Dangers of Hyping Books

image

Hype is a common concept to hear in relation to books coming soon. In fact, you can make the same argument I’m making today with movies and video games. For me, “hype” is eerily similar to advertising a product. It is how a company gets us, the reader, excited about a new book. They create hype around a product. In the case of books, it may be by releasing the cover picture, or synopsis, or even an announcement of the next book by our favorite author. The authors go on tour to promote their book, and bookstores offer the book to be pre-ordered.

See the source image

I constantly hear other bloggers talking about the latest hyped books (most of which I’ve never heard of because I honestly don’t bother keeping up with new books). But so often, when a book comes out, I hear how expectations were distant from reality. Yes, many people may love the book, but when it comes to hype, it’s impossible to make everyone happy.

So today I want to discuss something I’ve been thinking about for a while: what price does the average reader pay for hype?

Reality is Always Worse

Hype is all about the emotion. That giddy feeling when you hear your favorite author is coming out with a new book or when you read a great novel and look greedily to find when the sequel is coming out. It is entirely based on the pathos of a person’s character. There may be some logic involved (if you liked the previous book why wouldn’t you like the second one), but for the most part our excitement is based completely on emotion.

See the source image

However, as any reader can tell you, emotions can be dangerous. Just as authors get our favorite characters into twisted tales of betrayal and revenge through emotions, the publishing companies get us so excited that reality can never match all the variables we concoct in our head.

Let’s take Game of Thrones, for example. Now that the final season is over (with a lot of negative reviews), so many readers have one question in mind: how will the books end? Will they end the same as the TV series? I don’t avidly watch the show, but I do keep up on the basics of the plot and characters, watching frequent analyses of the episodes. I can make the argument I was a relatively unbiased viewer, but I watched for years as avid fans made predictions (most of which were disproved by the end). And I couldn’t help but think that nothing the filmmakers could have done would make everyone happy because for years hype kept rising and it is perhaps that hype that made many people upset about the final season.

See the source image

The same thing happened with Harry Potter when the books finally came to an end. A lot of people were extremely displeased with some of the choices in the final book, like the epilogue at the end. I had a mostly favorable view of this series, but I can see a lot of reasonable points critics said. But it stands to reason that the ending wouldn’t be as controversial if the readers hadn’t been building up in their minds exactly how they wanted the series to end.

This is my point, that reality can never be as good as what the fans cook up in their heads because each person wants different things. Some fans might have wanted Hermione and Harry to end up together, and some fans didn’t want Snape to die. Some fans wanted an open-ended ending, so the epilogue was horrible to them. What I’m saying is that hype only creates discontent for a reader.

I myself struggle with hype as well. I have had books by my favorite author that I really didn’t like, but I looked forward to because I had loved their other books.

Let the Story Speak For Itself

A good book is a good book, whether it’s hyped or not. Just because ten people you know hype a book does not mean you’ll like it.

See the source image

What I’m saying is that you should go into any book with as open a mind as possible. Of course bias in unavoidable, but we can still try to understand a story for what it is instead of what we want it to be.

Let’s take a look at two books I read, one of which I let the story speak for itself and the other I went into with high expectations: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black and Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young. Looking back, both are extremely similar books. Both YA fantasy, following a young female protagonist thrust in a strange, dangerous world, and they were both published in 2018. So why did I give the former two stars and the latter five stars? Why did I enjoy one for the most part and highly disliked the other. If you’re curious to read my full reviews of both books, here’s links for The Cruel Prince and Sky in the Deep.

Well, my simplest answer is my expectations. The Cruel Prince was such a hyped book in 2018, and I hadn’t read a single bad review for it. I love stories about fairy kingdoms, so I was hooked. But, because my expectations were higher because of hype, I was so disappointed when there were many things I disliked about the book. With Sky in the Deep, my experiences were exactly the opposite. I went into the book with very little knowledge. I read the premise, it looked interesting, and I decided to read it. Thus, my expectations were relatively low. And I really enjoyed the book.

See the source image

I cannot help but wonder if I had read The Cruel Prince without knowing any of the hype for it, if I would have enjoyed it more. Similarly, if there had been more hype about Sky in the Deep and my expectations had been higher, would I have liked it less?

Conclusion

Do expectations and hype become detrimental to a reader? Yes, the companies get you to buy their book or watch their show, but are you as happy then if you had gone into the story without having any preconceived notions of its quality?

What is your view on this topic? Do you see that hype is dangerous, or do you see benefits for it? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments, follow my blog for more musings and, as always,

Best wishes in your life full of adventure,

Madame Writer

11 thoughts on “Dangers of Hyping Books

  1. I totally agree. There are some books that are so overly hyped that it would be completely impossible for the book to live up to it! Which – as you say – is just dissatisfying for the reader and I think it’s doing a disservice to the author as well. πŸ’›

    Liked by 2 people

  2. Suddenly Kathy Bates from Misery comes to mind.

    But I don’t pay attention to new releases. Sometimes I do a search on a few select authors to see if they’ve released anything lately but I don’t buy into hype especially when it comes to books. It isn’t like the latest book is going to have better graphics than those from ten years ago or if I have to concern myself if it decided to add the latest, ugly CGI or if it’s going to cast a flavor of the moment overrated actor. Good stories stand for centuries and modern authors must compete. Often they don’t come close to what’s already out there. The most I do is look at the new books the library brings in and that’s about it. With so many books already out there and coming in, there’s little reason for me to get hyped about any newly published book.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I could not agree more! There’s nothing wrong with looking out for new releases, but to buy into the intense hype seems ridiculous because, as you said, new or old, a good story will always stand the test of time.

      Like

  3. Sometimes I take part in a book tour. In a recent tour, I was asked by the publicist to write a review before finishing the book! “Just write a review on what you’ve read so far.” I’m not going to do that. In twelve years of writing reviews, I have never written a book review until reading the entire book. They want publicity for the book. They hope to have favorable reviews. And, if the book does not have a favorable/positive review, they don’t want the review posted on Amazon.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. It’s true. Hype is so much more beneficial to the author than it is to us as the reader. Like you, I only want to write a review when I’ve finished the book. How do you know if the second half of the book isn’t horrible if you’ve only read the first half?

      Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s