Why were the books in 2023 so bad?? || The book industry and influencers are a confused mess 

What I've noticed is that a lot of booktubers get books that have nice covers. They don't read the synopsis or the first chapter or two to see if they can actually get into the book. It's actually staring to get annoying. We as individuals need to stop following their lead and start looking into a book more before we fork over our well earned money. I enjoyed this video!

That was so interesting to listen to while taking a bath. 😅 Two of my main concerns this year are: 1. The inclusion of "smut" in every single book. Like, people are asking about the "smut level" before buying the book. I've been reading for 25 years,and this was never a deciding factor before. If you've wanted lot of sex scenes in your book, you bought the five dollar paperbacks that promised exactly that. How did that happen? And 2: The pressure of "How many books did you read this week/month/year"? Before, my friends just asked me what book I was reading right now,and not how many. The world is so competitive already - how did this spread into a hobby that should be relaxing for you? Crazy stuff. 🙃 All the best from Hamburg, Germany ❤

That Rebecca Yarros timeline was insane! Jess Owens did a great video on one aspect of this drop in quality. She was specifically talking about the “beautiful gowns” - all the publisher money going into the appearance of the books, especially for book boxes, and nothing spent on editing and supporting authors in the actual writing. Really enjoyed listening to your thoughts about this topic!

We need to remember that the number of books released per author hasn't changed in the last 40 years. The high fantasy era of the 80s-90s would also see an author push out 2-4 books a year (depending on their genre). So it's not that this is new. It's that we've cycled back to it. This time, we have the inclusion of self-publishing and the hybrid publishing environment. Authors have more rights over their books than they did in the 80s/90s too. And in general, self-publishing is still only about 10-15 years old, and only recently becoming an acceptable alternate means. So hybrid publishing is still very very new... I'm bringing this up, because self-publishing/hybrid publishing is a SMALL BUSINESS and it's a NEW industry. Authors are still finding the best ways to be independent while having a life and not going crazy. I firmly respect their struggles. And I especially love publishers like Orbit who have AMAZING reps who will find these authors and pick them up to get the proper traditional publishing treatment. Honestly, the book industry just needs to do better by their authors on all accounts, and be more modern / with the times.

omg the lack of editing in self-pub is horrendous!

I think publishers need to do more for their authors, the marketing and hype and all the things a self-published author has to do themselves. They need to hire the editors and proofreaders and sensitivity readers for their authors, not just to support the writer but also to support the consumers. If it comes from a publishing house, consumers should expect more than the self-published and kickstarters. There’s also the SE sub-box space that could teach publishers a lot about the presentation and marketing. In my opinion, media beyond the cover of the book muddles the entire industry.

Thank you for a very thoughtful analysis. I have some further points. 1. Debut novels are really good. I speculate it’s because of the amount of time it takes an author to write and edit a debut book. And it has to be good to be picked up. 2. Algorithms are burying the good books. I purposely subscribe to booktubers who read book prizes and translated fiction so the algorithm will show them to me. Otherwise, all I see are new release popcorn reads. My reading year was very good, having a mixture of nominated books and popcorn reads. 3. Fourth Wing is a guilty pleasure type of book. It has its place but why are Booktubers including it in best/worst books. I see a lot of booktubers chasing views over reading quality books and then complaining that 2023 was a dud.

I remember seeing Fourth Wing early on the tables at Barnes, and kept passing it over because it sounded so uninspired and cookie-cutter in the wake of all the other romantasy KU stuff I see (and read on occasion). I was surprised to see how it blew up on social media, but after reading it (library) and learning of the timeframe it was written, edited and published... Yeah, checks out. There's nothing wrong with churning out a whole book in a short span of time due to inspiration hitting just right, but very, very few authors can make it a good book under those conditions. Also, your review of Midnight is greatly appreciated lol, that's one title off my TBR I don't need to worry about.

‘George Martin did not rush his books’ is the understatement of the year 😂 But also: hey, thanks for a great video!

