'it often comes from people who haven’t made the effort to find diverse and niche creators to get book recommendations from. It can take a while to curate personal taste, but it’s a task worth doing.'
if you're seeing the same stuff over and over, that's on you. training your algorithms is maybe the great digital skill and there are plenty of people out there reading the good stuff.
in the end, all we have to recommend us as creators is our honest point of view and if we only read the same stuff as everyone else, we're easily replaced.
this is so true...many of the oft-cited issues in the book world can be attributed to individual lack of effort to find books that are very much out there. and the amount of attention taken up by these non-issues reduces the space we give to the real problems!
this sums up so perfectly what i’ve been feeling these past few months! where people gave great positive reviews to the popular books, i often find myself disappointed or even hating the book. i was even worried if i could get a brain rot from reading too much now.
I feel like the pressure to read so many books, even for a regular person who isn't a Booktok influencer, really takes away the joy of reading. I've even given up on meeting a Goodreads goal this year, because I found it was making reading more of a task and less of a joy.
omg yes i talk about this all.the.time! there’s incredible pressure to be one of those people who read 100 or more books a year, but that’s not sustainable for everyone, especially if reading/book content isn’t part of your job. the average person reads 10-12 books a year - a lot of us in the online book space seem to forget that!
Funny, I just published a Substack on this today :D I left Booktok and Bookstagram for these reasons. I wanted to try it out, but within months I lost my love of reading. I felt pressured to read whatever everybody else reads. Not even fantasy or romantasy, but the recently published ones. There are great books on the backlist! It was the forced interactions to be visible that really made me want to leave early on. I agree that everybody should read whatever they want to, but I am starting to see changes in bookstores in my area, where romantasy takes over so much shelf space that all other genres become less visible. This is when I start to care because other readers, genres and authors are not represented anymore.
I agree with this. In the academic and library fields I'm
In BookTok is spoken of , I find that goodreads and booktok can create a bias, leaving many out. While I have a list of books we've read on my podcast, I don't want to push titles on everyone. It seems exclusive to those already interested People have to learn to think and explore themselves. recommending is one thing but what you speak of is another.
I remember watching a booktube (book YouTube) collaboration of about 10 channels reviewing the goodreads nominations. Each chose a genre and read several of the books. most of the reviewers/booktubers hated all the nominations- it was fun and entertaining for a while (Schadenfreude) and then to come to the realisation that most of the books nominated just weren’t very good. I don’t know goodreads nomination process, but it seemed to be a popularity contest.
Its named too full of Kultur. Its not a book podcast at all. We just made a list of things that we have read and made it into a mini club. We aim to just give quick recaps of what we read.
The same criticisms were thrown at Bookstagram especially about the same 5 books (I’ve only been on it for a few years) but I think because tik tok has a younger audience popular booktok books can be unsubstantial/ not well written because the booktok audience is easier to please as they haven’t read broadly yet. I guess literary is never going to be mainstream people want a relaxing book to read. I follow a couple of Booktubers who read more widely (popular and also more interesting books)
I was just nodding along reading every paragraph, thank you for writing this! and I can relate to debating picking up popular books and making content about them way too well.
This about sums up the booktokcalypse
trademark that rn
this:
'it often comes from people who haven’t made the effort to find diverse and niche creators to get book recommendations from. It can take a while to curate personal taste, but it’s a task worth doing.'
if you're seeing the same stuff over and over, that's on you. training your algorithms is maybe the great digital skill and there are plenty of people out there reading the good stuff.
in the end, all we have to recommend us as creators is our honest point of view and if we only read the same stuff as everyone else, we're easily replaced.
yes! when it comes to booktok people seem to forget how social media algorithms work. find the content you want to see!!
this is so true...many of the oft-cited issues in the book world can be attributed to individual lack of effort to find books that are very much out there. and the amount of attention taken up by these non-issues reduces the space we give to the real problems!
definitely! i can’t help but feel people wouldn’t be getting so frustrated about ‘the same 5 books’ if they just looked for something new
this sums up so perfectly what i’ve been feeling these past few months! where people gave great positive reviews to the popular books, i often find myself disappointed or even hating the book. i was even worried if i could get a brain rot from reading too much now.
very true! many times i’ve read a book that’s been raved about online and am left thinking ‘did we read the same book???’
I feel like the pressure to read so many books, even for a regular person who isn't a Booktok influencer, really takes away the joy of reading. I've even given up on meeting a Goodreads goal this year, because I found it was making reading more of a task and less of a joy.
omg yes i talk about this all.the.time! there’s incredible pressure to be one of those people who read 100 or more books a year, but that’s not sustainable for everyone, especially if reading/book content isn’t part of your job. the average person reads 10-12 books a year - a lot of us in the online book space seem to forget that!
this is so so important and so true
🫶🏼🫶🏼
Funny, I just published a Substack on this today :D I left Booktok and Bookstagram for these reasons. I wanted to try it out, but within months I lost my love of reading. I felt pressured to read whatever everybody else reads. Not even fantasy or romantasy, but the recently published ones. There are great books on the backlist! It was the forced interactions to be visible that really made me want to leave early on. I agree that everybody should read whatever they want to, but I am starting to see changes in bookstores in my area, where romantasy takes over so much shelf space that all other genres become less visible. This is when I start to care because other readers, genres and authors are not represented anymore.
I agree with this. In the academic and library fields I'm
In BookTok is spoken of , I find that goodreads and booktok can create a bias, leaving many out. While I have a list of books we've read on my podcast, I don't want to push titles on everyone. It seems exclusive to those already interested People have to learn to think and explore themselves. recommending is one thing but what you speak of is another.
I remember watching a booktube (book YouTube) collaboration of about 10 channels reviewing the goodreads nominations. Each chose a genre and read several of the books. most of the reviewers/booktubers hated all the nominations- it was fun and entertaining for a while (Schadenfreude) and then to come to the realisation that most of the books nominated just weren’t very good. I don’t know goodreads nomination process, but it seemed to be a popularity contest.
What is the name of your podcast?
Its named too full of Kultur. Its not a book podcast at all. We just made a list of things that we have read and made it into a mini club. We aim to just give quick recaps of what we read.
The same criticisms were thrown at Bookstagram especially about the same 5 books (I’ve only been on it for a few years) but I think because tik tok has a younger audience popular booktok books can be unsubstantial/ not well written because the booktok audience is easier to please as they haven’t read broadly yet. I guess literary is never going to be mainstream people want a relaxing book to read. I follow a couple of Booktubers who read more widely (popular and also more interesting books)
I was just nodding along reading every paragraph, thank you for writing this! and I can relate to debating picking up popular books and making content about them way too well.