I’m planning a mini-series on online courses that I’ve taken in April, but before that, I want to do a mini brain dump about new releases vs older books. As you know, I’ve spent March focuses on rereading books, which means that I’ve been focusing on older books that I already own. This is partly because I like rereading books, and partly because I want to make full use of the books that I already own (else it feels like a waste of money).
But about halfway through the month, I started wondering about whether this was a good idea.
New books are huge in the bookish community and I’ve heard so much about why we need to support authors during their launch periods. For indie authors, having people buy their books during their launch can help them get the various book platforms (especially Amazon) to promote their book because the algorithm likes popular things. I remember hearing about launch numbers affected traditionally published’s authors and their subsequent contracts but I can’t quite find references for that now. Regardless, I’ve developed this idea that it is a good thing to help support authors by hyping up/supporing new releases.
And because time and money is a limited resource, I’m leaving behind books for every book that I pick up. If I focus on older books (which is pretty much most of my TBR list), I will be neglecting new releases. My ego is not so big that I think I will make or break a new release, but I do wonder, should I be using my reading time to support new authors?
Which leads to another thought: Does reading in public (i.e. reading and talking about books online) mean that you should be behaving in a certain way (like to help up and coming authors?). After all, I’m always hearing about how we need to read diversely[1] and that does feel like there’s a trend to promote certain reading trends (read authors of colour, readg more women, etc) in order to somehow help society **magic handwaving here because I’m not sure if one leads to another, but I have the impression that it should??**
Anyway, a few years ago, a friend and I were talking about voting and if it was important everyone votes. According to him (a sociology major), it didn’t quite matter if I voted but it mattered if the group voted. I wonder if it’s relevant here, that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter if I’m promoting certain types of books in my reading as long as someone else is doing it. As selfish as it sounds, I read mainly for enjoyment and sometimes for education, and I wouldn’t like to think that as a blogger, I’m obliged to help certain books succeed because we want to change publishing for the better or something.
Do you think we should support new releases over backlist titles? Why or why not?
[1] I have previously written about what diversity in books mean to me, but one thing that I’ve been thinking about in recent months is that the concept of diverse books is just so Western (specifically, American-centric). I mean, a book with a Chinese protagonist would be considered diverse in most cases, yet I grew up and live in a Chinese-majority country (with many other races) and so this would be… just another day for me? I don’t know if this can be a post by itself but I just wanted to throw out this additional point I’ve been thinking about.
Oh you dear girl. Don’t let ’em guilt you. Just read what you like. If you read what you like, your reading list will be “diverse” by any reasonable definition of the term.
You are right that in America, “diverse” has a special meaning. It evokes a whole worldview, to wit: “We believe that certain immutable characteristics like race and sex, and certain ones that are part of the self-concept each person builds, like sexual preferences, are super important to everything a person does. We believe that in the absence of evil discrimination, there will be a certain balance of these characteristics that is the same in every human endeavor. We don’t like the balance of these characteristics in this industry (say publishing), so we are going to try to make that balance match our vision of what it should be by favoring and excluding people in this industry based on those characteristics, regardless of whether said characteristics have anything to do with the task.”
In other words, “Inclusion” means exclusion basically.
Yes, it’s true that indie authors adore reads and reviews. Thank you when you give them! But I think you should be giving them because you honestly like our books, not because you feel a sense of social responsibility.
Also, it’s often the people who talk the most about diversity, who seem to neglect the authors of the past. They are either completely ignorant of entire literary traditions, or they clearly hate these past authors and read them only to deconstruct. Yet there are sooo many good older books that no one can know about them all. By doing your re-reads, you are doing us all a service by calling our attention to gems we might not otherwise hear about. Call it “temporal diversity.” 🙂
I have a sequel to The Long Guest coming out soon. I’m happy to send you an ARC again if you like.
Carry on, my friend!
Good point about “diverse” books being a worldview! It may explain why most diverse books come from authors in America (and maybe the UK?)
I’d love to read the sequel to The Long Guest, but won’t the shipping be very expensive?? I could get it off Amazon instead!
Yeah, the whole identity politics madness has infected the UK as well I believe. And France is miffed with the U.S. for exporting it, which is rich since it comes out of postmodernism, which was started in large part by some of their philosophers like Foucault, but I digress.
Thomas Sowell has written a lot about the diversity worldview if you are interested in reading more about it. Which I’m not sure why you should be, except if there is a big ugly troll living on your block you might want to know about it. I love his book Discrimination and Disparities, and though I haven’t read it yet, I’m looking forward to The Vision of the Anointed.
If you can affordably order The Strange Land on Amazon, fantastic! If not, let me know and I will get it to you.
Will do (re: The Strange Land)
And thank you for the book recc, I will check out Sowell’s books… hopefully pretty soon. The TBR is long and demanding haha
I think you bring up some interesting points and ask some great questions there. I think it’s just as important to look back as it is to look forward and deal with the present, so I’m all for reading backlist books. Doing so can sometimes help you clearly see where some authors and other artists got their inspiration from. However, regarding which to prioritize (backlist or new books), that’s totally up to you. Some blogs tend to focus only on new books while others mix it up. I tend to prefer when a blogger mixes things up. There are lots of great books out there that were published years ago that I haven’t heard of.
I’m all for reading diversely, but I agree that “reading diversely” is different for each person. And again, how you read and what you promote regarding this is totally up to you. Unfortunately, I think “reading diversely” has become a trend in the US and probably in other Western countries. I hope it’s a trend that will become accepted and just stick around, but I have a feeling it might be forgotten when the next big thing comes along. There are some blogs that focus only on books by marginalized authors in order to promote diversity, but it’s totally up to you whether you want to focus on your blog like that or not. I see blogging as a hobby so I try not to make it too stressful for myself and just read what I want and talk about it all.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, and I agree that each blog should do whatever fits them best.
I think there are so many backlist books out there to read that there’s no way I can keep up with that, let alone find new books that are coming out that I want to read. I tend to get my recommendations from bloggers and like you, I like bloggers who mix it up!
Truth be told, unless it’s within a paid position I think we should just read for pleasure!! This isn’t a job, we don’t get a wage (however wonderful that would be) and so we’re free to read whatever we like! Now if I was a massive account with sponsors etc then yes I’d look towards the new releases, however being the teeny tiny platform that I am, I’m quite content to stick with my mix of backlist and new books and read whatever I want to!
I just read about some people on BookTok getting paid “hundreds to thousands” for posting so I suppose the line between job and hobby can be very fine for some people! But yeah, I’m just a little hobby account reading for pleasure too!!
hu…hundreds? I mean I wouldn’t say no! Hahaha