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- [00:01]
Tracy Thomas
Hey everybody, it's me, Tracy Thomas, host of the Stacks, and you're here for another episode of the Stacks Unabridged, our exclusive bonus episodes for paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack. This month we're doing something a little bit different. I'm actually sharing a conversation where I was interviewed by the folks over at the LA Review of Books about social media and book publishing content creator life, and also a few recommendations of books that are getting us through the year. If this episode cuts out for you after about 15 minutes, that means you're not a paid subscriber of the Substack or the Patreon. And you can remedy that by going to patreon.com thestacks or tracy thomas.substack.com to join. In addition to getting to listen to this episode and all of our bonus episodes, you'll also get perks like access to the Non Fiction Summer Reading Guide, which is only available now through September 22nd. You'll also get perks like my hot takes about pop culture, access to the Discord, and so much more. So head to patreon.com thestacks or tracythomas.substack.com to join. Okay, enough of me. Now here's a conversation that I got to be a part of with the LA Review of Books.
- [01:16]
Eric
We're pleased to be on the line today with Tracy Thomas. Tracy is the host and creator and so much more of the literary podcast the Stacks, which you can find wherever you get your podcasts or@thestackpodcast.com. you can also hear Tracy every month on NPR's Here and Now, or see her live on stage as part of the Literary Laist Live series One for the Books. In addition to this already varied and voluminous work, Tracy also hosts and moderates literary events, book festivals, and author talks across the country. And she does all this while also working on her own substack, appropriately called Unstacked, where she offers deep dives into books while also opening the door to discussing her non literary passions like pop culture, which we're all always already here for, sports, which maybe one or two of us politics and more. She joins us today from her home in Los Angeles. Hi Tracy, thank you so much for joining us.
- [02:15]
Tracy Thomas
Maybe I can convince you to like sports.
- [02:18]
Eric
Oh, a challenge after many, many years. I mean, maybe tennis occasionally.
- [02:23]
Tracy Thomas
The French Open is on right now. It is great. So many compelling narratives. If you love a story, if you love an upset, if you love heart and emotion, sports telling you it's where it's at.
- [02:37]
Unknown
Look, I'm immediately up for one of the hardest things that she can take on, convincing me and Eric to like sports. What our parents can't do, Tracy can.
- [02:50]
Eric
So the reason we wanted to talk with Tracy today for this collab is to talk about the book fluencer, which is a clunky word that we use to describe folks like Tracy. And I'll ask her in a minute how she identifies, as it were, who bring kind of literary discussions, book discovery and passion to the multi platform landscape of today's social media. And it's because of Tracy's kind of unique sort of work in this relatively new literary media ecosphere that we also want to talk to her about this strange moment in media, you know, which depending on your pov, is either the harbinger of a new dream or a kind of techno capitalist nightmare. So we're going to get into it and talk a bit about being a modern content creator, about where people find their latest read today and about the books that are getting through this very strange, maybe kind of scary year. So can you talk to us a little bit about how you got started and what it, like, do you even kind of vibe with the, the, the identity label of like a book fluencer?
- [03:58]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, you know, I know people feel weird about these things. They feel very strongly like I'm not an influencer, I'm a content creator. And to me it's all the same. I don't feel strongly that there's a difference between those things. Like when I think about people who make fashion content, I'm not, I don't say, oh, they're not a fashion influencer, they're a content creator. There's no difference to me what I personally say because a lot of people who aren't in the book space don't know what a book fluencer is. I generally just say I talk about books on the Internet because I do do so many different things and hearing you list out my bio like that makes me kind of nauseous. But you know, we'll move off that. But I just say I talk about books on the Internet, I'm a book person, I review books, I promote books, I have a book podcast. There's. It's such a new thing to be a single book person unattached to a large media company that there isn't really language for it. And most people, I have to say like three or four things that I do before any of it actually hits. So I'm not precious about what People call me.
- [05:06]
Unknown
Tell us how you got started. Of course you were a reader. And, And. And how did you bring being a reader and a writer to this other. To these other platforms?
