Booktok and Consumerism
Written by Karina Hill
Does literature still hold artistic value if it has to be rushed or made digestible for consumers?
This is a question that has started many discussions amongst avid readers. Some say that consumerism is good for literature because it keeps bookstores open, which in turn encourages writers. Others say that it creates trends and takes away from books having nuance. But no matter where people fall on the spectrum, a common thread these conversations share is the mention of Booktok.
Booktok is a community formed by adamant readers on the social media platform, TikTok. Many point to booktok as the source of the destruction of “good” literature, saying that its obsession with tropes and trends leads to all books having the same plot and uninteresting characters. One Booktok book that was subject to this opinion was Lightlark– a YA novel written by Alex Aster that tells the story of a young ruler who is thrown into a vicious competition to save her realm called the Centennial. It was compared to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games and Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses. Most of the reading community was taken aback by how underwhelming the book turned out to be, since it was not at all how Aster marketed it. Many complained about the writing quality and how the world-building felt shallow, and most complaints about the main character was that she felt like a carbon-copy of any other YA female protagonist and didn’t offer anything new.
“World building, It's non-existent. There's no clarity. Characters, all of them are bland. There's no personality” Goodreads user SK commented, giving the book a 1 star rating. Other readers acknowledged its juvenile storytelling but still found it enjoyable. Another user, Ayman, said “lightlark’s target audience are adolescents. being 21 myself, i couldn’t connect with the story as a 14 year old would have. and that’s perfectly ok” alongside a four star rating of the book. Overall, Lightlark was said to read like a rough draft and a project that needed more work before being published. But more time isn’t always possible when it comes to traditional publishing, making it hard for many writers who take this path to perfect their craft to the best of their ability.
It is evident that Alex Aster, like many other authors who traditionally publish, are told to cater towards what consumers “want.” Obviously, everyone can’t be pleased, so controversies are bound to happen. In the end, it is up to readers to decide persoanally which books to read and who they take recommendations from. You can’t rely on someone else to decide what a “good” book is or what gives something artistic value– you must discover it for yourself.
