Being petty about book stuff for 17 minutes (bookish pet peeves)

[@NixanAmbrose]

Any hunger games comparisons that are actually just battle royale story structure and not actual politically charged commentary of government and ruling class IRKS ME

[@pauieeepau]

@@NixanAmbroseand worse when they seem to care more about the aesthetic elements. Like, if you just wanted the dresses, parties, and interviews of THG, maybe THG format isn't the way to go.

[@laurendavis377]

I hate the non-removable stickers!!!

[@maem7462]

Those are some of the worse and most stupid things ever. It blocks some of the cool cover. It’s just annoying as well.

[@Luumus]

My hatred of non-removable stickers burns with the intensity of A THOUSAND SUNS!!

[@Lexyim]

"For fans of Red White and Royal Blue/RWRB meets ___" means NOTHING other than the books is gay. It's become a household annoyance for me and my roommates that so many books have that as a blurb. (No hate to RWRB itself but I need publishers to STOP)

[@groofay]

My major pet peeve is when an author says something rose to a crescendo. No, it didn't. It rose to a climax. The crescendo is the rising. Learn your music terminology before slopping it on your pages.

[@Lillyjoy]

Your haircut & hairstyle are so cute! One of my biggest pet peeves is when all of the action is in like the last 40 pages and then there’s only 3 pages left after the conflict is resolved. I want more pages after the conflict!

[@AModelWhosRead]

agreed! Give me the falling action!

[@mj-sc5ff]

They also do the “Perfect for fans of Sara J. Mass” thing with Agatha Christie. Like I cannot count how many murder mystery books I’ve come across that claimed to either be “perfect for fans of Agatha Christie” or straight up claimed that Agatha Christie would have written this. It’s like publishers think Agatha Christie = murder mystery

[@sarahkinsey5434]

I hate how books aren't numbered on the spine because how do I know when buying them? It's easier for me to remember that I have book two than the title. I want to write it somewhere on the book, but feels like sacrilege and some books have dark spines. I've written the numbers on the inside cover in pencil in Agatha Christie's Poirot series, but I want to be able to just glance and know what is what

[@scrubsandbooks]

Those glossaries are hard to get to when you’re not using a physical copy to read the book!

[@SamuelMcAuliff]

I published my first three books with a legitimate (ie, not vanity or hybrid) but well-known small press in 2016 where they were using stock photos of real people doing real things. They even sent me to Shutterstock and told me to find something that closely resembled what I had in mind and they would either recreate it or buy the rights to it. I couldn't find anything, so I left it in their hands. The choices they sent me had nothing to do with the book, nothing. I made the best choice possible, but have regretted it ever since. The second publisher wasn't much better. The first time I was sent the cover art to approve, I thought they sent me a page out of a child's coloring book by mistake. My point being, I agree, real people on the cover is a trend I am glad to see the back of, but I also hate cartoony covers also. I'd almost rather we go back to the days of bodice ripper covers that looked like paintings than the crap we are often given.

[@AModelWhosRead]

I would LOVE to have that oil-paint bodice-ripper style back!!

[@InquieteNightshade]

Ok, but for the “for fans of…” pet peeve; I feel the same way about Game of Thrones. Every time I see a book that says, “for fans of Game of Thrones,” I want to scream. Just because it’s grime dark fantasy doesn’t mean it’s Game of Thrones.

[@differentbeat8320]

I.need.a.part.two (please). This was so much fun xD

[@AnnicaSeal]

Glad I’m not the only special editions hater. I want to see more boosting up of books by authors who are underrepresented and lost under all the booktok slush! Not the 50th special edition of the same book that’s been shoved in my face for the past six months! On top of that, I hate hardcovers so I’m not even gonna want your special edition anyway!

[@pauieeepau]

Saaaame. I like paperbacks for my weak wrists and I can shove more books into my shelves. And they're waaayy cheaper. Like, I know North American publishers are rolling out hardbound first for, idk, money-hungry reasons, but now lesser-known authors are not as accessible to masses in hardbound form, they also usually don't even get paperback editions. Paperbacks would also sell better, I wish publishers concentrated on that.

[@maem7462]

I’m mostly neutral to special editions. I normally don’t know abt most of them. I do think there is a a moment when it becomes too much. Especially if one books has so many special editions it’s too repetitive at that point.

[@DarkBeauty73]

people on the cover, the unremovable stickers, no numbers on books, agree about the made for tv or movie adaptations, are all my pet peeves as well lol

[@zachreads]

The worst time jump I ever saw was in The Meg series where there was a 17.8 year time jump between book 3 and 4 so the author could immeadiatly sexualize the mc's infant daughter.

