Speaker 2 0:02

Hi, I'm Kristen with an E, and this is Talk with Kristen with an E, a place to slow down, be honest without having all the answers, and feel a little less alone together. Let's talk it

0:16

out.

Kristen 0:20

Hey everybody. Welcome back. It is another episode with my friend Alexis. Hey, Alexis. Welcome back. So today we're talking about something that could be kind of controversial, but also something that is worth talking about. Today we're talking about books. But it's gonna be a little different take on books and how the publishing industry is changing. We think that some of it may be from. Book talk and how book Talk is changing the book sphere and reading for people in general. So before we get started, well as we're getting started, I guess to set the stage, Alexis, share with us some of your overall opinions or things that you've seen over the years, as Book Talk has grown

Alexis 1:10

yeah. So, what I have found through the past, especially the past like two, maybe even three years, I just feel like. The worst written books haven't been published, and if I'm honest, they're popular because they're full of, open door scenes and a lot of smut and just kind of, I call them the twilight of. These years, Twilight was so poorly written,

Kristen 1:41

okay.

Alexis 1:41

but yet we devoured it because it was like, it sucks you in. But when you look back on it, you're like, those are so badly written, but yet they're entertaining story. Does that make sense?

Kristen 1:53

it a hundred percent makes sense. And all of a sudden, like I was like, oh, wait a minute. This may go a different direction than I thought because. I was kind of leaning in with the thought that, because book talk and social media influencing is pushing people to read books, that that was part of the reason books were kind of, like you said, kind of the as well written books were making it to the top of charts and stuff. But then you said Twilight and all of a sudden I was like, wait a minute. isn't necessarily a new phenomenon with book influencers pushing us to books that aren't great. kind of happened before too, and books were trendy because you're right. I had no interest in vampires at all, like ever in my whole life. But when everybody was reading Twilight, and keep in mind, I was also probably. the age of the standard demographic for that book.

Alexis 2:47

Right, right.

Kristen 2:49

and I read all of the books.

Alexis 2:51

yeah.

Kristen 2:52

new Moon, whatever, whatever.

Alexis 2:54

Oh yeah. There's a whole bunch.

Kristen 2:56

Same thing with the Hunger Games, because then I got sucked into that one. I read all the Hunger Games books again because everybody was reading them. And again, probably past the age of that demographic. Did you read the Hunger Games?

Alexis 3:08

I actually like the Hunger Games, and I'm proud. It's probably controversial. I read them. I have teenagers, so you have to remember, my teenagers are coming on these books, so I'm like trying to find books that I feel like, oh yeah, you can read them. So I actually like Hunger Games. I don't like the new ones. I don't feel that they're, I'm like, okay, we've seen this story. Yeah, but the old ones. I would never go back and read them. I don't usually read books twice, but Yeah, you're exactly right. Hunger Games, maybe even, divergent

Kristen 3:37

Yeah,

Alexis 3:37

that. I don't know if

Kristen 3:38

go into. 'cause yes, I liked Hunger Games. I loved Divergent, I loved

Alexis 3:45

I?

Kristen 3:45

series. Oh my gosh,

Alexis 3:47

Mm-hmm.

Kristen 3:47

Yeah. But again,

Alexis 3:48

Yeah.

Kristen 3:48

I think because everybody else was reading it, because I don't necessarily know it's a book I would've picked up on my own if I hadn't been influenced by seeing every, I mean, that was still what, like 2010, 11 maybe for divergence, a little bit around the same time. Hunger Games, maybe a

Alexis 4:05

Yeah,

Kristen 4:06

like I,

Alexis 4:08

I was a little bit later to Hunger Games too.

Kristen 4:11

Okay.

Alexis 4:11

I had younger kids and I was looking back at this because my kids wanted to read 'em, and I was like, I think I own those. It's probably on my other Amazon, like Kindle account. My kids were young. They were like two, three, so it would've been me reading while they were outside playing. I would sit out there and read and they would play,

Kristen 4:27

yeah. But

Alexis 4:28

Yeah.

