Is BookTube the Democratization of Book Reviewing?
Question: choose true, false or I don’t know. Booktubers help readers discover books. Their YouTube and/or TikTok channels with linked Discord servers, Patreon accounts, websites and presences on X, Twitch, and other platforms, create a virtual community and book club experience for readers. They are a key tool to market books that escapes the control of traditional book publishers and establishment media. Sound right?
The booktuber sector of YouTube has mushroomed over the last decade. (No attempt here to give equal time to booktokers; I’m swimming fast to try to understand how BookTube works.) Attitudes toward BookTube, like other internet platforms, benefited from the utopian hope of the early years of the internet that it would democratize access to knowledge and speech. In the old analogue days, literary critics and reviewers at the big publications and media channels told us what was good and what we should read. These tastemakers influenced where we spent our money and our attention.
Then came smartphones and global internet access and suddenly citizen journalists could upload videos from within a burning building or comment from a beach towel. Pretty authentic. Similarly, citizen readers can publish book review videos to major platforms with a smartphone. Who cares whether establishment figures like AG Sulzberger, NYT publisher, editorialize in the Columbia Journalism Review about the rise of platform journalism, lamenting a lack of professional ethics and commitment to the facts?
So maybe the correct answer is ‘true.’ BookTube and BookTok book reviews democratize the formerly elite world of criticism. They’re a fun inclusive way to help readers manage the sea of published books currently dooming the vast majority of such books to ignominious failure. After all, otherwise readers are at the mercy of Amazon algorithms or bookstore acquisitions based on the already-successful-slash-profitable, erasing the new, the old and the different from view.
One evil god undermines those naive hopes: money. BookTube is now an important marketing tool for book publishers and an income source for video creators. Like other platforms that may have started with a belief that we common people could now talk to each other sans corporate or institutional gatekeepers, it is now a complex promotion game that evokes problems with a long history, like the soulless manipulations of advertising, along with its own new set of problems.
Advertising brazenly promotes consumption, empowered by the knowledge that without it a modern capitalist society would grind to a halt. While earlier justifications from a less jaded era of capitalism might have depicted ads as a means to inform people about goods available to satisfy their needs, advertising is now recognized as a system that creates and promotes ideologies. It teaches consumers to experience and be motivated by new needs they otherwise wouldn’t have imagined. It also saturates society with new languages that use goods and services as symbols to communicate messages about prestige, identity, political opinions and economic class.
We all know advertising is salesmanship and shouldn’t be trusted for truth value. Yet platformed book reviewers trade on their authenticity. They’ll tell you that viewers trust them because they are honest, transparent and willing and able to express their thoughts and reactions. No ulterior motives, this is free speech in the digital public square where we all have the right to opine about what we like. It’s just that they’re more charismatic (or have craftier editors) than you or I. They often make comments like ‘I can’t be bought’ or ‘I never promise a positive review’ or ‘my opinions are my personal truth.’
But any booktuber who acquires a modest following receives requests to review. And book publishers now include a substantial percentage of marketing budgets for influencers. (The share of marketing budgets globally that goes to influencers is 26% in February 2024.) Advertising research proved a long time ago that herd mentality is effective, meaning that people are more likely to buy a product they see others use or mention. That gives influencers power but produces a crisis of authenticity. If they take money to review a book, knowing there will be more money from that same source in the future, are they likely to displease their client? Human nature, not to mention survival in the capitalist marketplace, says no.
Why then should we accept their claim to authenticity? Most don’t have any bona fides for the job they’re doing apart from that claim. Recognizing this existential threat to their platform, some have responded by posting videos explaining how they make money. They say they’re doing it to be transparent. They don’t say they feel compelled to do it to justify their continued claim of being an authentic voice.
Mara at bookslikewhoa (a rare channel that reviews murder mysteries; thrillers are more common), states in her channel description that she brings a uniform critical approach to any book. “I do not accept sponsored reviews, but I may accept a sponsored haul, or a sponsored video inspired by a book.”
What, pray tell, is the difference? If you’re being paid to produce a video about the book, how is this different from being paid to produce a video reviewing the book? Does she think the semantics justify her continuing claim that “all books deserve to be taken seriously on their own terms.” Not far below she adds, “I don’t accept unsolicited review copies from self-published authors…” She says that’s to manage her inbox, but self-published authors often have small or non-existent marketing budgets.
So much for the ‘false’ camp. Jack Edward’s offers an argument for ‘true.’ He calls himself YouTube’s ‘resident librarian,’ has 1.3 million subscribers, signed with a talent agency and is branching out into speaking and hosting events. In other words, one of the superstars of the booktuber crowd. He argues there’s no problem with review mirroring leading to uniform recommendations because you can tailor your feed any way you want. He extols great books pulled from obscurity, sometimes years after publication, by reviewers. He says even if some lousy books go viral, publishing uses that windfall to fund the creative off-beat books that don’t make money (that one is likely no longer valid).
This is a classic argument celebrating free choice in a free marketplace. No mention of booktuber income streams here. He solves the authenticity problem by having sponsors from other economic sectors than publishing. He does admit that tropification is a problem (reductionist categorizing of books by a few common tropes). There’s the rah-rah opinion.
So what’s the correct answer to the question? I don’t know, but I’d love to hear what you think.