors and/or publishers want to push out low quality books because they know how fast the internet moves on from the popular, trendy books and if they get them out fast enough then the hype never fades, at least until the series is done. And honestly I don’t even care about how close the release dates are, I just want the books to be good and feel like the author actually put a lot of effort into it and that a lot of effort went into editing it into something that’s worth our time. I get this feeling reading sometimes where I’m like if this author doesn’t seem to care about the quality of their own story, then why should I care about reading it?
First off, love your shelf setup. It looks so pretty and aesthetically pleasing 🥰🥰 Now the fun part… And this is just my experience/take, so take it with a grain of salt. What I’ve seen from and why I hate the folks shouting about these sorts of books from the rooftops is that they have that toxic Swiftie mob mentality. It’s not because they’re mostly young women. It’s not because it’s “romantasy”. It’s not even because the boom came from TikTok, because I’ve found some gems on there that scratch my reading itch It’s because they are ignoring literally everyone else who gives valid opinions as misogyny while they throw money at mediocre white folks who put out subpar content on a rapid release schedule. I would much rather only get one work from an artist/author per year than this rapid release horse shit that fetishizes black and brown people for a group of consumers who think mayonnaise is too spicy. 🙄🤦♂️😒
Marines is always here with the amazing overview and the facts 😊😊 For me, the tropes started on ao3 and as you say, tiktok users had to use them (I've never been on tiktok so i take your word for it). I didnt know 'assistant to the villain' had patchy edges or iron flame misprints... I need to Google this asap. And omg Yarros and her interviews.... 😂😂😂😂 (Edited to add, sorry this is so long lolyou dont needto engage with me fully.) What irks me the most is that fanfic authors will sometimes scrutinize and edit until everything is perfect, but then these publishers earn millions with books that have entire words missing, pages missing, idk what else... its crazy.
The fanfic thing especially, because I've seen a lot of people who are saying "those kids publishing their one direction fanfiction is what's ruining books," but ive seen fanfiction where people are like "lol I had to become an expert on wine to write this" and they're doing that for free! The people getting paid to write should at least Google what they're writing about. And I've seen amazing custom skins, coded for free, because someone wanted their fic to look like a reddit thread. people who aren't in fandom seem to think everything is 50 shades, and some stuff is, but there's a lot of stuff that isn't. Edit: another thing is, in fandom, it's a joke that the people who say "sorry English isn't my first language!" write the most beautiful prose you have ever read in your life, and these books just... aren't written well. Edit 2: and another thing, (sorry I just have so much to say) people will apologize for putting a 10k chapter up late because they're working on their dissertation or they wrote it in the car on the way to their grandma's funeral, and Red Tower is doing a rapid release schedule and getting none of it right.
@Ceruleansquid-lo3iv I wholy agree on all of this 🥹🥹🥹 I'm very biased because I used to wrote fanfic and read a lot. I just know that a lot of joy and hard work goes into the craft sometimes, and sometimes people will just upload for fun without editing (and tell you in the tags too!!) I'm always happy when people say they read fanfic better than this or that book. The writers deserve a lot more recognition.
I feel like another thing to add to this that is another factor to consider is the Fast Release that Indie Authors do as well. So many authors are releasing books a month apart that there is no real way that they got the attention they needed during right. Does that make them objectively bad, no becuase everyone has their own opinion on what is good or bad. But like Yaros has stated it's just not sustainable for books, many of those written in Fast Release are actually novellas. I'm working on my first novel one in a series and I'm just frustrated that I've taken years to plan this novel so that when I write it I know I'm putting forth my best effort and Yaros can just put out a book in a month to immediate sucess.
I think that Red Tower might actually be trying to mimic what indie authors are capable of doing because they are indie. Indies I feel like have had a boom, particularly on TT, but that model just doesn’t work in a traditional publishing framework. And to be honest, I also feel like a lot of the indies I read could also use more editing, but there’s a difference between feeling that for the book I read “free” on KU and a book I paid $20 for…
Just to hop in on the EDS rep I agree with the others that say the rep was over simplified and washed over with rose colored glasses. As someone with hEds that deals with chronic pain and other common co-conditions, the rep was very strange. I was initially excited to see my condition depicted in a book, but I was quickly disappointed. I’m my opinion it gives the impression that EDS is less serious than it can be and often is for many people. While it is a spectrum syndrome and affects everyone differently, there are many people that are disabled and unable to work and deal with rampant medical gaslighting and inadequate medical care because a lot of medical professional don’t believe it’s real or think it’s just women being dramatic. Not to mention EDS is not just joint pain and dislocations. It’s Mast cell issues, POTs, chronic fatigue, and can affect all systems in your body. It can be incredible disabling. As someone with EDS not only would I personally not be able to “keep my seat” I wouldn’t even be able to SIT ON A DRAGON that long without being in a huge amount of pain. Again everyone is different but this was overall a strange and inaccurate depiction of this disabling condition which is strange considering the author has EDS. To be fair I personally have dealt with this toxic positivity with most of my doctors. Most will tell me I can just “push through the partial dislocations” and repeatedly deny me accommodations because “I can’t let it run my life.” So I’m sure Rebecca Yarros has possibly been fed this narrative as well. This depiction overall smacked of ableism over all and I was incredibly disappointed. There was a way that the author could have depicted this disabled woman becoming a warrior and finding her strength while also accommodating her disability. Instead Yarros oversimplified and glossed over Violets condition in order to fit her into the typical tropes and character arcs that are commonly done and nothing new. Big sad.
I do kinda see TikTok as partly at fault/indicative of the problem, but not the actual communities on it, rather it being a representation of capitalism's constant push towards more, quicker. Like social media platforms are products, and they, down to their design, represent that desire of marketing and infinite selling and capitalist growth imo, like it's not a failure of the communities trying to use them to connect but rather a feature of the sites as tools of the capitalist companies that made them... idk like i think this move of publishing is just a "natural" extension of the direction capitalism is pushing us toward; it's unsustainable and it doesnt actually create a better product or better work environments, just higher sales and more money for the ppl at the top
Always love your discussions and hearing your point of view. Lots to unpack here. I mean yeah, sure - the model of fast fashion has been adopted in so many industries, cuz we live in a capitalist hellscape, and this kind of model is appealing to our awful corporate overlords. That being said, there were cheaply printed penny dreadfuls and dime novels in the 19th century, pulp fiction soon after. I grew up reading RL Stein books that were published monthly. And I bet you had ppl bitching about them in those time periods. So it might be on a larger scale now, but it’s not exactly new. Thanks for the video! Looking forward to your end of year content.
Yep! There are so many examples of people publishing quickly both in trad and indie published spaces. I think the Red Tower thing is bonkers because they said "fast but complicated," and like... what?! But yes, the idea of speed by itself when it comes to books is not new. Nothing that Red Tower is doing is wholly unique. They just really said "what if we did all these things together?"
I saw your Bindery announcement on Tiktok and I'd never heard of it until then. I just joined your Patreon a few weeks ago, so I might have to look at moving over there instead. Are you planning on moving your old Patreon content to Bindery? Also, I can't finish this video until later today, but I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this article!
The chapter recaps will move to Bindery, but also, for the time being, I'll be cross-posting my Bindery content to Patreon as well. I have people who signed up for Patreon for a year's membership, and I don't want to close it down completely. Bindery will get some exclusive things, but most everything will be up on both Bindery and Patreon for the foreseeable future.
omg the fourth wing LOVERS can be so weird. You're allowed to not like a book. I enjoyed Fourth Wing but I can also see why people weren't really into it
Now I'm wondering how well they'll handle people who didn't decide to keep screwed up copies. I'm guessing most were discovered within the place they were purchased's return/exchange window, so this is probably hard to judge at this point. My one experience with a publisher and a binding error I discovered too late to return, was a very nice email exchange and a new copy being sent. (Probably didn't hurt that it was a mmpb Star Wars book though.)
The special Iron Flame/Fourth Wing release really bothered me just because it was clearly rushed garbage. My friend owns an independent book store, and Red Tower cut their shipment in half at the last minute, and much of what they got was missing pages, had the map in the wrong way, was peeling already, etc. Like, if you're going to try to turn out content this fast, you'd think they would have the process down. I can't imagine this was a great experience for anyone except Red Tower's bank account.
I knew that Rebecca Yarros was pro military industrial complex given the whole Israel debacle, but I didn't realize it devolved into racism. God damn. I would really love to see a review of that military romance she wrote.
What I am starting to feel uncomfortable about is that it feels like the book market is using the same tactics as fast fashion: Sell as much as possible to gain profit and not care about the quality of what is being produced while also making these products be the same and look as pretty as possible. I see this in how many editions of FW is out and how many books have different covers for different types of books. I will say that discreet covers I understand because not everyone likes a half naked human on the cover but when you have so many covers for the same book, it feels just wasteful. Also there is this strange feeling of elitism in the community because it feels like only a select few can actually get these special editions of these books because most of the companies that do special editions of books are based in the US or UK and shipping from those countries are expensive! That’s just my thoughts on what I can conjure up.
I read Fourth Wing knowing it was going to be bad, so I had fun (I borrowed it from the library). It's such a stupid book, nothing makes sense, the characters are predictable, and the plot was predictable (Even though I had watched a few book reviews talking about some of the plot). I gave it 4/10 for writing and plot but 10/10 for fun. It was a fun book to make fun of while reading it and to laugh at. Kind of like watching a bad movie that's unintentionally funny. But, when I read Iron Flame (also through my library), I DNF'd it at 5 Chapters. It was just bad, nothing to laugh at, nothing that I found silly. It was cliche and boring.
You are not alone in hating Fourth Wing, I DNF'd the audio book, then the ebook after giving it a second chance. I found Yarros to be ableist and eugenicist. I hope you are getting trauma pay for reading Iron Flame. BookToc is as toxic as GoodReads and there is a skew since 2020 away from quality stories for smexy tingle time books with supernatural or fantasy elements without decent world building. Romance of all spice levels is 90% of the entire industry right now but sadly, it is thriving on toxic tropes with a weird sprinkle of spicy Cozies.