Kristen 4:28

I don't remember who I would've been listening to, to be influenced to read those. I don't know, but I read them I enjoyed them and maybe that's kind of the bigger thing that we talk about too, is how do books become popular? Like, because you see so many books. Not even looking beyond just the book talk, which we're gonna get into 'cause that's kind of the heart of the episode. But looking at how other books, because you've got the New York Times list and those books, ones that win awards aren't always the books I enjoy either. Like sometimes I read those books, I'm like, how did this book win an award? Like I don't love this book. So it kind of depends on like, where are you getting your recommendations for books and how are these books being reviewed? Any thoughts on that?

Alexis 5:12

Well, I think with the New York Times, and I might be wrong on this, but I know now that these books, top Amazon and stuff like that typically is because of pre-orders. People haven't even read the book yet. They are just buying them and it shoots it up I've seen authors say that, like, if you buy, it helps me move it up because they're not, print. I think the way they used to do it is they would just print books and they would sell them, but now they print according to their pre-order, and so they're not having an overage of books. And so that's my guess of how it works. And I get that, like, paper is expensive now. It's just a whole dynamic, but I don't know how it used to be before. Like pre COVID

Kristen 5:54

Right.

Alexis 5:55

because I didn't pay attention because let's be real. Book talk just kind of blew up in the past, what, five years, four years.

Kristen 6:01

Yeah, it is. And full disclosure, I have a bookstagram, I started my own Bookstagram in 2023, so I realize I am part of this too, although I haven't been as active on it in the past year or so. But yes, book talk has been very, involved in the book community.

Alexis 6:23

Yeah, and I think I have my suspicions as I have thought about this more. I think that there's probably influencers with the authors that pushed it. What do we see with everything? I mean, this is a whole nother topic, but the whole unplugging thing,

Kristen 6:39

Yeah.

Alexis 6:40

this is just a, a whole, it's a whole problem. And I absolutely like there, I think when Book Talk first started, it was really great 'cause you could share reviews and you could look up stuff. But now it's just like, it just pushes stuff like your algorithm just starts pushing it and you're not really getting true, authentic. Reviews anymore, it's just people fan girl over, or I guess fan, I don't know. I wouldn't say fan and girl necessarily because there are plenty of male perspectives in book talk, but they're just fanning over an actual author versus the actual story, if that makes sense.

Kristen 7:18

I totally get it and I can see it because that's partly the reason I joined Bookstagram was because I was reading a lot and I loved seeing other people's reviews and I wanted to do my own reviews. And honestly, doing reviews on my Bookstagram helped me remember books longer. If I don't write a review for it, I can go back to my Good Reads and be like, why did I give it four stars? What did I like about this book? But having my review on my bookstagram was good because I was able to go back. But also I was very big into just reading what I wanted to read. Although I did get caught into a couple, like obviously part of it too on social media is you want to grow your account. So there's these like challenges you can join and then you post a certain thing and then everyone little group is supposed to go and like your stuff and comment and it's a way to like, you have to follow everybody. Follow trains or whatever, right? You do this whole thing, and I did a few times because I wanted my book Instagram to like seem legit. Not like, oh, here's this person who only has a hundred, whatever, which is hilarious. Now, quick little side story because my podcast, I think has like 109 followers right now. Those are all organic though, because I learned from my bookstagram that I didn't want to just like, follow me. I'll follow you. Like I wasn't gonna get into that. Like I wanted to grow organically, but I did not do that with my bookstagram. That books to Graham and book talk, I think more so became more than just sharing reviews and sharing pictures of your bookshelves. All of a sudden it became these big halls and people buying all these books and showing all these books. And to your point, Alexis, yes. Pushing books. And I do think there's become a big thing on that where it's not necessarily what the book's about because yes, pre-sales matter and. a big author is, that's still good because you wanna get it. I don't know. You talk some more take your turn Alexis.

Alexis 9:04

No, I think you're right, and I think I'm gonna bring up a series that I kind of like to talk about because I have a love hate relationship with.

Kristen 9:14

All right.

Alexis 9:15

We're gonna delve into the fourth Wing series. Okay?

