The lack of self awareness in booktok calling her an industry plant just because the book is bad like half the books they hype up to the heavens aren't absolute crap 😭😭😭
maybe not half... but way too many books booktok peer pressures me into reading expecting them to at least be entertaining are just... meh at best, garbage at worst 😭
@@skullchimes Yeah, same. I'll give them a chance for sure! But I've gotten to the point where everytime booktok raves about a book I go into it with the worst expectations, so I just don't invest as much into physical copies unless I'm sure they're not gonna make me want to throw them into fire anymore. 😞
@@calinda4003 I've downloaded so many pdf from booktok recommendations and if I did read a book and loved it I'd look for a physical copy for sure, unless unavailable in my country cuz I like having books in my native language
As an booktoker myself, I deeply despise booktok, bc for a community of people who loves reading, seems to sometimes completely lack any kind of critical thinking
Booktok seems to praise my least favourite kinds of books, or only one or two kinds of books. It hasn’t had a great track record for good recommendations for myself, imho
a lot of those people use reading purely for escapism (nothing wrong with that, it’s just not particularly intellectual) and many of them only listen to audiobooks, which does not stimulate the brain the same way and wouldn’t aid intellect the way reading would
as someone near the industry who understands the drama (it’s hilarious), she’s not an industry plant: it’s more, she’s a product of the booktok centric marketing strategy that publishers are now using, getting an undeserved 7 figure deal that could have gone to two or three authors and lying about the contents of her book when she already had a semi successful MG series out
Yes, she got a book deal because she’d built up such a following which almost guarantees great sales. I still think based on book reviews that it should have gone through numerous edits, but I suppose they wanted to get it out fast while the hype was high
the worst part is that it barely went through edits (if even) from the excerpts that have been shown. it’s ABUNDANTLY clear that she wrote an MG book (from the style and voice of the writing) that she aged up and sold based on her view tiktoks. then it was rushed to printing to build upon her hype-and i doubt she’ll make back her advance at this point
@@Nebulousart Yup. People who use their followings to get deals are getting BOOK deals based on followers, not their books’ merit, only serve to make it even harder for other aspiring writers to get deals actually on their books’ merit.
Idk how people would immediantly think this is "Industry plant" material when the book is so clearly YA movie bait? Like death game and romance among teens? That's very clear movie bait. We've seen this over and over again and instead of being "oh yeah, this is obviously bait since hollywood is still trying to recreate Hunger games and twilight success" they think "There's no way a popular booktoker with a following, competent agent, and obvious writing experience could have rights shopped around!"
The idea of her being an industry plant is so tinfoil hat. She made a viral tiktok, and she promoted tropes that booktok loves, and you don't need any explanations beyond that. However, if anyone out there is still doubting booktok's tastes, here are a few sample lines from the book, taken from a goodreads review: “Lightlark was a shining, cliffy thing” “The sun had fallen. It was just a yolky thing” “The sun was a running yolk” “Grinned meanly” “Glared meanly” "'Make another sound and you're stew,' she said meanly." Exquisite, thank you, booktok.
“Grinned meanly” isn’t horrible, because the adverb adds something not implicit in the verb (grinning=happiness, not meanness), but the others are… yikes. A sun “falling” or “running” (while we typically associate sunsets with graceful slowness) makes me cringe
i’ve always thought of grinning as showing teeth and smirking as not, but even then evil/wicked grin sounds much cleaner and is more common so it’s still probably not the best choice lol
@@cthulhutheendless1587 "grinned meanly" could be good for a childish character, but "meanly" just doesn't sound good otherwise. "Grinned maliciously" or even just "a mean grin" would work
She's literally a product of the environment BookTok created. I'm rolling my eyes. Y'all support and boosted her and then she got her deal. I don't blame her to secure the bag. She didn't make herself go viral.
I appreciate that, after all the backlash, people are charitably saying “the book isn’t THAT bad” but having read the book, I really have to step in here and say that yes, it actually is bad, and not just because the characters are flat and the worldbuilding makes no sense and the prose reads like a buried Wattpad story. It’s because there are so many inconsistencies and anachronisms that I’m convinced that ZERO effort went into editing this book. Absolutely none. It’s an objectively inferior product. If I had bought a lamp and found out when I got home that it had faulty wiring, I would be annoyed that the company had sold me a bad product. This is exactly the same situation. And having worked in publishing previously as an agent assistant, having read dozens of truly fantastic unpublished novels that I fought for but that ultimately did not get representation, it does boil my piss to see this kind of mediocre, phoned-in, falsely advertises content get showered with cash and attention. Publishing is a business at the end of the day, and Alex Aster is a business person. I respect the grift. But people who read the book are annoyed for good reason.
I hadn't known that about publishing, so thanks for that info! Yeah, I think the people saying "it isn't too bad" are trying too hard to overcompensate for the backlash and criticism- saturating with positivity to bury the negativity/criticism.
@@lt7153, even within traditional publishing, authors still have more control over books than it seems. Editors CAN’T cut huge chunks out of your book without your consent. You ultimately have the control to reject their edits if you wish. I’m not saying she did or didn’t, but the concept of the book is handed off to the editor and the author never sees it again is a myth. It comes back to them and then they choose what edits they will and won’t approve with their manuscript. No doubt, there are some authors who have more control than others. SJM can basically just write anything and nobody will question it because it WILL sell regardless of how bad it is, but all authors have some level of control. So nobody can just blame bad editing. For all we know, the editor could have done a stellar job and every suggestion got rejected (unlikely but possible).
It's hilarious that people are trying to blame the editors. When the rest of us peasants submit books to agents they have to be PERFECT for us to even have a chance. It's so competitive that many people hire editors for their stories even before submitting to agents. So a poorly edited book clonking its way onto bookshelves looks even more suspicious and annoying.
All they care about is swindling money out of you. Books published by trad pubs are passed off as better than other books because they have editors and other professionals on hand to make sure a book is polished. Well, due to that rep, they can cut corners and get money from readers who expect polished quality. They’re misleading readers into thinking they’re getting one thing, and by the time they know it, it’s too late, they’re out the money, and it’s all legal. It’s a bait-and-switch. Of course readers are getting wary. And because of this, because publishers are buying books based on social media followings rather than the merits of a book, writers are annoyed since we can’t rely on a book’s merits being what matters, and have to instead work on social media, which is toxic and damaging to mental health. Yet when we go the indie or small press route, at best we’re panned right out of the gate and accused of not passing the non-existent vetting process to get a trad deal, and at worst we’re called jealous. Some of us just care about the merits of a book and don’t want to have to spend 80% of our time making videos for whatever the current trendy social media app is. Social media following being what matters is reminiscent of when having a pretty face to use for the author’s photo was important. Not to be mean here, but a writer who is 400 pounds and conventionally very unattractive is less likely to amass a large following. Publishers are still looking for thin, relatively pretty faces.
I hate when writers write a book with the sole intention of it becoming into a movie. It completely changes the tone, the plot, and how the characters interact. They should’ve become screenwriters.
I completely agree! And with the topic of Red Queen involved, Victoria Aveyard went to school for screenwriting, and I feel like it shows in the book Lol
I feel like this is a huge issue with YA and comic books specifically. I’m sure it’s easier to get a novel published for a first time writer than to get a big budget genre film made, but it’s still always disappointing to read
wait ... there are ghostwriters coming out to claim writership of successful books out there?? 1. how is that not potentially a breach of contract? 2. HOW DO YOU INTEND TO GET HIRED AS A GHOSTWRITER WHEN YOUVE PUBLICLY PROVEN THAT YOU CANT KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT???? 😭😭😭
I'm guessing their mentality is "once they know I actually wrote the book, they will be interested in my career and I can become an established author."
I'm just sick of the Sarah J Maas knockoffs in YA fantasy. Lightlark is just yet another knockoff they're shoving at us YA fantasy fans despite so many of us PLEADING with publishers to stop, just stop. If I wanted to read Sarah J Maas I would. I do not want the watered down, third cousin twice removed wearing a wig version of Sarah J Maas. Also I hope publishers learn that just because you can get a million views on TikTok, (Which honestly isn't even that hard anymore) does not mean you can write a good book.
Oh my goodness, this. I love SJM. Don't get me wrong. But I haven't read as much romantasy lately because it's all so similar. I can only read the same but different book so many times. (But mam I can reread acotar an unlimited amount of times)
I'm sorry to say, but the publishing industry will NEVER learn this lesson. They did it with Twilight, they did it with Hunger Games, they did it with Fault in Our Stars, they did it with 50 Shades of Grey, they're doing it now with SJM (and fae in general), they will do it again once the next big thing takes her place. They will always chose the closest thing to what is massively popular until the genre is cursed untouchable ground for the next ten maybe twenty years. The vampire genre is only JUST NOW recovering from the oversaturation of Twilight knock offs and I honestly only think that's because of the Twilight Renaissance.
"watered down, third cousin twice removed wearing a wig version of Sarah J Maas" i'm cackling at this alskjdfgjksdgfla as much as i love sjm books, they already read VERY derivative of other works, and like bits of world/character building from here and there that she smushed together to make her books, so people deriving from her work in a superficial kind of writing is soooo painful to read
What she had going against her was that she wasn’t willing to pander to publishers and had standards. Her following eventually helped, but even she acknowledged that her book, which wasn’t in a trendy genre for the time, wouldn’t have had a chance in the end without her following. The book in question in this video is pander-bait bought based on a following.
Tbf Lindsay Ellis' book is really different from her work on RUclips. If she had written a non-fiction book about pop culture and media, maybe her following would've been more helpful in getting her a book deal.
I also think the LIGHTLARK thing isn’t conspiracy. It can be best summarised by an old Hollywood saying; “it was a great trailer, ruined by a terrible movie.”
Netflix optioned my fiance's book a few weeks after it came out with a small publisher. His agent contacted him and basically said "yeah, they're doing this with pretty much every book that's coming out right now." It's interesting how they're optioning all these stories right off the bat just to scoop other media companies.
Pretty much and then leave most if not all left in a deep vault somewhere, only to be used when the fans basically beg and plead for it. Only problem is it can somewhat to greatly back fire, like Wheel of Time or Artemis Fowl
I'm having such a hard time with this concept. Like on the one hand, it's awesome as an author to get a studio's attention like that and I'd be tempted to say yes just so I could tell people my work had been option by [insert company name], but on the other hand, it seems super shady to claim a property while it's cheap and then sit on it while you wait to see if it'll be popular enough to justify making an adaptation of. And I bet you'd get...blacklisted seems like a harsh word, but something to that effect if you say no so you can get what you deserve later on. Hollywood really doesn't give two shits about writers and it shows.
@@raven_moonshine39 it all looks like since every media company has their own streaming platforms and basically competes with Hollywood movies now, they’re all fighting to get what the newest “It” story is.
Just FYI, most publishers have a clause where the option rights (right to choose to make an adaptation) revert back to the publisher or author if a certain amount of time has passed. Netflix can’t hold their option rights indefinitely
I feel like we should also mention that a lot of people have been grouping the unwarranted hate with justified criticism from poc reviewers who were told that there was diversity and the only poc present was also the only lgbtq character! Time and time again poc are sold a movie, show, or book with a promise of diversity only to be told to take the one or two characters that are representation. We aren't demanding, but we are criticizing her advertising a falsehood. And POC are being called a mob or hater for pointing this out.
This is so common too! I'll see a book hyped up as diverse, and then when I read it, it's just one single character with all the diverse things. And they're never even the main character!
This is so funny because I read "Curse of the Night Witch" over the summer because it was chosen for Florida's "Sunshine State Young Reader" list for grades 6-8 and was an option for required summer reading at my school. As an educator who consistently reads almost exclusively YA and middle grade, Curse of the Night Witch wasn't very good and a lot of my students didn't like it either.
@@lavendermarshmallowplant3229 I agree! A lot of my students purposefully picked Curse of the Night Witch BECAUSE it sounded interesting. But they said the characters and the journey itself didn't really vibe with them or catch their interest.
I think there's a lot of value in occasionally reading a bad book you don't like. But that's funny that it's such a big thing when apparently the target audience doesn't like it.
god as someone who dabbles in booktok (only because i work in a library) this world is so fascinating to me and how the use of critical thinking is disappearing. i’m also watching a similar situation happen in real time for a different book i got an arc of with the addition of a rabid fanbase from the show’s pending adaptation and it’s…wild. lowkey would love to see amanda’s take on it ngl
@@ScreechTheMighty big swiss! like i already knew this was going to be a whole thing (since i’m a fan of the actress who’s producing/staring in it) but phew it’s pretty much going the way i expected this to play out as soon as the arc was out lol
I couldn’t agree more that most booktok recs absolutely suck. I’m on queer booktok, and like every book kinda sounds like it was written by a 13 year old.
Ugh tell me about it. Are queer books wierdly infantalizing right now or is it just my algorithm that hates me? ps. If you got any recs for good accounts to follow I'd be thankful.
@@Ostkupa oh some definitely are. In terms of accounts, honestly I mainly follow POC accounts cause they tend to stray away from the Tumblr/wattpad level books that white queer creators tend to eat the Fuck up. In terms of Authors, I have had good luck with ShaunDavid Hutchinson. And their was a book going around on booktok called “Cemetery Boys” that is actually pretty great.