Okay, you made me curious about The Fourth Wing, so I started reading the sample. I had to tap out after the first couple of pages. I didn't really think that the writing was horrible, but the way the exposition was handled just made me feel like I was wasting my time. After all, there was no way in hell that I'd retain any of the details, so why bother reading them???
The info dumps and terrible dialogue only keep getting worse and worse. The actual sentence structure level writing is like... fine... 70% of the time, and the other 30% of the time, it gets kind of unwieldy and makes you have to stop and reread a sentence to try to decipher what is even happening.
@@mynameismarines I didn't have issues with the sentence structure... I don't think I did, anyway. It's clear, though, that she doesn't understand dialogue. Truth be told, I find that most writers don't. Most think you can just "eavesdrop" on conversations to learn how to write dialogue. _Nnnnnope._ Dialogue has it's own energy, and a writer must learn to flow within it. It's a concept that I'm currently refining, about which I intend to post an article... if I can ever find the time..............
I have two main thoughts. 1 I think there's more to be said rather at the idea of how social media as a whole has lead to reading being something that chases fads as social media algorithms has shortened when it feels people can be in on the conversations. As a slow reader, I'm just never "present" to participate in the talking and community aspects of any given book because the moment passes so quick. 2. I think a far better comparison with how you've gone about talking about this publisher, would actually be the video game industry which has seen a major increase in games being released unfinished and buggy, promising later updates, but only turning them out if interest maintains. And with pre-orders being a major trigger for the rushing in video game making, I'm sure pre-order and special edition campaigns are a catalyst here.
I understand this wholeheartedly. I listened to the audiobook. The narrator made the story soooo good. But honestly, if I had to read it myself I prob wouldn’t have gotten through it. I did enjoy the story a lot though. I can’t lie. But I do think you made some really good points. Although I do think we need to normalize preferences. It’s okay to disagree. And also I think talking about quality over quantity is a very important conversation.
I dont even have to finish this video to know that I 100% agree on your views of Fourth Wing. I personally dont have too high standards for fantasy romance books (I dont think)....im fairly easy to please and yet I couldn't stand it. I agree...its a bad quality book from a storytelling perspective imo. I also like how you pointed out the weird (racist???) Ways Violent describes Xaden in the book. Im sorry but its a very specific group of people that like Fourth Wing and its usually newer fantasy readers....it shows..
noti gang!! edit: to answer the title, in my opinion, yes :(( edit x2: okay after finishing the video, i’d change my answer to sort of. i don’t think it’s purposeful per say but it’s because of how tiktok functions as a whole. yes, mediocre or bad content can still get popular on it’s own but never with the same speed that it can now. i feel like as our attention spans shorten, those of us who still read will look for books that aren’t much of a challenge like a fourth wing. tiktok offers an easy place to find likeminded people and spread your “gospel”, whatever it may be. that’s why i’d say yes; i hadn’t really considered red tower as a company. thanks for always giving me a different angle to consider!
This was a very interesting and well made video! I clicked on this video thinking that the article was right. Now i’ve realized that I have once again been tricked into blaming the consumers instead of the capitalist companies that are making most of these shit choices 💀
Respectfully - you're amazing and I love your takes. It is hard not to be literally disgusted with the likes of Yarros and Maas + people being incapable of critical thought.
I'm so irritated with the fact that so many people who review books are pressured to be apologetic and ashamed for critiquing books due to being dismissed as “negative” and a “hater”. The perspective of the critic is not an enemy of the perspective of the artist. They go hand in hand and criticism is an important component to art. So much of our thinking of art is influenced by decades and decades of thoughtful criticism. The devaluation and to some degree, demonizing of critical perspectives is such a disappointing phenomenon in our contemporary conversations about art.
If you think a book is Bad, it's OKAY. You are entitled to that opinion and you should not have to hold your tongue. An opinion is not a crime!
as someone who works in publishing, post-pandemic has been weird. we saw a massive increase in readership - but it was a very healthy mix of backlist and new releases. now, frontlist titles are no longer bringing readership to the backlist - people only want the new thing. so instead of releasing new books with the intent of building a solid backlist of titles, publishers will start to move towards cash grab books that will "live" for a shorter period of time. and with all other things, keeping a publishing house is becoming more and more expensive (even with the ridiculous working conditions worldwide!!! pay your editors!!!) so for old publishing houses to stay afloat (like the one i work for), even when editors don't want to, we have to publish books like these. we hope that this means that all of this money will be able to be funneled into building a backlist of stronger titles that can live longer, but i'm skeptical.
Another thing about this trend of rapid-releases, I think this trend is detrimental to the quality of books. Considering that we're paying anywhere from 30 to 70 dollars a book (depending on where you live), to have undeveloped plots, half-assed world-building, half-baked characters, and poor writing be the new "standard" (for the lack of a better word), we're getting cheated out our money. Especially when you take into account that fantasy works written by women and targeted to the female-audience, are already looked down upon in the publishing industry and seen as the lesser genre, to have such a cesspool of poor quality filling the market towards female-consumers is only going to add to that belief, which I fear will only hurt women authors and readers in the long run. I don't think publishers should sacrifice quality just for "binge-ability", especially when we're paying so much money since the price tags have gone up.
This is so true. I've read a romantasy series once (I only continued because I gave the author the benefit of the doubt) that was glaringly similar to another popular series. And this is not just about the popular tropes in the genre or some elements common in story telling but the characters have the same descriptions, the same family, the same attitude, even the same names only altered a little bit so it couldn't be called outright plagiarism.
I was so uncomfortable reading the whole thing but I felt bad for the author because she was indie and I felt guilty of even thinking she copied from another big name author. I soldiered on and soon found out how much she "borrowed" (copy pasted, paraphrased, let's mash it all up together because no one can prove mosaic plagiarism) from that big name author whom I found out she was a fan of from her old posts. This is because she does not have a developmental editor who would be professional and honest and blunt enough to tell her that what she's writing would land her into waters an inch close to plagiarism.
She pumped out two books each year since her debut and this ear she was supposed to release three (all of them were 400, 500-600 pages long and her most recent one in the series is about 900 pages long FFS), but she took a step back after she gained attention (her other book not from this series got signed by a traditional publisher, god help us all) and more and more readers discovered this series of hers which she basically ripped off of another author.
The quality of her books were not even good and they were a bore (writing was okay, I guess, nothing special or unique; the characters were straight out of another popular book series; underdeveloped and the FMC was a Mary Sue but meh, too, she's boring; and most of the plot like the characters were copy pasted that it's straight up fan fiction of the original ones).
It was passable and again, I think I gave her more leniency initially because she was indie but how many times do indie authors ask to be recognized the same way as traditionally published authors? So this means that they should also be regarded in the same standards, right?
Edited: Grammar and spacing.
@@BG-wv3vnCassandra Clare?
@@phoenixfritzinger9185 I NEVER THOUGHT SOMEONE WOULD RELATE THE TWO BUT YES
Okay, I meant Chloe C. Peñaranda here but I've always called her "the new Cassandra Clare". I was just a bit terrified of the backlash from Cassie's fans T_T
Now that you've commented it, I finally feel free to reveal my thoughts XD
Edit: When I say, "the new Cassandra Clare", I don't mean in any way, shape or form except: ripping off other author's ideas, not crediting them or citing them as influences, attacking them passive aggressively or otherwise because of guilt, and becoming bitter and spiteful of the readers who are smart enough to notice the "borrowing" done and blame them for low ratings and going as low as villainizing them to their peers and other people who didn't know any better to gather sympathy.
@@BG-wv3vn I think in regard to certain standards, I'm willing to forgive indie published authors for not reaching the level of traditional publishing quality because they don't normally have the same access to resources, like editors or cover artists, etc, and I can give even more leniency for debut indie authors. I'm an avid indie book reader, so I can forgive quote "poor quality" end-quote from indie authors, as long its not first-draft quality, if that makes sense.
But traditional publishing, in my opinion, has no excuse for poor quality. They have the money, they're just greedy. I get that manufacturing is expensive, so I think they should be less focused on spending money to make the next pretty special edition, and refocus that money on bringing back quality writing/editing into their books. Don't get me wrong, special edition are cool and pretty and all, especially for those of us who have a library-compulsion and what our shelves to look nice, but sprayed edges and gold foil covers mean nothing if what is in between the pages is not up to par.
@@mariavalie8434 Great point. Traditionally published books are held on higher standards because they have the resources and perhaps people believe there should be no room for mistakes for them. However, there could still be errors in them no matter how miniscule.
I was referring to indie books that have, as you called it, "first-draft" quality in them. Too many errors for me to let go, and when it seems like there wasn't any real effort put into publishing them.
And I've said what I said because of the book series I've read that border suspiciously on plagiarism (no developmental editor) with plenty of grammatical and spelling errors. No book is perfect and they're all bound to having errors but this shows how important editing is.
The author of these books also uses the same tactic these traditional publishers do when it comes to marketing her books. The "special edition" feel in which she'd commission art of high quality to pull in readers. The books themselves are meh and like what I've said bordering on the plagiarism spectrum, but the author has great marketing skills that make people curious... until they've read her books and find out what's in them that is XD
I was one of those victims LMFAO the art in her books were just amazing that I feel like the artists should be the ones really getting the praise and all the credits for why her books sell the way they do.
The contents don't match the quality of the art and that was why I feel it's similar to the cheap strategy some of these big wigs publishers do like RT. The quality of the story itself was secondary as to what the book looks and it's disheartening that we have come to this.
I miss the days when there is no social media and books sell like pancakes all over the world via news outlets or word of mouth. Books that weren't written around tropes and have actual heart and genuineness to them.
The positive side, I guess, of social media is that now I get to discover a lot of indie authors who sometimes have even better books than traditionally published ones.
"In her own words, she's not pro-military, she's anti-war." Bro did she think those were synonymous??? If you're actually anti-war then you're also anti-military, anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist, and anti-colonialism. Things that she very clearly isn't.