Kristen 9:18

Huge

Alexis 9:19

Okay. I waited. I wanna say almost a year. I think it had been on almost a year, maybe not. Maybe it had been less, but it was definitely not like, oh, I'm gonna read this. Okay. And I am in a very large book group on Facebook, Hey, this was a good book. You know, and it's, it's a, I like it better because it doesn't seem like book talk, so I use it sometimes just to look for them. I kept seeing that, you know, okay, it's actually pretty good. It's not terrible. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna give this a try. First of all, I don't breed dragons. Don't care about dragons. I wasn't necessarily a fantasy reader. Okay. I actually literally enjoyed fourth weight. I enjoyed it. I had to skip a couple scenes because they were way too open door for me, and supposedly that's not even, they're not even that bad. And I'm thinking, okay, I'm just a prude. We'll just say it. No, it's just, that's where I was. But now, okay, we're, is it three or four years since it was released? And there are two more books in this series. Okay. And I can. Objectively look at it and say, that was a Twilight book. I liked it because it was easy to digest and I could just delve into it. It has so much, it has so much potential. And I actually enjoyed the second book before the first book because I felt like it answered some questions. But then we got to the third book and I. I liked it. Okay. There was a lot more questions asked, and I know it's a third book in a series. We all know the third book, the middle book is not good. It's kind of just the way it is, but towards the end, some of it just didn't make sense and I'm thinking, how is this so popular? But yet I'm not quite grasping what is happening. And so I still refer to this entire series as. Very, very hyped on book talk. I mean, it's the twilight of this era. We'll say these years on book talk and it just kind of, I will probably finish the series because I'm curious how it ends, but I will never rank it as like an amazing work of art. I also think that. The entire romantic genre has been so overhyped on book talk. Like honestly, that's the stuff that I see the most, and I cannot tell you how poorly written these are. Some of them are just smut scene after smut scene after smut scene, and then some of 'em, it's just like, okay, but we're overdoing it. Like we're just overdoing it. So yeah, that's kind of how I feel.

Kristen 12:07

No. And I think you are right. And granted, keep in mind listeners, these are just our opinions, but I

Alexis 12:14

Right.

Kristen 12:14

some truth to what you're saying too, because it's kind of like, you know, when you have a mass group of people saying something, it kind of becomes reality when so many people are saying the same things. So when you have all these large groups of people saying, this is a good book, it almost becomes a good book or a great book for those groups of people. And you know, you have to keep in mind too, a lot of book talkers and books to grammars are in the younger demographic. I think I did look this up, that it's usually 13 to 30 is kind of where your general book talk. Person is. And so probably do enjoy those kind of books and there's nothing wrong with them. But you know, as somebody in her not quite mid forties, I'm still early forties. What I enjoy is going to be different than what a lot of those people enjoy. And there's nothing wrong with that is just different place of life. The thing though is regardless of the demographics of book talkers, because of how loud they are, and I don't mean that in a negative way, I just mean because. There's so many of them. I do think they've had a way to sway the publishing companies. And what I have seen, and I recently watched a YouTube video on this, although it's been a little while, so I might not get it exactly right, but it's kind of like publishing has become like fast fashion, like kind of the cheap clothes that are made from China that you wear, they kind of fall apart, you move on whatever. It's kind of become that way in publishing where it's almost like fast fashion publishing because there's the authors that are pushing out books so quickly and you see some of the bigger authors. You know, we got an episode on Kristin Hannah, a deep dive into Kristin Hannah Books, which are larger books. She has one out maybe every three years. Give or take if we're lucky. Right? And then you've got some of these other authors who are pushing out a book, you know, one a year. And I'm not saying that they can't do that. I mean, when writing is your full-time job, you should be able to put some books out. But at the same time, there's some authors that it's even more than one book a year, and they are just pushing it and pushing it and book talks, pushing it and pushing it. And whether it's good or not, it's just like, how good can it be if you've just written it. Like how many edits did it go through? How many reviews did it go through? How many, you know, what were your alpha and your beta readers saying about it before it came out? So I think that that's part of it too, is it's just that they're pumping it out so much that I don't know that you can really a. good quality story, like some of the, you know, some of the classics. I mean, I don't think Charles Dickens was putting out a book every year. But like, you know what I mean though? I, I don't think

Alexis 14:54

Yeah.

