558. The Myths of BookTok, with Chels Ebooks

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello and welcome to episode number 558 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell, and with me today is Chels, who is on TikTok as @chels_ebooks. Chels has been doing a series debunking the myths of BookTok, and let me tell you, when people say everything old is new again, myths about the sales power of new forms of social media are recycled with every new platform, I swear to God. So we are going to debunk some myths about romance and TikTok, and we’re going to talk about what Chels really likes about TikTok too. Plus we talk about classic romances and even more classic cover art.

I will have all of the links, as usual, in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

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All right, are you ready to talk about BookTok? We’re going to talk about BookTok; we’re going to do that. On with my conversation with Chels.

[music]

Chels: So my name is Chels. I’m a writer who’s primarily interested in romance, the history of romance, publishing, and social media. I’m probably most well known for TikTok. I have a BookTok account under the user name chels_ebooks, and there I focus on Old School historical romance, romance history, and cover art. I also have a Substack where I write about romance and romance history and pop culture; it’s called The Loose Cravat.

Sarah: I love all of those things. I am such a fan.

Chels: [Laughs]

Sarah: I also love cover art; as you might imagine, I’m a big fan –

Chels: Yes!

Sarah: – and I love seeing how the visual representation of romance has changed, and yet how some elements remain the same. I do, I do miss with all of the illustrated and cartoon covers? I really miss, like, animals just freaking out in the background of whatever the couple is doing?

Chels: [Laughs]

Sarah: Like, a falcon is like, Oh my God, they’re doing it! And a unicorn is like, Get off my lawn! Like, I miss the background animals that are just like – [scoffs] – How dare!

Chels: Yeah! Or like, like a bunch of horses, or sometimes there’d be like a panther or a dog that’s unsettling, like an unsettling dog.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Chels: There’s not enough of those.

Sarah: Do you have favorite covers?

Chels: Yes, I do! So I like the Tom Hall covers the best?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chels: So his are kind of also, like, a little bit unsettling?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chels: I have read that they’re, like, reminiscent, reminiscent of French impressionists, which I googled that; it means like Monet. [Laughs] But –

Sarah: Reminiscent.

Chels: – yeah. Yeah, reminiscent. That’s what I found on the internet. Yeah, he did a lot of covers for, like, bodice rippers. He did the original cover for The Thorn Birds; he did, like, Teresa Denys’s –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: – The Silver Devil, like that, like, really creepy, awesome cover. That’s probably my fave.

Sarah: I truly love the, the very, very end of, I think they might be doing it on the cover –

Chels: [Laughs]

Sarah: – poses? Like, I’m going to, I’m going to put in the chat for you one of my favorites, because I just, I wanted to make sure that you know of this cover. I had this cover on my bed stand when I – so this is from 2006, and Smart Bitches started in 2005, so this is one of the first covers I ever got like a book from a publisher; like, I didn’t know that was a thing publishers did? Like, the whole ARC thing? Complete mystery to me. I had this –

Chels: Yeah.

Sarah: – on my bed stand because it made me laugh every time I looked at it.

Chels: Is, are they on a cliff?

Sarah: I don’t know!

Chels: [Laughs]

Sarah: They’re, they’re fucking on some jagged rocks with a wave that is about to kill them.

Chels: I just, like – it’s, I’m at a loss –

Sarah: Amazing, right?

Chels: Yeah, no! It’s, it’s amazing. Like, I, I just, I’m just really thinking about his knees.

Sarah: Yes! [Laughs] Exactly!

Chels: Like, I think that’s going to cause some scrapes. And he’s got his pants on, but, like, those, those rocks seem extremely pointed; they seem threatening.

Sarah: My, my knees hurt just looking at that.

Chels: Yeah, it’s a little – you know, good for him.

Sarah: Yeah, right? But –

Chels: Yeah.

Sarah: – this is a – for those who will be listening, I’ll obviously have this in the show notes – this is For the Love of a Pirate by Edith Layton, I think one of Edith Layton’s latest, or last books before she passed away. I love this cover. Like, whenever someone’s like, Can you tell me, like give me an example of a cover? I’m like, Oh, just, just, just hang on.

Chels: [Laughs]

Sarah: We got waves, we got cliffs, we got rocks, and I think they’re doing it!

Chels: Yeah. It’s so, it’s like, they didn’t go for the beach. They weren’t like –

Sarah: No!

Chels: – they’re not, they’re not going to make love on the beach; they’re going to make love on the rocks.

