graphic by ella sylvie
If you’re a reader, or if you just find yourself in online spaces that deal with readers, you might have seen the countless TikTok videos and YouTube video essays discussing the idea that publishing is becoming “the new fast fashion.” I have a bone to pick with that.
Now, before I really dive into this, I want to clarify that I’m not talking about the idea that things like BookTok and BookTube promote overconsumption. I personally own over 200 books, and about half of them are still unread. However, I not only plan on reading them all, but I am also a publishing student and get a lot of free books from my school. I have never thrown a book in the trash, almost exclusively buy used books, utilize little free libraries, participate in book swaps, and exchange my books at local independent bookstores for both different books and other goodies (shoutout to Sweet Pickle Books for allowing me to donate my books in exchange for pickles). This all being said, I still absolutely agree that if you are simply buying new books just to have them sit on your shelf, never make time to read them, and then throw them away when you decide you don’t want the clutter, you should really stop buying books in the first place.
My main issue with likening publishing to fast fashion is not the sentiment that there is an overconsumption problem; it is the fundamental idea of equating reading and publishing to fast fashion. The idea that publishing is turning into fast fashion primarily came about because of discussions around book quality—both objective physical quality and subjective content quality—which is why I don’t think it is a fair comparison.
The problem with fast fashion is not only that the quality of the clothing is poor, but also that there are concerns for the environment attached to this poor quality, as it is impossible to recycle the cheap, inorganic fabric often used. There is also a major ethical concern with fast fashion brands regarding child labor, unsafe working conditions, and the general exploitation of the people who make these clothes. Additionally, second-hand shops get flooded with poor-quality clothing from fast fashion brands because no one wants to thrift something that might fall apart in three wears. This is where books differ from clothing and where the “publishing = fast fashion” argument begins to fall apart.
First, no matter the subjective quality of the content in the book, books are not being made to fall apart. Even if publishing houses are using slightly cheaper methods and materials (mostly due to rising production costs), such as using thinner paper or opting not to include any special effects on covers, the books are still not going to fall apart on you as you try to read them. Even if a book is technically lower quality, it can still be read tens, even hundreds, of times before it might start to show significant wear. Trade books — books published by traditional publishing houses in both hardcover and paperback, sold at major retailers, and typically found circulating BookTok — are meant to last no matter what material is actually used. They are also not made using child labor or sweatshops like many fast fashion companies. In fact, book printing and binding is a largely automated process done in a factory or warehouse.
That leaves the environmental aspect. While books are unable to be tossed in your home paper recycling bin due to the glue often used to bind the pages together, there are recycling programs you can send your books to because, when it comes down to it, books are paper! And before you say that books contribute to deforestation, paper makers have guidelines in place to ethically source wood from designated forest areas that are managed for sustainability purposes. Paper makers cannot afford to run out of wood to use, seeing as it is literally their entire business.
Now, let’s say you’re not trying to trash a book and you want to donate it instead. Some people will argue that this brings the same issue that fast fashion brands in thrift shops do. In a video essay by According to Alina, she says, “If these books were only bought because they were trendy at one point in time on TikTok, then who will buy them from a charity shop way after the fact?” However, this is a very black-and-white way of putting it. Yes, books become popular on TikTok, and certain genres and tropes become almost “trendy,” but not in the same way that clothes are trendy.
When it comes to fashion, trends go in and out rapidly, and people stop wearing certain styles because they do not want others to think they are behind the times. In contrast, books and reading are more personal. “Trends” don’t apply to your own personal reading preferences. The genre you like is probably going to remain a genre you like, just as a book you liked the first time you read it will probably remain a book you like whether you decide to re-read it or not.
I also believe the idea that no one will buy the book when it is no longer “trendy” is just a flawed argument. I know exactly who will buy that book: The person who never got to read it when it was popular because they couldn’t afford to buy it new; the person who borrowed it from a library and wished they could own it to re-read but couldn’t afford to buy it new; the person who couldn’t splurge on a new hardcover book but finally can if they buy it secondhand; or the person who doesn’t necessarily keep up with what the internet says is popular and discovers the book for the first time while browsing a used bookshop. The pressure to follow trends and the fear of buying something that won’t last is a real issue for fast fashion items in thrift stores, but flooding thrift stores isn’t really an issue for books—or at least not on the same scale. In fact, I have found that thrift stores tend to run out of the more popular titles way before the abundance of classics that get donated to them.