Kristen 14:54

of the books that we now consider as classics that we make high school kids read, were thrown together in a year or less.

Alexis 15:03

Well, yeah, I mean, even if you look at Harry Potter, I think those came out every two years, but I might be wrong on that. And those things are thick and well done, in my opinion. Well, and that's what I would say about, Rebecca Yaros books as far as her fourth week series is the third book was rushed. It was even, I would see even the second book, and I think I will give her credit in this. I think she has learned from that because she did say. I am not pushing out, you know, she hasn't even started the fourth book, which they came out subsequently like really within a year. And so I do do hope, you know, she has learned from that. And I have read some of her other books. She's actually a fantastic romance writer. She does well.

Kristen 15:44

I

Alexis 15:45

but I think

Kristen 15:46

have told me the last letter to your lover or whatever that book was, she wrote.

Alexis 15:50

the last letter, yeah.

Kristen 15:51

I have heard multiple people say what a wonderful book that is.

Alexis 15:56

Yeah, and I, I would agree with that. She has another fun military series that I actually like, really enjoyed. It's a little younger now for me than you know, but. Different point in my life. So I think she's learned from that. But I will say I do think even Book Talk has pushed these romance writers to now all of a sudden write romantic because there's another romance writer that, she wrote a romantic this past year and I ended up, I was like, this is so bad. This is just so bad. I don't even look at the romance c-section anymore because I think I've just been burned now by them I won't read them anymore because they are terribly written. They're not going through a good editing process, and it's fine for authors to try do things. I think that's not a bad thing at all. Like it, it makes you a well-rounded author, but you need a good editing and proofing team to get there. And please, can we stop making? It filled with smut.

Kristen 16:56

Yeah.

Alexis 16:57

Like that's not the point of a fantasy book. I want the fantasy. I want the world building. I want the magic systems. Like I want that because that's what makes a good fantasy. My favorite fantasies have some of the best world building and magic systems, and these are just like love stories with a little bit of fantasy and I'm like, Ugh. Can we have some depth here?

Kristen 17:18

But I think they go where, where the trends and where the sales are. And I think that's, you know, you bring up a good point that it's almost like the book talk and the influencers are the ones kind of driving what they write about. And that an author may be like, I mean, that's not my go-to style, but if that's what sells, sure I can write a book like that. And that's not necessarily wrong in itself, but it's a. on what your goal is. If your goal is to just sell a lot of books right away to a certain group, then yes, that's gonna work all the time. If your goal is more to write a book that is going to stand the test of time, that is going to eng engage various demographics of readers, something that's going to maybe not be huge right now, but kind of grow in intensity with readers later on. So it may depend on what you're looking for. The other thing I've seen is I think that book talk, you know, can really make or break an author too. Like if one author

Alexis 18:15

Yeah.

Kristen 18:16

on, like, her ex, formerly known as Twitter, like people will go and cancel them. Like, oh my gosh, this author said this. You know, boycott them, don't buy any of their books, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which is kind of, you know, a little like witch hunt kind of thing, just taking them down and. Another one is you can tear down even new authors. So. There is a new author coming out and she's, actually a content creator. So Hailey fam, she is Ryan Han's wife. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Ryan

Alexis 18:47

I know who. Yep, I know who you're. Yep.

Kristen 18:50

On the YouTubes. My son watched him. I think they are just good people. Like I, I

Alexis 18:56

People.

Kristen 18:56

Ryan and Hailey. So Hailey has written a Clean Romance book called Just Friends. It comes out later this summer. It's a Second Chance Romance about childhood

Alexis 19:05

I'm excited for this.