Yes I know exactly what you mean! I ironically came from an hour long deep search of Goodreads just before this because I read Perfect On Paper and now want to inhale every m/f bi character book I can find and although much to my dismay there seems to NOT really be much of that available but now that I've went sifting through queer book rec lists and and every "readers of this enjoyed" twice removed I can confidently say there does seem to be a pattern of queer books that seem like they exist just to fill the spots on a "50 best queer books of the summer" Goodreads article. Some feel like they just suffer from the monotonous Goodreads descriptions that feel so fucking generic and souless and might actually have gems underneath the marketing bullshit but still there was so many that just felt so lacking
It sounds like, to me, that this woman realized all the tropes that booktok people seem to love and that Hollywood wants because they’re desperate for another multi film juggernaut like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games and she took advantage of that…that dosnt mean she’s a plant that just means she was paying attention and knew how to market to people without having to put much effort into the actual book itself and just focus more on the “themes” And also rights to things (not just books) are bought by movie studios all the time but that dosnt mean anything ever comes of it or it get stuck in development hell. It reminds me of how many video game based movies that had been announced years ago but never came (Tetris being one I remember)
You are right. And in this case it wasn’t even the rights to the book, only the option! Studios like to quickly snatch the rights to anything even vaguely popular or promising. That doesn’t mean they are actually gonna turn it into a movie. Even very established properties can take forever to be turned into a movie. But of course sometimes they quickly (as in, maybe in 2 years time) churn out a cheap product in order to capitalize on a trend or hype, but you can never count on that. Even if Lightlark doesn’t just crash and burn upon release when booktok instantly spreads the word that it’s bad, it would still take a lot of continued interest in the title for it to move forward.
Honestly I hate that tiktok ever learned the word “industry plant” it’s like gaslighting, they learn it and throw it around to define anything they don’t like
I hate how booktok is all about having a ton of books and buying and pre ordering all of these books. Libraries exist for a reason. I'm not going to pre order a book before it's even out (especially when I haven't read anything similar from that author before). And then used book stores too! I get that they're old and usually not aesthetic or currently popular books, but new hard backs are like $30 now!
damn, booktok's legit just 2010s bookblr and booktube recycled huh, even down to the obsession with buying books with no clear goal or even possibility of reading them.
used book stores can have some great things! library and independant booksales too! plus you save a lot; over the course of, like, two book sales, this one's family picked up 4 paper grocery store bags FULL of books for the grand price of 30 USD. Not just books, but music CDs and stuff too! Got a bunch of old Forgotten Realms and Pern novels and some very nice old cook books. None of the Terry Pratchet this one was after though
It is so odd to me that ~this~ book is the one that’s getting everyone’s suspicion up when we’ve been seeing the viral influence of BookTok for well over a year now, if not several years. Like, nothing distinguishes this book or author from all those displays at Barnes & Noble where the theme is “TikTok Made Me Buy It”, and when I worked at a library even our “new” section was dominated by those kinds of book (especially Colleen Hoover for some reason). Obviously in that case Hoover is a little different since she’s a very established author, but yeah. And the audacity to be like “Well, I’m in this community and I haven’t heard of it so it must be plant” is so self-centered it’s insane. When the category you’re working within is “popular YA fiction” that’s still such an insanely large category there is no way anyone, even active in the space, can keep up with every new release and the book’s legitimate success or lack thereof does not depend on an app not showing you every single video related to a specific topic
What happens is a thing passes as a fluke the first few times, but then happens enough that people start to realize that it’s part of an ongoing trend. By your thinking, if a problem isn’t pointed out at the very beginning, when it well might be a fluke, then no one gets to say anything. But the problem with that is that if everything that could be a problem is screamed about, and most end up being flukes, after a while, no one listens anymore. You become the boy who cried wolf for not observing first, and then people like you dismiss them for not crying wolf a hundred times first.
@@mandalorian_guy If yo want to find different YA books that aren’t pander-bait, check the indie realm. People in that realm usually choose to be there since they are writing what is different enough that the trad industry won’t even consider glancing their way.
It sounds so painfully 2015 YA sff in particular. Like I could see every big booktuber from back then showing off their five million bookcrate exclusive editions before unhauling most of them after admitting it was mediocre.
@@phadenswandemil4345 that’s totally fair and true. I was more so questioning why something that seems so much like everything else would be so successful. But you’re right, it’s the market
Tbh even if your family has money, unless they have power or public influence, that won’t get you a book deal. That will just give you the ability to focus on nothing but writing while your family supports you. So while that’s a privilege for sure, that’s not nepotism or being an industry plant.
From someone who read the book I feel like a lot of the hate is kind of unwarranted. The book is just a generic YA fantasy/dystopia novel and there’s nothing special about it
Yeah, but as a writer who's test-read some fabulous books by talented unpublished writers who can't find an agent no matter how hard they try, it is frustrating to see mediocre schlock like Lightlark get a six-figure advance and tons of promotion.
@@jessip8654 Unfortunately, this is not a new thing. Access nepotism and fame privilege has always been a thing and all facets of the entertainment industry are unfair. If a good singer gets born to someone in the middle of Minnesota, they might end up the best singer on their school choir. And an equal or even not-as-good singer born in LA with an Uncle who happens to be a producer, record deal at 12. Where as the best singer in the school choir might be fighting years just to get in front of a producer that can help them make decent money with this talent. As much as it sucks, getting into any entertainment (books, film, TV, music, etc etc). If you have some fame (of which social media is now) getting attention on your unpublished, unproven, novel is just a privilege that comes with using fame on one platform to get access to another. Like music stars are handed acting roles all the time despite displaying zero previous talent in acting. And they are given these roles over people with years of proven talent who just haven’t had a chance at that big break out role yet.
I agree, but some of that is I think why there is so much hate. It's like the emoji movie of YA, It's painfully generic, which is fine, but after all the hype it's irritating that it was overblown
I do feel like I need to point out that film studios also purchase rights to projects they DON’T want to get made. In general, studios do not want two similar projects getting made and released around the same time. They’re afraid of their audience getting stolen. And, like she pointed out in this video, Shadow and Bone did well on Netflix, studios noticed that and want to do something similar. It is completely possible that that film studio (idr who actually bought the rights rn) has similar project already in the works that they’ve already sunk money into, then saw how much hype this Tiktok book was getting, and decided to snatch up the rights to it solely to prevent anyone else from making it. I know how ridiculous it sounds but it really is a fairly common practice, primarily with scripts, but I could see them applying the same logic here.
I remember there was a manuscript being passed around about a biopic of Vince McMahon (the owner of WWE). It was very melodramatic and was made to make him and WWE look as bad as they possibly could. The theory was that the writer was hoping WWE would buy it so it would never get made.
As an indie author myself I just find all this fascinating. Tbh the most frustrating thing, as someone who has also querried, that the rest of us cannot get book deals off premis alone. We have to have a finished manuscript as polished as possible before we can be considered.
Her being able to do that is probably because of her decently successful MG books. I remember, back in my YA days, reading an interview with Neal Shusterman, one of the biggest names in YA fiction, especially YA science-fiction, and he mentioned that when he was first starting out he would write the book and then pitch it. Now that he's an established author (and money-maker), he can just pitch a book before even writing the first chapter.
Wasn’t ‘Children of Blood and Bone’ by Tomi Adeyemi also optioned to become a film before it was even released as well? It shouldn’t be a surprise that Hollywood is investing in the film rights of YA books before they are published and released because the film industry is always looking for ‘fresh’ material that has the potential to become a big money making franchise. ( Even though the industry has a tendency to regurgitate the same film ideas and reboot already popular franchises…😬)
Yes. Blood and bone rights were bought as well. 20th Century Fox bought it and then when disney bought Fox, Lucasfilm was hoping to develop it into a movie, but they put it on the back burner after some star wars projects and indiana jones, seems like the author left on bad terms, she wanted to co write the script, but the studio said no. Paramount has it now. So who knows what will happen or even if it'll happen.
As someone who wants to get published someday booktok frustrates me so much, I hate that writers are basically forced to become tiktok stars now just to get good marketing from their publisher, I just want to write books I don't want to make daily tiktoks
Yeah, my problem with today publishing is that the book is crazy popular, translated to many languages getting a movie deal and ALL of that before the book is out. Like, the book can be garbage, but even if it is, people won't acknowledge that because the confirmation bias kicks in. It's disgusting for me that they're just selling hype today, not "at least decent literature" that has to stand on its own before it gets popular based on the simple fact that it's at minimum an enyojable read. EDIT: I just want to read good books. I have classics but I want to see new ones that are worth my time and money. Fuck my life, apparently cause there are few and far between, and the most popular ones are just awful.
I know you probably weren’t asking for recommendations but The Goblin Emperor is fabulous if you like fantasy and The Murderbot Diaries are great if you like sci-fi
Honestly, this is why I mostly read backlisted books these days. When I do pick up a new release, it's most likely by an author I've read and loved before- like I'm so excited for the new Cormac McCarthy novels coming out later this year. Some small-press stuff is also pretty good, too. I also really love the feeling you get when I discover a forgotten gem; it's even better than that feeling you get when you find a new up-and-coming author to follow.
@@Kat-mv5dy Thanks anyway! I may check out the The Goblin Emperor, but I definetely will read The Murderbot Diaries cause the premise is just really interesting. I mean first I have to finish The Book of The New Sun and after these four brainfucks my view on the entire written word can be changed completely, but I will add the Morderbot to the list!
this might be an odd comparison but it kind of reminds me of videogame marketing where it's based on hype and companies push preorder bonuses before people even know if the game is good or not.... and then people get disappointed when some of them crash and burn. i guess marketing on hype is just where we're at with capitalism nowadays
@@jichanxo It's not odd at all. This is how entertaiment companies think now and we can see that in games industry people are starting to be fed up with this bullshit. Book publishing will either learn from it (they will not, corpos never do that) or will crash and burn.
Well I‘m an author myself (in germany/austria so pls dont comment on any errors with ‚how can you be an author?‘) and i was following this whole scenario because i got a lot of refusals from agents and publishers for my latest book and it really sold well. It was not bad but one publisher in german is giving all these booktokers and bookstagramers contracts which really sucks. And some of these books seem familiar averagE like lightlark. They only get them because they have followers. I am not kidding! Some of them were on the bestseller lists so … and yeah. Of course i envy them. Its hard to be a writer and especiAlly when you love your books and it dont get the attrntion it deserved.
Bestseller lists are so moot. Go into any bookstore and on any given shelf, almost all of the books will say "NYT bestseller." It's an oversaturated label people throw on the book to be like "oh look it's a great book, NYT said so!" Like no, it just means X number of people purchased the book, whether it was good or not.
@@jspihlman yeah but the amount of purchases is so important! My new lit agency only gave me a contract after my last book sold more copies than the others. And then they are publishers who think the same. In the german publishing field you can look into how many copies have been sold via a special tool (which is expensive but publishers can afford it) aaand authors get and you only get paid around 5000 euros upfronz for a new book - than it has to sell well to get more money
OK, I can weigh in potentially on your question, re: how it got to auction in a week. I'm not super familiar with Alex Aster, that said, so I don't know whether she had an agent at the time of the viral TikTok (if someone knows, let me know!). But let's say she didn't have an agent at the time... all it would take is some TikTok savvy publishing professionals seeing the TT, going "this feels like lightning in a bottle" and someone emailing Alex (agent or publisher) and then having it go from there. It's easy to go from zero to sixty when something's gone viral, including being snapped up quickly by an agent when you have publisher interest. It was likely sold on a 1 page rough synopsis and some sample chapters (assuming she already had them), and because no one had to read a whole book if it was done on proposal, it can very quickly go to auction. So it's a wild story but 100% feasible to me.
A lot of people who aren’t in the film industry or don’t know a lot about the film industry don’t really understand how buying rights work. There are TONS of books that have been optioned and fights bought for decades and nothing has been done. It’s the POTENTIAL for the studio to use the IP in the future and to stake their claim. Also soooo many movies and tv shows sit in development hell that who knows if the movie will even happen?
I'm so mad that it's called Lightlark because one of my favourite middle grade books to this day is called Larklight by Philip Reeves (2006). Its such a good book and deserves more attention and it's own gooddamn movie, but now if it does, it'll be called something else cause it's too similar to Lightlark (which seems like its going to have a movie).
I can’t speak to this specific book or author but a lot of time I feel like today’s publishing landscape is just bleak. There are a few standouts of course, but it feels like YA and women-oriented publications in particular have dropped in quality to the degree where I’m shocked that some of them aren’t straight out of a vanity publisher. If I wanted to read something with the narrative cohesion and editing quality of a lazy fanfic, I’d visit AO3, not the library or bookstore
And I think that's where a lot of the frustrations are coming from. YA is in a bad place and Lightlark was like, people's breaking point. No more Sarah J Maas knockoffs PLEASE!
It's like publishers now are so caught up with trend-chasing they don't even care about quality. I've been involved in the online book world for YEARS now and I think Booktok is one of the worse things that happened to it. YA and romance are basically just focused on going viral and getting in as many AO3 buzzwords as possible, and it's even leaking into literary fiction (look at how many "unhinged women" or "hot girl" books are coming out now). It really is depressing.
As someone in publishing, the way one gets a book deal, its almost impossible for it to be nepotism to be apart of it, as book querying (is what its called) is entirely about the book. You write a cover letter and summary for the book, not you. At most you sign your name at the bottom (some don't even want that). Publishers are generally uninterested in you, the author and they care entirely about the book. Unless your a known author in another genre, or have written or edited pervious books, they don't care. In this case, her previous publications would have given her a little boost but not much, especially since she's switching genres and reading level. She would've have been querying entirely different publishers and presses.
