What are some opinions about authors and writers marketing and advertising their books by primarily listing the tropes that appear in them (enemies to lovers, morally grey main characters, ‘touch her and you die’, etc.)?
I, personally, do not care for this and most times it doesn’t make me want to read your books. It makes me feel like I’m reading AO3 tags (which is not a dig at all on fanfiction or Ao3 writers in general, I love fanfiction) but if I wanted to read tags, I would go where tags are a natural part of what I am expecting. It’s like authors have seen the success of Booktok and, to a lesser extent, Instagram and Twitter where reviewers are using these keywords and tropes to discuss the books with their audience, and they’re removing the middle man and just outright saying it. It also feels like an easy way for authors to get out of describing plots and actually selling you on what the book is about if the tropes are even accurate at all (a lot of enemies-to-lover books aren’t actually enemies-to-lovers, hot take).
I just don’t like the trend and it actively drives me away from engaging. Don’t sell your book like fanfiction, because it isn’t, I should be able to see what kind of tropes you’ll be utilizing without you having to spell it out for me.
Feel free to disagree with me, though, and if that kind of advertising works for you, then I hope you have fun reading!
by Relative_Treacle_738
4 Comments
In theory I can’t figure out anything super wrong with it… but in practice every time I read a book that prominently displays its tropes as marketing, I end up not finishing it due to lack of enjoyment.
I also tend to see marketing via tropes used primarily for YA, so it could be correlation rather than causation there.
Related, all I can do is remember that one Tumblr post:
>You like non-stereotypical depictions of autism? What about ✨ neurodivergent protagonists ✨ ? Yes? What about asexual neurodivergent protagonists that go on chapters-long rants about their special interests? You want gay characters that are important to the plot too? Then I’ve got the book for you! The author is gay!!! American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis, is
I was surprised when I first heard Tik Tok kids using “trope” to describe something they like about a book. I always thought it had a connotation similar to “cliche,” i.e., best to avoid them altogether. It’s incredibly foreign for me to describe a book in terms of tropes, and honestly if marketing materials just listed the tropes in a book, the effect of reading it is already partly spoiled, like those movie trailers that reveal too much. If you want to market a book to me, show me blurbs praising your prose style, tell me about the writers you’ve been compared to, use adjectives to describe the feel of the book…none of that interferes with my ability to really experience the book for myself, the way it would be ruined if I were waiting for the antagonist to become the love interest or whatever.
It serves a purpose. Sometimes I want an easy to read, precisely as advertised, guilty pleasure book. I’m not going in expecting literature when looking for a witchy Halloween rom-com