Kristen 19:07

I've already pre-ordered it, and yes, I pre-ordered it because she's Ryan's wife and I've been watching Hailey on YouTube for a while. I think she's adorable. She likes reading a lot of the same books. I like reading, so I feel like I'm going to like it. However, some of the early readers, they've gotten arcs or they were chosen to be, alpha readers, beta readers, whatever. Have put some, there's been some pretty scathing YouTube videos and tiktoks about it and it's like, it's not even out yet. Like, but I worry that they're trying to influence because they may not like her YouTube videos. They may not like her style, they may not like something about her and it's not actually about the writing. And I think in some aspects it may be too like jealousy. Like there's this influencer and she wrote it and got it published. Well, she did, but at this point in time, like literally. Anybody can write a book with all the self-publishing tools on, unlike Amazon, like literally anybody can write a book. It's not even a good book. And again, this is nothing about Haley. This is just like the book Talkers kind of can either lift you up and take a terrible book and make it very, very popular, or they can take a new and up and coming person and tear it down before it even happens. And that's where my struggle with book talk is, is that it becomes so influential. then people aren't necessarily thinking for themselves and are going based on the book talk algorithms, and that's where I kind of have start to have a problem with it.

Alexis 20:34

Yeah, so I just think that's a bigger issue. I think, to be honest with you, that's a bigger cancel culture issue. I think it's a bigger social media issue. The depths of evil, of social media. I do not like cancel culture. There are things I do not believe in. You know, I'm not gonna, I don't wanna bring any controversy to this at all, but, you know, there are books that we have read together and I absolutely adored them, but. I didn't like what was in the books for personal reasons, but I would never cancel an author for that. In fact, they're probably one of my favorite authors and I still read their books. Like, that isn't gonna stop me. But it permeates. I mean, you and I know this because we've talked about unplugging, it permeates politics. Like you see it like, both sides are hypocritical because they do the same thing, but you're not paying attention to it because of your algorithm, and it just shoves and. Social media, I'm just gonna say it. It's, it's the devil in so many ways. It was so good. But this all goes back into the whole bots and ai, and I hate ai. I don't use AI for anything. And I know that's controversial in itself, but it's ruining so much. It's ruining relationships. It's ruining people's lives. I'm not gonna cancel Target because they did stuff that I disagree with on the other side. Now the other side's canceling Target it just, you know, you can't cancel everybody. Everybody has opinions and they should be able to have their opinions and you can still, they're a person. You should be able to love them as a person and just recognize that if they all agreed like you did, you know it would be very boring. So you cancel culture. It's my least favorite thing.

Kristen 22:19

No, and I think you're right. And to your point of the algorithm, you're right. You're only seeing what the system wants you to see. So a lot of times if you see people talking about books that you like, that you think are great, then that's fine. You're gonna be in that and you're not gonna. See other books or see other things like that. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I do think it creates an echo chamber where you see things that you agree with and that you think that everybody else is like you. So you may think that everybody thinks whatever book is great and it's crazy for you to think that anybody wouldn't love that book and they must be wrong if they don't love the book that you and all your book talk friends love. And I do think that it can kind of separate people that way and that yes, the algorithm is. It works for what it's supposed to work for, but then that's not necessarily a positive thing. Now my views on AI are a little bit different. I think when used responsibly, AI does have a lot of benefits that can be used to make things more efficient, streamlined, and kind of just help in general. I understand there's always going to be challenges, and I stress that AI used responsibly part, that there is a time and a place for it that we need to be able to use it in a way where we aren't losing our creativity and we're still being able to critically think for ourselves. Because that's something where I think that, we as a nation struggle with in general is thinking critically.

Alexis 23:42

Yeah.

Kristen 23:43

With my son. I see it in the workplace. I see a lot of people who are just not able to think critically by misusing ai. People can lose that ability even more. So there's definitely a good and bad way. Right and wrong way. Again, personal opinions, but I think that the ai, you know, for this specific topic. Coming into book talk and whether there's AI written books or AI material pushing books, that again, may not be that great. I think that we just have to evaluate what we're seeing on our streams. And evaluates who's putting it out there because I've gotten to understand now that there's certain, 'cause I'm still on my bookstagram and there are certain influencers. I know that I can trust their reviews. I know that their values align with mine and if they enjoy a book, then maybe I'll enjoy. I know there's others that as great as their content may be they're probably not gonna be books that I'm going to enjoy. And that's okay too.