[@Lee-rn9mz]

The book numbering thing happened to me recently, I accidentally bought the last book in the practically magic series 😅

[@whisperingtoadstools]

Yes! I hate the "for fans of-" thing! I am much more into gaming and film than books (though I deeply love reading) and they do it constantly over there! Every single "cozy" game is "THE NEW STARDEW" and they are rarely anything like stardew at all. Also, they literally never understand WHY we liked the original. Like, Daddy Daycare was a beloved and popular film when it released because it challenged the notion that men can't take care of children, had complex discussions about modern family dynamics, the pressure we put on children to succeed, and how to meet children on their level. Yes, there were slapstick antics but it was centering around how raising kids is hard and we are all just doing our best. Hollywood did not understand that's what we loved so we got like an entire decade of "hur dur men can't raise kids! Let's watch these bozos fail because MEN CAN"T TAKE CARE OF KIDS!?!?" UGH!

[@emilyharrington2219]

Yes. I agree with almost all of these. Especially the movie/tv announcements before it’s in production. I remember hearing about the Warriors books getting a movie or tv deal thing in middle school and I’m STILL waiting for that to come out over 10 years later. So frustrating!

[@KatisWritingStill]

Unfortunately, I can tell a secret ( a secret that a few of my traditionally published author friends of mine and I have discussed,) and I say unfortunate because these news outlets (and sometimes the authors) get excited and jump the gun before knowing the truth about movie and tv adaptations. And the secret it that publishers will purposefully buy a book's movie and tv show rights to crush the book so that they can never actually make the shows and movies at all. So when you said stop talking about books that are not ending up out soon. It's sometimes just news outlets needing a story, but that the publisher never planned to let that book see the light of day as a show or movie. Since it is public knowledge publishers have to disclose what they are doing with a book. It is why they also reveal what books were bought or had bidding wars. Its required for transparency (though the interest this sometimes thrums up is helpful to the author and publishers later book launch too.) Anyway those journalists hunting for news for online stories for online news outlets that will report a cow chewing their food twice on a slow day. They will then take this information and break news that a new book has been picked up for shows and movies thus making everyone excited. But on the publishers side there was actually never any plan for there to be a show or a movie for that book. They just needed to buy off the competition. Publishers will do this on purpose if they know that they are releasing something they think will be commercially successful and something else will get in the way of it reaching its revenue margin that was predicted. Mainly with the firm belief that if someone else grabs those rights that are not them and it goes into production and is released around the same time (normally a 1-2yr window) that their profits will be stifled by the competition. This has happened so many times in the book world by the larger publishing houses you would actually be pretty disgusted. It's extremely common to buy a books rights to actually drop it in a pit of darkness. So unless you hear from the author or the publishing house directly that a director, a production crew, writers, and filming has started. It is take it with a grain of salt because that news the reporter dug up might be that an author somewhere out there is getting screwed.

[@aki0ari]

I hate when a series is being published and the cover style and/or trim size suddenly gets changed. Like I'm all for alt covers and different editions AFTER the completion of a series. But when I have book 1 in one style and someone had the bright idea to change the entire look of the series and they release book 2 in some wildly different style, I just want to cry. (I'm looking at you production, design, and marketing folks responsible for that disaster of a cover on Allie Therin's Sugar and Vice series). I also get seriously miffed when books are marketed as being standalones from others that take place in the same universe, but end up NOT being standalone at all. All the worldbuilding and overarching plot get established in the previous books, you cannot tell me I can drop into book four or six because you decided to rebrand and say it's something new when the only thing that's happened is a change of focus to a different main character pov. If the overarching story has not been concluded, it's all part of the same story and needs to be read in order to make the kind of sense that will do the book justice. If you tell people something is standalone or a new series and they start with that and are disappointed because the worldbuilding is thin and they choose not to continue reading the series or that author because of it that is a disservice to both the author and the readers. Like do y'all not want to sell these books? Why are you setting them up to fail?

[@LiteratureLindsi]

0:45 already starting off strong 😂😂 for me, I tend to glance past chara descriptions in stories and just imagine them with the vibes they give off, and seeing books w people in general on the covers or art kinda ruins that for me. Even worse when the main love interest isn't 'my type' LOL!! Super fun vid, and really relateable 😅❤

[@jojobookish9529]

Black Tide Son is out?!? *flies to bookstore*

[@nitzeart]

Oh THIS is the way to do a bookish pet peeves, so much passion 😅💖

[@justwonder1404]

4:05 - oh that hit close to home, Ukrainian editions of Terry Pratchett Discworld books are the prettiest things ever, but they have nothing, NADA in terms of their chronological order on their covers and they are wrapped in plastic in bookstores so I walk away from them grinding my teeth because I just get too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of them, this has been going on for years I can't take it anymore.