This is coming from someone on the other side of querying, so do correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always seen that personalizing your query will give you a boost, and that boost will be multiplied if you've been referred to an agent. So if someone was actually a nepotism baby of the publishing industry (which I don't think she is), having that successful family member/friend's approval at the top of a query would surely bump them up, right? Not to discredit an agent's discretion, but I know I'd be more likely to give a second glance to a less good submission like this. If I'm wrong that is fab to hear as someone who is definitively *not* a product of nepotism lol
It’s well-known that large social media followings help the chances of a deal, and if someone is referred to an agent of publisher, then there’s a higher chance of getting a deal based on that referral, which is more likely to come from a friend or relative. That’s what nepotism is, and it’s as alive in publishing as anything else.
@@isabelyoung1744 “Someone in publishing” can mean an assistant or someone else in the office. Actual agents have stated the opposite, that they DO look at social media followings and DO give more weight to referrals, which usually come from family and friends who are already known.
A good example of auctioning off rights before a book release is The 100. The series started filming around August 2013, the first book was published September 2013, and the pilot aired in March 2014.
Are you talking about Handbook for Mortals? The author never claimed to have written my immortal, it was an accusation thrown at her but she denied it. I believe your thinking or Rose Cristo, she's the one who got a book deal for claiming to have written my immortal, but it was cancelled after she was exposed.
@@xstarrycity3627 Yeah doesn't make sense to me either since the only piece of evidence people seemed to use was that both titles sounded similar with Mortal and Immortal and that they were both bad
I get why it’s “controversial” for ppl to have connections that get them ahead in the public eye/Hollywood etc but the industry plant/nepotism baby discourse is my least favorite thing to come out of the 2020s lmao
especially considering that so many people don't really seem to understand the concept, but throw around the terms anyway. I bet a lot people would be surprised to learn so many of their faves are already "industry plants" lol
On one hand, it's fucking WILD to me how much of Hollywood has a parent or grandparent in the biz. On the other hand, it's really not a new thing (Melanie Griffith, Liv Tyler, Angelina Jolie, Isabella Rosselini) and, let's be honest here, a lot of times talent does run in the family. Look at the Redgraves- massive British acting dynasty, all talented. Or the Coppolas (even Nic Cage, as much shit as he's been in, is a genuinely great actor).
i feel like people cant decide if "networking" itself is unethical because many things people are calling nepotism things that are just people making connections in their field of work
It's actually not that bad imo, I think it's eye opening. It's more difficult to make it in the entertainment industry for those who don't have family connections and it's probably helpful to know that. However it's annoying when ppl just throw these terms around without even knowing what they're talking about lol like here
As someone who works in publishing, I’ve definitely seen booktok blow up books, so while this might be uncommon, given that she’s had her other works picked up by a traditional publisher previously (and knows how to use social media to garner hype), this doesn’t really surprise me or seem super outlandish 🤷🏼♀️
18:00 Working at multiple books at one time is often times a way to keep yourself from going insane, lol When it feels like nothing is working with one book, you just go to a different story and focus on a part that you love
The confusion surrounding the movie deal is in part a lack of understanding on how rights are sold in regards to books but also that it was framed or otherwise implied by Aster herself as something already in production (with her as a exec producer) and a for sure big franchise coming from Universal when series like Throne of Glass and Red Queen have been optioned for almost a decade with no movement and that, understandably, is confusing for a lot of people both in the book community, like myself, and outside of it. The industry plant thing is weird but mostly just a reaction to a lot of seemingly shady marketing put forth by Aster and fueled by claims that negative reviews are wholesale false when they aren’t. As someone who’s also read the book and reviewed it on GRs, it’s frustrating to have that brought into question when the book itself is, imo, subpar but will inevitably be seen as a success based on sales numbers alone because it’s sparked curiosity in neutral parties.
And Gone Girl was sold before it came out. Lots of books rights are sold before release. It's not uncommon. Actually people are getting book and movie deals together, you write the book in a way for it be adaptable to the screen.
That sounds pretty terrible like it's great for these writers that their books are getting adapted into movies but at the same time you shouldn't be writing books just for the sake of movie adaptations,books themselves are beautiful medium to explore storytelling and should be the reason to write the book to tell that story in that medium,writing a book with a movie adaptation in mind causes that concept to get lost and can make the book very lacking in both story and depth usually
I got an advance copy (I review books online under a pen name for a media company) it was okay. I personally am tired of dystopian curses and love triangles and I didn't find it engaging because I wasn't the target demographic as someone in their mid-20s and burnt out on "Hunger Games"/"Divergent" dystopian YA books. For the love of God I'm tired of it. The "diversity" really wasn't there and it felt hollow considering her claiming it to be a big part of the story. Would love to have seen some queer representation or neurodivergent or anything that wasn't so cishet and able bodied. Overall it's fine. It's a fun read if you like those types of stories. Otherwise there is no reason to hate it. This whole situation is a nightmare. It's just a book.
I was sent the audiobook to review it’s average it’s not great it’s not bad yes she was untruthful about scenes and that is an issue. My major issue is her reaction to peoples criticism, there was a lot of backlash from her editor and her. And overall everyone who is giving a bad review or truthful review are haters and are lying. There was also a whole section where they denied it being an audiobook form but it was sent from the company directly to us reviewers. It just gave me a really bad taste in my mouth and it does not make me want to support her anymore
I think a lot of people just don't know what "industry plant" means, and think it's just a general phrase that means something's bad and mainstream (or trying hard to be like the mainstream). Probably the whole kerfuffle about the Tramp Stamps a while ago introduced a lot of tiktok users to the term in that context.
But ultimately I don't know, people call other people things that they aren't all the time, especially as insults, and whether that's good or bad it's kind of just an unavoidable bit of how language works.
Frankly, she’s a pretty young girl who went viral - she’s talented but not unique. She probably got lucky from that more than anything. Could have been any YA premise that went viral
Xian jay zhao is probably the best comparison I can think of. I.e. some amount of “privilege“, a good writing style and ideas, and leveraging their viral attention to help push their authorship careers. But I will also say that at least zhao deserves all her success, I really like her book(s) and videos. I’m not sure about lightlark or it’s author since I haven’t read it or any of her other works and so I’m not gonna comment.
I am inclined to agree, but given that RUclipsr books is sort of a genre in which there is varying levels of RUclipsr involvement, would other RUclipsrs who have mainly written their own books fall into the same comparison? An open question, I don't have an idea
My reply's a bit late, but Xiran is nonbinary and goes by they/them pronouns. They also made a video about their entire journey to becoming a published author if you want to hear from their perspective.
So, as someone who works in the YA publishing space … “New Adult” is a plague. It’s adults sexualising teenagers, and teens being pushed out of YA (and into MG, which is getting a knock-on effect of becoming more mature again, to accomodate older readers who are too old really for the readership, but too young for how YA is very focused on the older end of the spectrum). “New Adult” was borne out of adults readers of YA. Casey McQuiston & Sarah J Maas further muddied waters (publishers pumping out illustrated romance covers very much to usher teens over to adult romance, and publishers that release an initial-YA book that then transitions confusingly into a very adult/almost erotica series)
This 100%! I find that there's a reason a lot of younger (14-15, even some 16 year olds) tend to read older YA titles, if they read at all. Basically every new YA book now is about 17 and 18 year olds. I've even seen some books marketed as YA despite the fact that the characters are in their freshmen year of college. Meanwhile it's impossible to find MG anymore that doesn't have characters that are 13-14, maybe 12 if you're lucky. It's so hard to find books about elementary-aged characters anymore.
@@wormdoodles that’s true, I feel bad for my little cousin because then she won’t get to find or read books about kids having wacky adventures with good heartfelt messages, to teach kids about the world and how to treat others
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with teens reading MG, especially if there keeping up with something they read when they were younger (Ex: I got mad into KOLTC when I was fifth grade and when I went to middle school I inadvertently got half my new friend group into it too. So even if we’re in high school now, because we’re all far to invested at this point, and there’s only two books left, we all decided that we would in fact read on for the sake of our childhood. Plus the characters are basically our age now helps a bit.) I do agree though that NA sucks, I want to get into more mature YA books but the only barrier now is the smut scenes. I’m on the ace-spectrum so reading that is a big hell no.
Throne of Glass when SJM decide she wants to wright graphic sex scenes in the middle of the series. I remember beeing a young teen when I read it and it genuanly put me off fantasy for solid 5 years. Authors should not be allowed to just do that.
I love it when subspaces for a type of media on the internet that is usually perceived as either being lighthearted (ex. cute children's game) or refined (ex. books and reading) end up having some of the most pettiest dramas known to man that is identical to Hollywood celebrity gossip.
Hollywood has optioned books since at least the 90s. Best example I can think of was Jurassic Park. Spielberg and his production company bought the rights in 1990 then released the film in 1993.
One of my first Swell videos!! This was pretty great. I’ve often seen the mass dislike of dystopian YA as in response to the swathe of bad YA dystopia after the Hunger Games. Seeing it happen on TikTok is very surreal, after seeing it all on tumblr agessss ago. I know less about industry plant accusations and it’s a strange turn in the “culture” of disliking media, this was very interesting to hear about. Looking forward to watching more videos of yours!
I remember when Booktok first showed up and all the recommendations were for, like, YA fantasy books from 2014-15 and Colleen Hoover. For those of us who lived through that era of Booktube, it was fucking WILD to see them again.
Darryl F. Zanuck was purchasing the movie rights to not-yet-published books 80 years ago. There's nothing new about that practice and it definitely is not evidence of an "industry plant". Not that I'm sticking up for this absurd girl or her very likely absurd book.
Ah, this whole situation reminds me of the Atlas Six aka a book that could have truly been really good if it had gotten a few rounds of editing (and some additional research - you can 100% tell that the author knows next to nothing about Japan for example)... but they needed the momentum I guess and hey, it worked. The only thing I know about Lightlark (apart from very much not being the target audience) is that the one person I follow who gives almost every book they read five stars (or the occasionally rare 4 stars when they're not as enthusiastic about it) gave it three stars.
I very much agree with you about A6. I read it because of the crazy hype, and agree it definitely needed wayyy more editing. There was a good book/premise in it, but the execution did it wrong
my mom was a published author (retired due to mental health) and was made to change his books to YA even though they were never intended to be sold as YA novels. publishers often change books to YA cause more people seek out YA. it's simple as that.
AMANDA! I work at a bookstore and I’ve been on vacation, but today I come into my coworkers telling me all about this book drama! Now I’m on my lunch break and I literally squealed seeing this video upload! IM SO PSYCHED FOR THIS, you always have great timing for me!!💕💕💕
Hi This is a little out of topic but as someone is Hispanic/Latina, I really get interested when I find books that have main characters or secondary characters with Hispanic/Latino representation especially within the fantasy genre. I have heard within the book community that some authors of color don’t know how much representation they should write about within their stories. Because there are some readers that are satisfied with the representation. Some readers believe that the background, the author is representing where they are from, is either authentic or stereotypical.
Somewhat "sterotypical" characters aren't always a bad thing imo. Some stereotypes are there for a reason. It gets problematic when a character has no depth and is *just* all stereotypes and no individual traits
There is important conversations to be had with this situation, but people are just rushing to conclusions and aren’t analyzing the information. I’m actually very familiar with Alex Aster- I live in the city she grew up in. Her parents splatter her and her sisters faces all over billboards and commercials trying to make them the next Mary Kate and Ashley. My siblings went to school with them. So this whole thing has been very weird, lol.
So many of these recent YA books have the EXACT. DAMN. SAME. Style as much as they do the same premise. They’re always in first person, have a conversational hip-with-the-kids voice, and there’s no variation in sophistication. Obviously not every book has to sound sophisticated and like classic literature, but there really needs to be some diversity in terms of tone and style. I often just reread my favorite books back from the 2000s as well as translated light novels (Tanya the Evil is so good) and they’re infinitely more engaging and fresh-feeling than literally any book pushed on booktok. On the topic of booktok, almost everyone on it feels like the people at middle school who would bully me for reading all the time. Just an observation, probably just me but. On top of that booktok’s insistence on pushing “spicy” and “tragically romantic” books has given rise to Colleen Hoover and I will forever resent it for that.
i immediately went “is this just hunger games?” when i heard the book description. dont get me wrong you can have an interesting and unique narrative that’s similar in plot to another popular book but im hesitant so far. guess we’ll just have to see lol.
I find it very interesting that all i have seen on my fyp is the priviledge talk and how she sold herself in a very "boot strappy" kind of way, and it not be included in this video. Yes the hate is unwarranted but i do think that the way she advertised herself was off putting. Yeah she admitted all these things after being called out, she didn't acknowledge her priviledge before these conversations were happening..
Lindsay Ellis pitched her books to her fans on YT, because, if you like her work in general there's a good chance your going to like her book. I don't think its wrong, I think its smart crowed work.
As someone who gets and reads a lot of early ARCs, most sites that send them out have a prompt that asks if you run a professional blog or represent a media company, so I'm not surprised that movie studios get first pick of hyped titles. Honestly everything about her and her book are in-line with how the publishing industry works. Online visibility makes you more attractive to publishers, and she literally already had a successful book in a different genre. Nothing about this says industry plant.
i don’t use tiktok so i had no clue about this whole fiasco, but the premise of this book sounds… quite typical? as a YA novel ngl 😅😅 it doesn’t sound very special tbh
I've overheard authors talking to each other after a book signing, when they were complaining about how their publisher pretty much forces them to make a certain number of tiktoks to promote their books. I personally want to write and publish books someday, and the thing that is dissuading me isn't the idea of rejection, it's the idea of the whole added things of self promotion and crazy contracts which want you to always be working on multiple projects and all of these more business type things which I am really not interested in at all; things which I feel would make my work feel more like a product than something I'm passionate about. It kind of worries me that writers aren't allowed to just be writers at this point, they also have to be savvy business people and social media experts. Maybe it's always been this way? I don't know, it freaks me out.
