The mysteries of hype

Goodreads recently put up a blog post about how The Girl on the Train became the "it" book of 2015. It's not an analysis of the book's content, but of the publisher's strategies - all about starting buzz early and keeping it going as strongly as possible. The post highlights why readers picked up the book en masse, catapulting its popularity into massive spikes.

But scrolling down, something else jumped out at me: the number of comments that express disappointment that the book didn't live up to the hype. I haven't read The Girl on the Train so I'm not here to discuss its quality. I can, however, relate to these readers' qualms based on my own experience of reading books that I came to feel were overhyped (see my "overrated" shelf for a few). It made me wonder: does hype help or hurt the chances that I'll love the next book that I pick up? 

Hype can start among a book's intended audience, but it ends up being heard far outside those boundaries. Looking at the books that I've deemed overrated, some of them are in categories that I don't normally read - like memoirs, dystopians, and YA contemporaries. It's possible that without knowing the genres, I wasn't able to put my expectations in the right place.

However, there are books that deserve to be read even if they're not the type of thing that you'd normally pick up. That quality seems implicit if something has reached the status of being a new "it" book.

And that's where we run into problems: "it" is singular. No single book has ever been liked by everyone, but that fact can become obscured by hype. We might see a flood of positivity and assume that those other readers' expectations and desires are aligned with ours. We might be in such a hurry to join in that we forget to ask ourselves whether it's actually something that we would find enjoyable, challenging, or informative. (I especially have this problem on NetGalley, where a book is only available for a short while.) A book can't live up to everyone's expectations when everyone's expectations are sky-high.

It makes me wonder whether generating huge hype is always such a great idea. The publishers of The Girl on the Train succeeded from the perspective of promoting the book to maximize money, but from the perspective of managing reader expectations to maximize enjoyment? Maybe not so much. Many readers, including myself, have become apprehensive of hyped-up books due to past disappointments. And some readers, which might include myself, can consciously or unconsciously take pleasure in setting ourselves apart from popular opinion. As a result, for some hyped-up books it seems like there are only two types of reactions: love and hate. Because when the buzz is turned up as loud as possible, it's often only the most polarized voices that get heard above the crowd.

So given past experiences, how do I react now when I encounter a hyped-up book?

• I take time to observe how I feel about it. If a few days or weeks have passed and the book is still on my mind, I'll probably pick it up. But if a few hours later I don't even remember its name, I'll pass. 
• I try to think critically about how and why the book is being promoted to me, and if I decide to read the book, to think critically about the book itself and to share an honest perspective of it afterwards. (By critical I mean thoughtful, and not necessarily negative.) Having honest, balanced reviews available for a book can help other people decide whether to try it or not. 
• I remind myself that there's more than one kind of conversation. Hyped-up books are attractive because there's an exciting conversation going on about them and we want to be part of it. However, conversations are what we make them. It can be equally exciting to share your love of a lesser-known book, and to in turn hear other people talk about books that you wouldn't have learned of otherwise. Unexpected connections can form. Popular books give us a shared starting point, and that's wonderful. But let's not forget about our diverse points of view in the process.

How do you approach hyped-up books? Does hype increase, decrease, or have no effect on your enjoyment of a book?