Sarah: He’s very edgy.

[Laughter]

Sarah: And so on your TikTok, you have been doing a series on the myths and the mythology of TikTok and book sales, and I have to tell you, I feel both incredibly like I love these videos? I think they’re so interesting, and I love the way you pull from different sources in terms of analysis. They’re brilliant, and I look at them, and I’m like, Oh my God, I’ve been doing this for seventeen years and nothing has changed. It’s just the platform.

Chels: Yeah.

Sarah: So what are some of the ideas that you have been delightfully debunking?

Chels: Yeah, so I think there are a lot of big feelings about TikTok and the publishing industry, and it’s been kind of interesting to track.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: Yeah, so people kind of associate BookTok with rising book sales and have sort of framed it as a tastemaker in publishing, and that if something is going to get big, it’s going to get big on TikTok, so therefore, like, everybody needs to be on TikTok, authors need to be on TikTok, and something like that.

Sarah: Yep.

Chels: I think a lot of the grandiose claims about TikTok’s purchasing power are dubious and that articles that perpetuate these claims either cite each other or – which kind of creates a loop – or they trace their data back to BookScan, which is a subscription service that provides a faraway look at the data by way of, like, a handful of graphs that they give to journalists that don’t really mean anything. So you look at these, this information that they give you, and they tell you that the correlation is causation, and it’s just supposed to make sense, but without kind of like being able to look at it, like the granular data, it, even if you were, I don’t even think you would be able to track that, like, a view on TikTok translates into a sale.

Sarah: No.

Chels: Like, it just, it’s, it just really doesn’t add up. The rise of BookTok happened during the pandemic.

Sarah: Yep!

Chels: Like, that’s kind of a – and there’s this New York Times article that came out in like early, early March like – maybe not March, but it was like early 2020, like right in the beginning stages of the pandemic, where they noted that sales for authors who were bestsellers and celebrity books were doing really, really well, while new authors were struggling, so the big BookTok authors were all authors that had, that were, had bestselling books in the ‘00s? Like Taylor Jenkins Reid had multiple –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: – Leigh Bardugo had multiple, and they, a lot of them also have fandoms too?

Sarah: Yes.

Chels: This is something that I’ve kind of taken up from, other BookTokers have kind of pointed this out too, is that when people write about BookTok, they, sometimes they attribute things to BookTok that are actually from fandom on TikTok.

Sarah: Mm-hmm

Chels: Like Colleen, all Colleen Hoover fans aren’t BookTokers.

Sarah: No.

Chels: Like, they, they are Colleen Hoover fans; they make, like, Colleen Hoover fan content. Like, that’s not necessarily the same as someone from BookTok coming on and saying, Hey, I read this book that nobody’s ever heard of called It Ends with Us, so –

[Laughter]

Sarah: It’s like there is a portion of Tumblr on TikTok. There are very specific cohesive fandoms, and much like, much like being on Tumblr – I am clearly an old – you know, you, you find the fandom, you find all the people talking about the thing you love. The same is true on TikTok.

Chels: Yeah! Like, there’s, like, a huge ACoTaR fandom on TikTok, so that’s kind of like the, the thing that people say about BookTok is if they go there, if they get on BookTok and they don’t, like, train your algorithm is basically like once you interact with content it starts to show you more similar content?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chels: So if you don’t do that, primarily what you’re going to be seeing is, like, Colleen Hoover or Sarah J. Maas, and that’s – and so that, people kind of like conflate that while these, like, big viral videos – and a lot of times, too, it’s quite interesting: like, you go to the accounts of the people who have these big viral videos, they’re not really regular BookTokers all of the time.

Sarah: Nope.

Chels: They’re just, they’re, they’re making fan content, which is totally fine! But it is, it’s kind of, I, I don’t know, I think it’s kind of crazy to me that there are so many articles about the power of BookTok and all that BookTok has been doing, and then, and it’s primarily about Colleen Hoover and – there are other big authors too, authors that are very successful, and I don’t want to say that BookTok doesn’t, isn’t able to influence book sales, but –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chels: – I do, I, I think there’s kind of no way to prove that, and I think that a lot of the ways that people are talking about it is, I kind of, I kind of question the motives sometimes. Like, I wonder why this is such a compelling story, and I don’t consider myself someone who makes content for authors, but I have had a lot of authors, like, reach out to me and be like, Thank you so much for –

Sarah: Yes.

Chels: – for, for saying that some, something that, like, this isn’t your fault. Like –

Sarah: Yes.

