While I was looking all over for reviews of a new ebook reader, I was inadvertently training the algorithms to recognize that I’m totally super into books now. As a result, all of the theme park trip reports, video essays about Star Wars and the MCU, and video game reviews have fallen out of my recommendations, to be replaced with tons and tons of dispatches from Booktube.
A positive example is Good Books Lately, a YouTube channel and podcast hosted by a married couple chatting about what they’ve read and are looking forward to reading. They’ve also got a video giving attention to other people making book-centric videos. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would’ve hoped for, people talking about what interests them and giving recommendations for new stuff to read.
Like with everything else on the internet, there’s another side to “Booktube” and its darker, more-attention-deficient cousin “Booktok.” It blurs the divisions between earnest, low-budget projects from people wanting to share what they’re into; slick projects from influencers trying to sell books and book-adjacent projects; and slick projects trying to pass themselves off as earnest, low-budget projects. And as with so many things on the internet, it blurs the divisions to the point that I’m no longer sure the divisions are even relevant anymore.
But I seem to be more sensitive to crossing the streams of art and commerce when it comes to books than with other media. I don’t usually balk at theme park fans, video gamers, or amateur movie critics pulling in some cash by making unofficial-but-sanctioned advertising. Especially since it’s not always calculated, and it can happen even when you don’t mean it to.
This blog got a slightly higher than normal amount of attention1Although still laughably low if I were someone who cared about internet analytics. for that post about the Kobo ereader, just because my interests happened to intersect with something people were looking for. But it still hypocritically makes me uncomfortable to see a page full of thumbnails with people all reviewing, say, How to Solve Your Own Murder than it does with people reviewing a new episode of The Mandalorian or the Captain America movie.
I’ve been thinking about it since I re-read my post about How to Solve Your Own Murder and realized it sounds a lot more negative than it should. It’s a really good book! It takes a lot of talent to make something that even flows well and holds together structurally, much less something that’s engrossing enough to make an adult stay up way past his bedtime to finish. My issue was that it was jarring to see a book so fully committed to its protagonist being an aspiring mystery writer anxious about getting responses to her first submitted manuscript, and have it end with setting up the sequel(s) and giving thanks to literary agents and people who’d sold the film rights.
I already acknowledged that there’s a good amount of sexism and hypocrisy there. Not the least of which is the obvious fact that having a literary agent doesn’t mean that you’ve never been in the position of anxiously awaiting feedback on your early material. That’s how you got an agent and a book deal in the first place. All of this and more will be addressed in my upcoming book How to Unpack Your Own Prejudices.
The reason I found this particular instance jarring was because I’m holding onto an overly-romanticized image of authors and the process of getting a book published. It’s hard to shake the image of someone locking themselves in a room alone to pound out a manuscript, bravely letting it loose into the world, and then being rewarded for their brilliance. Even though it should be obvious that a book can’t sell itself any more than any other piece of media can. It’s not just naive to treat the commercial side of book publishing as if it were inexcusably gauche, it perpetuates the harmful idea that commercial success is a reflection of nothing but inherent quality.
But even so, I still think of it as the most direct and intimate form of media. It’s still a solitary author directly addressing a single reader. Even if they’re writing the most plot-driven of genre fiction or purely commercial franchise installment, even if they’re layering on unreliable narrators and unsympathetic protagonists, it’s unavoidable that they’re sharing at least a part of their true self with you.
And I think that’s why I irrationally make a stink-face when confronted with the idea of books meant to sell instead of books meant to communicate. And book recommendations that are chasing whatever is trending and popular, as opposed to reacting to books that you read because they were already trending and popular.
Another side effect of Booktube is it’s a reminder of just how vast the publishing industry is. Every time I get hyper-fixated on reading, I invariably overflow with the unearned confidence of the White American Man and start to think, I should write a novel! And when it’s just a solo reader and a solo writer in a room typing away at a keyboard, it feels attainable, like dipping my toe into a pond. When I see just how much stuff is already out there, from people who actually have something to say, it feels like stripping naked and blindly diving into Lake Michigan.