- [05:17]
Tracy Thomas
Okay, so first, I'm not a writer. I hate writing. I only write because I have to. It's part of being a person who talks about books on the Internet. If I could do everything as a podcast, that's what I would do. I just want to talk about books. But the way that I got started was with the podcast back. I had always been a reader. Growing up, I loved reading. I lived in New York. I read all the time on the subway, you know, on the bus, whatever. I moved to LA and I basically stopped reading. So in 2016, I set a goal for myself. I was like, I'm going to get back into reading. I'm going to read a book a month for the whole year. Like, no one's ever done anything this hard in their life. And I got to December 29, I finished my last book. You know, I treated myself to a gallon of ice cream. I was like, I am the most literate person. And then in 2017, I said, I'm going to read 13 books this year because I had pushed it to the wire. You know, I thought I had, like, reached my limit. And I started posting little reviews on my just personal Instagram page. And at the time, I was working in fitness, I was a spin instructor. And people would come up to me and say, oh, I saw you read the sellout by James Beatty. What did you think? Or, oh, that book you said you loved is so bad, I can't believe you liked it, or whatever. And I realized, like, oh, my gosh, people want to talk about books. And I had sort of been sold this lie that people in LA don't read or don't care about books. And that's not true, as I'm sure you both know. But. But it. That was sort of the first thing that clicked. And then the second piece was that I read the book Blood in the Water about the Attica prison uprising, and I was desperate to talk about it. And nobody in my life, like, my mom, didn't really remember it that well. We're from California, and it was a New York thing, so it was sort of like, you know, and it was 50 years ago, so she was sort of was like, I don't remember. And so I went to listen to a podcast about it, and there were only two episodes I could find. One was a legal podcast, and it was a very legal eagle and then the other podcast I can no longer find, I've tried to go back and find it. I think it was the New Yorker or something like that. Very hoity toity. They weren't really talking about the book in the way that I wanted to talk about it. They weren't saying things like, oh my God, that scene was so crazy. Like, are you kidding me? They were saying things like the sentence structure was beautiful. And I just, I was like, I need a place to talk about books in the ways that I want to talk about them. And so then I was like, I'll just make my own podcast. And then everything just spiraled and is completely out of my control now.
- [07:49]
Eric
So you started doing this in 2018. And I think over about that kind of period of time we've also seen content creators, and it's not just literary views, but also movie reviews, like all kinds of cultural criticism has kind of become a unique space for promotion that in particular the publishing industry has become more and more reliant on. I mean, I'm remembering this New York Times article from. And we're going to get into this as well because it's also all about platforms in which when TikTok was first threatened to kind of be yanked out of the country, whatever that would actually look like or mean, a lot of publishers were kind of concerned because they said actually book talk, which is a reference to bookfluencers or book related content creators on TikTok, but I think is also used as a catch all for people like yourself too, who are primarily on other social media platforms. They had become really important to the kind of publicity campaigns for these books. So can you talk a little bit about how just over the course of your own work on this podcast, you've seen the type of work that you're doing change?
- [09:02]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, I mean, because I think this is across most of the platforms, at least Instagram, which is where I'm mostly active as far as social media goes. I don't really consider substack social media, but it is. But anyways, I'm the most active on Instagram and video has become huge in the last seven years since I've been doing this, which really changes. I mean, I like to just post a picture. I'm an elder millennial. I don't want to make a film. I will make a film about once a week. That's what I call my reels are films because it takes seven years to make one. But there's a lot less. When I first started, there was a Lot more reviewing going on. People were talking about books they had read. Now it's a lot more like book haul culture where it'll be like, here's all the books that I got at the bookstore, here's all the book mail I got or here are all the books that are coming out this month. And a lot less of, I read this one book and here's what I thought about it. And when we do see reviews, oftentimes those are also now more video style reviews where someone will say, I read this book and oh my God, it made me want to throw. Grow up. And it was amazing. But there's no actual critical conversation. A lot of people won't even post critical reviews, which is something that I do. I think it's really important. I'm one of the few people who genuinely will say I didn't like this book or this was bad. And so. And as time has gone on, there's even less and less people who will do that. Most people say, I'm only going to talk about the books I like. Or I'm not going to say, say anything bad about a book. Because writing a book is hard. And I'm like, everything is hard.
- [10:37]
Unknown
Everything is hard.
- [10:39]
Tracy Thomas
You know what's really hard? Being a waitress. And a lot of people are rude to waitresses and tell them they're doing a bad job. So it's not that writing a book isn't hard, but I would love for you to find me a job that's not hard. Like, you know who works really hard? My babysitter. Totally. And like I have notes for her too. So I'm gonna have notes for your novel. It's just, that's how it's going to be.