Chels: – if you are on TikTok and you, you’re not getting traction, like, lis-, the, the way authors, the way that people are primarily getting attention on, on BookTok is, is kind of the same way that it’s always been: it’s ARCs most of the time –

Sarah: Yep!

Chels: – Advance Reader Copies. BookTok is kind of a little bit more married to the front list than I think I would like in some ways, because it’s very easy to kind of mimic the organic feel of, like, a word-of-mouth book if, like, a wealthy Big Five publisher puts all of their power behind, like, a specific book and distributes, like, so many ARCs.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s grass roots, except that the grass is actually made out of hundred dollar bills.

Chels: Yeah. It’s just –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chels: – it’s just like, so yeah: there’s kind of like a lot of, a lot of things that are kind of dubious. The book sales, and then there’s also “BookTok is saving Barnes & Noble” is another big one. Which just, that one really frustrates me too.

Sarah: Wow! What power and responsibility you guys have. Are you okay over there?

Chels: Yeah, and it’s, you know, the weight of the world.

Sarah: It’s just, it’s fine.

Chels: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: I mean – [laughs] – and, and that, that one’s really funny to me because Barnes & Noble has a lot of good will by way of not being Amazon?

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Chels: And by being the only physical bookstore in a lot of areas. And Barnes & Noble has kind of capitalized off of TikTok with, you know, their BookTok tables, and they have touted, like, James Daunt, their CEO, has, like, publicly thanked BookTok and said that this is kind of the reason that they’ve come back.

Sarah: It’s not just that, though, because Barnes & Noble’s one of the last remaining bookstores that is in so many locations, and also it’s going to be popular with young people because there are no spaces for young people to hang out in anymore. You’re, you know, you’re not supposed to congregate at the mall if you’re a teen; someone’s going to call the cops. You can’t hang out on the street; someone’s going to call the cops. When I was younger and my, my friends who have teenagers, they go to, they go to Barnes & Noble and hang out. There’s a coffee shop in there.

Chels: Yeah!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chels: Yeah! It’s, it’s, and it’s so easy to do a Barnes & Noble book call, because there’s no, really nowhere else to do it. It’s kind of like, it’s –

Sarah: Yeah!

Chels: – easy content. You don’t have to buy the books; you can just, like, film yourself looking at the books and then talk about the books.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chels: Which, honestly, nothing wrong with that.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s great!

Chels: I think I would – yeah, I would take more issue kind of with the Barnes &, there are Barnes & Noble TikTok accounts where they have their employees make TikTok videos, and that, I block all of them. I hate that so much! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: I, I think that’s – I know they’re not getting compensated for that.

Sarah: The devil you say.

Chels: Yeah. They’re, they’re definitely not.

Sarah: One of the things that struck me – two things actually struck me as I was looking at your videos, and I’m like, Wow. Okay, one: we are still starved for accurate data inside publishing. Whether you are an author, whether you are a reader, whether you are trying to figure out what a book actually sold, we’re all still starving for accurate data.

And everything is the same, right? Like, okay, when I started blogging in 2005 about romance – I was blogging before that, but when I started Smart Bitches in 2005 with Candy Tan, that was right at the start of book blogging, and authors were told at that time, Okay, you need to start a blog. You need a blog; blogs are important. You need to have a blog. And I was like, No, you don’t. You really – I mean – [sighs] – if you are good at TikTok, then you think, Okay, I have an idea and I know how to make this visually. If I want to write something, I, that muscle is very strong. If you’re busy writing books, you can’t also maintain a blog. That’s not universally applicable advice, but it was like, Nonono, you have to have a blog. And then it was Instagram: You need to have an Instagram. You need to have a Twitter. You need to have a BookTube. You need to have – you need to be an influencer; you need to have this platform. That’s never changed. It’s staggering to me that people are like, Oh, I need to be on TikTok! I’m like, Well, you don’t need to be on TikTok, and you don’t need to have a blog. [Laughs] It’s okay!

Chels: Yeah! No, I, I, I think you’re exactly right. I think it’s just kind of like, it’s always, it’s moving goalposts.

Sarah: Yes! It really, really is, and I’m horrified to see it happening over and over again. It’s like, this is like the eighth thing people are told they need to have.

Chels: Yeah, and, and, and TikTok, too, is kind of like, I, I always, I always, I always feel like I, I come across as like a TikTok hater. Like, I’m on BookTok; like, I, I like it obviously, but, like –

Sarah: Obviously!