When I heard that I was like.... what 🤠
See when I hear anti-war I hear "I'm not anti-choice, I'm pro life!"...
I loved watching her try to give us that line when Fourth Wing so clearly proves that's a lie. Fourth Wing's world is perfectly set up to deliver an anti-war message so it's very notable that it goes out of its way to not do that.
Tbh, "special edition" doesn't mean anything to me anymore. It seems like every book is getting a special edition nowadays so it's not really special anymore? Also the trend of getting a special edition of a book you haven't read yet and don't know if you will like is wild to me. Especially because a lot of new releases are pretty bad bc of the lack of editing.
I feel this which is why I'll only ever pay for special editions of books I have already read and I know I love. Like I ordered the litjot crate Neil Gaiman Coraline and stardust because I adore his writing and I would love to have them on my shelf. I also got the fairyloot poison study set because those are some of my all time favorite books.
With how expensive some special editions are I will never understand why or how people would just throw money at all of them.
The lack of editing trend, while not universal, is starting to feel very common to me. Which is so frustrating, because that is another barrier for me to overcome when I try to get into a book. Writing quality affects so much and especially character (which is my primary reading motivation) and themes (which is my close second). It feels a bit unfair tbh, because in some ways criticizing writing quality is much more stigmatized in certain areas of the internet. And the “it isn’t a masterpiece but it’s fun” to borderline objectively poor quality is exhausting. Leave me to vent in peace about the dumb books 😭
I literally made a video yesterday on TT too about how I can't stand getting the "it's no literary masterpiece" comment sooooo much. Like... I DIDN'T EXPECT IT TO BE!!!
I have been fighting against "it isn't a masterpiece but it's fun". I get push back all the time. As a writer it really upsets me that I'm consistently put down. People would agree with me if I said XYZ book was good and used my knowledge of explain why it was good, but if I were to use that SAME knowledge and explained why a book is bad, even if people like it, and suddenly I'm being a hater.
If a chef said something was cooked poorly people would believe them. But why don't writers get listened to? Why is my craft, knowledge and skill not respected? Is it because I'm a self-published nobody? Is it because I don't have a Big Five publisher backing me? It's really disheartening an annoying.
I mean people have the right to disagree if a book is 'bad' or not just because you think a book is bad doesn't mean they have to inherently agree with you regardless of your skill level. Art is subjective and when it comes to food I feel its different, giving someone a 'bad' book isn't like giving someone a undercooked steak which could make someone ill lol.@@vvitch-mist20
@@marandaed4335
You missed my point. Art is subjective, however writing also takes talent.
My bad and your bad aren't the same. I've seen this growing trend of media, in general, on a decline with everyone going "Oh well it's allowed to be bad" and like you "art is subjective". I am telling you, as a writer of like 17 years, that it's bad. Writers tell each other that just because something is popular doesn't mean it's well written.
Storytelling is a craft like cooking and people can be bad at it. Rebecca Yarros is bad at it, and her editor is bad at editing.
Not only the quality but the content, too. One indie book just got picked up by a traditional publisher after claims that it had heavily "borrowed" a lot of things from other popular romantasy books came up, and that was why a lot of negative reviewers have issue on the clunky, patched up writing, and the characters, scenes, and lines that readers felt like they have already read before. Developmental editor who? XD T_T
I like that you don't sugarcoat the issues or speak in a roundabout way in order to sound positive.
Don't let the haters get you down!
Appreciate you! Out here just doing my best lol
“Why are we blaming the consumers for these hellish capitalistic choices?” THIS SO MUCH!
Truly wild to have Red Tower printing terrible copies and go, "huh, how can we blame TikTok for this?"
But can't you argue that consumers are the same ones perpetuating these standards? I mean, if as a group, people decided to stop buying badly written and edited books, publishers wouldn't then follow trends that encourage chicanery, no?
@@mynameismarinescan't we blame both? They seem to work well together
@@thefriesofLockeLamoraI very much agree with that. We don't need to read or buy trash... There's actually plenty other books available to read
@@thefriesofLockeLamorayeahhh i agree that some blame has to go to the consumers when it comes to this issue. it reminds me of how when the idol came out SO MANY CZcamsRS came out with their opinions on how bad it was, but still watched it for content. shanspeare on here has a good commentary on the concept of “hatewatching” and i feel like that can apply to this conversation.
Is there a way to articulate the idea that like….it’s not calling anyone stupid or a lesser reader to note that the people in the general booktok demo are young and haven’t been reading adult-ish books for very long? They haven’t yet put in a decade or two of reading 50 adult books a year to develop that muscle and accumulate the data to start seeing patterns. They might not be discerning, just as newbies to any hobby still have a lot to learn. But to me it seems somewhat new that adult publishers are aiming for that readership where it is. Fourth Wing had writing problems starting in the content warning, and I truly don’t understand how anyone kept going after the info dump on the balance beam.
That's exactly how I feel like publishing is catering more to people who are new to reading and therefore less discerning and we're losing out on books that are more for people who are more seasoned readers and need more complexity in the writing and storytelling. While I think its good to introduce more people to reading it should be balanced because the effect will be that people won't stick to it and the industry will end up losing readers once they get tired of the same basic stuff. I don't know if I expressed that well lol
This is how I felt like what people who read Twilight and FSOG were. Like what you said, not to call those who read these books stupid or a lesser reader but the language was just dumb, simple, easy to understand. Anyone could read it. And come to think of it, Colen Hover books were also similar. They're so easy to read and simple BUT all of these books appeal to the better part of the masses. I wonder if that has to do with the literacy rate. If there are more people who reached a certain educational degree find these books compatible to their Lexile level, that's why they're far enjoyable for them. I'm just pondering here. Correct me if I'm wrong or if I misspoke or misunderstood something.
I don’t think these people are “stupid” they’re just not seasoned readers. That’s not an attack on their intellectual ability because I see reading as a skill the same as people are bad at sewing or drawing when they’d first start. But I do find that the books that are popular are ones that don’t require a lot of interaction to enjoy. The author tells you everything and doesn’t really allow for much interaction which isn’t the reader’s fault but the author not letting readers form their own opinions.
I also think there’s an issue with how reading is taught in school. The booktok crowd seem to think that if a book has purple prose than it’s well written when prose is only part of a story. There’s other parts to a good story.
I do find that these days when I talk to some people about books they just want to talk about how hot the guy is. They don’t talk about plot progression, what they liked about the prose, dialogue, the world itself, characterization, etc. It’s just “wow he was so hot and daddy!!” Idk. Like I said I don’t blame the consumers as much as I blame editors and agents for this. Lot of agents these days are kind of weird. Some of them shop on AO3 for writers and just have them change up the names a bit.
It's felt like one of those "we are living in a dystopia and only I can see it" moments when reading comments and seeing videos where people are brushing off MAJOR physical problems with the iron Flame books. Especially because people also (rightfully so) always request a replacement if a special edition/illumicrate/fairyloot book has any kind of dent or dustjacket damage and there has been so much talk about the declining quality (in terms of errors and damage) in book box content.
"It's special, it'll be worth lots of money" not when 50% of them have errors lmao
See, this is it. This is the thing. Misprint books ARE worth money, but that's only because when you have a known major misprint, the publisher tends to recall and destroy the stock that's out there, and replace it with non-misprinted items. When most of the stock is suffering some kind of damage and the publisher is not pulling them, the only value it has is as a personal curiosity. Emotional attachment. That's it.
The entretaiment industry in general has been pivoting towards scam territory for a while now. No matter if they sell books, films, videogames or what-not, there's a trend of assuming the product is of bad quallity but must be sold in astronomical numbers anyway. In that sense, tiktok is the perfect tool for advertisement because of its shortness, fastness and capacity to form nuche communities. Is not that tiktok is killing the publishing industry, is that both are tied into a mutually** lucrative feedback loop
**lucrative for Tiktok the company, not necessarily its content creators
I agree with this exactly. And like the people using TikTok aren’t exactly innocent bystanders, because of all of these patterns of overconsumption and a decrease in media literacy, but to blame the content creators for these problems above media companies and even TT the company is wild to me.
As a former professional editor, I have zero tolerance for poorly edited or written books, especially at current new book prices. I usually only buy books and authors I love in new hardcover, despite my overall love of beautiful, well-made and designed books as artifacts.
"a romance set during the troop withdrawal in Afghanistan" [insert Homer backing into the hedge gif]
When I read the description, I was stunned honey. I said SET DURING THE WHAT NOW.
@@mynameismarines Like...maaaaaybe it it were written by a person from Afghanistan??? But even then, I'd be like, there are so many other possibilities that won't make people sprain something from cringing
Thank you for bringing up EDS and the toxic perseverance trope that was so prevalent. As someone who has EDS among other chronic conditions who is unable to work, I was incredibly disappointed by the representation. I know that not every single person with EDS has the same symptoms but I felt like the condition was very oversimplified when it is so much more complex and severe, and I honestly felt like it only played into the inspiration p*rn, toxic perseverance tropes that are harmful to the disabled community as a whole, not just the EDS community. This whole video brings up so many valid points so thank as always for your content!
Oh 100%. I don’t have EDS, however this book was rough to read because of the internalized ableism
I agree. The disorder only came up when convenient and sorry but you can't tell me that she broke bones and such in battles and NOT with rough you know what where you're literally knocking furniture down...it was very poorly represented which is surprising since th author suffers from it...seems like out of all the people she would be the best to incorporate it into her writing in a natural, realistic way....
What I want to know is why Rebecca Yarros appears to understand her own disability so poorly. Of particular note is a scene where Violet's told that a hand-to-hand weapon that is perfectly suited for her and her condition is a bad fit and the single worst strategy conceivable under those circumstances is not only recommended, but utilized instead. Kinda hard to get in close let alone move quickly at all when you have to worry about if your ligaments can even withstand your muscle strength, but it sure is interesting how a quarterstaff makes all of those considerations largely irrelevant.