I agree with a lot of what you said. Emily Henry is another author that I feel is on a publisher timeline. I really liked Beach Read, but every book she wrote after that was just so mundane and boring. She keeps coming out with books like clockwork. Sally Thorne - I loved The Hating Game, but everything else after was horrible and coming out like clockwork. I agree with Sarah J. Maas' books being too long. Kingdom of Ash was horribly drawn out and needed to be shorter. I don't have Twitter and TikTok either and I don't really follow the trends. I know what I like. This is why my second hobby other than reading is researching books because it's tough out there. A lot of indie authors are getting picked up by publishers as well for the money grab. I prefer most of the indie authors (or former indie authors) because it was a labor of love for most of them and it shows. There are a lot of bad indie books too (hence my research) but overall I enjoy them.

They just don't make em like they used to . . . 😕😕😕😕😕😕😕 I really appreciate this video essay. This needs to be addressed, and I'm grateful that you're taking this issue head-on.

I think the funny thing is about editing is that a reason I did not like Stephen King was because he another author that they did not do harsh edits to his work. So this is not a new issue but a worst issue editing is important and not just line edits but story edits like where are the beta readers. Beta readers a lot of them well do a lot of work for free and then hope for a free copy of a book or something for there hard work. I do belive that books are being pushed out way to quickly I don't mind waiting a year or two for the next book. Unless it is a situation where an author has three books lined up and they just have to be edited and if and when I try to publish my series I am thinking about that is my plan.

I think that has happened with some of the more established authors. I know that the books seem to be getting longer ascseries go on. The third book in a trilogy always seems to be the longest and usually drags a bit.

Warning ⚠️ This is long and I apologize in advance 🙃 I didn’t know that about Rebecca’s books. I thought she had the first book complete and the second one done but in editing when Forth Wing was released and that was why they seemed back to back published. I assumed it took the normal amount of time it takes to write and edit the book and it was just a matter of the publisher just signing on to the series, not pushing her to spit them out fast. Also I heard it was originally supposed to be a trilogy then they changed it to 5 books so she had to restructure the story. That is awful to put that kind of pressure on an author. Maybe if it’s turned into a show they can make the story a bit better and those who didn’t like it due to it being rushed will enjoy it more? Now that the series is so popular maybe she can push back and not let them bully her as much. I can see why more people turn to self publishing but without good editing it can make their name known as a bad author and hurt them. I remember when I was younger wishing I could write a fantasy book but I know I would suck at it 😂 Love him or hate him George R R Martin gives zero F’s about finishing his GOT books. I’ve read them and watched the show. It’s been over a decade since he published the last book in that series. It’s frustrating because the show did many things differently than his books before they basically took over and wrote what they wanted. Like the symbolism and presence of the dire wolves 🐺 was a lot more in the books than they used in the show. Maybe it would have been harder to do in a filming format, but it was a very cool thing. Hopefully it was at least loosely based on what he initially planned on publishing but the writers and producers ended that show so bad. I remember George making comments online about watching some other show while his was on basically giving them the middle finger and showing he didn’t approve of what they were doing to his story. He had commented about how they had killed off characters that according to his books are still alive. 😑 I just want to read how HE finishes the book series and see how much they changed from his vision. He certainly doesn’t need the money to finish the series with the success of the show and the prequel show that came from it. On top of new fans who went out and got the books because of that show so he made even more money from them, but fans would appreciate it. It would be nice if he broke the books up a bit bc last time I recall him talking about it he was at around 1000 pages and still has a way to go before it’s finished. 😵‍💫 Books don’t need to be that long dude. Break…them… up… On top of him taking forever, the man is no spring chicken. If he passes away before finishing it the he wants, the publisher will just hire someone to finish it for him. Especially when they use authors like cash cows. They wouldn’t blink an eye doing it I’m sure. Sorry for the rant on a book series you aren’t interested in lol. It just makes me so annoyed. He is a good example of an author who doesn’t feel the need to bend to a publisher, but he’s also well known. Like you said, those big authors can do whatever they want but the smaller ones seem to get stuck being bullied to push out more. 📚😊

The good books are there, but popular BookTok/BookTubers aren't reading them.

I had a much better reading year because I stopped instagram and started reading the books I thought sounded interesting. The hyped books, more often than not, just disappoint.

Ahahah a few days after watching this I saw Xiran’s ig and there was that whole Hugo controversy. Which I get isn’t publishing industry per say. But still…

Joyce Carol Oates

If you ever get a chance, read yellow face! This goes into other issues of the publishing industry. I spoke to someone who works in industry and she says it hit very close to home

And terrible ending it was!☄️☄️☄️🗑️🗑️🗑️