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Comment by bertman | Hacker News Reader

Imho the stark difference between the number of views and likes that these videos generate and the actual sales of the books and (often) their literary quality shows that these book influencers promote merely the idea of reading.

The average TikTok user knows that being on this platform is a gross waste of one's time, but it's oh so addictive, so giving a like to a video promoting a much more healthy and valuable activity like reading a book works as a kind of self-assurance that "I'll start reading again someday, I promise".

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I don't mean to sound condescending, but how old are you? I'm only in my late 20s, and even I don't consider myself the main target demographic for the app, but it has proven itself fairly useful for certain scenarios (e.g. something happened around X, was curious about quick videos from the area). There are people who read what you would consider "quality books", and share/talk about them on the app as well. Even a very small subset of users/likes transfer into an actual product purchase is a mind-boggling achievement for the writer, so we might be underselling its value.

A five second clip of <the area where thing happened> is useful. But for anything recommendation/opinion based, tiktok vids are absolutely terrible. There’s not enough time for any nuance and everything is engineered lest u scroll away.

I don’t think GP was trying to undersell the achievement of an author.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, since videos can be up to 10 minutes on TikTok. Sometimes the algorithm favours longer videos to promote "educational stuff" (don't quote me on this, but that's what the corpspeak says, and it's definitely a thing in the Chinese version of the app). I would say 3-5 minutes is more than enough to give a general opinion of a book without going into details.

Wasn't aware of that, thanks for pointing that out. And full disclosure, I haven't seen any tiktok book reviews so these are my thoughts on tiktok globally (which is perhaps unfair). I guess my general annoyance then is the, let's say, minification. And the stupidly engaging hook sentences. Very artificial and a lack of authenticity and because you're at the mercy of the algorithm, the discoverability of niche, genuine vids can be extremely hard. Not that these are groundbreaking takes though

Just like reading the comments one news discussion sites promotes merely the idea of reading the articles.

> literary quality

Generally speaking, people read for entertainment, not literacy. And it has very little to do with TikTok.

The way to read quality books is by reading tons of low-quality books. Nobody develops a reading habit by starting reading Tolstoy or Proust.

War and Peace was the first book I read as an adult (at 19) and I was blown away. Definitely opened my mind as to how great a great book can be, and raised my standards for what I'm willing to spend time on reading considerably.

I think this was one of the best things that happened to me for my reading habit, and I'm incredibly glad I stumbled upon it sooner rather than later.

The only change I'd make, if possible, would've been to read it at a younger age (12-14) so my perception of what books can be would've been expanded sooner and I could've branched out from my comfort zone at the time.

Depends what do you want to take out of reading. If you are only looking for entertainment, it's logical to pick a romance or an action-packed fantasy book. It's also okay never to graduate from such books, if it's not the way you want to spend your time. What's less okay is to imply that the sole action of reading will linearly increase your knowledge and sophistication. It's cool that you've built a personal library, but if every book in there contains more or less the same story with minor tweaks, then it's not really enlightening.

Not really. I started picking up reading as a habit last year, and as long as you do some research then there's no reason to read crap, but there's also no reason to read epics if those don't appeal to you either.

I started with Hitchhiker's guide and thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't think that's a low-quality book by any means.

It's not low quality, but it is something a lot of people into literary novels would consider low quality. It's certainly an easy read and belongs to a genre that is often looked down on with almost as much disdain as romance novels (while selling a small fraction of romance novels...)

I think we're talking about very different things here then. I don't think I've ever interacted with someone who considers anything less than Tolstoy to be low quality.

Consider yourself lucky. Any "genre fiction" gets looked down on by a lot of people irrespective of quality.

If you want to find more of this kind of judgment, you can look online for "pseud" or "midwit" as a signpost; alternatively, "literature" ...

They do, and a first read at a young age (17-21) can be transformative.

> their literary quality

In one book title of four simple words... "50 Shades of Grey"

The biggest market has always been romance, followed by mystery, and neither of which requires tremendous literary quality. Beware of survivorship bias when claiming otherwise.

As for the rest of the argument... it speaks for itself.

That's the reality of all social media engagement though. There are going to be way more people just viewing or liking a video versus any other form of more active engagement. The average user you're describing is probably not even engaging in these niches at all that influencers are cultivating.

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