- [11:02]
Unknown
When you are choosing which book you're going to talk about, what do you think about, like, are you thinking about the book that has most sort of engaged your attention? Are you thinking about your audience? Are you thinking about all those. Maybe all those things?
- [11:17]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, I'm thinking about a lot of different things. So one of the rules I set for myself when I first started the Instagram page and the podcast was that every book I finished, I, I would review publicly. So if I read a book to the very end, I will post about it. I used to always do it on my Instagram. Now I've sort of started doing that weekly on my substack. I post like a mini paragraph review. That is a rule that I set for myself that I have sort of a non negotiable as far as like if I'm posting a bunch of books that are coming out soon or whatever. I'm thinking about what are books. Mostly I'm thinking about what am I genuinely interested in. Because I believe, and I know as a consumer of Internet culture, that when people speak honestly and passionately about things, that's much more effective than when they try to squeeze into a box. That being said, sometimes I will read a book because everyone else said it was great, even though I never would read it. I'm like, I just. I just have to know. Like, we did Colleen Hoover on book Club last year. I would never normally read a Colleen Hoover book, but at some point I was like, I'm a book person. I gotta know what this is about. So sometimes it's that outside pressure. Sometimes I also, I call. This is not really true. But what I call it is inventing a book. I like to invent a book, which is where I find a book that's coming out that I read that I really love, and I talk about it a lot. And then at the end of the year, people tell me, I read this book because of you or whatever. A few years ago, I think the. A book that people, A lot of people associated with me was country of the Blind by Andrew Leland.
- [12:53]
Unknown
Great book.
- [12:53]
Tracy Thomas
And that. Real. So good. But it wasn't. It's not an online book. It's not fairy smut. It's not, you know, it's not that. It's not even like literary fiction. It's not all fours. It's not James. Like, I, I read James early. I loved it. I screamed about it. But I was never going to invent that book. Right. Like, Percival Everett invented that book. You know, same with Martyr. I read it early. I loved it. I screamed about it. But like, that book, it got to be too much of an online thing for anyone to invent.
- [13:24]
Eric
Yeah. You know, I. I want to talk to you a little bit. I mean, we've kind of been teasing this throughout. Is like that You're. I wonder how I could even break this down. So it's like you've got the. You have the podcast, right? So that involves scheduling, recording, prep, all of that. You create also social media posts in order to promote the podcast, but also to call out other things that you're doing. You do the live events. You work with NPR for their here and now as a monthly contributor.
- [13:55]
Tracy Thomas
You're making me sick again.
- [13:57]
Eric
I know, I know. But this is what I'm curious about because. And as you've mentioned before, this isn't A podcast.
- [14:02]
Unknown
It's actually just your to do list.
- [14:04]
Eric
This is therapy.
- [14:07]
Tracy Thomas
It's like the dickens. It's like past, present and future self, like, come and talk to you, but instead it's just all the things I have to do today. Come and talk to me.
- [14:17]
Unknown
Sorry, where the ghosts of your present.
- [14:20]
Eric
Okay, exactly like the groundhog's day of your to do list. But like, I mean, as you had mentioned before, you know, there's kind of been a shift to even within all of that. Plus the substack. Right. Like, even within all of that, there's a shift to more video content, which I know you've had to respond to. And you're, you know, or kind of integrate into your system, you know, how did you kind of learn to do all of these things? Because, you know, nobody is born outside of a Nepo baby, maybe, who grows up on set. Right. Nobody is born just knowing how to do all this recording, knowing how to do the social media stuff. So I assume that was all a process. And can you kind of talk about how you developed and kind of how you today kind of manage all of these various different things you have to do as a quote, unquote, content creator.
- [15:15]
Tracy Thomas
Foreign. That is the end of this bonus teaser. If you were liking what you were hearing, you can listen to the entire episode by going to either patreon.com the stacks and joining the Stacks pack, getting access to the Discord, being able to participate in our virtual book club and. Or you can go to Tracy thomas.substack.com and subscribe to Unstacked, where you're going to get my writing about books, pop culture, you're going to get other exclusive author interviews and of course, these bonus episodes. So go to one of those two places, join us, get to hear the rest of this episode, and support the work that I do by being a part of these wonderful communities. Thank you so much and I'll see you in the stats.