Chels: – but, like, I, it’s, it’s kind of a little bit more insidious to me to say that you need to be on TikTok, because TikTok is not a level playing field. Like, the algorithm is if it’s like, is this nebulous thing –

Sarah: No, it’s people!

Chels: – and there have been, like, critical – yeah!

Sarah: It’s people! They’re picking stuff. Like, they said so! [Laughs]

Chels: Yeah! It’s credible, there have been, like, credible allegations of racism and suppressing content, and so it’s just like a not – it’s, it’s just, it just feels really kind of awful to be like, This is a thing that you have to do, and you have to be good at it, and this is how books sell now; and it’s like, well, I don’t, I don’t think so! I don’t, I don’t think so.

Sarah: No.

Chels: Yeah. There are so many people who are kind of just, like, unnecessarily mean in their criticisms of BookTok, and so you get kind of that, like, that, that defense like, I believe there was an article in Lit Hub recent-, recently: “BookTok is Good, Actually,” and the author of that piece’s argument is essentially that you have to, you’re kind of sad and pathetic and jealous of successful authors if you aren’t on BookTok? Like, it’s, I, I don’t think that’s helpful to anyone. Like, even if you are a fan of TikTok or even if you are good at TikTok, which some people are and some people aren’t, and it’s totally fine; it’s not, it’s not going to make or break your book.

Sarah: Yeah! It’s absolutely true. These are some of the frustrations you have with TikTok. What do you love about TikTok?

Chels: It’s very low barrier to entry? So –

Sarah: That is fascinating to me.

Chels: Yeah! You don’t really have to have like, you don’t really have to have everything figured out to, in order to get your videos seen, because the, you don’t have to have a following, essentially. Like, any video could potentially be put on the For You page, which is the feed where people who don’t follow you see your videos. So my early videos were, like, I wouldn’t be here without TikTok. I don’t think anybody would be interested in, in talking to me, or I wouldn’t have kind of like developed my skill sets without it? But my vid-, early videos were a mess. I had shoddy editing –

Sarah: Oh!

Chels: – I didn’t script.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Chels: I had a very cheap ring light that made me look jaundiced. I stopped using –

[Laughter]

Chels: I stopped using a ring light like maybe a few weeks in. I was just like, This is not working out. I just have to hope for the best with the weather outside; that’s bright enough.

But yeah, people will tell you also, like, what you have to do on TikTok, and I think that can be kind of obnoxious. Like, you, you have to have, like, really short videos; they have to have trending sounds. I didn’t do any of that. All my videos are like three minutes plus.

Sarah: Yep.

Chels: I’m not really interested in creating digestible content. It’s made me really good at condensing my thoughts and, and editing and trying to pick out the absolute best words possible so that I’m not making like ten-, fifteen-minute videos?

My, I also don’t talk about new books, which is kind of a thing that people say that you have to do. Most of my, my most successful videos are about bodice rippers that are out of print.

Sarah: Oh yeah! I noticed that one of the things that TikTok did do is revitalize the backlists of authors. Now, they were already popular; these were authors who were already known names, but they were books that were going back like ten years! And the, my, my theory has always been that if you haven’t read it, then it’s a new book.

Chels: Yeah.

Sarah: Publishers not, like marketers and publicists, not a fan of that statement, but –

Chels: No!

Sarah: – if you haven’t read it, it’s a new book! So it doesn’t necessarily matter when it came out if you’re like, I got to tell you about this! Like, please tell me everything about this book from 1972; I want to know everything about it

Chels: Yeah! It’s, it’s, it’s so much fun to do, ‘cause, like, you’re, there’s so much out there, and it’s also just like, it kind of opens up kind of the possibility of, like, what you can be talking about. You don’t need to be going to Barnes & Noble; you could be going to that really smelly bookstore where they don’t organize the books, and they’re all in, like, the brown bags.

Sarah: And you’re searching for Topaz man with his shirt.

Chels: Yes! [Laughs] Yes! I am always searching for him!

Sarah: I used to hunt for what cover he was from until I realized, Oh, that’s a separate illustration.

Chels: [Laughs] The one, the one on his, on the spine, like –

Sarah: Yes, with the, with the white shirt and the incredible hair.

Chels: Yeah. I want, I want a shirt like that. Like, I, I, I find it hard to get the sleeves right.

Sarah: Yeah. It’s like part puffy shirt, part pirate shirt.

Chels: Yeah.

Sarah: Have you seen some of the old Rebecca Brandewyne covers where she does her author photo on the back cover dressed as the heroine –

Chels: Yes!

