Thursday, November 14, 2013

Reader's Rant: The "Next Twilight"


"Without a doubt, [some YA paranormal book title] is going to be the next Twilight!"  


You guys know what I'm talking about.  It's on basically every single popular YA book in the industry.  All of these up in coming books are constantly being compared to the last "best" book in the industry whether that be Twilight, The Hunger Games, City of Bones, ect.  These comparisons never fail to upset me.  


The thing I hate most about these "next best X" books is that half the time, they aren't even accurate.  I remember back when I was first getting into reading after having finished Breaking Dawn for the thousandth time, I picked up a book because I saw that it said, right there on the cover, that it was "the next Twilight".  As you've probably guessed, the book was absolutely nothing like Twilight besides the fact that it was a YA.  And while I enjoyed the book a lot (though the title is escaping my mind at the moment) I was always bothered because it had been nothing like I had expected when I picked it up thinking it was just like Twilight.  
 

I know it might not seem like a huge deal to others, but this is similar to false advertising.  If you say it's the next Twilight, I'm going to pick it up expecting to read about sparkly vampires wooing humans with their super awesome stalking skills (hey, I used to love Twilight.  Don't mean to be offensive!) 


Now trust me, I get why they do this.  They're taking a well known and widely loved book and giving the readers of it a chance to find new books that they may like.  Not to mention it's good advertising for the new books.  Being associated with big-name books will put attention on them!  And they're also just saying this to communicate the fact that this new book is amazing and has the potential to be just as popular, if not more, than the previous "big-shot" book.  And hey, more power to them.  I totally support spreading the word about awesome books and telling people that they have the potential to be totally amazing and successful.


I guess what I'm getting at here is just that I wish we could get readers interested and reading new books without having to call them the next "X".  Trust me, tons of these books that have been described as the next Twilight/CoB/Divergent/ect totally have the potential to be just as successful without the comparison.  I think that we need to let these books speak and stand for themselves without having people's opinions on them (whether good or bad) influenced by what they are being compared to.



What do you think about this?  Does it bother you this much, too?



 P.S. Yes to ALL the Supernatural gifs :D

3 comments:

  1. I personally try to aviod books that compare themselves to a well known book. Makes me wonder why they have to do it. Marketing should be able to get the book out there without the comparison. Great rant

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  2. OHMYGOD YES! Whenever I see a book advertised as "next X, next best X, sometimes even better than X based on some review' I usually just roll my eyes and buy the book if the cover and synopsis fascinate me. I agree that these books can be advertised without having to compare them, and most of the time, when they are, I like the book anyway even if the comparison wasn't accurate, because the book itself impressed me independently. So yeah, I'm quite disapproving of this, even if I've grown to love a book or two that's been advertised in much the same format :)

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  3. I hate when they compare books to Twilight or Hunger Games. I decided to stay away
    from them ! Obviously, there can't be another Jacob or Katniss. Publishers refuse to realize that they hurt books when they make those stupid comparisons.

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