I personally feel that diversity enriches art, but at the same time I would have a major problem with anyone criticizing this girl for being Latina but not including "enough" representation in her (likely absurd) book. For starters, how do we quantify what is "enough" representation? The ratio of latino characters? The dialogue? How exactly? Who judges this? This girl is still (God help me) an artist. _Not the kind of artist I personally value_ but an artist nonetheless. And no healthy culture places these kinds of demands on their artists. As Amanda says, _expecting_ representation out of any artist isn't fair. More than that, I'd personally call it unhealthy.
It's something I've always wondered about, I'm European and in a country with basically no diversity. There's lgbtq+ diversity but not race wise. Is it better for me to write something diverse and potentially get it wrong? Or don't but then have a book lacking diversity.
@@cait812 yeah, that's tough. I feel like I'd be comfortable writing POC side characters but idk about a main character just because I've never experienced it personally and wouldn't want to get it wrong. I think it's better to just promote more POC authors
There was apparently one main character who was a POC and that character also doubled as the only major LGBT representation, and I think the main reason people are mad about it isn’t because she’s Latina, but because she specifically promoted her book as being really diverse. She acknowledged that YA fantasy is full of improbably white casts. And then she wrote a book just as white as the books she criticized and claimed to be more diverse than.
I wouldn't criticize her lack of representation NOW because 1) people in the US have a very distorted and narrow idea of what diversity and representation is (for example, calling actress Anna Taylor-Joy WoC because she was born in Argentina) from my non-US perspective and 2) is very, very hard to get published, and I wouldn't be surprised if she is playing safe (or her editor forced her to) until she has a stable fanbase to be as representative as she wants to be. It will be a different story if she succeeds yet doesn't deliver what she promised.
It really is a double-edged sword imo. You get a lot of people who say white authors shouldn't write any characters of color because they'll "inevitably" get the representation wrong (focusing too much on race, focusing too little on race, being too stereotypical, being too "white-washed", etc), and then blast them for writing books with majority-white casts. TBH, I'm sort of glad that if I ever publish, it would likely be in either adult literary fiction or horror, both genres Booktwitter and Booktok tend to leave alone when looking for their next witch hunt. I couldn't imagine trying to publish YA or SFF in today's political climate.
Hey Swell, Since I caught this video early, I'd just like to say I love your content. I subscribed a few months ago, and I have been watching consistently since then. There are subjects that I'm typically not intrested in initially, then you MAKE me interested. To have that effect on someone is admirable! So continue what you're doing and I hope your channel continues growing! Take care!
On the calling booktok a cult thing- cults harm their members. Outside influence doesn’t add up to much in cult-levels tbh. Booktok would be a cult if they had control over one or more of the BITE model- Behavior control, Information Control, Thought control, and emotional control. If booktok has one main person who could be called their leader, and they control all of the book-related information all members of booktok ingest, yeah I’d call it a cult. But likely it does not bc of the nature of tiktok and online interactions. The reason ppl are mad is bc it makes the stories of survivors of cults (hi I’m one) less serious. Unless you fit a very narrow view of public perception of what a cult is, your story is discounted. Which sucks like, you wanna see my therapy bills?? This shit still affects me today. I don’t need some idiot trying to tell me I wasn’t “realllly in a cult”. Which you likely understand this already, but here’s my two cents as a who i am.
I love watching your videos. I live under a rock. You let me know about so much that is going on. You educate, explain, and entertain in such a magnificent way. Thank you ♡
My girlfriend has a book coming out this october and the company she's getting published through 100% expects her to do all the marketing. They specifically asked her to have at least 1 or 2 social media accounts and want her to make a website. Self promotion is just part of the process these days, especially for a debut (or sort of debut??) author. Saying self promotion means an industry plant is so silly.
Fellow writer here also trying to finish a book >.< I definitely enjoy these stories on the author spaces, especially keeping up with other Latina authors and how far they can make it in publishing. Thank you for covering this story! I'm always looking for New Adult recommendations, but I'm trying to get back into reading YA since I'm floating between writing for YA and NA.
PLENTY of popular authors come from money, nepotism, industry push, buy their way to the top, have ghost writers, etc. it’s not surprising or controversial at all
Some more insight as to how many people can actually get an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC): I work low level at a Barnes&Noble and I have access as an employee to an entire website of ARCs digitally, and can essentially request any physical ARC to be shipped to our store (with the publisher's permission). We can even give these ARCs to family/friends if we so choose. ARCs are available to a such a wide range of people who work tangentially to the book industry it's kinda insane. They really aren't hard to get unless it's a MASSIVELY POPULAR book. I don't doubt a bunch people were able to get their hands on this book to review early. However, I do concede a lot of the reviews were probably hate reviews. In regards to the "B&N special edition" having deleted scenes - I haven't read any edition of this book and unfortunately can't answer that one way or another.
The publishing industry is so fucked up. My mom has a friend who worked for years to get published. When she finally got the chance, the publisher set her up for failure (first print of very few units, no promotion, etc), dropped her claiming it didn't sell enough, and waited for the contract to expire and relaunched the book in a bigger market. Alex's case could be the result of a self promotion strategy that went so well it got out of control. The inconsistencies would make sense if she still wasn't so sure of what to say at the beginning, and the promises of representation could be a way to get more traction or something her editors and agent told her to remove to become more "marketable". What troubles me more is the idea of following the EA model and sell the "juiciest" parts of her book as a DLC of sorts. (And regarding Mom's friend, her case brought the attention of one of the little towns where her novel took place,who decided to sponsor her as a local author and got her a better publisher.)
From my very outsider perspective of the publishing industry and the industries tied to it, it seems like it’s just the Wild West. Everyone is out for their own gain and have to use every tool at their disposal to get ahead. It’s the kind of industry that breeds these kinds of situations, I don’t think it means someone is a plant or had a bunch of extra help behind the scenes because they actually managed to make it. I just think the general public doesn’t have an understanding of how things work and then social media latching onto one example breeds confusion and contempt. That said I know nothing about her or the situation but similar situations have come from similar things on other platforms and other interests and industries. Ooh, also on one of your last points the people saying they’d never been recommend her on tik tok, there’s a bunch of famous RUclipsrs who’s been on the platform a decade or more that I’ve never been recommended, or I didn’t care about them so I didn’t notice or remember that I’ve been recommended them. Like who remembers the people they don’t decide to watch? That’s such a weird facet of the argument to me😆
Lightlark is a terrible book but Alex Aster is a queen who played the game and won and we shouldn’t fault her for that. If you’re mad be mad at the system
I was so excited when I first came across booktok but then I got the same 3 books shoved down my throat indefinitely and my opinion changed real quick. There's so little variety in opinion over there.
My only exposure to Alex Aster were her (I assume) reposted TikToks on Instagram reels bragging/gloating about having Lightlark bought as a "massive film franchise" before book 1 was even published, which kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, be proud of it by all means, but I felt like the tone of the whole thing was off. I didn't immediately jump to "industry plant", but it did feel a little suspicious. Knowing now that she had another book out prior makes more sense though.
Booktok books are always so painful. And the best part is, if you leave a negative review anywhere near the viral videos about it, it's most likely the author's page and they will delete the "bad reviews" because they don't want to have their flaws pointed out or discourse on their page;; the never king specifically made me infuriated because of how many people on booktok hyped it up and how awful it truly was
So if I can point out, Jaws is in theaters this weekend. Reminded me that the rights to Jaws were purchased before the book was released and it was the author's debut novel. It is not a new thing at all.
Great video, as per usual. My question regarding the tiktok "trailer": did she had the rights to use any or all of those photos in there? Cause if not authors of those pieces of media should have a field day at court. P.S. - sooo... this book is basically Hunger Games. Quite boring even for an YA novel. Jeez.
Not really. The initial video was simply asking “would you read this novel” and using photos as concept art, which would fall under fair use. It’s not necessarily a commercial for an existing product.
one of the photos i believe i recognized (the one w the red haired women in a suit of armor type dress) im 90% sure thats from chotronette which is the company that made the dress. i believe at that point tho its fair use but im not an expert so idk
[not an IP/copyright lawyer, just some rando that occassionally peruse the topic of fair use etc] based on the use: the "trailer" was presented more like a pitch rather than an actual advertisement. at that point seems like the product (book) wasn't even out yet, so since there's no clear line of "pictures used" to "profit" that can be drawn and used to prove that the copyrighted items were used commercially without license, even if someone actually wants to sue her they'll prolly be standing on a real shaky ground at best. depending on the rules of the country, the burden of proof might either fall on the plaintiff, which they'll prolly have thousands of comments and posts across the span of several weeks or months to parse through and prove that the trailer _directly_ contributed to the sales, or the burden of proof might lie on the defendant, in which she'll have to do the similar thing except with the goal to prove that the trailer _did not_ have any direct influence on the sales. (which imo is waaaaayyyyy easier bc at that point she's prolly already posted tens to hundreds more posts promoting the pitch, WIP, then actual book, all of them combined would have a greater effect in sales by generating hype compared to one post alone.) based on the presentation: the pictures weren't posted as is and most have undergone some altering, whether through actual editing or by adding words on top/somewhere alongside the pictures presented, in manners that absolutely do change how the pictures look (e.g., the difference between a portrait versus a portrait with title on it). those should be considered transformative enough that the original owners most likely would have a hard time backing up their claim that the pictures usage divert the hypothetical profit or income they should be making from those photos to the tiktokker instead. but all of these aside ... getting lawyers and court involved is just not worth it for most people, unless you got the finance and deep pockets to back it up. so even _if_ theoretically proving that her use of the pictures infringed on copyright would be a cakewalk, most people would simply not bother since the cost of hiring a lawyer(s) would likely be greater than whatever compensation they'll be granted by the court -- if they even win the legal battle at all. rather than a field day it'll prolly more like a sad trip after you got scammed by fake tour guides then got robbed blind in the market.
The only complaint I have is the book sounds very familiar. It’s “The Selection” meets “Hunger Games” in such a blatant way that I’m surprised that just skirted by.
The lack of self awareness in booktok calling her an industry plant just because the book is bad like half the books they hype up to the heavens aren't absolute crap 😭😭😭
maybe not half... but way too many books booktok peer pressures me into reading expecting them to at least be entertaining are just... meh at best, garbage at worst 😭
@@calinda4003 thats why I just download the pdf's from free libraries
@@skullchimes Yeah, same. I'll give them a chance for sure! But I've gotten to the point where everytime booktok raves about a book I go into it with the worst expectations, so I just don't invest as much into physical copies unless I'm sure they're not gonna make me want to throw them into fire anymore. 😞
no kidding
@@calinda4003 I've downloaded so many pdf from booktok recommendations and if I did read a book and loved it I'd look for a physical copy for sure, unless unavailable in my country cuz I like having books in my native language
As an booktoker myself, I deeply despise booktok, bc for a community of people who loves reading, seems to sometimes completely lack any kind of critical thinking
Holy shit! That sentence just describes booktok (and booktube) so perfectly. Thank you for putting it in simple but sharp and true terms!
Booktok seems to praise my least favourite kinds of books, or only one or two kinds of books. It hasn’t had a great track record for good recommendations for myself, imho
Yes, and the greatest example is the whole craze around colleen Hoover's books and nobody seems to point out all the serious problems in them
@@ayatriahi4249 Yes! I see them everywhere! I’ve never read them because that’s such not my kind of genre, but i’ve read ON them and holy shit
a lot of those people use reading purely for escapism (nothing wrong with that, it’s just not particularly intellectual) and many of them only listen to audiobooks, which does not stimulate the brain the same way and wouldn’t aid intellect the way reading would
as someone near the industry who understands the drama (it’s hilarious), she’s not an industry plant: it’s more, she’s a product of the booktok centric marketing strategy that publishers are now using, getting an undeserved 7 figure deal that could have gone to two or three authors and lying about the contents of her book when she already had a semi successful MG series out
Yes, she got a book deal because she’d built up such a following which almost guarantees great sales. I still think based on book reviews that it should have gone through numerous edits, but I suppose they wanted to get it out fast while the hype was high
All of this.
the worst part is that it barely went through edits (if even) from the excerpts that have been shown. it’s ABUNDANTLY clear that she wrote an MG book (from the style and voice of the writing) that she aged up and sold based on her view tiktoks. then it was rushed to printing to build upon her hype-and i doubt she’ll make back her advance at this point
@@Nebulousart Yup. People who use their followings to get deals are getting BOOK deals based on followers, not their books’ merit, only serve to make it even harder for other aspiring writers to get deals actually on their books’ merit.
Agree with this. The industry shift to find new, fresh ideas is welcomed. There’s so much out there… keep pushing the envelope
Idk how people would immediantly think this is "Industry plant" material when the book is so clearly YA movie bait? Like death game and romance among teens? That's very clear movie bait. We've seen this over and over again and instead of being "oh yeah, this is obviously bait since hollywood is still trying to recreate Hunger games and twilight success" they think "There's no way a popular booktoker with a following, competent agent, and obvious writing experience could have rights shopped around!"
Its a book that I feel like is already out there in some fashion and its like you said, regurgitated YA bait
Yeah, TikTok especially is egregious in that people will learn a new term (industry plant, nepo baby, etc) and then throw it at every single situation
I think some people might just be in denial about how many bad/really generic books there are out there.
The idea of her being an industry plant is so tinfoil hat. She made a viral tiktok, and she promoted tropes that booktok loves, and you don't need any explanations beyond that. However, if anyone out there is still doubting booktok's tastes, here are a few sample lines from the book, taken from a goodreads review:
“Lightlark was a shining, cliffy thing”
“The sun had fallen. It was just a yolky thing”
“The sun was a running yolk”
“Grinned meanly”
“Glared meanly”
"'Make another sound and you're stew,' she said meanly."