Sarah: – on the front cover? I used to hunt for those in the used bookstore because I loved them so much. Like, I loved the dedication!

Chels: I, that is a level of extra that I’ve always aspired to? Like, I, she’s like, Okay, the cover model can be on the front –

Sarah: That’s fine.

Chels: – but I’ll be on the back. [Laughs]

Sarah: And if you think about the amount of coordination, she had to have the ability to say to the publisher, I need to know what the dress looks like; I need to know what color it is; I need to see pictures of it, ‘cause I’m having one made. Or I need to borrow the model’s gown, or, like, how did that come to be?

Chels: I, yeah. No, that was so incredible. I love, I love those. [Laughs]

Sarah: Please tell me about your Substack. I love reading it, I think it is so interesting, and I, and I love that it’s almost sort of come back around to blogging. I think of Substack as dedicated, personalized blogging, ‘cause it’s like a, it’s a, it’s an essay. It’s a blog-length essay, but instead of having it on a site, it’s directed specifically to people who want to, who want to read it. And I love that you’ve gone with TikTok to Substack. I love this so much!

Chels: Yeah! So TikTok is a bit limiting because not every thought or idea I want to explore can be condensed into three minutes? So The Loose Cravat was kind of born out of my desire to do long-form work.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chels: It’s called The Loose Cravat because I’m a queer historical romance guy, so I wanted to, like, paint the picture that I care about history and I’m, like, thoroughly uninterested in refined neatness?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chels: So I actually started with essays about my burnout on TikTok, which is something that is, kind of happens because the TikTok videos are, as I think I might have said earlier, they’re ephemeral?

Sarah: Yes.

Chels: Like, they don’t really have staying power the way that the other forms of social media do.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: So, so I wanted to write, like, longer pieces about authors I’m interested in, like Teresa Denys, or, like, kind of take out, like expand thoughts. I have this big fear of being misunderstood, which happens on TikTok a lot, and Twitter too. Twitter, to me, is scarier, because I think sometimes a thought is something that I need to expand and think and sit on and not something that is maybe worth two sentences.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chels: It’s kind of where I decided to, to do that. So I started writing things that, like, opinion pieces. I started about how the, writing about the romance industry and how it’s changed, but more importantly how it hasn’t. I think a lot of times kind of a big interest of mine is, is kind of debunking the idea that progress is linear and, like, about, some of, like, the, the maybe less empathetic thoughts that people have about the past? Like sometimes, because I talk about older romance books a lot, people will usually kind of talk to me like a little, like, frame their conversation in a little bit of a condescending way to –

Sarah: Oh yes!

Chels: – romance readers!

Sarah: Extremely familiar; I know all the words to this song. Yes.

Chels: Yeah! And I –

Sarah: Let me, let me tell you what happens when I tell people what my job is! [Laughs]

Chels: Oh, oh my goodness!

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: Like, a whole website? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, yeah! Like seventeen years’ worth! Mm-hmm! Some things do not change, and the general condescension to romance, it’s, sometimes I see it less, but it’s still there!

Chels: Yeah, yeah, and I, and it, it just, it drives me crazy, especially from, like, romance readers who, like, are maybe not as familiar or not as curious or not very empathetic to older romance readers? Like, I think that bothers me, so – and we have also erased a lot of cool history when we kind of pretend that everything now is better than everything then and kind of paper over modern problems that I think are worth addressing? I find a lot of times, people who make big blanket statements are the ones who are the least curious or, or helpful in fixing anything, so – [deep breath] – but, yeah, I’m interested in digging into thornier subjects, but hopefully with, like, an honesty that does them justice.

Sarah: What led you into this particular interest? The romance reader origin story is something I love, but it’s always like, well, meandering.

Chels: Yeah! So I, I think that I can kind of – so there is the, like, my, my mom, my mom read romance novels, and she also wrote too, but our, we didn’t really overlap, like, in the hobby as much?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chels: So it was kind of like during the pandemic is when I got really, really into romance, romance novels, and I think kind of, what kind of made me what I am is probably reading a lot of bodice rippers and kind of like the books that are, like, so maligned. For me, like, there’s, a lot of them are like, kind of have, like, a little bit of elements of horror to them –

Sarah: Oh yeah! For sure.