Alexis 24:49

Yeah, and I think that's true. And like I said, everybody has their opinions on ai. I can see where it could be very valuable in a business setting. I'm not in that setting, so what I see is kids trying to use it and I'm like, whoa, wait a second. You need to dig deeper. That's not the answer, you know, and so that's where I see it. I also see it in publishing or translations, like they're now using AI to translate stuff. And I do think that I struggle because I see it taking jobs away and also what if it's a bad translation? You know what I mean? And so it's there's

Kristen 25:21

infallible. You still need the human piece of it to double check whatever it puts out to ensure, like

Alexis 25:27

mm-hmm.

Kristen 25:28

it even. 'cause there's been times where AI has messed things up

Alexis 25:31

Oh yeah. Well, and that's kind of where I get frustrated because people just use that as their answer. Well, this is what AI says. Have you dug into what AI says? Because AI can say that, but that doesn't mean it's right. And I suspect that the social media companies are using AI to push so much, and I think it is in some ways dividing, it just goes back to the political, the abusing politics and to divide, and I think that's where it's just dangerous.

Kristen 26:02

Not to go down this road too far, but my thing is when I see people using AI in their personal posts on like Facebook or Instagram, I use ai. Like I'm not gonna say that I don't. when I see people making posts, and you can clearly see like I'm like, chat GPT totally wrote that for you. Like you didn't even. Change it and it hurts me a little bit because I'm so focusing on, you know, last year and this year, like authenticity and being the real me and being who I am on social media and who I am in real life. That it kind of hurts me when I see people making posts like that because I'm like, that's not you. Like You didn't

Alexis 26:45

Right.

Kristen 26:46

And again, like I try to not be judgy because I, I do use chat GPT for certain things, even along with this podcast. There's parts of AI that I use for it. Like I'm not hiding it or anything, I do feel like there's, like I said before, there's just, there's a good and a bad way to do it.

Alexis 27:01

Oh yeah.

Kristen 27:03

Sometimes I'll write, I'll draft something and run it through AI to maybe clean it up or change the tone or something, but I have a harder time. I know I've gotta be careful because I don't wanna offend anybody, but at the same time, the use of AI can lose some of our personality too, and that's where I struggle with. People shouldn't be ashamed of who they are or feel that they need to fix who they are or have posts written for them because they're not confident enough or whatever. Like it's just, it's a whole thing.

Alexis 27:32

It is a whole thing. I think that's a whole thing for our unplug series because I think it Dells in there. It's just interesting that as we do this, how interconnected it all is and unplug. That's my word of the year, unplug.

Kristen 27:50

Well, before we get too far down that then back to the original topic of a book talk and publishing. Any other thoughts on that or anything you wanted to share? Alexis?

Alexis 28:02

I think, just, take everything on social media sometimes with a grain of salt and just kind of like, you know, everything is not necessarily what it seems. I think that even applies to books that have been released. And, I think something that I've kind of started to work on with my kids is, is that book really, is it a waste of your time or are you getting something out of it? And it's okay if it's a fun story, but is it just fluff? Like is there substance to it? And so that's kind of. What I have worked towards this year is to make sure my books have a little more substance, and obviously it's okay to have some fun books in there, but it really does make a difference when it's not just poorly written and full of fluff.

Kristen 28:53

So I think what I would wanna leave listeners with is read what you wanna read. Don't worry about what everybody else is reading. It doesn't matter how many people influence a book and say how great it is. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it just because there's more voices about certain books doesn't mean they're the right voices, and your opinion still matters and just read what you wanna read. All right. Well, as always, Alexis, this has been fantastic and I look forward to another thrilling conversation with you soon.

Alexis 29:27

Thank you.

Speaker 29:33

Thanks for spending this time with me. I hope this conversation made you feel a little less alone. Take care of yourself, and I'll talk with you soon.