Exquisite, thank you, booktok.
“Grinned meanly” isn’t horrible, because the adverb adds something not implicit in the verb (grinning=happiness, not meanness), but the others are… yikes. A sun “falling” or “running” (while we typically associate sunsets with graceful slowness) makes me cringe
@@cthulhutheendless1587 Smirked. The word she was looking for was “smirked”.
@@kaywho6477 -Oh damn
i’ve always thought of grinning as showing teeth and smirking as not, but even then evil/wicked grin sounds much cleaner and is more common so it’s still probably not the best choice lol
@@cthulhutheendless1587 "grinned meanly" could be good for a childish character, but "meanly" just doesn't sound good otherwise. "Grinned maliciously" or even just "a mean grin" would work
She's literally a product of the environment BookTok created. I'm rolling my eyes. Y'all support and boosted her and then she got her deal. I don't blame her to secure the bag. She didn't make herself go viral.
Seems like that was supposed to be the goal then once achieved, screams “not fair!”
@@vampired people should already take note, that everything they love, value and believe in will be used against them
@@vampired can you elaborate on this? What exactly did she advertise the book as
@@alexkozliayev9902 thats a stupid thing to say
@@Vickynger lol, no
you will be less disappointed and betrayed, if you understand what i mean
I appreciate that, after all the backlash, people are charitably saying “the book isn’t THAT bad” but having read the book, I really have to step in here and say that yes, it actually is bad, and not just because the characters are flat and the worldbuilding makes no sense and the prose reads like a buried Wattpad story. It’s because there are so many inconsistencies and anachronisms that I’m convinced that ZERO effort went into editing this book. Absolutely none. It’s an objectively inferior product. If I had bought a lamp and found out when I got home that it had faulty wiring, I would be annoyed that the company had sold me a bad product. This is exactly the same situation. And having worked in publishing previously as an agent assistant, having read dozens of truly fantastic unpublished novels that I fought for but that ultimately did not get representation, it does boil my piss to see this kind of mediocre, phoned-in, falsely advertises content get showered with cash and attention.
Publishing is a business at the end of the day, and Alex Aster is a business person. I respect the grift. But people who read the book are annoyed for good reason.
I hadn't known that about publishing, so thanks for that info!
Yeah, I think the people saying "it isn't too bad" are trying too hard to overcompensate for the backlash and criticism- saturating with positivity to bury the negativity/criticism.
Editing is not on the authors though. It seems to me that the industry is throwing author to the wolves with poor editing and marketing.
@@lt7153, even within traditional publishing, authors still have more control over books than it seems. Editors CAN’T cut huge chunks out of your book without your consent. You ultimately have the control to reject their edits if you wish. I’m not saying she did or didn’t, but the concept of the book is handed off to the editor and the author never sees it again is a myth. It comes back to them and then they choose what edits they will and won’t approve with their manuscript.
No doubt, there are some authors who have more control than others. SJM can basically just write anything and nobody will question it because it WILL sell regardless of how bad it is, but all authors have some level of control. So nobody can just blame bad editing. For all we know, the editor could have done a stellar job and every suggestion got rejected (unlikely but possible).
It's hilarious that people are trying to blame the editors. When the rest of us peasants submit books to agents they have to be PERFECT for us to even have a chance. It's so competitive that many people hire editors for their stories even before submitting to agents. So a poorly edited book clonking its way onto bookshelves looks even more suspicious and annoying.
All they care about is swindling money out of you. Books published by trad pubs are passed off as better than other books because they have editors and other professionals on hand to make sure a book is polished. Well, due to that rep, they can cut corners and get money from readers who expect polished quality. They’re misleading readers into thinking they’re getting one thing, and by the time they know it, it’s too late, they’re out the money, and it’s all legal. It’s a bait-and-switch. Of course readers are getting wary.
And because of this, because publishers are buying books based on social media followings rather than the merits of a book, writers are annoyed since we can’t rely on a book’s merits being what matters, and have to instead work on social media, which is toxic and damaging to mental health. Yet when we go the indie or small press route, at best we’re panned right out of the gate and accused of not passing the non-existent vetting process to get a trad deal, and at worst we’re called jealous. Some of us just care about the merits of a book and don’t want to have to spend 80% of our time making videos for whatever the current trendy social media app is.
Social media following being what matters is reminiscent of when having a pretty face to use for the author’s photo was important. Not to be mean here, but a writer who is 400 pounds and conventionally very unattractive is less likely to amass a large following. Publishers are still looking for thin, relatively pretty faces.
I hate when writers write a book with the sole intention of it becoming into a movie. It completely changes the tone, the plot, and how the characters interact. They should’ve become screenwriters.
I completely agree! And with the topic of Red Queen involved, Victoria Aveyard went to school for screenwriting, and I feel like it shows in the book Lol
I feel like this is a huge issue with YA and comic books specifically. I’m sure it’s easier to get a novel published for a first time writer than to get a big budget genre film made, but it’s still always disappointing to read
Right
“Bad art gets made all the time without the help of the industry.” Put it on a shirt.
wait ... there are ghostwriters coming out to claim writership of successful books out there?? 1. how is that not potentially a breach of contract? 2. HOW DO YOU INTEND TO GET HIRED AS A GHOSTWRITER WHEN YOUVE PUBLICLY PROVEN THAT YOU CANT KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT???? 😭😭😭
I'm guessing their mentality is "once they know I actually wrote the book, they will be interested in my career and I can become an established author."
I'm just sick of the Sarah J Maas knockoffs in YA fantasy. Lightlark is just yet another knockoff they're shoving at us YA fantasy fans despite so many of us PLEADING with publishers to stop, just stop. If I wanted to read Sarah J Maas I would. I do not want the watered down, third cousin twice removed wearing a wig version of Sarah J Maas.
Also I hope publishers learn that just because you can get a million views on TikTok, (Which honestly isn't even that hard anymore) does not mean you can write a good book.
Oh my goodness, this. I love SJM. Don't get me wrong. But I haven't read as much romantasy lately because it's all so similar. I can only read the same but different book so many times. (But mam I can reread acotar an unlimited amount of times)
“Watered down, third cousin twice removed wearing a wig version of Sarah J Maas” LMAOO 💀
I'm sorry to say, but the publishing industry will NEVER learn this lesson. They did it with Twilight, they did it with Hunger Games, they did it with Fault in Our Stars, they did it with 50 Shades of Grey, they're doing it now with SJM (and fae in general), they will do it again once the next big thing takes her place. They will always chose the closest thing to what is massively popular until the genre is cursed untouchable ground for the next ten maybe twenty years. The vampire genre is only JUST NOW recovering from the oversaturation of Twilight knock offs and I honestly only think that's because of the Twilight Renaissance.
"watered down, third cousin twice removed wearing a wig version of Sarah J Maas" i'm cackling at this alskjdfgjksdgfla as much as i love sjm books, they already read VERY derivative of other works, and like bits of world/character building from here and there that she smushed together to make her books, so people deriving from her work in a superficial kind of writing is soooo painful to read
Please tell me how to get a million views on TikTok I'm begging you
The most I've gotten is 3k and that's when I paid money to promote the TikTok.
The publishing industry is just wild. It took Lindsay Ellis over a decade to get published despite having a large following online
What she had going against her was that she wasn’t willing to pander to publishers and had standards. Her following eventually helped, but even she acknowledged that her book, which wasn’t in a trendy genre for the time, wouldn’t have had a chance in the end without her following.
The book in question in this video is pander-bait bought based on a following.
I miss her so much and hope she's doing better now.
Tbf Lindsay Ellis' book is really different from her work on RUclips. If she had written a non-fiction book about pop culture and media, maybe her following would've been more helpful in getting her a book deal.
And Lindsay Ellis’s book is actually quite good. I haven’t read the sequel but I’ve been meaning to.
that's the truth
I also think the LIGHTLARK thing isn’t conspiracy. It can be best summarised by an old Hollywood saying; “it was a great trailer, ruined by a terrible movie.”
as an author it's absolutely baffling just how booktok believes things work behind the scenes, and how misinformation spreads so quickly over there.
what can we say, It’s tiktok. Misinformation is Thriving there
Netflix optioned my fiance's book a few weeks after it came out with a small publisher. His agent contacted him and basically said "yeah, they're doing this with pretty much every book that's coming out right now." It's interesting how they're optioning all these stories right off the bat just to scoop other media companies.
Pretty much and then leave most if not all left in a deep vault somewhere, only to be used when the fans basically beg and plead for it. Only problem is it can somewhat to greatly back fire, like Wheel of Time or Artemis Fowl
How cool for your fiancé tho! Can I ask what his book is? You don’t have to share if he would rather keep it quiet
I'm having such a hard time with this concept. Like on the one hand, it's awesome as an author to get a studio's attention like that and I'd be tempted to say yes just so I could tell people my work had been option by [insert company name], but on the other hand, it seems super shady to claim a property while it's cheap and then sit on it while you wait to see if it'll be popular enough to justify making an adaptation of. And I bet you'd get...blacklisted seems like a harsh word, but something to that effect if you say no so you can get what you deserve later on. Hollywood really doesn't give two shits about writers and it shows.
@@raven_moonshine39 it all looks like since every media company has their own streaming platforms and basically competes with Hollywood movies now, they’re all fighting to get what the newest “It” story is.
Just FYI, most publishers have a clause where the option rights (right to choose to make an adaptation) revert back to the publisher or author if a certain amount of time has passed. Netflix can’t hold their option rights indefinitely
I feel like we should also mention that a lot of people have been grouping the unwarranted hate with justified criticism from poc reviewers who were told that there was diversity and the only poc present was also the only lgbtq character! Time and time again poc are sold a movie, show, or book with a promise of diversity only to be told to take the one or two characters that are representation. We aren't demanding, but we are criticizing her advertising a falsehood. And POC are being called a mob or hater for pointing this out.
This is so common too! I'll see a book hyped up as diverse, and then when I read it, it's just one single character with all the diverse things. And they're never even the main character!
Booktok really has bad vibes. It truly gives me the ick…
This is so funny because I read "Curse of the Night Witch" over the summer because it was chosen for Florida's "Sunshine State Young Reader" list for grades 6-8 and was an option for required summer reading at my school.
As an educator who consistently reads almost exclusively YA and middle grade, Curse of the Night Witch wasn't very good and a lot of my students didn't like it either.
I've read the synopsis of both Curse and Lightlark, and it's a shame that their premises interest me a lot but the execution seem to be lacking.
@@lavendermarshmallowplant3229 I agree! A lot of my students purposefully picked Curse of the Night Witch BECAUSE it sounded interesting. But they said the characters and the journey itself didn't really vibe with them or catch their interest.
I think there's a lot of value in occasionally reading a bad book you don't like.
But that's funny that it's such a big thing when apparently the target audience doesn't like it.
god as someone who dabbles in booktok (only because i work in a library) this world is so fascinating to me and how the use of critical thinking is disappearing. i’m also watching a similar situation happen in real time for a different book i got an arc of with the addition of a rabid fanbase from the show’s pending adaptation and it’s…wild. lowkey would love to see amanda’s take on it ngl
What book?? I'm curious now. I always find out about book drama way, way after it's happened.
@@ScreechTheMighty big swiss! like i already knew this was going to be a whole thing (since i’m a fan of the actress who’s producing/staring in it) but phew it’s pretty much going the way i expected this to play out as soon as the arc was out lol
I couldn’t agree more that most booktok recs absolutely suck. I’m on queer booktok, and like every book kinda sounds like it was written by a 13 year old.
Ugh tell me about it. Are queer books wierdly infantalizing right now or is it just my algorithm that hates me?
ps. If you got any recs for good accounts to follow I'd be thankful.
@@Ostkupa oh some definitely are. In terms of accounts, honestly I mainly follow POC accounts cause they tend to stray away from the Tumblr/wattpad level books that white queer creators tend to eat the Fuck up.
In terms of Authors, I have had good luck with ShaunDavid Hutchinson. And their was a book going around on booktok called “Cemetery Boys” that is actually pretty great.
Yes I know exactly what you mean! I ironically came from an hour long deep search of Goodreads just before this because I read Perfect On Paper and now want to inhale every m/f bi character book I can find and although much to my dismay there seems to NOT really be much of that available but now that I've went sifting through queer book rec lists and and every "readers of this enjoyed" twice removed I can confidently say there does seem to be a pattern of queer books that seem like they exist just to fill the spots on a "50 best queer books of the summer" Goodreads article. Some feel like they just suffer from the monotonous Goodreads descriptions that feel so fucking generic and souless and might actually have gems underneath the marketing bullshit but still there was so many that just felt so lacking
you may be onto something there...
90% of the books booktok seems to be obsessed about just read like they're lifted straight from wattpad ngl
It sounds like, to me, that this woman realized all the tropes that booktok people seem to love and that Hollywood wants because they’re desperate for another multi film juggernaut like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games and she took advantage of that…that dosnt mean she’s a plant that just means she was paying attention and knew how to market to people without having to put much effort into the actual book itself and just focus more on the “themes”
And also rights to things (not just books) are bought by movie studios all the time but that dosnt mean anything ever comes of it or it get stuck in development hell. It reminds me of how many video game based movies that had been announced years ago but never came (Tetris being one I remember)
Thank the heavens for most of these video game movies not being released though!
You are right. And in this case it wasn’t even the rights to the book, only the option! Studios like to quickly snatch the rights to anything even vaguely popular or promising. That doesn’t mean they are actually gonna turn it into a movie. Even very established properties can take forever to be turned into a movie. But of course sometimes they quickly (as in, maybe in 2 years time) churn out a cheap product in order to capitalize on a trend or hype, but you can never count on that.