Chels: – that I really found appealing, and I liked thinking about them, and, and that’s kind of, I think that was kind of a turning point for me is when I started, like, digging more and more into, like, the past and, like, what people used to do and, and how things started and how, how people used to think, because I think for me, I, it didn’t feel good –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: – when people would, when people would be kind of like, I don’t know, a little bit snooty about it or –

Sarah: Mm-hmm. This seems completely normal to me, but I know exactly what kind of reaction you get.

Chels: I think that sometimes people are like, Why are you spending so much time on this? And I’m like, Because it’s my favorite thing in the world. [Laughs]

Sarah: Absolutely. What are some of the most memorable romances that are no longer in print that you just love to think about?

Chels: Judy Cuevas’s Bliss and Dance?

Sarah: Yes!

Chels: Are my absolute favorites. They’re so perfect. So they’re set in like the early 1900s France. The first one, Bliss, is about Nardi, who’s, like, a sculptor, and the second one is about his brother, who’s a duc, but picture me saying that with a C instead of the K-E, because –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: – he’s a French duc.

Sarah: Duc!

Chels: [Laughs] He’s a –

Sarah: Yes.

Chels: Yeah, and, and they’re, they’re just like, both of them have, like, so much about art and, like, messy family relationships. I love Judith Ivory so much. I think that she’s very, I think kind of something that can be kind of frustrating about a lot of romance novels for me, at least, is that, like, they’re so tied to reconciliation, and, like, I, I love how she’s kind of like, sometimes you hate a guy, but that doesn’t mean that guy is awful! People just don’t like other people, and that’s, like, something that is weirdly comforting to me about her books. It’s not really the point – like, there’s the romance, but she’s just so good with people.

Sarah: Her characters and characters by, like, Patricia Gaffney? They just live in my head.

Chels: Oooh!

Sarah: Right? They’re just, they’re so emotionally realized? Like, I know the popular term is they’re very fleshed out, they’re very, they seem real, but they are so emotionally memorable and so emotionally nuanced that, like, they just haunt my brain, and I’ve read them like ten more years ago.

Chels: Yeah! No, the, the Wyckerley trilogy, I reread those –

Sarah: Oh my gosh!

Chels: – so often. Just, like, perfect series. I recommend, like, everybody says that To Have and to Hold is, like – I don’t, I don’t, I think that book is extremely good. I actually think that book is feminist. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Chels: I think I – well, I said that like it was, like, radical thing – no, that’s, it is feminist. It’s –

Sarah: Absolutely!

Chels: – it’s, like, got a lot of cool stuff and ideas about, like, prison and incarceration and, like, the type of women that get left behind that –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: But when people talk about it, they’re like, Oh, he’s a bad man who did a bad thing! I’m like, Well, yeah! That’s the point.

Sarah: That’s kind of the whole thing, right?

Chels: Yeah, that’s the point. I, I do think like sometimes there’s kind of like a tendency to have a lot of romance characters be more unequivocally good –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: – than they used to be?

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: And I, and I think that’s also kind of interesting, because especially with historicals, and you get into the aristocracy, it’s, I think it’s, like, a little bit weird to, to have the aristocracy be the good guys –

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Chels: – and, and I think that is a little bit weird. Yeah, I do – not that I don’t enjoy it, but, like, I do kind of, I kind of like the, the older books where, in, in some ways, like, they’re like, Yeah, he’s the love interest, but he’s also a horrible person.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Chels: Because he’s, because kind of everybody in this position is, in a way, a horrible person.

Sarah: And it’s interesting because there’s some, there’s still so much wider range of accepted behavior for male-presenting characters, heroes, than there is for female-presenting characters and, and heroines especially in historical. I think it was Lisa Kleypas is like, They’re like Goldilocks’s porridge: not too hot, not too small, not too loud, not too mean, not too strident, not too anything; just this very neutral, even plain yogurt. Like, there’s not even a flavor. [Laughs] It’s just a solid mass of person.

Chels: People are really harsh about heroines. Like…

Sarah: Still! It’s amazing to me!

Chels: If I see someone on Goodreads call a heroine a bitch I’m like, I’m going to love that book.

Sarah: Oh yeah! It’s like, it’s, it’s like if you see a book review that says, This book had too much sex in it, like sixty readers just went, I’m sorry, could you tell me the title again of the book that had too much sex in it?

Chels: It’s like, oh, it sounds like a – sounds great! [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah!

So what are you working on now?

Chels: I am starting a podcast! I’m –

Sarah: Yaaay!

Chels: Which is hard to do!

Sarah: Awesome! Tell me all about it!