Donating to a thrift store is just about the only option for fast fashion besides giving your clothes to a friend or throwing them away, but that’s not the case for books. You can sell your books to companies that are based entirely on the sale of used books, like ThriftBooks or SecondSale, or sell them on your own on an online book marketplace, like Pango Books. Not interested in selling? That’s fine, because you can also look for a community book swap to attend, find a little free library in your area, or give your books to your local independent bookstore, allowing them to resell your book to make more profit and help them stay afloat while they battle Amazon. There are so many systems and companies that exist solely to buy, sell, and redistribute books that comparing books to fast fashion just feels wrong.
Moving on to the part of this argument that claims that publishers simply don’t care about the quality of their books — as seen by the disastrous misprints in the release of the “Iron Flame” by Rebecca Yarros — and will instead prioritize getting a book out quickly to keep up with trends: I just need to say that that’s not entirely true, but to understand this part, we need to do a mini-dive into how the publishing industry works.
Publishing houses do not print in-house. After a manuscript is finalized and designed, the file is sent to an outside printer and binder. The publishing house gives the printer details on any special effects for the book (think sprayed edges and foil) and the general printing and binding specifications, but the printer is the one who actually does the work to put it together. The printer prints the pages of the book out in signatures — or groups of pages in 8, 16, or 32-page increments — and binds them by sewing the signatures together, gluing them together, or a combination of both to make the book block. If it is a hardcover book, these book blocks are then glued to the hardcover boards. This whole process is where the issues with pages being missing (signatures are left out), pages being upside down (an entire signature is sewn/glued in upside down), spines being backward (the board was not placed correctly on the book block), and other printing and binding errors occur. I promise you, the publishing house itself had nothing to do with the actual printing and binding process. I can also say that after the release of “Iron Flame,” the printers probably had to eat that money and reprint that run because the error fell on them, not the publisher.
Now, were the errors heightened because of the accelerated schedule? Maybe, but it’s not like there haven’t been countless books put out on rushed schedules that didn’t see this kind of misprint fiasco. It’s not something the publisher anticipated and overlooked for the sake of speed. When it comes to quality control, finding each error would require publishing house employees with other responsibilities to physically comb through thousands of printed copies to check for errors, which, as it sounds, is not feasible.
As for the subjective quality of the content of the books, this is where I have a real issue. People have argued that publishers should stop publishing so many books that are “just okay” and instead focus only on “good books.” And this, my friends, is where I get angry. Who’s to say if a book is good or bad? I have heard countless complaints of “horribly written” books that refer to at least half of the cute little rom-coms I love. However, after reading them myself, I could not figure out how anyone was coming up with that idea. Personally, I loved them. I love the genre; I love a lot of the authors; and, most importantly, those books got me to read.
Forget this subjective “quality of the content.” Is the book getting people to read? Yes. Are a decent amount of people enjoying it? Yes. That’s all that matters. No one gets to go around and say what is “good enough” and “not good enough” to be published. I might hate the writing style of your favorite book and you might hate that of mine, but neither of us should get to dictate which one was “worthy” of being published. And, of course, this is another reason why the fast fashion comparison is misleading: The issue with fast fashion is not just because the clothes are “bad”; the issues are with the environmental problems associated with poor fabric quality and with the human rights violations stemming from companies’ cost-cutting solutions. Thinking a book is badly written doesn’t even come close to comparing to the real-world implications of fast fashion.
So, if you want to talk about the issue of overconsumption and lack of responsibility around the purchasing of books, go for it, but claiming that this is exactly like fast fashion is not exactly a fair comparison. The term “fast fashion” comes with intensely negative associations. Equating book publishing and reading to fast fashion brings some pretty exaggerated implications to the table.