Even if Lightlark doesn’t just crash and burn upon release when booktok instantly spreads the word that it’s bad, it would still take a lot of continued interest in the title for it to move forward.
A TETRIS MOVIE, DEAR GOD 🤦♀️
@@Sleipnirseight it kinda slapped ngl
I think that's giving alex a lot of credit-
Honestly I hate that tiktok ever learned the word “industry plant” it’s like gaslighting, they learn it and throw it around to define anything they don’t like
I hate how booktok is all about having a ton of books and buying and pre ordering all of these books. Libraries exist for a reason. I'm not going to pre order a book before it's even out (especially when I haven't read anything similar from that author before). And then used book stores too! I get that they're old and usually not aesthetic or currently popular books, but new hard backs are like $30 now!
Hard backs are such a scam lol. I wish I didn't have to wait a year for a new book to come out in paper back 😭😂😭😂
damn, booktok's legit just 2010s bookblr and booktube recycled huh, even down to the obsession with buying books with no clear goal or even possibility of reading them.
@@phadenswandemil4345 I love hardbacks. Paperbacks get damaged and worn so easily, and I hate breaking them in. 😩
@@BeatGoat Yah that's true. It would be better if they release them simultaneously. Or maybe a month apart
used book stores can have some great things! library and independant booksales too! plus you save a lot; over the course of, like, two book sales, this one's family picked up 4 paper grocery store bags FULL of books for the grand price of 30 USD. Not just books, but music CDs and stuff too! Got a bunch of old Forgotten Realms and Pern novels and some very nice old cook books.
None of the Terry Pratchet this one was after though
It is so odd to me that ~this~ book is the one that’s getting everyone’s suspicion up when we’ve been seeing the viral influence of BookTok for well over a year now, if not several years. Like, nothing distinguishes this book or author from all those displays at Barnes & Noble where the theme is “TikTok Made Me Buy It”, and when I worked at a library even our “new” section was dominated by those kinds of book (especially Colleen Hoover for some reason). Obviously in that case Hoover is a little different since she’s a very established author, but yeah.
And the audacity to be like “Well, I’m in this community and I haven’t heard of it so it must be plant” is so self-centered it’s insane. When the category you’re working within is “popular YA fiction” that’s still such an insanely large category there is no way anyone, even active in the space, can keep up with every new release and the book’s legitimate success or lack thereof does not depend on an app not showing you every single video related to a specific topic
What happens is a thing passes as a fluke the first few times, but then happens enough that people start to realize that it’s part of an ongoing trend. By your thinking, if a problem isn’t pointed out at the very beginning, when it well might be a fluke, then no one gets to say anything. But the problem with that is that if everything that could be a problem is screamed about, and most end up being flukes, after a while, no one listens anymore. You become the boy who cried wolf for not observing first, and then people like you dismiss them for not crying wolf a hundred times first.
I’m sorry, this book sounds SO derivative of literally every other book
Welcome to every YA book ever.
@@mandalorian_guy If yo want to find different YA books that aren’t pander-bait, check the indie realm. People in that realm usually choose to be there since they are writing what is different enough that the trad industry won’t even consider glancing their way.
It sounds so painfully 2015 YA sff in particular. Like I could see every big booktuber from back then showing off their five million bookcrate exclusive editions before unhauling most of them after admitting it was mediocre.
Being derivative isn't necessarily bad. Especially for YA, having certain tropes or broad plot points in your book is part of the appeal.
@@phadenswandemil4345 that’s totally fair and true. I was more so questioning why something that seems so much like everything else would be so successful. But you’re right, it’s the market
Tbh even if your family has money, unless they have power or public influence, that won’t get you a book deal. That will just give you the ability to focus on nothing but writing while your family supports you. So while that’s a privilege for sure, that’s not nepotism or being an industry plant.
Ive noticed that people are just jealous.
From someone who read the book I feel like a lot of the hate is kind of unwarranted. The book is just a generic YA fantasy/dystopia novel and there’s nothing special about it
Yeah, but as a writer who's test-read some fabulous books by talented unpublished writers who can't find an agent no matter how hard they try, it is frustrating to see mediocre schlock like Lightlark get a six-figure advance and tons of promotion.
@@jessip8654 Unfortunately, this is not a new thing. Access nepotism and fame privilege has always been a thing and all facets of the entertainment industry are unfair. If a good singer gets born to someone in the middle of Minnesota, they might end up the best singer on their school choir. And an equal or even not-as-good singer born in LA with an Uncle who happens to be a producer, record deal at 12. Where as the best singer in the school choir might be fighting years just to get in front of a producer that can help them make decent money with this talent.
As much as it sucks, getting into any entertainment (books, film, TV, music, etc etc). If you have some fame (of which social media is now) getting attention on your unpublished, unproven, novel is just a privilege that comes with using fame on one platform to get access to another.
Like music stars are handed acting roles all the time despite displaying zero previous talent in acting. And they are given these roles over people with years of proven talent who just haven’t had a chance at that big break out role yet.
@@jessip8654 I definitely agree
I agree, but some of that is I think why there is so much hate. It's like the emoji movie of YA, It's painfully generic, which is fine, but after all the hype it's irritating that it was overblown
@@TheDawnofVanlife So no one can air grievances? Good to know.
I do feel like I need to point out that film studios also purchase rights to projects they DON’T want to get made. In general, studios do not want two similar projects getting made and released around the same time. They’re afraid of their audience getting stolen. And, like she pointed out in this video, Shadow and Bone did well on Netflix, studios noticed that and want to do something similar. It is completely possible that that film studio (idr who actually bought the rights rn) has similar project already in the works that they’ve already sunk money into, then saw how much hype this Tiktok book was getting, and decided to snatch up the rights to it solely to prevent anyone else from making it.
I know how ridiculous it sounds but it really is a fairly common practice, primarily with scripts, but I could see them applying the same logic here.
I remember there was a manuscript being passed around about a biopic of Vince McMahon (the owner of WWE). It was very melodramatic and was made to make him and WWE look as bad as they possibly could. The theory was that the writer was hoping WWE would buy it so it would never get made.
As an indie author myself I just find all this fascinating. Tbh the most frustrating thing, as someone who has also querried, that the rest of us cannot get book deals off premis alone. We have to have a finished manuscript as polished as possible before we can be considered.
Her being able to do that is probably because of her decently successful MG books. I remember, back in my YA days, reading an interview with Neal Shusterman, one of the biggest names in YA fiction, especially YA science-fiction, and he mentioned that when he was first starting out he would write the book and then pitch it. Now that he's an established author (and money-maker), he can just pitch a book before even writing the first chapter.
@@wormdoodles if she had the same agent, sure. But it sounds like she lost her agent too.
Wasn’t ‘Children of Blood and Bone’ by Tomi Adeyemi also optioned to become a film before it was even released as well? It shouldn’t be a surprise that Hollywood is investing in the film rights of YA books before they are published and released because the film industry is always looking for ‘fresh’ material that has the potential to become a big money making franchise. ( Even though the industry has a tendency to regurgitate the same film ideas and reboot already popular franchises…😬)
The same happened with The 100, they were already adapting the material before the books were released.
Yes. Blood and bone rights were bought as well. 20th Century Fox bought it and then when disney bought Fox, Lucasfilm was hoping to develop it into a movie, but they put it on the back burner after some star wars projects and indiana jones, seems like the author left on bad terms, she wanted to co write the script, but the studio said no. Paramount has it now. So who knows what will happen or even if it'll happen.
As someone who wants to get published someday booktok frustrates me so much, I hate that writers are basically forced to become tiktok stars now just to get good marketing from their publisher, I just want to write books I don't want to make daily tiktoks
Add to that the halo effect and how good looking people gt more attention in social media and the picture is even worse.
Yeah, my problem with today publishing is that the book is crazy popular, translated to many languages getting a movie deal and ALL of that before the book is out. Like, the book can be garbage, but even if it is, people won't acknowledge that because the confirmation bias kicks in. It's disgusting for me that they're just selling hype today, not "at least decent literature" that has to stand on its own before it gets popular based on the simple fact that it's at minimum an enyojable read.
EDIT: I just want to read good books. I have classics but I want to see new ones that are worth my time and money. Fuck my life, apparently cause there are few and far between, and the most popular ones are just awful.
I know you probably weren’t asking for recommendations but The Goblin Emperor is fabulous if you like fantasy and The Murderbot Diaries are great if you like sci-fi
Honestly, this is why I mostly read backlisted books these days. When I do pick up a new release, it's most likely by an author I've read and loved before- like I'm so excited for the new Cormac McCarthy novels coming out later this year. Some small-press stuff is also pretty good, too. I also really love the feeling you get when I discover a forgotten gem; it's even better than that feeling you get when you find a new up-and-coming author to follow.
@@Kat-mv5dy Thanks anyway! I may check out the The Goblin Emperor, but I definetely will read The Murderbot Diaries cause the premise is just really interesting.
I mean first I have to finish The Book of The New Sun and after these four brainfucks my view on the entire written word can be changed completely, but I will add the Morderbot to the list!
this might be an odd comparison but it kind of reminds me of videogame marketing where it's based on hype and companies push preorder bonuses before people even know if the game is good or not.... and then people get disappointed when some of them crash and burn. i guess marketing on hype is just where we're at with capitalism nowadays
@@jichanxo It's not odd at all. This is how entertaiment companies think now and we can see that in games industry people are starting to be fed up with this bullshit. Book publishing will either learn from it (they will not, corpos never do that) or will crash and burn.
industry plant theories be like "their uncles neighbours best friend is on the board of a soap company...that got them in the music industry"
Well I‘m an author myself (in germany/austria so pls dont comment on any errors with ‚how can you be an author?‘) and i was following this whole scenario because i got a lot of refusals from agents and publishers for my latest book and it really sold well. It was not bad but one publisher in german is giving all these booktokers and bookstagramers contracts which really sucks. And some of these books seem familiar averagE like lightlark. They only get them because they have followers. I am not kidding! Some of them were on the bestseller lists so … and yeah. Of course i envy them. Its hard to be a writer and especiAlly when you love your books and it dont get the attrntion it deserved.
You need to get yourself on Booktok/Bookstagram and be your own cheerleader. If she did it, so can you 👍
Bestseller lists are so moot. Go into any bookstore and on any given shelf, almost all of the books will say "NYT bestseller." It's an oversaturated label people throw on the book to be like "oh look it's a great book, NYT said so!" Like no, it just means X number of people purchased the book, whether it was good or not.
Wie heißt dein Buch und gibt es Aussicht darauf, dass es bald verlegt wird?
@@ElementalWhispers i am. It works semi good
@@jspihlman yeah but the amount of purchases is so important! My new lit agency only gave me a contract after my last book sold more copies than the others. And then they are publishers who think the same. In the german publishing field you can look into how many copies have been sold via a special tool (which is expensive but publishers can afford it) aaand authors get and you only get paid around 5000 euros upfronz for a new book - than it has to sell well to get more money
OK, I can weigh in potentially on your question, re: how it got to auction in a week. I'm not super familiar with Alex Aster, that said, so I don't know whether she had an agent at the time of the viral TikTok (if someone knows, let me know!). But let's say she didn't have an agent at the time... all it would take is some TikTok savvy publishing professionals seeing the TT, going "this feels like lightning in a bottle" and someone emailing Alex (agent or publisher) and then having it go from there. It's easy to go from zero to sixty when something's gone viral, including being snapped up quickly by an agent when you have publisher interest. It was likely sold on a 1 page rough synopsis and some sample chapters (assuming she already had them), and because no one had to read a whole book if it was done on proposal, it can very quickly go to auction. So it's a wild story but 100% feasible to me.
A lot of people who aren’t in the film industry or don’t know a lot about the film industry don’t really understand how buying rights work. There are TONS of books that have been optioned and fights bought for decades and nothing has been done. It’s the POTENTIAL for the studio to use the IP in the future and to stake their claim. Also soooo many movies and tv shows sit in development hell that who knows if the movie will even happen?
I'm so mad that it's called Lightlark because one of my favourite middle grade books to this day is called Larklight by Philip Reeves (2006). Its such a good book and deserves more attention and it's own gooddamn movie, but now if it does, it'll be called something else cause it's too similar to Lightlark (which seems like its going to have a movie).
I can’t speak to this specific book or author but a lot of time I feel like today’s publishing landscape is just bleak. There are a few standouts of course, but it feels like YA and women-oriented publications in particular have dropped in quality to the degree where I’m shocked that some of them aren’t straight out of a vanity publisher. If I wanted to read something with the narrative cohesion and editing quality of a lazy fanfic, I’d visit AO3, not the library or bookstore
And I think that's where a lot of the frustrations are coming from. YA is in a bad place and Lightlark was like, people's breaking point. No more Sarah J Maas knockoffs PLEASE!
It's like publishers now are so caught up with trend-chasing they don't even care about quality. I've been involved in the online book world for YEARS now and I think Booktok is one of the worse things that happened to it. YA and romance are basically just focused on going viral and getting in as many AO3 buzzwords as possible, and it's even leaking into literary fiction (look at how many "unhinged women" or "hot girl" books are coming out now). It really is depressing.
I will watch Amanda talk about literally anything
🤣🤣🤣 same here
Same 🥺
She's our Oprah.
As someone in publishing, the way one gets a book deal, its almost impossible for it to be nepotism to be apart of it, as book querying (is what its called) is entirely about the book. You write a cover letter and summary for the book, not you. At most you sign your name at the bottom (some don't even want that). Publishers are generally uninterested in you, the author and they care entirely about the book. Unless your a known author in another genre, or have written or edited pervious books, they don't care. In this case, her previous publications would have given her a little boost but not much, especially since she's switching genres and reading level. She would've have been querying entirely different publishers and presses.