Chels: So it’s, it’s called Reformed Rakes, and it’s with, actually, two other BookTokers. So it’s like a historical romance podcast for leftists, essentially? [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh, perfection! Absolute perfection.

Chels: Yeah. So we filmed like a few episodes so far, so hopefully maybe some time within like a month or so we’ll get some things up. But yeah, that’s kind of the, that – so yeah, it’s called Reformed Rakes. And then also just my Substack. I think I’ve been kind of putting a lot of effort into my writing –

Sarah: Yeah!

Chels: – and it’s kind of been kind of a nice outlet.

Sarah: So what books are you talking about, and who else is in this podcast?

Chels: Ah, yes! So it’s, it’s me, Beth – her, she goes by Bethhaymenreads –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Chels: – on TikTok. Probably the most concise reviewer, and who does, is really good at giving, like, plots without spoilers? Like –

Sarah: That is an –

Chels: – she can do like a –

Sarah: – art.

Chels: Yeah! She can –

Sarah: That’s hard!

Chels: Well, she can do like a very condensed summary of a book with no spoilers, and then also have like the criticism and commentary just like very neatly tied together.

And then I’m also with Emma, who’s EmKick on TikTok. So she’s a lawyer and law librarian? She also has a Substack called Restorative Romance.

But what we first recorded is a series on Cecilia Grant. We all were huge fans; so good.

Sarah: I, I love that book, A Lady, Lady Undone [A Lady Awakened]. I love that book because there’s so much bad sex in it.

Chels: Yes!

Sarah: Like, there’s super hot conversations about land management and sheep farming –

Chels: [Laughs]

Sarah: – and the sex is terrible!

Chels: So bad! They’re having sex like almost the entire time, and it’s, like –

Sarah: So. Bad! [Laughs]

Chels: There’s one point where he loses his erection?

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah! It is so good, and, and it subverts so many things in so many ways. There’s, there’s no shortage of things to talk about with that book.

Chels: It’s really, really good, and I – so yeah, we were, we’re really excited about that one.

Sarah: So what books are you reading right now that you would like to tell people about?

Chels: They’re kind of related. So I, on accident? ‘Cause I bought these two books, and the, yeah. Anyway, so I’m, right now I’m reading The King’s Brat by Constance Gluyas, and it’s a historical romance. It was published in 1972 –

Sarah: Ooh!

Chels: – which is kind of interesting, because that was the same year as The Flame and the Flower.

Sarah: Yeah!

Chels: But this book was, like, obviously not game-changing the same way, and it was published as a hardback from Prentice Hall, and they’re like a, they’re more well known for their textbooks? So I don’t think it was really sold as a romance novel, even though it, it totally is, but it wasn’t really sold as one until ’79, when Warner picked it up, and they, they, they gave it like a clinch cover that’s, like, illustrated by Melissa Duillo, and put it in mass market, so now it’s a romance novel.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: Even though it’s the same. But I, I picked it up because it, I’m trying, I’m currently reading about, like, depictions of Newgate in romance novels, and the first –

Sarah: Ohhh, interesting!

Chels: – yeah, the first like third – well, that’s probably too much – the first like fifth is, like, all in, in Newgate, and it’s horrifying and gross and weird. I’ve, I read another ‘70s romance novel that was, like, had a lot of Newgate scenes. I feel like when Newgate kind of pops up nowadays, I don’t think people are as interested as setting the scenes inside Newgate –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: – as they are, like, referencing Newgate? Which is fair, because it’s kind of a horrifying place; not super romantic. But yeah, it’s like a Restoration era, and the heroine catches the eye of Charles II? And –

Sarah: As you do.

Chels: Yeah! No, anyone could, really! [Laughs] He had a very roving eye!

Sarah: I – he, yes. He was a, he was popular.

Chels: Yeah! And then she, like, makes an enemy out of Barbara Villiers, which was his, like, kind of like famous mistress? Sometimes I think she was also, like, Lady, known as Lady Castlemaine.

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: But I got this book at the same time that I got this other book called The Lives of the English Rakes, and there’s like a whole chapter on Charles II, so it was like, oh, that’s interesting. The author, Fergus Linnane, says that he was too nice to be a rake, which I didn’t know, romance novels taught me that rakes can be nice, and I was like –

Sarah: I mean, I’ve seen many a nice rake.

Chels: Yeah. What is this definition? [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah!