@@GatekeeperGuardian-wv3cd no literally it doesn't make any sense!!!
firstly i want to thank you for articulating all of the issues i’ve had with this book especially in regards to rebecca yarros’ pro militarism. secondly, i am a bookseller at a independent bookstore and watching this whole phenomenon unfold was utterly bizarre. i remember gawking and laughing at the dedication with my coworkers the day fourth wing released. after interacting with so many people earnestly gush about how much they love the book it’s made me really grapple with my opinion on it. i can see why people like it from a pure entertainment level, but if you look into it any deeper it gets real dark real fast.
I hear you because I have a hard time even processing like the pure entertainment level, but I know that’s because I had such a bad time reading it. There is so much you have to straight up skim or ignore to make the story even make sense 😭
@@mynameismarines I feel kinda confused that THIS, was the book that got me out of a slump LOL 😂. But I also read it while having a high fever, so it felt more of a fever dream than a book!
Fortunately the people who like Fourth Wing tend to be self-aware about either not looking at it at a deeper level or understanding that it has some very sussy implications when you do look at it on a deeper level. At least in my experience anyway.
@@mynameismarines I thought so too, at first, but as someone who watches and reads a lot of shonen I've noticed that there's a difference between media you can enjoy without thinking about it and media you can ONLY enjoy without thinking about it.
I understand reading is a stress reliever for people, but the amount of consumers shovelling mid down their throats and inflating goodreads reviews because they turn their brains off while reading is frustrating for people (me) who want to find...actually great books to spend their hard earned money on :')...
As someone with a few chronic illnesses, one of them being hyper mobility, I was super excited when Fourth Wing came out. I also really like dragons. I was expecting some good rep seeing as how Rebecca Yarros has EDS, and was super surprised at how ableist this series is. There is a line between pushing through to live your life, and the toxic pushing through and destroying your body. Also, I feel like I am at the point that I want to just ignore the whole romantasy genre because I feel like the majority of them cheapen fantasy by having bad writing and virtually no editing. Which is frustrating cause I love the idea of romantasy and women authors but....I feel like it can be done better. I feel like readers are worth authors and publishers doing better.
Yes! The way the book seemed to just take the stance of all Violet had to do was try harder, even though it gave a couple of nods to accommodations. The fact that homegirl was freefalling off the back of a dragon multiple times a day with little to no consequences was wild to me. There was basically nothing about pain management. Just mostly “push a little harder” and “she knows how to deal with pain.”
And I’m with you on romantasy! It should work for me but so often, the fantasy elements are flimsy props to spice up the romance… which also doesn’t work as well as it should.
Another EDS person here! This book bothered me with the rep not only bc it’s ableist but bc pushing yourself with EDS only leads to a systemic breakdown of the body (an emergency situation). Ableism and the people around me in general (aka American society) always tells you to push through your pain and that’s the exact WRONG advice for EDS! It just makes me livid bc not only is this book echoing societal norms but it’s directly harmful to the people it’s supposed to be representing.
Yes and someone who also is disabled and has a sister who has EDS I found it very ableist to.
Honestly I kind of despise that Lindsay Ellis made it popular to regurgitate that criticizing YA/NA romance is inherently misogynistic. It’s just gross to me because no I don’t criticize these books because they’re written by women or popular with women. I criticize them usually because the writing is bad or there’s something in there that’s just rancid. But of course I just hate women right? 🙃
Edit: and I’ve noticed a theme of these stories is that they put a lot of emphasis on men anyways. The plot barely moves without the man and the woman is just standing around smiling and waiting for instructions. Rarely are there female friends in these stories unless they’re fridged (Crescent City’s Danika for example). So I’m not sure how that’s not misogynistic.
Edit 2: I edited her name back in. LE needs to be criticized for that video lol
I literally have a line on the editing room floor of this video about how I will never forgive Lindsay Ellis for that I'm Sorry video lmao. I cut it but I'm glad you said it anyway.
@@mynameismarinesI totally agree. The video just completely ignores the valid criticism of racism throughout the story. The director of twilight wanted to make the cullens more diverse but SMeyer said no 🫠 the black Lurent was the only thing she’d budge on. But sure I’m critical of Stephanie Meyer bc she’s a woman not bc she’s racist lol
That video was literally the first thing that came to mind when Marines mentioned people using that phrase to deflect from actual criticisms people had with a story's problematic elements (not to mention that it only seems to consistently apply to white girlies 🫢)
@@nootnewt9323plus Twilight is just bad. I’ve read one of those books and it was bad. I had to reread sentences to understand what was happening and I was still confused. I hate that people think we can’t criticize Twilight because a lotta women and girls like it even though it’s bad and has tons of bigotry and weird shit in it
i saw some tweet discussing those cringe erotica books that was like "young women are 100% within their rights to explore their sexuality through erotica and read these sorts of books, i just want them to have higher standards" and like that but with how fourth wing relates to YA and fantasy
It seems that more and more books are being published for an audience that is new to reading. But to me that's bad practice because you need balance. Otherwise the industry loses avid readers (loyal customers) who need more complexity in their books. It's not sustainable.
Seriously. I've started having to specifically look for older books to find anything with substance.
@hyenaedits3460 Samee I spend more time looking for what to read next than actually reading. It's so sad because while older books are usually better in quality they are outdated in many ways so there's no winning. I'm either gonna have to give up reading which I really don't want to do or get used to having mid reading experiences on the regular.
@@bicho6313 I read fanfiction or write my own stories tbh. Some fanfics are better quality than some traditionally published books.
I'm not so sure. If you do it quickly enough the way Red Tower is doing you might be able to successfully groom an audience's expectations within "acceptable" levels. At least in theory.
Your channel makes me feel seen. I have really been aghast by most new releases where I don't really bother reading anything new until I can watch booktubers end of year recaps that I trust (and even still I get burned sometimes). Books are expensive, and we as readers deserve better quality books for the amount we are paying for them.
So I'm in the Indy publishing side of writing and books. Lately I feel like Kindle Unlimited books have slipped into the mainstream. There is nothing wrong with some of these books, though they do tend to be edited less and read like Fourth Wing and other books that have gotten hyped as of late. It's so interesting to me cause in Indy publishing, you are encouraged to write and publish 2-6 books a year, if you can do a book a month you're normally doing very well. That mindset in traditional publishing scares me.
Why are authors so against like buying fantasy languages. Like they make websites for it. You can avoid all of this. You want to make a a new world ,with new languages and new places and new city capitals! Well people will do it for you!!! Consult a damn map maker!! Focus on your story and let someone else worry about that!
I love this! I didn’t know that you could pay for something like that!
I love this. You are right and you should say it!
Wait, how and where can you consult them? 👀
@@LnzMQ Yup, no muss no fuss just focus on the book.
@@AHealthyDoseofFran Look up Conlang (constructed language) generators. For the map making, you can use like free websites and or buy a commission on like fiver. So you can have some input on things like capitals and spelling.
I think the publishing industry, similar to fashion, doesn’t know what to do with the rapid change of trends due to social media. But their reaction seems to be more akin to the film industry. They are putting a lot of money into just the big hyped books and designing a tent pole style release strategy. Very similar to what we are seeing with Marvel and that the lack of time between projects results in a worse result and this is coinciding with the death of the midlist like the death of the mid budget movie.
I feel like Yarros using Gaelic the way she did is an extension of how Maas and all use the fae the way they do. It's bizarrely disrespectful to the cultures they're from and I get that its, like, fairies but it's starting to just be really annoying. Type of nerds to be like omg fairy alpha males and then make jokes about the way sean is pronounced.
That out of the way, I agree with your points. It's just quick, easy reads for a quick buck during what was a perfect storm. I also believe there's an aspect of the fanfic-ification of books, which is not inherently a bad thing (I'm working on fanfic right now!). Familiar settings, familiar characters, on and on. I'll also never forgive Ellis for setting the whole "its misogyny!" in motion. I remember being the target demographic for twilight while it was coming out. I distinctly people talking about the romanticization of abuse, and the racism, and Meyer's whole mormon agenda. But its become a blank check for people.
Yes, SJM is also guilty! So many authors dip into minority languages like their own personal fantasy stash. I’m absolutely certain people have been calling this out for years, so I’m glad that this criticism got heard by so many more people now.
I truly left out me laughing at how I’d never forgive Lindsay for that video, but know that I thought it too!!!
Yet a lot of indie authors ride in the wave of this "success" and use fae so callously and their bad attempts at thwarting comparisons against their works and SJM's by saying SJM was not the first person to write about fae (we all know it) or that she's not the one who invented fae (obviously) only made them seem the more ignorant and just as guilty.
I also feel like people get away with butchering languages like Gaelic bc people can say they’re a white people language so it doesn’t matter lol
Agents shop on AO3 for writers these days. I won’t name names but there is an agent that specifically looks for Reylo fanfic writers and publishes them. It’s very bizarre to say the least.
@@nootnewt9323 Oh I know. I'm a fanfic author myself- these people have built in audiences and write for dynamics/tropes that are very popular (And are, imo, basically paint by numbers)
I'm also really annoyed by this "fast fashion" comparison that is actually not tied up in any of the things that make fast fashion so horrific? Like the closest this argument is getting to that is "over consumption" which is part of the problem, but the connection between people buying a couple more books and people buying dozens of extra articles of clothing per year is pretty tenuous. That's a bit of a reach. Fast fashion is unethical because of the truly insane labor conditions under which it is produced and because of how incredibly resource intensive it is, and therefore destructive to the planet. As you've noted here, there are plenty of problems with these trends in publishing! But I'm not seeing how that's "fast fashion" per se? It seems like the crux of this argument is "fast fashion = consumer choices I dislike," which is just fucking weird, annoying, and detrimental to the conversation about the *actual harms of fast fashion*.
tl;dr "fast fashion" is my new "emotional labor"
It’s a quality comparison. It’s an IG Insta Fashion reference to 1000s of people starting “clothing lines” with the same poorly constructed basics that they slap a Cricut logo onto. I get it. If you’re attuned to urban fast fashion you definitely get the comparison to what some corners of publishing is doing for a cash grab
@@JDris08 Yeah, so I know a lot about fast fashion and definitely *get* the comparison and I'm saying it's a bad one. Businesses make cash grab decisions across many industries because that's just how capitalism works. Fast fashion is *uniquely horrific* because of the implications for both people and the environment. There is a very real human cost for the people performing the labor for unethical wages in terrible conditions. (Etsy sellers in rich countries slapping Cricut logos on t-shirts are not the primary laborers in this industry.) There is a very real cost to our planet, both because of how clothing is manufactured and because of how disposable the garments are. None of these things apply to this larger argument about the publishing industry. My point was and remains: the comparison was made for lazy click-bait reasons, not to actually say anything meaningful.
