Every few months, there’s a hot new book circulating with a shot of frantic energy on BookTok. The current one? “Onyx Storm” by Rebecca Yarros, the third installment of the Empyrean Series, better known as part of “Fourth Wing.”
I’m sure you’ve heard of that one. It’s quite literally everywhere, practically shoved down your throat by BookTok and bookstores alike. “Fourth Wing” is about dragons (and that’s the hooker) and a girl who attends a dragon-rider war college. Like I said, crack for most fantasy readers.
And despite the appeal, I haven’t read it yet.
I know, I know. I’m the person who should be caught up on all the wildly popular books, but… that’s not how I handle the hype around these sometimes so-so books.
When a book is super popular, and I mean everyone has read it, everyone is talking about it, there’s merch being made, popular — I don’t read it. I’ll wait it out. Then I’ll read it. By waiting, I’m more likely to form my own opinion instead of letting it get sucked into the black hole that is BookTok oblivion.
Here’s an example: “Throne of Glass” by Sarah J. Maas, a major series with a household-name author. It has been pretty successful since BookTok first came to prominence in 2020, but the hype slowly died down, as it always does, and I finally felt as if I weren’t pressured to like it, so I picked it up.
And guess what, I loved it. BookTok also led me to other treasured authors like Ali Hazelwood and Emily Henry.
However, that’s not always the case. Sometimes the hype drives your expectations so high, the book could never satisfy them. That being said, some of the books that are talked about don’t deserve the attention they get. That could mean that less popular, more worthy titles are crowded out of the social media literary scene. While BookTok is a good advertising tool, it isn’t always the best judge of good writing and a cohesive plot.
And yes, I said an advertising tool, because that’s basically what it is — free advertisement.
BookTok has changed the publishing industry. Content creators promoting books time and time again generates sales, and most importantly, pre-orders. This motivates the industry to produce more titles like the ones that are successful on social media — mostly fantasy and romance.
Just look around. Booksellers everywhere are curating their selections based on what is the new hype on BookTok. You can’t go into the Target book section without recognizing most of the titles from BookTok — Colleen Hoover, Sarah J. Maas and the like. In fact, Target’s selection is so BookTok oriented that it’s almost impossible to find a book that hasn’t been advertised there.
This is why it is important to explore backlists (author’s works from years past). If you’re only consuming the hottest new thing, you lose the critical, broader perspective of past works. I’m not saying don’t read new releases, that’s not it at all. All I’m saying is to make sure you are getting a healthy dose of both the quick-change of BookTok, backlist books, and titles/authors you’ve never even heard of before.
So next time you rush to buy the flashiest new book you see on social media, maybe take a step back and wait it out before diving into the fray.