Chels: I feel like there’s, like, a taxonomy of rakes you can do? Like, there’s, like, a different; there’s, like, a dissipated; there’s, like, the charming rake; there’s, like, like, from, what is it, like, Anne Gracie’s The Perfect Rake; I always think of that –

Sarah: Yes.

Chels: – where they’re like, Reformed rakes make great husbands. Which, like –

Sarah: There’s the, the scary, cold rake; the crime, the, the crime mastermind rake who doesn’t let anyone near them but has lots and lots of sex.

Chels: Yeah. There’s, like, the, the misogynist –

Sarah: Yes!

Chels: – rake. That’s –

Sarah: Yes.

Chels: There’s the, there’s the, the charming one; like, we’re told that Colin Bridgerton is the charming rake, but I have yet to see the evidence on paper. But, like, I’m sure –

Sarah: No, you just call him a rake and it’s true!

Chels: Yeah, you can, you can just say it. You can just say that he’s charming. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah. And a lot of historical romance is a very, very fast shorthand, because you’re talking to an audience that is familiar with all of these pieces, so if you say, This character’s a rake, like, okay, I fill that in; I know that that means.

Chels: Yeah! Yeah, you definitely, you definitely do. But yeah! So I believe that Charles II was a rake, unless you exclude kings. [Laughs]

Sarah: They also had a lot of sex.

Chels: Yeah! He did! And, and so did his mistress Barbara Villiers, and she’s like a, she’s kind of a villain in the romance novel that I’m reading, The King’s Brat, but, like, she also pops up in this book, and they’re like, Oh, well, she – they didn’t say that she wasn’t a villain, but they said that she was a rake –

Sarah: Yeah.

Chels: – and that Charles didn’t have any problem with that. So I thought that was pretty – he’s apparently very easygoing.

Sarah: I have a rake for you to read, if you’re interested in a recommendation.

Chels: Yes, I am.

Sarah: I am, I am an inveterate fan of a lot of Edith Layton’s books? I already showed you the, the –

Chels: Yeah!

Sarah: – we, we, we have sex on edgy rocks? She wrote a book in like 1982, like early, early ‘80s; it’s called The Duke’s Wager, and it’s about a heroine who is pursued by two men who are both attractive and very desirable in society, and one of them – okay, this is, this is the cover copy; ready? All right, hold onto your headphones.

“One was Jason Thomas, Duke of Torquay, whose skill and success in seduction had made him a legend of lordly licentiousness.”

Chels: Oh, I love the alliteration. [Laughs]

Sarah: Right? Mwah! So good! And the other guy is St. John Basil St. Charles, who’s “the devilish Duke’s only rival as the foremost rake of the realm.” And they decide to have a wager as to who’s going to ruin this, this girl, and it, it, it takes a lot of clever turns? But they’re, they’re two very different models of rake?

Chels: That’s awesome!

Sarah: Yes.

Chels: Two! So it’s a triangle.

Sarah: Yes! Yes.

Chels: Okay.

Sarah: But it’s not a love triangle where you’re invested in both of them?

Chels: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: It’s, it’s so interestingly done. It’s one of my favorite of her, of her novels. And also, lordly licentiousness!

Chels: [Laughs]

Sarah: Where can people find you if you wish to be found?

Chels: Yes! So I am on TikTok; the username is chels_ebooks, and that’s kind of my username everywhere. There’s two underscores on Twitter ‘cause somebody’s just sitting on that one I guess. [Laughs]

Sarah: How? How?

Chels: Yeah. But, and then I’m, I’m also, I write at The Loose Cravat; it’s theloosecravat.substack.com.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you so much to Chels for hanging out and telling me all the things. As I mentioned in the intro, I will have all of the links to all of the things that we talked about, but at the end of the interview, Chels mentioned, you know, there should be a taxonomy of rakes? There is now a taxonomy of rakes because Chels wrote one, and I will link to that Substack in the show notes as well.

As always, I end with a terrible joke, and this joke comes from my email inbox. This was sent to me by Karoline. I hope I’m saying that right; it could be care-o-linn, but I think it care-o-line. Karoline’s seventh-grader just told the most groan-worthy joke, and “I immediately thought that I should share it with you for the podcast.” These are good thoughts, and I commend this impulse. This joke is terrific. Are you ready?

Why can’t you run through a campground?

Give up? Why can’t you run through a campground?

You can only ran, because it’s past tents.

[Laughs] Past tense! That is an outstanding joke. Thank you, Karoline, and thank you to Karoline’s seventh-grader! That is, that is, that is top tier.

On behalf of everyone here, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will see you back here next week.

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

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