This is coming from someone on the other side of querying, so do correct me if I'm wrong, but I've always seen that personalizing your query will give you a boost, and that boost will be multiplied if you've been referred to an agent. So if someone was actually a nepotism baby of the publishing industry (which I don't think she is), having that successful family member/friend's approval at the top of a query would surely bump them up, right? Not to discredit an agent's discretion, but I know I'd be more likely to give a second glance to a less good submission like this. If I'm wrong that is fab to hear as someone who is definitively *not* a product of nepotism lol
It’s well-known that large social media followings help the chances of a deal, and if someone is referred to an agent of publisher, then there’s a higher chance of getting a deal based on that referral, which is more likely to come from a friend or relative. That’s what nepotism is, and it’s as alive in publishing as anything else.
@@isabelyoung1744 “Someone in publishing” can mean an assistant or someone else in the office. Actual agents have stated the opposite, that they DO look at social media followings and DO give more weight to referrals, which usually come from family and friends who are already known.
If you want a good book I recommend one with a title that's a flipflop of this one: Larklight. It's a victorian steampunk space thingy.
I love Larklight! Myrtle Mumby has to be one of my favourite characters in fiction.
I ADORE LARKLIGHT.
A good example of auctioning off rights before a book release is The 100. The series started filming around August 2013, the first book was published September 2013, and the pilot aired in March 2014.
I was thinking this!! Wild how that was a decade ago now.
it's like how the fake My Immortal writer bought her own book a shit ton so it would make the NYT best seller list .
Are you talking about Handbook for Mortals? The author never claimed to have written my immortal, it was an accusation thrown at her but she denied it. I believe your thinking or Rose Cristo, she's the one who got a book deal for claiming to have written my immortal, but it was cancelled after she was exposed.
@@laradorren8009 alot of people said that The Handbook For Mortals ripped off alot My Imortal which might be what their refrencing too
@@awhimsyreader9015 Never understood that because other than magic, the two works have NOTHING to do with each other.
@@xstarrycity3627 Yeah doesn't make sense to me either since the only piece of evidence people seemed to use was that both titles sounded similar with Mortal and Immortal and that they were both bad
@@awhimsyreader9015 People will label anything as a ripoff it seems 🙄
I get why it’s “controversial” for ppl to have connections that get them ahead in the public eye/Hollywood etc but the industry plant/nepotism baby discourse is my least favorite thing to come out of the 2020s lmao
especially considering that so many people don't really seem to understand the concept, but throw around the terms anyway. I bet a lot people would be surprised to learn so many of their faves are already "industry plants" lol
@@kkuudandere yeah those words have no meaning anymore especially “industry plant”, now it’s basically just anyone with a record deal these days haha
On one hand, it's fucking WILD to me how much of Hollywood has a parent or grandparent in the biz.
On the other hand, it's really not a new thing (Melanie Griffith, Liv Tyler, Angelina Jolie, Isabella Rosselini) and, let's be honest here, a lot of times talent does run in the family. Look at the Redgraves- massive British acting dynasty, all talented. Or the Coppolas (even Nic Cage, as much shit as he's been in, is a genuinely great actor).
i feel like people cant decide if "networking" itself is unethical because many things people are calling nepotism things that are just people making connections in their field of work
It's actually not that bad imo, I think it's eye opening. It's more difficult to make it in the entertainment industry for those who don't have family connections and it's probably helpful to know that. However it's annoying when ppl just throw these terms around without even knowing what they're talking about lol like here
As someone who works in publishing, I’ve definitely seen booktok blow up books, so while this might be uncommon, given that she’s had her other works picked up by a traditional publisher previously (and knows how to use social media to garner hype), this doesn’t really surprise me or seem super outlandish 🤷🏼♀️
18:00
Working at multiple books at one time is often times a way to keep yourself from going insane, lol
When it feels like nothing is working with one book, you just go to a different story and focus on a part that you love
The confusion surrounding the movie deal is in part a lack of understanding on how rights are sold in regards to books but also that it was framed or otherwise implied by Aster herself as something already in production (with her as a exec producer) and a for sure big franchise coming from Universal when series like Throne of Glass and Red Queen have been optioned for almost a decade with no movement and that, understandably, is confusing for a lot of people both in the book community, like myself, and outside of it. The industry plant thing is weird but mostly just a reaction to a lot of seemingly shady marketing put forth by Aster and fueled by claims that negative reviews are wholesale false when they aren’t.
As someone who’s also read the book and reviewed it on GRs, it’s frustrating to have that brought into question when the book itself is, imo, subpar but will inevitably be seen as a success based on sales numbers alone because it’s sparked curiosity in neutral parties.
"why are you 27 and saying you haven't done enough."
as someone turning 27 in two months, that feeling is *real* though.
I'm 24 and *definitely* haven't done enough
@@isabellamorris7902 it doesn't help that in the US at least, you're expected to have your shit together at like 20.
And Gone Girl was sold before it came out. Lots of books rights are sold before release. It's not uncommon. Actually people are getting book and movie deals together, you write the book in a way for it be adaptable to the screen.
That sounds pretty terrible like it's great for these writers that their books are getting adapted into movies but at the same time you shouldn't be writing books just for the sake of movie adaptations,books themselves are beautiful medium to explore storytelling and should be the reason to write the book to tell that story in that medium,writing a book with a movie adaptation in mind causes that concept to get lost and can make the book very lacking in both story and depth usually
@@awhimsyreader9015 oh I agree but I have accepted publishing like everything else is about the money. Books are entertainment
I got an advance copy (I review books online under a pen name for a media company) it was okay. I personally am tired of dystopian curses and love triangles and I didn't find it engaging because I wasn't the target demographic as someone in their mid-20s and burnt out on "Hunger Games"/"Divergent" dystopian YA books.
For the love of God I'm tired of it.
The "diversity" really wasn't there and it felt hollow considering her claiming it to be a big part of the story. Would love to have seen some queer representation or neurodivergent or anything that wasn't so cishet and able bodied.
Overall it's fine. It's a fun read if you like those types of stories. Otherwise there is no reason to hate it. This whole situation is a nightmare.
It's just a book.
I was sent the audiobook to review it’s average it’s not great it’s not bad yes she was untruthful about scenes and that is an issue. My major issue is her reaction to peoples criticism, there was a lot of backlash from her editor and her. And overall everyone who is giving a bad review or truthful review are haters and are lying. There was also a whole section where they denied it being an audiobook form but it was sent from the company directly to us reviewers. It just gave me a really bad taste in my mouth and it does not make me want to support her anymore
I think a lot of people just don't know what "industry plant" means, and think it's just a general phrase that means something's bad and mainstream (or trying hard to be like the mainstream). Probably the whole kerfuffle about the Tramp Stamps a while ago introduced a lot of tiktok users to the term in that context.
But ultimately I don't know, people call other people things that they aren't all the time, especially as insults, and whether that's good or bad it's kind of just an unavoidable bit of how language works.
I swear this is those indie people screaming about shit.
Frankly, she’s a pretty young girl who went viral - she’s talented but not unique. She probably got lucky from that more than anything. Could have been any YA premise that went viral
Xian jay zhao is probably the best comparison I can think of. I.e. some amount of “privilege“, a good writing style and ideas, and leveraging their viral attention to help push their authorship careers. But I will also say that at least zhao deserves all her success, I really like her book(s) and videos. I’m not sure about lightlark or it’s author since I haven’t read it or any of her other works and so I’m not gonna comment.
I am inclined to agree, but given that RUclipsr books is sort of a genre in which there is varying levels of RUclipsr involvement, would other RUclipsrs who have mainly written their own books fall into the same comparison? An open question, I don't have an idea
My reply's a bit late, but Xiran is nonbinary and goes by they/them pronouns. They also made a video about their entire journey to becoming a published author if you want to hear from their perspective.
So, as someone who works in the YA publishing space … “New Adult” is a plague. It’s adults sexualising teenagers, and teens being pushed out of YA (and into MG, which is getting a knock-on effect of becoming more mature again, to accomodate older readers who are too old really for the readership, but too young for how YA is very focused on the older end of the spectrum). “New Adult” was borne out of adults readers of YA. Casey McQuiston & Sarah J Maas further muddied waters (publishers pumping out illustrated romance covers very much to usher teens over to adult romance, and publishers that release an initial-YA book that then transitions confusingly into a very adult/almost erotica series)
This 100%! I find that there's a reason a lot of younger (14-15, even some 16 year olds) tend to read older YA titles, if they read at all. Basically every new YA book now is about 17 and 18 year olds. I've even seen some books marketed as YA despite the fact that the characters are in their freshmen year of college.
Meanwhile it's impossible to find MG anymore that doesn't have characters that are 13-14, maybe 12 if you're lucky. It's so hard to find books about elementary-aged characters anymore.
When acotar was ya until it was NOT. 🤣
@@wormdoodles that’s true, I feel bad for my little cousin because then she won’t get to find or read books about kids having wacky adventures with good heartfelt messages, to teach kids about the world and how to treat others
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with teens reading MG, especially if there keeping up with something they read when they were younger (Ex: I got mad into KOLTC when I was fifth grade and when I went to middle school I inadvertently got half my new friend group into it too. So even if we’re in high school now, because we’re all far to invested at this point, and there’s only two books left, we all decided that we would in fact read on for the sake of our childhood. Plus the characters are basically our age now helps a bit.) I do agree though that NA sucks, I want to get into more mature YA books but the only barrier now is the smut scenes. I’m on the ace-spectrum so reading that is a big hell no.
Throne of Glass when SJM decide she wants to wright graphic sex scenes in the middle of the series. I remember beeing a young teen when I read it and it genuanly put me off fantasy for solid 5 years. Authors should not be allowed to just do that.
I love it when subspaces for a type of media on the internet that is usually perceived as either being lighthearted (ex. cute children's game) or refined (ex. books and reading) end up having some of the most pettiest dramas known to man that is identical to Hollywood celebrity gossip.
You're right, it gets even weirder the more you think about it.
Hollywood has optioned books since at least the 90s. Best example I can think of was Jurassic Park. Spielberg and his production company bought the rights in 1990 then released the film in 1993.
One of my first Swell videos!! This was pretty great.
I’ve often seen the mass dislike of dystopian YA as in response to the swathe of bad YA dystopia after the Hunger Games. Seeing it happen on TikTok is very surreal, after seeing it all on tumblr agessss ago. I know less about industry plant accusations and it’s a strange turn in the “culture” of disliking media, this was very interesting to hear about.
Looking forward to watching more videos of yours!
This is my favorite channel. Binge the older vids !
@@georgia8670 I absolutely will! Care to recommend a favourite of yours?
@@lia-DR her OG tanacon videos are great that's how I found her and any video going over niche TikTok communities like Nugget tok After Dark
I remember when Booktok first showed up and all the recommendations were for, like, YA fantasy books from 2014-15 and Colleen Hoover. For those of us who lived through that era of Booktube, it was fucking WILD to see them again.
I glanced over the Goodreads reviews and everyone is comparing it to A Court of Thorns and Roses. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.
For me, that’s not good.. because i didn’t particularly like those lol
Darryl F. Zanuck was purchasing the movie rights to not-yet-published books 80 years ago. There's nothing new about that practice and it definitely is not evidence of an "industry plant".
Not that I'm sticking up for this absurd girl or her very likely absurd book.
Ah, this whole situation reminds me of the Atlas Six aka a book that could have truly been really good if it had gotten a few rounds of editing (and some additional research - you can 100% tell that the author knows next to nothing about Japan for example)... but they needed the momentum I guess and hey, it worked.
The only thing I know about Lightlark (apart from very much not being the target audience) is that the one person I follow who gives almost every book they read five stars (or the occasionally rare 4 stars when they're not as enthusiastic about it) gave it three stars.
I very much agree with you about A6. I read it because of the crazy hype, and agree it definitely needed wayyy more editing. There was a good book/premise in it, but the execution did it wrong
I’m an indie author, and I do agree that tiktok is a good place to do marketing. I just haven’t gotten over there to do ads and stuff.
my mom was a published author (retired due to mental health) and was made to change his books to YA even though they were never intended to be sold as YA novels. publishers often change books to YA cause more people seek out YA. it's simple as that.
AMANDA! I work at a bookstore and I’ve been on vacation, but today I come into my coworkers telling me all about this book drama! Now I’m on my lunch break and I literally squealed seeing this video upload! IM SO PSYCHED FOR THIS, you always have great timing for me!!💕💕💕
Hi This is a little out of topic but as someone is Hispanic/Latina, I really get interested when I find books that have main characters or secondary characters with Hispanic/Latino representation especially within the fantasy genre.
I have heard within the book community that some authors of color don’t know how much representation they should write about within their stories. Because there are some readers that are satisfied with the representation. Some readers believe that the background, the author is representing where they are from, is either authentic or stereotypical.
Somewhat "sterotypical" characters aren't always a bad thing imo. Some stereotypes are there for a reason. It gets problematic when a character has no depth and is *just* all stereotypes and no individual traits
@@msjkramey yes I 100% agree with you!
I genuinely appreciate you saying “this was written by an avocado with a marker,” rather than making an intelligence insult. 💜
There is important conversations to be had with this situation, but people are just rushing to conclusions and aren’t analyzing the information.
I’m actually very familiar with Alex Aster- I live in the city she grew up in. Her parents splatter her and her sisters faces all over billboards and commercials trying to make them the next Mary Kate and Ashley. My siblings went to school with them. So this whole thing has been very weird, lol.