@@SweeneySays the fact remains that the analogy is fitting. The fact that YOU want it to compute on every level is a PERSONAL PROBLEM. The rest of understand exactly what it means🙄 Like why are we being overly deep?
I'm intrigued by the sustainability costs of genuine fast fashion now.
Real because the last quality book I’ve read is Six of Crows😭 books are being pushed as ‘tropes’ and they have no identity outside of them. Every book I’ve read is just the same book with different names and a little bit of different *worldbuilding*.
If you are into fantasy, there is still plenty of proper adult fantasy published. The key word here is "adult". You need to look beyond YA and fantasy romance. There is a whole genre with a large amount of variety, styles and different sub-genres. Where "adult" means more than just adding sex and some swear words. These books won't gain traction in TikTok, but you can find CZcamsrs discussing them. Never mind including older books that have been released in the last three decades or so.
The first page of Fourth Wing cemented Rebecca Yarros as my 2nd archnemsis. I write Romantasy, and love both fantasy and romance. What Yarros did, and the unforunate trend she started upset me. People will read this, and think it's good. She called her own work "low-brow". Now I write for casual readers, I write short books and I use simple, and easy to understand language. I would never call my work low-brow.
I think this kind of "well it's fun" kind of attitude came out because people forgot what media literacy is. In the 2010s we went mad hard online with tearing stories apart, and now we just swung in the other direction and publishers will pump out anything.
(and if anyone is curious JJ Abrams is first bc he can't finish stories, which is literally the whole point of storytelling)
I think it’s important to have stories that are fun and written for escapism. Not every story needs to be pulled apart by all readers. I for example mostly read to enjoy myself.
@@LilyEvans1996It is still important for stories that are traditionally published to be polished by editors and come out the other end as coherent, solid works. In this case, it wasn’t.
@@angelaahhh not to mention the fact that stories that are written just for fun and escapism can still contain questionable or problematic elements that should be discussed? it doesn't have to take your enjoyment away from a story. we don't have to be hypercritical but we also shouldn't be complacent and ignorant. both extremes are bad.
@@angelaahhh I agree. There are so many mistakes I have noticed in some books I've read recently. I am still in the middle of Iron Flame so I can't speak for it, but with Fourth Wing I didn't notice anything wrong. Maybe I was really into the story and the mistakes did not jump out at me haha.
I remember hearing from authors early in 2020 that the supply chain issues would mean smaller books would get cancelled so that the presses only get used for the mega sellers- which is why preorders were so important for them. I wonder how much of this rapid release mega seller success will continue to push smaller authors off the presses and lead to a tighter publishing landscape- which is all ultimately super unfortunate
I think A Discovery of Witches was the first Popular Book where I noticed that it needed at least two more editing passes: developmentally, and to correct some egregiously poor sentences, including what seemed to be Google-translated French. (No comment on its sequels, except that the prose was so poor from the get-go that I had to return the ebook immediately lest I have some kind of fit.) The covers are very pretty, to the point of being more intriguing than the books themselves. So I think this trend has been a-brewing for a minute, but COVID's impact on the industry has kicked it into overdrive.
I've thought the same thing about A Discovery of Witches! It needed better developmental editing. I only got halfway through the book, but that first half about 95% of it was honestly just wine, breakfast, and yoga. 5% was actually plot related.
I loved the books but when I read the German parts I was like, ...what?
I was so disappointed in that book and HOW MUCH PRAISE it was getting. It's just grown up Twilight with the way its currently written (poorly). Sigh.
i love that book series but i also love those really slow passages where nothing really happens and if that's not your cup of tea i can see why you don't like the series ^^
@@colleen6644 Not every book (series) with vampire is Twilight geez
Every time you put out a video you say exactly what I feel! 🙌🏽🙌🏽 And yes, I have been saying for so long we need more editing in books. When I critique a book in my book club about the editing, I get responses saying “you’re being harsh” but I’m not it’s just if there’s all these flaws that need to be fixed. We should talk about it and they just say oh I just ignore it. We shouldn’t have to ignore things that can be fixed easily.
My sister has EDS along with quite a few other things and I'm also disabled, we read this book together because she was excited to find a book with a character that has her disability in it. We both ended up hating the book for similar reasons one of them being how EDS was written into the book. I honestly felt like the disability was written from a ableist view point dispite the author having EDS herself.
I have a whole host of problems with this book but the disability is what gets me the most. I feel like if your going to write disability you should write it in a way that is beneficial and thoughtful.
I do understand that everyone deals with and handles there disability differently and everyone has different symptoms but I would have really liked it if she had given a lot more thought into this part of the book.
I think the "fast fashion" trend has been around for a while now. When I joined booktube I bought so many books that people deemed as amazing, and when I read them they were terrible. It really put me off (particularly ya) of the consumerism of it all.
I will say tt has brought such a rapid turn around to it, in a disturbing way. The amount of "limited editions" that dropped so immediately and how quickly the sequel came out was surprising to me - I recall coming across one comment of someone saying they were convinced ot was going to be as popular as hp and they were hoarding as much as they could. So, I think a portion of it is false hype/only involved for the potential of the popularity.
It seems that way, every walmart or store ive been too has Hollen Coover and Sarah J.Maas. People went crazy for fourth wing but when iron flame came out I haven't seen many reviews on the book. There are still good books out there, alot of indies are starting to gain attention, the publishers want cash grabs, stuff that people will eat up and be hungry for more like romantasy. There so much of it now along with dark romance its annoying. Tiktok plays a huge role, if your a new author wanting to gain a huge audience for your book you have to use it.
Romantasy is becoming the new Contemporary Romance in the sense that subpar writers can pump out these books with little skill or editing, and people will EAT it up.
This reminds me of that book getting picked up by a new publisher written by an author accused of plagiarizing Sarah J. Maas of all people XD so many follow in Maas's footsteps and try to be the next her (WHY) that it's all the same book regurgitated again and again only with poorer and poorer quality, but this time around one copycat author who blamed negative reviewers for her lack of opportunities (when she already got signed by a traditional publisher) actually got through an editor and got her pretentious, trope-filled and mediocre of a "dark romantasy" book got picked up 💀
@@vvitch-mist20 The way some "authors" even justify their outright copying and stealing original ideas as something "that can be found in all fantasy and romance books" is baffling. Yes, tropes can be similar as well as other story elements but exact characters and their backgrounds/histories, relationships, lines and dialogues paraphrased, and scenes? The audacity.
All the authors doing this think it's acceptable because there is no developmental editing done. Their friends of course will say anything positive like the servants in The Emperor's New Clothes, so they have no way of coming to the conclusion or the basest realization that they're copying a story that was already out there, one that they have read about and loved.
They could write these Walmart books with no talent or creativity because the original authors have already done it for them and it was like they're writing a fan fiction but claiming that the intellectual property was their own.
Edited: Grammar.
Girl I feel ya on Walmart I bought 11 new books from there and there is lots of Colleen hoover bks and Sarah j. Maas bks more than anything and I got two hoover bks cuz I've never read her books before I got too late and maybe now by her hopefully they good.
@@BG-wv3vn
I wouldn't diss authors in Walmart is subpar since that's more to do with the publisher than the writer plus a book is good regardless if you spend $1 or $15 for it. Just as a book is bad if you spend $1 or $15.
I don't think books being expensive that makes people more likely to defend their purchase bc then they would have wasted money. (Even though you should get mad)
I completely agree with what you said about reading an unfortunates number of books that felt like they needed another pass or two of edits. And it’s one of a handful of reasons why I’m now taking courses to become a developmental editor.
my answer is still a yes to me ): but i still dont know if fast fashion is the right word? i was having a discussion with my partner and i said "i feel like bad bingeable content for literature has been inevitable." but tbh i think it's always been here. i remember smeyer being rushed to put out breaking dawn due to the success of the franchise. i feel like the new books section at my job always has the top authors (jpat), meaning they're (with help of ghost writers i know i know! of course, they are actually okay to use surprise to folks) always putting out books every 6 months, maybe less. ive noticed older patrons tend to only read their go-to authors And they tend to be our regulars, so i can only assume theyre also the people publishers target. from what ive read of them, quality tends to meh. But we don't hear often of misprints or "exclusive editions/content" from those authors....
i guess what i see from tiktok is the Instant Demand? that shein and the like brought. shein is cheap but the famous influencers bought hundreds with the whole haul thing, rendering people's "it's good for poor people!" pointless to me. im a real life money down person, i bought once from them and it tore and i was horrified. but the masses ran to defend shein. i left tiktok in jan, so u were the only booktok person i encountered, well you and ur comment section. while i can't assign blame to tiktok users for the downgrade in clothing quality and unethical labor practices, consumer dollars have done nothing to oppose this. consumers with this knowledge still endorse it and proudly too on that app, last i saw. i can only see that being the case for something like red tower, which looks like it already has begun. and criticizing shein/fast fashion also got hit with the "it's misogyny no ethical consumption under cap!" which lol.... so i dont think it's fast fashion in the way of the product itself but the defensive consumer base. publishing companies to me always knew the formula, we see it a lot actually. theyre now printing books that have "as seen on tiktok" "tiktok author" "tiktok viral" marketing stickers, so i do think to me it's the specific tiktok phenomena they've been gunning for. it isn't the fault of tiktok users, but tiktok users are susceptible to it and the algo rewards it. i hope this was coherent
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Some of the points you mentioned about Fourth Wing reminded me of a couple of the criticisms from A Clockwork Reader… who is also called a hater for not always liking popular things! Lol
Great video! Super informative.