[@qualitystreet9636]

I have a very specific pet peeve in books: I'm French but I mostly read books in English and I find really annoying when English speaking authors have a French character saying random French things all the time. Like calling their Mom "Maman" or having a Mom call their son "Mon Chéri", it takes me out of the book every time. Especially on audio when the accent is off because they don't get a French narrator who learned English to voice a French character, they get an English speaker who learned French, not the same. Yeah I'm looking at you Addie Larue.

[@bluesey-182]

i recently learned that trad. pubbed authors typically have zero say in comp titles. which makes me frustrated for them because seeing a book that says "for fans of acotar and/sarah j. maas" pretty much means i get an immediate ick and won't bother with it. their publishers/marketing team are nerfing them, honestly

[@pauieeepau]

Yeah, it seems like they just choose whoever's the most popular in the genre, even if the themes and settings are vastly different. They also do this for minority authors. For fans of [most popular author in genre who's a similar or same ethnic background or sexuality] even though the books aren't similar. I think publishers/marketers prefer striking a broader audience, instead of a more specific audience.

[@zachreads]

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! (a bit late) I'm American but I celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving to avoid my family!

[@sarahdreger5031]

Just became a super fan for the SJM point

[@digitalbrinjen3245]

Yes, definitely over the whole 'for fans of ACOTAR' thing. Not a fan of that series (or anything by Sarah J Maas), so if you wanna compare your book to it, you're saying it's not for me. Same with songs in a book, not a fan. Did love the playlists at the start of each of the Kitty Norville series though. About a werewolf who is also a talkback radio show host. Appropriate and fun. Yep, take those printed stickers off the cover, they're awful and please, please, please, tell us where in the series that book is. Preferably on the spine.

[@mistybradley1217]

Not a Sarah J Maas girlie, so 'Good for fans of ACOTAR' = welp, guess this book isn't for me. -__-

[@craftychicken12]

Ok so I'm not scientific, but I did pass science at school so in my opinion...that counts! Here's my opinion on the real people on covers phenomena. In my opinion, I think the reason we get startled by real people on covers when we see real people everyday is that we use both reading books and shopping for books as escapism. We don't want to think about other people when we're either buying books or reading them, and I think this definitely puts us into a certain mindset while we're shopping. This means that when you do see a real person on a book cover, it startles you similarly to how jumpscares get us in horror movies. We all go into horror movies, knowing there will most likely be jumpscares and yet they still catch us out. It's the same with these real people on book covers, we know that they exist, but when we're in our mindset of shopping for books, we don't remember they exist and therefore when we see one, we are startled and go 'ew' or something similar. I hope this helps. This is just my opinion and I'm not a scientist or anything but I hope that makes sense :)

[@AModelWhosRead]

A great science point!

[@craftychicken12]

@@AModelWhosRead Thank you

[@Luumus]

That thing about series not having the book number can actually cause confusion. For example, my best friend started reading the Atlas Complex. Without even knowing it was from the Atlas Six series, much less the third in the trilogy. And that's because that cover in Portuguese didn't have that information. Predictably it was quite confusing for her. And I concur on the non-removable stickers. A plague upon humanity. Truly. I'll add my own pet-peeve, which is to have what I call Spanglish or Japinglish or whatever combination of languages randomly in the text. Let me explain, say a character is from a Spanish speaking country and so it's understood that whilst we are reading the text in English, the character is talking and thinking in Spanish, we just read it in English because it's an English written book. Then why on god's green earth would you put random sentences of Spanish in it?? I will actually name and shame, the book "Together we burn" from Isabel Ibañez suffers from this. An example: < He has an angular, sharp face with deep, weathered lines forged by years in the sun and taming beasts. “¿Tienes un momento, por favor?” “Give me an update, Benito.” > For those of us who can understand it, it's redundant. To those who can't, it surely breaks the flow of the story causing confusion. To all it breaks immersion: it's implicit that everyone is speaking Spanish though all writing is in English for the benefit of the reader. Yet, when there's a random Spanish sentence you can't help but think where they talking in English then and just happen to burst into Spanish randomly? It's the sort of thing I see in a lot of anime/manga fanfiction and that at least, has the excuse it's not professionally published. It's one thing to add a random other-language word when you are talking, we all forget or confuse vocabulary, especially the more languages you know, but in a published, presumably edited text? Nah fam.

[@LinnySays]

Yes, tell me what order the books come in! I don't know how many times I've almost picked up a book, had a quick Google if it's a part of a series or not, realised it is, and had to put it down because the book shop isn't selling book 1. Surely it's bad marketing to have people pick up the wrong book by mistake?