New Amanda video, perfect thing to relax myself before I get busy asf for the next 5 hrs😌👍
So many of these recent YA books have the EXACT. DAMN. SAME. Style as much as they do the same premise. They’re always in first person, have a conversational hip-with-the-kids voice, and there’s no variation in sophistication. Obviously not every book has to sound sophisticated and like classic literature, but there really needs to be some diversity in terms of tone and style.
I often just reread my favorite books back from the 2000s as well as translated light novels (Tanya the Evil is so good) and they’re infinitely more engaging and fresh-feeling than literally any book pushed on booktok.
On the topic of booktok, almost everyone on it feels like the people at middle school who would bully me for reading all the time. Just an observation, probably just me but.
On top of that booktok’s insistence on pushing “spicy” and “tragically romantic” books has given rise to Colleen Hoover and I will forever resent it for that.
i immediately went “is this just hunger games?” when i heard the book description. dont get me wrong you can have an interesting and unique narrative that’s similar in plot to another popular book but im hesitant so far. guess we’ll just have to see lol.
You mean the industry plant wasn't Coleen Hoover?
I honestly didn’t even think about the possibility of a book industry plant for some reason this whole situation is so interesting
Did you get a new camera? This video looks really good, did you get a budget increase, are you an industry plant?? 😱
the true industry plant was the one looking into industry plants all along 😵
I find it very interesting that all i have seen on my fyp is the priviledge talk and how she sold herself in a very "boot strappy" kind of way, and it not be included in this video. Yes the hate is unwarranted but i do think that the way she advertised herself was off putting. Yeah she admitted all these things after being called out, she didn't acknowledge her priviledge before these conversations were happening..
Lindsay Ellis pitched her books to her fans on YT, because, if you like her work in general there's a good chance your going to like her book. I don't think its wrong, I think its smart crowed work.
As someone who gets and reads a lot of early ARCs, most sites that send them out have a prompt that asks if you run a professional blog or represent a media company, so I'm not surprised that movie studios get first pick of hyped titles. Honestly everything about her and her book are in-line with how the publishing industry works. Online visibility makes you more attractive to publishers, and she literally already had a successful book in a different genre. Nothing about this says industry plant.
i don’t use tiktok so i had no clue about this whole fiasco, but the premise of this book sounds… quite typical? as a YA novel ngl 😅😅 it doesn’t sound very special tbh
Oh its pretty much every other YA dystopian out there right now 😅😅😅
If there was no mention of romance, I'd actually think there is something to the idea. Because rich people fighting and getting killed off? Hell yeah
i can't believe we now have Amanda on camera admitting to being a privileged nepotism plant
I've overheard authors talking to each other after a book signing, when they were complaining about how their publisher pretty much forces them to make a certain number of tiktoks to promote their books. I personally want to write and publish books someday, and the thing that is dissuading me isn't the idea of rejection, it's the idea of the whole added things of self promotion and crazy contracts which want you to always be working on multiple projects and all of these more business type things which I am really not interested in at all; things which I feel would make my work feel more like a product than something I'm passionate about. It kind of worries me that writers aren't allowed to just be writers at this point, they also have to be savvy business people and social media experts. Maybe it's always been this way? I don't know, it freaks me out.
Book RUclips is my ish!! Just hearing ppl break down books I’ve never heard of or will read is just *chefs kiss*
She didn’t need to be called an industry plant, the book itself was the longest 4 days of my life
I personally feel that diversity enriches art, but at the same time I would have a major problem with anyone criticizing this girl for being Latina but not including "enough" representation in her (likely absurd) book.
For starters, how do we quantify what is "enough" representation? The ratio of latino characters? The dialogue? How exactly? Who judges this?
This girl is still (God help me) an artist. _Not the kind of artist I personally value_ but an artist nonetheless. And no healthy culture places these kinds of demands on their artists. As Amanda says, _expecting_ representation out of any artist isn't fair.
More than that, I'd personally call it unhealthy.
It's something I've always wondered about, I'm European and in a country with basically no diversity. There's lgbtq+ diversity but not race wise. Is it better for me to write something diverse and potentially get it wrong? Or don't but then have a book lacking diversity.
@@cait812 yeah, that's tough. I feel like I'd be comfortable writing POC side characters but idk about a main character just because I've never experienced it personally and wouldn't want to get it wrong. I think it's better to just promote more POC authors
There was apparently one main character who was a POC and that character also doubled as the only major LGBT representation, and I think the main reason people are mad about it isn’t because she’s Latina, but because she specifically promoted her book as being really diverse. She acknowledged that YA fantasy is full of improbably white casts. And then she wrote a book just as white as the books she criticized and claimed to be more diverse than.
I wouldn't criticize her lack of representation NOW because 1) people in the US have a very distorted and narrow idea of what diversity and representation is (for example, calling actress Anna Taylor-Joy WoC because she was born in Argentina) from my non-US perspective and 2) is very, very hard to get published, and I wouldn't be surprised if she is playing safe (or her editor forced her to) until she has a stable fanbase to be as representative as she wants to be.
It will be a different story if she succeeds yet doesn't deliver what she promised.
It really is a double-edged sword imo. You get a lot of people who say white authors shouldn't write any characters of color because they'll "inevitably" get the representation wrong (focusing too much on race, focusing too little on race, being too stereotypical, being too "white-washed", etc), and then blast them for writing books with majority-white casts.
TBH, I'm sort of glad that if I ever publish, it would likely be in either adult literary fiction or horror, both genres Booktwitter and Booktok tend to leave alone when looking for their next witch hunt. I couldn't imagine trying to publish YA or SFF in today's political climate.
Hey Swell,
Since I caught this video early, I'd just like to say I love your content. I subscribed a few months ago, and I have been watching consistently since then.
There are subjects that I'm typically not intrested in initially, then you MAKE me interested. To have that effect on someone is admirable!
So continue what you're doing and I hope your channel continues growing! Take care!
On the calling booktok a cult thing- cults harm their members. Outside influence doesn’t add up to much in cult-levels tbh. Booktok would be a cult if they had control over one or more of the BITE model- Behavior control, Information Control, Thought control, and emotional control.
If booktok has one main person who could be called their leader, and they control all of the book-related information all members of booktok ingest, yeah I’d call it a cult. But likely it does not bc of the nature of tiktok and online interactions.
The reason ppl are mad is bc it makes the stories of survivors of cults (hi I’m one) less serious. Unless you fit a very narrow view of public perception of what a cult is, your story is discounted. Which sucks like, you wanna see my therapy bills?? This shit still affects me today. I don’t need some idiot trying to tell me I wasn’t “realllly in a cult”.
Which you likely understand this already, but here’s my two cents as a who i am.
I love watching your videos. I live under a rock. You let me know about so much that is going on. You educate, explain, and entertain in such a magnificent way. Thank you ♡
My girlfriend has a book coming out this october and the company she's getting published through 100% expects her to do all the marketing. They specifically asked her to have at least 1 or 2 social media accounts and want her to make a website. Self promotion is just part of the process these days, especially for a debut (or sort of debut??) author. Saying self promotion means an industry plant is so silly.
Fellow writer here also trying to finish a book >.< I definitely enjoy these stories on the author spaces, especially keeping up with other Latina authors and how far they can make it in publishing. Thank you for covering this story!
I'm always looking for New Adult recommendations, but I'm trying to get back into reading YA since I'm floating between writing for YA and NA.
PLENTY of popular authors come from money, nepotism, industry push, buy their way to the top, have ghost writers, etc. it’s not surprising or controversial at all
That and if you have money you have more free time to write and can buy classes to learn and easily pay for an agent
Some more insight as to how many people can actually get an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC):
I work low level at a Barnes&Noble and I have access as an employee to an entire website of ARCs digitally, and can essentially request any physical ARC to be shipped to our store (with the publisher's permission). We can even give these ARCs to family/friends if we so choose. ARCs are available to a such a wide range of people who work tangentially to the book industry it's kinda insane. They really aren't hard to get unless it's a MASSIVELY POPULAR book. I don't doubt a bunch people were able to get their hands on this book to review early. However, I do concede a lot of the reviews were probably hate reviews.
In regards to the "B&N special edition" having deleted scenes - I haven't read any edition of this book and unfortunately can't answer that one way or another.
The publishing industry is so fucked up. My mom has a friend who worked for years to get published. When she finally got the chance, the publisher set her up for failure (first print of very few units, no promotion, etc), dropped her claiming it didn't sell enough, and waited for the contract to expire and relaunched the book in a bigger market.
Alex's case could be the result of a self promotion strategy that went so well it got out of control. The inconsistencies would make sense if she still wasn't so sure of what to say at the beginning, and the promises of representation could be a way to get more traction or something her editors and agent told her to remove to become more "marketable". What troubles me more is the idea of following the EA model and sell the "juiciest" parts of her book as a DLC of sorts.
(And regarding Mom's friend, her case brought the attention of one of the little towns where her novel took place,who decided to sponsor her as a local author and got her a better publisher.)
I had to pause at “avocado with a marker” LMAOOOOOOOO
I've been waiting for you to talk about this book!! It's all over my tiktok fyp.
From my very outsider perspective of the publishing industry and the industries tied to it, it seems like it’s just the Wild West. Everyone is out for their own gain and have to use every tool at their disposal to get ahead. It’s the kind of industry that breeds these kinds of situations, I don’t think it means someone is a plant or had a bunch of extra help behind the scenes because they actually managed to make it. I just think the general public doesn’t have an understanding of how things work and then social media latching onto one example breeds confusion and contempt. That said I know nothing about her or the situation but similar situations have come from similar things on other platforms and other interests and industries.
Ooh, also on one of your last points the people saying they’d never been recommend her on tik tok, there’s a bunch of famous RUclipsrs who’s been on the platform a decade or more that I’ve never been recommended, or I didn’t care about them so I didn’t notice or remember that I’ve been recommended them. Like who remembers the people they don’t decide to watch? That’s such a weird facet of the argument to me😆
Lightlark is a terrible book but Alex Aster is a queen who played the game and won and we shouldn’t fault her for that. If you’re mad be mad at the system
I was so excited when I first came across booktok but then I got the same 3 books shoved down my throat indefinitely and my opinion changed real quick. There's so little variety in opinion over there.
My only exposure to Alex Aster were her (I assume) reposted TikToks on Instagram reels bragging/gloating about having Lightlark bought as a "massive film franchise" before book 1 was even published, which kinda rubbed me the wrong way. I mean, be proud of it by all means, but I felt like the tone of the whole thing was off. I didn't immediately jump to "industry plant", but it did feel a little suspicious. Knowing now that she had another book out prior makes more sense though.
Booktok books are always so painful. And the best part is, if you leave a negative review anywhere near the viral videos about it, it's most likely the author's page and they will delete the "bad reviews" because they don't want to have their flaws pointed out or discourse on their page;; the never king specifically made me infuriated because of how many people on booktok hyped it up and how awful it truly was
So if I can point out, Jaws is in theaters this weekend. Reminded me that the rights to Jaws were purchased before the book was released and it was the author's debut novel. It is not a new thing at all.
Great video, as per usual. My question regarding the tiktok "trailer": did she had the rights to use any or all of those photos in there? Cause if not authors of those pieces of media should have a field day at court.
P.S. - sooo... this book is basically Hunger Games. Quite boring even for an YA novel. Jeez.
Most of the i recognise from free stock websites, but there were Pinterest viral one too
Not really. The initial video was simply asking “would you read this novel” and using photos as concept art, which would fall under fair use. It’s not necessarily a commercial for an existing product.
one of the photos i believe i recognized (the one w the red haired women in a suit of armor type dress) im 90% sure thats from chotronette which is the company that made the dress. i believe at that point tho its fair use but im not an expert so idk
[not an IP/copyright lawyer, just some rando that occassionally peruse the topic of fair use etc] based on the use: the "trailer" was presented more like a pitch rather than an actual advertisement. at that point seems like the product (book) wasn't even out yet, so since there's no clear line of "pictures used" to "profit" that can be drawn and used to prove that the copyrighted items were used commercially without license, even if someone actually wants to sue her they'll prolly be standing on a real shaky ground at best. depending on the rules of the country, the burden of proof might either fall on the plaintiff, which they'll prolly have thousands of comments and posts across the span of several weeks or months to parse through and prove that the trailer _directly_ contributed to the sales, or the burden of proof might lie on the defendant, in which she'll have to do the similar thing except with the goal to prove that the trailer _did not_ have any direct influence on the sales. (which imo is waaaaayyyyy easier bc at that point she's prolly already posted tens to hundreds more posts promoting the pitch, WIP, then actual book, all of them combined would have a greater effect in sales by generating hype compared to one post alone.)
based on the presentation: the pictures weren't posted as is and most have undergone some altering, whether through actual editing or by adding words on top/somewhere alongside the pictures presented, in manners that absolutely do change how the pictures look (e.g., the difference between a portrait versus a portrait with title on it). those should be considered transformative enough that the original owners most likely would have a hard time backing up their claim that the pictures usage divert the hypothetical profit or income they should be making from those photos to the tiktokker instead.
but all of these aside ... getting lawyers and court involved is just not worth it for most people, unless you got the finance and deep pockets to back it up. so even _if_ theoretically proving that her use of the pictures infringed on copyright would be a cakewalk, most people would simply not bother since the cost of hiring a lawyer(s) would likely be greater than whatever compensation they'll be granted by the court -- if they even win the legal battle at all. rather than a field day it'll prolly more like a sad trip after you got scammed by fake tour guides then got robbed blind in the market.
Lightlark is basically hunger games so of course is doing well
The only complaint I have is the book sounds very familiar. It’s “The Selection” meets “Hunger Games” in such a blatant way that I’m surprised that just skirted by.