YES it's really frustrating when criticism of any content enjoyed by women is written off as misogyny. Like, our society does have a huge problem with devaluing art created by and for women - AND ALSO, that kind of art can and should still be criticized!! I feel like this is happening so often with the ongoing attempted rehabilitation of Twilight and it is exhausting
Yeah wrt to the EDS rep, as someone who also has it, a person having a certain disorder or belonging to a certain identity group does Not mean they've done the work wrt internalized ableism, etc. I so hate seeing defenses of the disability rep in this book that uses identity politics to effectively shut down any actual analysis or critique into the representation on page...
You are dead on. I totally understand that even seeing the rep felt important to people, and when you are representation starved that is so real, but the messaging and the unchallenged ableism in the story were… something.
Every single pushback for this criticism makes me frustrated.
"You're misogynistic for criticizing women's fiction." No, I'm not. I'm pointing out the flaws in the genre that also perpetuates misogynistic tendencies. Criticizing it is not the same as being misogynistic.
"Let people enjoy what they want!" Except these books end up being badly written, overpriced and ridden with racism, misogyny, bigotry and abuse apologism and they get sold to teens in bulk. Teens who are impressionable and gullible. And you can't tell me that those books haven't caused harm yet. Every time I go to booktok, there's at least five to seven young girls who swoon over guys with toxic and abusive behavior and they have no idea.
"At least people are reading." You know I would be much happier about it if they were reading something actually good. The problem with trashy books getting popular is that they actively take away the opportunity and platform for ACTUALLY good books. These trashy books get five star reviews, movie deals, NY bestsellers and immense popularity. But good books get pushed to irrelevancy. It gets worse because most trashy books are written by white women and the skilled marginalized authors get nothing.
I'm going to disagree, I believe that TikTok and Social Media as a means of mass marketing, and the algorithms which encourage more engagement to things that are already getting engagement has certainly encouraged Publishers to jump on any project with even the smallest momentum in order to get onto or ahead of the trends, and readers are enticed to buy into it because it has a traditional publisher. And then, since they want to get the book out before the hype has begun to fizzle, they skip the editorial phase (or at least speed through it), we get unpolished products, and people who want to justify their purchases rationalize the low quality as 'unique' or 'stylized', when the fact of the matter is, it's just messed up.
It is and is not the fault of the consumer. They don't set the standards, but they normalize them by accepting the low quality rather than demanding proper editing or high quality prints. They need to stop buying into the hype of the newest thing, start putting their money where their mouth is. The Publishers will not go above and beyond the minimal effort if they sell the same number of books either way. They will not seek out a book with good representation if people just eat up whatever is new and well promoted. You can blame the Publishers, but they just want your money. Make them work for it.
I mean, we aren't really disagreeing as I also talked about how consumption and the fact that RT's approach worked on readers is something to consider, but ultimately, turning this back more on the consumer than the company ain't gonna be me. Particularly because TT and all other social media are primarily community-driven in that readers congregated there to interact with each other, not be marketed to. And to go "well, the company is gonna fleece us anyway, so let's blame the consumer" just feels like the wrong conclusion to me.
Watch Bramble take note from Red Tower T_T they're new-ish but they're already following with the limited edition spayed edges trend and the acquisition of indie authors who already established themselves and have a following, those who already can market themselves as well.
As always great video! Your videos always manage to make me think more critically! I'm not shocked at all by these special editions coming out with mistakes. I've seen many recently not just Iron Flame. It is a result of this 'fast fashion' type of business where publishers just want to release more books faster to make more money. I can't help but think about where the materials are coming from to produce these books - usually the global south - and the majority of those who have access and can afford to buy them - usually the global north. I think this conversation is part of a larger conversation on consumerism and the capitalist system that pushes us to think we need 13 copies of the same book.
My first thoughts: Your holiday bookshelf is so cute! And I’m so excited to move from your Patreon to join your Bindery!
Thank you and THANK YOU! I love my videos from this time a year because of all the cute decor in the background 😭
This whole rapid release was so poorly planned. Iron flame was rushed out within months of fourth wing and had a PLETHORA of printing issues that wouldnt have happened if they had tool the time to quality control.
Also Rebecca has supposidly reported she hasnt even started book three. How on earth is a 600 page book going to be written, redrafted and edited all for release in a few months?
They need to be more careful moving forward or theyll crash and burn.
Yeah she has said we won’t get book 3 as fast, but without actually acknowledging why other than she needs to slow down…
@mynameismarines very true, they're completely aware of the problems some accountability would have been nicd
so excited for your 30 books in december video! i love it every year
😂 Funny thing, I got generally enthusiastic feedback for slagging off Fourth Wing, but I guess that goes to show how different my demographic is from a whole lot of book content creators.
Yeah, my audience here is usually with it, but because of TikTok’s better discoverability, my content often ends up in front of all kinds of people!
always appreciate your thoughtful takes. and enjoyed seeing pup wander in and out of frame. :)
I never notice him back there until I'm editing and I see he's just wandering around lol
I absolutely LOVE that more people are reading. I love that there has been a boom in the unfettered consumption of books. But publishing houses churning books out just because they’re trendy, without care for quality in either the physical product itself or in the writing is cheapening something I’ve find solace in. I fully believe people should read what they love and write what they want but publishers have destroyed the meaning of quality. I’ve wasted so much money and time on books that seem like unedited Wattpad stories that I’ve found myself enjoying my favorite hobby less and less.
thanks for this. You are always so eloquent and clearly explain the issues.
It's been so confusing to see creators I had respected repping this book honestly. Always glad to hear your voice on these things!
This is why I've been a subscriber since your Mortal Instruments video. Thank you for balanced insight, as always!
The thing that really upsets me with all the misprints is when they are missing literal pages of the story because now that book is basically unreadable. When I think of the environmental impact of useless, unreadable books, it makes me sad. Also, wasn't it a few years ago because of covid that there were issues with there not being enough printers to keep up with all the releases? I don't think I've heard if they've fixed that, so I can only imagine these fast and messed up books are taking space away from other, better books....
I was looking for a word to describe how popular/best selling ≠ quality
The book to me just lacked substance(and was also very confusing for no reason). It was fine and I can understand where it appealed to a certain audience, but for that audience to label you a hater for simply pointing out clear flaws is bananas.
I get the hater label a lot, but I think my Fourth Wing review was the most backlash I ever got. I was confused..!!!
Also, as someone not on TikTok, I appreciate you posting longer videos over here! Bindery seems interesting. Question for you: What is an imprint? You mentioned wanting to launch one.
Something that I’m interested in is having a conversation about the rate of diverse books being released lately and it’s relation to this under editing and quick publishing change. Because something I’ve noticed is that these books being churned out are (as was briefly mentioned in the video) are pretty white cishet worlds. Historically speaking diverse books have always taken longer to publish (and they’re harder to get accepted) so will this “fast fashion” esque publishing cause a massive decrease in diverse books? And I’m mostly talking about diversity in terms of inclusivity, but there’s also something to be said about diversity of plot and characters. Truly all the protagonists of these super popular books blend together in my head they’re basically copy and pasted
We are currently in “late capitalism” soon to be “post-capitalism”.. it’s all moving so fast there is zero point in holding on or even participating within a conformist based society .. an alternative route could be investing in self sufficiency and tactile survival strategies. Js 💖
🤚🏻 another reader that really disliked Fourth Wing. Bare minimum world building. A book peopled by NPC’s . But yay for dragons, too bad we weren’t given more of that.
Very well put together. I agree with all of the points you have made, even though you've said that some of them may be subjective. It's okay to have the same opinions as another person and I would even go as far as referring this video to someone when I'm asked about what my thoughts on the matter is because you have articulated what I mostly struggle to express.
I sympathize with you about the hate negative reviews get. My reviews have been reported and deleted a lot of times on platforms because I have listed proof of my claims about an author's books. My account on Goodreads has even been deleted because I was having serious discussions with reviewers with similar opinions about the allegations against this author. The same author who asked negative reviewers to think twice before rating her book low after heavily implying that it affects her author opportunities (when she already got a traditional publishing deal because of her book going viral on TikTok and gaining traction).
The way Chloe C. Peñaranda implied that the negative reviewers were to blame for not only her but other author's lack of success truly soured my stomach. It didn't help that the little followers that she gathered as her support system went willingly in a one-star review of the book, The Stars Are Dying, and outright called the one-star reviewer wrong about her thoughts on the said book. Her closest circle even went as far as stating that all negative reviews in Goodreads were untrustworthy because of how readers only piggyback ride opinions and don't even read the book; they only give negative reviews and rate the book one-star to hate on it and on her. This is not the case, however, when negative reviews of her book were by people who have finished it. She made it about her when it had always been about her book.
The Stars Are Dying was picked up by an up-and-coming publishing house, Bramble, new to the business. They were collecting indie authors already established, has published books, and has already gained a decent amount of followers like the author of Gothikana, and Carissa Broadbent. They are now doing the same thing Red Tower is doing with the scarcity of limited edition print runs of their first edition books. They also have vouch-able authors (Olivia Blake, Sarah Beth Trust) in their line up mixed in with their indie authors and unfortunately, Chloe C. Peñaranda was picked up by them.
Now, I have not read a book they have put out yet because I'm skeptical and if they chose to acquire the author who I was having trouble with then I'm having a hard time trusting them. They didn't even research this author before signing her. And I feel like she was picked up by them as well because she already did most of the marketing of her book. She paid hefty amounts for the dust jacket cover, the characters art, and even the map of her book. For me, the content inside didn't match the quality of the overall design of her book, but people will buy anything pretty specially when it was advertised as having a digitally signed limited edition first print run that would only be available two weeks after its release (surprise, surprise, the books being sold until now were still digitally signed, I've gone ahead and checked after purchasing a hardcopy when I've only read this book in Kindle Unlimited).
