The Growing Annoyance with Trope Marketing

Welcome Back, Booklovers! Today I wanted to talk about the growing push back against trope marketing within the book community and give my opinion as a book reviewer who is active on social media but also pays close attention to the marketing materials publishers provide. 

What started in indie romance has spread to traditionally published fantasy, contemporary, literary fiction, and memoir with varying results. Many traditionally published authors insist this is the only way to market online against growing reader pushback. Though I'd love to see the data to back that up and how well it's worked for debuts vs established authors. And then for those authors that we're saying it works for what did their promo looks like from their publishers.

All books have tropes and multiple ones besides the one or two people usually to highlight. But at the end of the day those should just be pieces of the story not the entire story. I find it very interesting that the conversation has shifted to "Artists feel embarrassed about your art!" when I haven't seen any readers saying that.  Readers do not have a problem with authors promoting their books. They want to hear about these upcoming books. Where the pushback is coming from with readers is that authors are failing to tell readers what their books are about. Those graphics with the arrows usually pull buzzwords, phrases, personality traits, and plot points. If you have no context it makes some of those things meaningless. 

Some of them are little sloppy looking to people who prefer clean graphics and don't want to have to follow 20 different arrows jutting out in multiple directions.  Many of them repeat the same point two to three times just worded differently. While still not giving enough information about what the book is actually about. 

Enemies to lovers is a popular trope that many books are using as a key selling point. But it's disappointing as reader when you go into a book expecting enemies to lovers but the love interests are just people who had one small misunderstanding and never spoke to each other after that. Readers don't like to be misled unless the book is a mystery with a really great payoff. 

I could easily say a book is enemies to lovers,  small town, Montana, cowboys and Black authored. Or I could say, "It's Burris Brothers vs Hawkins sisters in a battle at the local rodeo. Will Jack and Audrey let their growing attraction ruin the competition?" (BTW if that interests you then check out Kathy Douglass' In the Ring with the Maverick)

Trends are also unpredictable and what was trending in 2020 has changed in 2022. And maybe an upcoming book wasn't written to fit trends but without reading the book it's hard to tell when that's all that's being highlighted. So many readers have been burned by books that were marketed by tropes where the story was clearly built around the tropes rather than coming together organically. Too many bad reading experiences back to back can suck the joy out of reading. The price of books adds up and people don't want to feel like they're wasting their money and time. 

For some readers it takes more than a pretty cover and some buzzwords to peak their interest. We can always say just read the blurb but many times those blurbs are paragraphs upon paragraphs often spoiling events that don't happen in the book until after the 50% mark. Which makes some readers less inclined to read blurbs.

Segregation, racism, colorism,  and microaggressions are not key-selling points. I thought the point of these graphics were to get readers excited? I don't know one Black person who gets excited when they hear about those things. Yet that's what's being marketed to us as what we should focus on for many books. Not the amazing characters, unique concept, or strong plot. . Trivializing Black characters experiences by centering it around their trauma and relationship to white people is a huge turnoff for a lot of readers. The story inside the book could be a truly great story. That aspect could be a very small aspect, but bad first impressions are lasting impressions.

As someone who's worked in retail and sales before I can attest that it's hard to sell a product when there are so many different options. When people say it's overdone it's because they're constantly seeing the same type of posts with little variation to the point where it no longer stands out to them.. And as much as books are art they are also a product. The same way people discuss how an ad for any other product is good or bad is the same way they're talking about what they see online promoting books.

It's easy to just write the book off as not for that person, but the truth is it could be for that person but the way it's being presented to them doesn't appeal to them. There are some really great books out there but the way that they're being promoted don't always allow them to shine. And with thousands of books being published each year, discoverability is key. Much of the discourse just boils down to readers asking to explore other methods. 

The one size fits all approach does not work when it comes to books. Everyone does not have the same audience even if they're writing within the same genre or age category. Rather than chasing everyone a better approach would be for authors to discover their niche market.  As publishers continue to put the majority of the marketing work on authors (though for Black authors this is nothing new) it's best that people discover who their intended audience is.