[@OddNiffer]

I love Japanese books (in Japan, not translated and published in the west) because when a book gets a movie or a series they add a book cover ON TOP of the regular book cover so you can easily remove it or swap it out! And none of Japan's stickers leave that horrible glue after you remove it. Wester publishers need to get on this!!!

[@OddNiffer]

Saying that, Japanese books have TERRIBLE pacing. There's a whole genre called light novels where random stories from the internet are published so an editor hasn't even glanced at them. It's so annoying.

[@AModelWhosRead]

This is so cool!!

[@little.prince]

Left no crumbs.

[@banannakis6723]

Archie comics were a giant part of my childhood, I will NEVER forgive the CW for what they did. I'm glad I never watched it, I just heard how awful it was.

[@cristagalli96]

Every book should have a pronunciation guide. I don't care if the characters are James and Emily, put in a pronunciation guide because there's bound to be something in there that the author has a specific pronunciation for and we fuck it up. Honestly I don't really want to hear about an adaptation until it's coming out on TV/in theaters. Just surprise me lmao.

[@leonis5664]

My eyes glaze over all the "for fans of" because i know it doesn't matter anything Also all the burbs, in not reading that

[@natcatsbookishcafe3799]

I was so confused when I was looking at B&N preorders and there was ACOTAR stuff, like aren’t these like 10 years old???? But no, it’s just another new cover 😒

[@Itsbaberuthless_]

I wonder how many books I put on my “never read” list because it was either blurbed by SJM or “for fans of ACOTAR”. Also ADULTS writing MINORS having sex and then other ADULTS rating the spice of said sex is so many layers of wrong.

[@christinakilada259]

I really want a copy of Six of Crows but I REFUSE to buy one because of the GD non-removable stickers!!

[@KYX1994]

Daaaamn you're hilarious 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@mariaandino2309]

You know what makes me so upset???? When they change the designs mid fucking series. I know that because I bought Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miró becuase I bought the first book when it came out (hardcover) but the second book just came out and it is completely fucking different. When the paperback of the first book came out it matches the second book but it doesn’t match the first book. Omg I hate it so freaking much!!! They also are doing that w the series of The Hurricane Wars and Fourth Wing. Like WTF. Shut the hell up. I hate it all. Now the books won’t freaking match.

[@goodmanticore]

My biggest pet peeve is a generic one. The overuse of THAT type of title. You know the one. A Bowl of Mac and Cheese. Also when spines in a series don’t match. Why did the title and author name switch places four books in? Annoying.

[@AModelWhosRead]

I know EXACTLY the title type 😂

[@anonymousnudibranch7444]

The "for fans of" thing is infuriating because it's not like there aren't already words to describe what they're trying to say. The Hacienda is "Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca" which feels accurate, but just call it a gothic horror. We all know about haunted houses! If someone is a fan of Rebecca and wants more gothic mansions, they will find The Hacienda. Comparing a book to a beloved classic is setting awfully high expectations and will only lead to disappointed readers.

[@tillthestarsevaporate]

Omg yes the songs in books thing is so annoying 😤

[@Heothbremel]

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@Elly-z7q]

2:16 if you must have the sticker attached to the movie cover (still questioning how anybody see's something that is clearly a movie cover and not come to the conclusion there is a movie or show and it's annoying when those shows are also cancelled) at least make it part of the cover and not that fucking eyesore like they could at least change the colours to match the cover. 5:01 I wish the playlist (and glossary) was at the start of the book and its the not case for some bizarre reason 8:35 love special editions if there is something interesting in the books as well the tenth anniversay editions of The Mortal Instruments City of Bones (and Clockwork Angel) having the illustrations and pretty colours on the cover... what happened to it that? where are the rest of the books? oh they're going for the other version that would be better off as a postcard 13:38 also give us adaptations that are fun make them animated (The Night Circus would work best as animated how likely is either of those things happening?) and give us completely new people (Cameron Chapman as Anthony Lockwood from the Lockwood & Co adaptation was so good both how he looked and how good he acted it was his first tv role and he did so good) mixed in with known actors using the biggest stars of the moment feels like the acting version of "for the fans of" Also movie covers for books when they're going to cancel the show... that, that makes me upset (Netflix)

[@AModelWhosRead]

I would LOVE a stop-motion Night Circus!

[@musicdragonmountain2911]

Genuinely curious: What the hell did Sarah J. Maas do to make her a horrible person?

[@chooselovebooks]

I think they also nailed the movie cover for The Hate U Give! That’s how you movie cover! Just a movie version - of the original. 😙🤌