Watching this video of yours made me think that Bramble is the next Red Tower. Tor's response to the inevitable growth in the romantasy readers demographic. I have read The Stars Are Dying and it is sub-par, a diluted version of all other popular romantasy books already written that failed to emanate the factor that made its predecessors beloved by its readers despite everything else questionable about them. Reading The Stars Are Dying felt like I've read it before... because I have. It was an uncomfortable feeling, seeing characters and scenes and lines jump out at me that I've already read before from other books. A lot of readers think the writing is confusing and clunky, and we all agree that it was not a good book for us. I'd never had beef with the author, I don't know her personally. But apparently she has with negative reviewers.
I've commented to my book club several times that it seems no one is editing books anymore. Had the same experience reading Divine Rivals... a book with tons of buzz that was a big dud with big "first draft" energy.
Great video as always!
Yes yes yes. Tiktok made community and reading more accessible and enjoyable for a lot of people, and capitalism has a habit of leeching accessibility and using it to turn a haphazard profit.
Love this and it is so sadly true. People forget that BookTok started as a reader community? And that the way people have tried to capitalize that is actually terrible and not primarily that reading community’s fault.
This is Twilight all over again, but make it dragons and dragon riders and fast forward because 💵. Unfortunately, the only thing the big 5 Publishing companies care about is 💵. So quit buying the "fast fashion" style books. 🤨 I'll cross my fingers, but there still seem to be a heck of a lot of H&M stores out there so I think these books will probably continue on as they are. Luckily for me, I don't have Tik Tok and I don't follow their cues.
I read the first couple of books, and loved Twilight as a kid. The difference between Fourth Wing and Twilight is Meyer can actually write. She's not great and Twilight has a TON of problems, but I will give credit where credit is due, Meyer is a MUCH better writer. Twilight is better of a read than Fourth Wing. (And again the series has PROBLEMS)
@@vvitch-mist20 I don't actually think I would go this far... Meyer's work was ultimately plotless. Her sentences were like clown cars, so packed to the brim that they were often nonsensical. She had grammar issues coming out of everywhere. And Meyer's work is even more overtly problematic. I mean, if you held a pew pew to my head and told me I had to either reread Twilight or Fourth Wing, I would say goodbye cruel world.
@@mynameismarinesinteresting 😊 I never read Twilight but I actually listened to the audiobook in German. I kinda liked it. I assume the translators took care of bad grammar and nonsensical sentences in all the translations to make sense out it... Wonder sometimes in how far a translation might actually improve upon a book 😅
@@kyliefire5008
The imprint on the baby is what did me in. I couldn't continue after that.
Publishers trying to make books “bingeable” meanwhile I’ve been binging bison bludgeoner books since middle school well before binging media was popular and they’ve actually been y’know…good 😅
Reading all the bad helps you appreciate the good all that much more!! To look on the bright side LOL
Learning about red tower from you, and having just read fourth wing and starting iron flame… might avoid red tower in the future! FW was entertaining enough but I agree that it wasn’t strong enough as a fantasy or a romance. I’m 100 pages into IF and am finding so many holes… big yikes! Thanks for contextualizing all this!
this development with bindery is very cool for you, and i am looking forward to see which manuscripts you find. i will however miss access to bonus content, since bindery doesn't take paypal and it's uncommon to have a credit card in germany :/
Super interesting topic! I've had that thought myself. Don't know how many times I've complained about it to my brother.
I'm here for the conversation. I mostly read history so I don't normally read these fiction books, but wow. Now I'm glad I don't read them.
Marines spot on with the Iron Flame weaknesses predictions. Yup. And with the quality of the product--I saw so many people whose sprayed edges just...flaked off.
I'm so over the "you don't like (name of extremely mediocre book with a lot of internalized misogyny troops) because you are misogynistic!" arguments". If anything, the fact that so many women like this books just highlight how pervasive internalized misogyny is and their complete lack of self awareness and media literacy. Just ask them why they like the book and they either come with a very shallow answer, start getting defensive, answer with their own headcanons or just laught at your face feeling superior.
I think it is time for us to give a ling hard look at ourselves and ask why we romanticize abusive relationships and immature protagonist always coddle by the narrative, hype extremely mediocre writing and act like it is the best thing ever
Late to the party as usual, but this is such a good breakdown. I will be very interested in what the fall out of all this is in the long run.
Very interesting video on publishing. And I just wanted to say that I love the way you laugh.
I think poorly produced books is here to stay. With the rise of self publishing, the quality is very mixed. Some authors are diligent in getting their books properly edited and produced, while others are more cavalier with respect to these qualities.
Gotta admit i have a soft spot for misprints but only because theyre usually rare/uncommon. If its happening at that frequency it stops being a silly little mistake and starts being a quality control issue. There arent many publishers i avoid outright but red tower is now one of them.
I am glad I am not the only one who did not like how Yarros portrayed EDS in Fourth Wing. I did not realise Violet even had EDS until I watched author interviews and how it was advertised as the book has diversity with the main character having a disability. It came across to me that Violet was just small and had brittle bones, not that she has EDS. To be inclusive of disabilities, it has to be explicitly stated and addressed, however, it was not in the book and it came across as false advertising.
A few comments like this have popped up under this video and honestly it’s so affirming!! Over on TT, I got so many “well we can’t criticize fourth wing because of the rep” comments. I’ve also come across more people with EDS who were grateful for the rep, which I totally understand particularly when you are representation starved, but I’m glad other people saw what I saw!!
I keep getting fourth wing recommended on Goodreads since it’s always trending or it’ll be like since you enjoyed this other book, but earlier I clicked on it and saw they already have listings for books 3-5 which is so crazy. I don’t think people should be allowed to rate them when they’re not even out yet first of all, but second I wonder how far apart they’ll be released. The third says December 2024 which is a lot better than the fourth wing and iron flame gap, but is that enough time for it to be at least somewhat decent? Is that too far for people to still care as much as they do now?
I talk about Tracy Wolff a lot but she released a 6 book series from 2020 to 2023 (not to mention that book 4 claimed to be the conclusion of the series and yet it kept going) but I can’t help but wonder if some authors and/or publishers want to push out low quality books because they know how fast the internet moves on from the popular, trendy books and if they get them out fast enough then the hype never fades, at least until the series is done.
And honestly I don’t even care about how close the release dates are, I just want the books to be good and feel like the author actually put a lot of effort into it and that a lot of effort went into editing it into something that’s worth our time. I get this feeling reading sometimes where I’m like if this author doesn’t seem to care about the quality of their own story, then why should I care about reading it?
First off, love your shelf setup. It looks so pretty and aesthetically pleasing 🥰🥰
Now the fun part… And this is just my experience/take, so take it with a grain of salt.
What I’ve seen from and why I hate the folks shouting about these sorts of books from the rooftops is that they have that toxic Swiftie mob mentality.
It’s not because they’re mostly young women. It’s not because it’s “romantasy”.
It’s not even because the boom came from TikTok, because I’ve found some gems on there that scratch my reading itch
It’s because they are ignoring literally everyone else who gives valid opinions as misogyny while they throw money at mediocre white folks who put out subpar content on a rapid release schedule.
I would much rather only get one work from an artist/author per year than this rapid release horse shit that fetishizes black and brown people for a group of consumers who think mayonnaise is too spicy. 🙄🤦♂️😒
Marines is always here with the amazing overview and the facts 😊😊
For me, the tropes started on ao3 and as you say, tiktok users had to use them (I've never been on tiktok so i take your word for it).
I didnt know 'assistant to the villain' had patchy edges or iron flame misprints... I need to Google this asap.
And omg Yarros and her interviews.... 😂😂😂😂
(Edited to add, sorry this is so long lolyou dont needto engage with me fully.) What irks me the most is that fanfic authors will sometimes scrutinize and edit until everything is perfect, but then these publishers earn millions with books that have entire words missing, pages missing, idk what else... its crazy.
The fanfic thing especially, because I've seen a lot of people who are saying "those kids publishing their one direction fanfiction is what's ruining books," but ive seen fanfiction where people are like "lol I had to become an expert on wine to write this" and they're doing that for free! The people getting paid to write should at least Google what they're writing about. And I've seen amazing custom skins, coded for free, because someone wanted their fic to look like a reddit thread. people who aren't in fandom seem to think everything is 50 shades, and some stuff is, but there's a lot of stuff that isn't.
Edit: another thing is, in fandom, it's a joke that the people who say "sorry English isn't my first language!" write the most beautiful prose you have ever read in your life, and these books just... aren't written well.
Edit 2: and another thing, (sorry I just have so much to say) people will apologize for putting a 10k chapter up late because they're working on their dissertation or they wrote it in the car on the way to their grandma's funeral, and Red Tower is doing a rapid release schedule and getting none of it right.
@Ceruleansquid-lo3iv I wholy agree on all of this 🥹🥹🥹 I'm very biased because I used to wrote fanfic and read a lot. I just know that a lot of joy and hard work goes into the craft sometimes, and sometimes people will just upload for fun without editing (and tell you in the tags too!!)
I'm always happy when people say they read fanfic better than this or that book. The writers deserve a lot more recognition.
@@PistachioGold no beta we die like people's faith in Red Tower books
u make some of the most interesting videos 💗
a lot to think about.
I feel like another thing to add to this that is another factor to consider is the Fast Release that Indie Authors do as well. So many authors are releasing books a month apart that there is no real way that they got the attention they needed during right. Does that make them objectively bad, no becuase everyone has their own opinion on what is good or bad. But like Yaros has stated it's just not sustainable for books, many of those written in Fast Release are actually novellas. I'm working on my first novel one in a series and I'm just frustrated that I've taken years to plan this novel so that when I write it I know I'm putting forth my best effort and Yaros can just put out a book in a month to immediate sucess.
I think that Red Tower might actually be trying to mimic what indie authors are capable of doing because they are indie. Indies I feel like have had a boom, particularly on TT, but that model just doesn’t work in a traditional publishing framework. And to be honest, I also feel like a lot of the indies I read could also use more editing, but there’s a difference between feeling that for the book I read “free” on KU and a book I paid $20 for…
True, I'm baffled how many new releases get a sequel the SAME YEAR!
Just to hop in on the EDS rep I agree with the others that say the rep was over simplified and washed over with rose colored glasses. As someone with hEds that deals with chronic pain and other common co-conditions, the rep was very strange. I was initially excited to see my condition depicted in a book, but I was quickly disappointed. I’m my opinion it gives the impression that EDS is less serious than it can be and often is for many people. While it is a spectrum syndrome and affects everyone differently, there are many people that are disabled and unable to work and deal with rampant medical gaslighting and inadequate medical care because a lot of medical professional don’t believe it’s real or think it’s just women being dramatic. Not to mention EDS is not just joint pain and dislocations. It’s Mast cell issues, POTs, chronic fatigue, and can affect all systems in your body. It can be incredible disabling. As someone with EDS not only would I personally not be able to “keep my seat” I wouldn’t even be able to SIT ON A DRAGON that long without being in a huge amount of pain. Again everyone is different but this was overall a strange and inaccurate depiction of this disabling condition which is strange considering the author has EDS.
To be fair I personally have dealt with this toxic positivity with most of my doctors. Most will tell me I can just “push through the partial dislocations” and repeatedly deny me accommodations because “I can’t let it run my life.” So I’m sure Rebecca Yarros has possibly been fed this narrative as well. This depiction overall smacked of ableism over all and I was incredibly disappointed.
There was a way that the author could have depicted this disabled woman becoming a warrior and finding her strength while also accommodating her disability. Instead Yarros oversimplified and glossed over Violets condition in order to fit her into the typical tropes and character arcs that are commonly done and nothing new. Big sad.
I do kinda see TikTok as partly at fault/indicative of the problem, but not the actual communities on it, rather it being a representation of capitalism's constant push towards more, quicker. Like social media platforms are products, and they, down to their design, represent that desire of marketing and infinite selling and capitalist growth imo, like it's not a failure of the communities trying to use them to connect but rather a feature of the sites as tools of the capitalist companies that made them... idk like i think this move of publishing is just a "natural" extension of the direction capitalism is pushing us toward; it's unsustainable and it doesnt actually create a better product or better work environments, just higher sales and more money for the ppl at the top
If it helps, you’re really gonna suffer with Iron Flame, but we appreciate the suffering 🤭
I know 😩 I’ve read the first 7 chapters and it’s taken me WEEKS.
Always love your discussions and hearing your point of view.
Lots to unpack here.
I mean yeah, sure - the model of fast fashion has been adopted in so many industries, cuz we live in a capitalist hellscape, and this kind of model is appealing to our awful corporate overlords.
That being said, there were cheaply printed penny dreadfuls and dime novels in the 19th century, pulp fiction soon after. I grew up reading RL Stein books that were published monthly.
And I bet you had ppl bitching about them in those time periods.
So it might be on a larger scale now, but it’s not exactly new.
Thanks for the video! Looking forward to your end of year content.
Yep! There are so many examples of people publishing quickly both in trad and indie published spaces. I think the Red Tower thing is bonkers because they said "fast but complicated," and like... what?! But yes, the idea of speed by itself when it comes to books is not new. Nothing that Red Tower is doing is wholly unique. They just really said "what if we did all these things together?"
I saw your Bindery announcement on Tiktok and I'd never heard of it until then. I just joined your Patreon a few weeks ago, so I might have to look at moving over there instead. Are you planning on moving your old Patreon content to Bindery?
Also, I can't finish this video until later today, but I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this article!
The chapter recaps will move to Bindery, but also, for the time being, I'll be cross-posting my Bindery content to Patreon as well. I have people who signed up for Patreon for a year's membership, and I don't want to close it down completely. Bindery will get some exclusive things, but most everything will be up on both Bindery and Patreon for the foreseeable future.
omg the fourth wing LOVERS can be so weird. You're allowed to not like a book. I enjoyed Fourth Wing but I can also see why people weren't really into it
Now I'm wondering how well they'll handle people who didn't decide to keep screwed up copies.
I'm guessing most were discovered within the place they were purchased's return/exchange window, so this is probably hard to judge at this point.
My one experience with a publisher and a binding error I discovered too late to return, was a very nice email exchange and a new copy being sent. (Probably didn't hurt that it was a mmpb Star Wars book though.)
The special Iron Flame/Fourth Wing release really bothered me just because it was clearly rushed garbage. My friend owns an independent book store, and Red Tower cut their shipment in half at the last minute, and much of what they got was missing pages, had the map in the wrong way, was peeling already, etc. Like, if you're going to try to turn out content this fast, you'd think they would have the process down. I can't imagine this was a great experience for anyone except Red Tower's bank account.
I knew that Rebecca Yarros was pro military industrial complex given the whole Israel debacle, but I didn't realize it devolved into racism. God damn. I would really love to see a review of that military romance she wrote.
What I am starting to feel uncomfortable about is that it feels like the book market is using the same tactics as fast fashion:
Sell as much as possible to gain profit and not care about the quality of what is being produced while also making these products be the same and look as pretty as possible.
I see this in how many editions of FW is out and how many books have different covers for different types of books.
I will say that discreet covers I understand because not everyone likes a half naked human on the cover but when you have so many covers for the same book, it feels just wasteful.
Also there is this strange feeling of elitism in the community because it feels like only a select few can actually get these special editions of these books because most of the companies that do special editions of books are based in the US or UK and shipping from those countries are expensive!
That’s just my thoughts on what I can conjure up.
I read Fourth Wing knowing it was going to be bad, so I had fun (I borrowed it from the library). It's such a stupid book, nothing makes sense, the characters are predictable, and the plot was predictable (Even though I had watched a few book reviews talking about some of the plot). I gave it 4/10 for writing and plot but 10/10 for fun. It was a fun book to make fun of while reading it and to laugh at. Kind of like watching a bad movie that's unintentionally funny.
But, when I read Iron Flame (also through my library), I DNF'd it at 5 Chapters. It was just bad, nothing to laugh at, nothing that I found silly. It was cliche and boring.
You are not alone in hating Fourth Wing, I DNF'd the audio book, then the ebook after giving it a second chance. I found Yarros to be ableist and eugenicist. I hope you are getting trauma pay for reading Iron Flame. BookToc is as toxic as GoodReads and there is a skew since 2020 away from quality stories for smexy tingle time books with supernatural or fantasy elements without decent world building. Romance of all spice levels is 90% of the entire industry right now but sadly, it is thriving on toxic tropes with a weird sprinkle of spicy Cozies.
Okay, you made me curious about The Fourth Wing, so I started reading the sample. I had to tap out after the first couple of pages. I didn't really think that the writing was horrible, but the way the exposition was handled just made me feel like I was wasting my time. After all, there was no way in hell that I'd retain any of the details, so why bother reading them???
The info dumps and terrible dialogue only keep getting worse and worse. The actual sentence structure level writing is like... fine... 70% of the time, and the other 30% of the time, it gets kind of unwieldy and makes you have to stop and reread a sentence to try to decipher what is even happening.
@@mynameismarines I didn't have issues with the sentence structure... I don't think I did, anyway. It's clear, though, that she doesn't understand dialogue. Truth be told, I find that most writers don't. Most think you can just "eavesdrop" on conversations to learn how to write dialogue. _Nnnnnope._ Dialogue has it's own energy, and a writer must learn to flow within it. It's a concept that I'm currently refining, about which I intend to post an article... if I can ever find the time..............
I feel seen and heard.
I have two main thoughts. 1 I think there's more to be said rather at the idea of how social media as a whole has lead to reading being something that chases fads as social media algorithms has shortened when it feels people can be in on the conversations. As a slow reader, I'm just never "present" to participate in the talking and community aspects of any given book because the moment passes so quick.
2. I think a far better comparison with how you've gone about talking about this publisher, would actually be the video game industry which has seen a major increase in games being released unfinished and buggy, promising later updates, but only turning them out if interest maintains. And with pre-orders being a major trigger for the rushing in video game making, I'm sure pre-order and special edition campaigns are a catalyst here.
I understand this wholeheartedly. I listened to the audiobook. The narrator made the story soooo good. But honestly, if I had to read it myself I prob wouldn’t have gotten through it. I did enjoy the story a lot though. I can’t lie. But I do think you made some really good points. Although I do think we need to normalize preferences. It’s okay to disagree. And also I think talking about quality over quantity is a very important conversation.
I dont even have to finish this video to know that I 100% agree on your views of Fourth Wing.
I personally dont have too high standards for fantasy romance books (I dont think)....im fairly easy to please and yet I couldn't stand it. I agree...its a bad quality book from a storytelling perspective imo.
I also like how you pointed out the weird (racist???) Ways Violent describes Xaden in the book. Im sorry but its a very specific group of people that like Fourth Wing and its usually newer fantasy readers....it shows..
noti gang!!
edit: to answer the title, in my opinion, yes :((
edit x2: okay after finishing the video, i’d change my answer to sort of. i don’t think it’s purposeful per say but it’s because of how tiktok functions as a whole. yes, mediocre or bad content can still get popular on it’s own but never with the same speed that it can now. i feel like as our attention spans shorten, those of us who still read will look for books that aren’t much of a challenge like a fourth wing. tiktok offers an easy place to find likeminded people and spread your “gospel”, whatever it may be. that’s why i’d say yes; i hadn’t really considered red tower as a company. thanks for always giving me a different angle to consider!
Good points
@@exomake_mehorololo thanks!
This was a very interesting and well made video! I clicked on this video thinking that the article was right. Now i’ve realized that I have once again been tricked into blaming the consumers instead of the capitalist companies that are making most of these shit choices 💀
Respectfully - you're amazing and I love your takes. It is hard not to be literally disgusted with the likes of Yarros and Maas + people being incapable of critical thought.