Enemies to lovers. Grumpy x sunshine. He falls first. One bed. Bodyguard x princess. Reverse age gap. 

The ao3 taglist that once allowed us to choose our preferences in fanfiction content have now become the norm in book marketing. 

And I hate it. 

Think about the last book you've seen on social media where you actually know what the synopsys is. Not the tropes or genres. I'm not asking if it's reverse harem dark enemies to lovers dragon shifters one bed forced promixity romance. I'm asking you what the book is about. If you can tell me, great. Your FYP is better than mine. If you can't... that's where my problem is. 

I'll admit - I participated in it. At first, it was fun: what tropes can I find in my books and which ones can I put forward to attract the exact reader base I'm looking for? Because yes, that's the point: marketing. We need readers to find our books. What's the easiest way to do so? Use key words that will make their search easier. 
It's the easy choice. It's the one that will get you views and likes and maybe if you're lucky preorders and booksales. 
Trope marketing has become the standard in social media marketing and is moving in publishing as well - and I urge indie authors like me, who have always paved the way for trends and traditional publishing, to come back (or find new ways) to talk about their books focusing on plot, themes, writing style rather than reducing their life's work to one-liners. 
Tropes do not reflect the quality of our work, our books, our stories. They're there, for sure, but don't let them be all there is. 
In 2021 it was fun. In 2026 it's driving me bonkers. 
Besides, there's a downfall, a little trap no one really talks about. In my experience, selling a book based only on tropes will also get you bad reviews. It will frustrate readers. It will frustrate YOU.  

Why is that, I wondered for a while before sitting down and writing this post. 

From an author's perspective, it's extremely difficult to summarise an entire book in just a few catchy tropes - especially when you're writing a series that depends on certain things remaining a secret and twists. If I were to give you a trope for my completed book series, then in a single line I've ruined the surprise, the buildup, the plot, of it all. 

That leads me to the reader's perspective - or at least, the cons I can think of from my own experience as a reader.
I think most of us don't read for tropes, we read for plot : we pick up a book that has an interesting premise, worldbuilding, or that is in our preferred genre. 
Tropes are a bonus, something that naturally occurs, not something a book should be written around to... 
What I like about tropes - enemies to lovers, for example - is the surprise. It's the not knowing what kinds of tropes I'll find in the pages.  
If I'm reading a fantasy romance book and I start questioning the relationship between the main character and the villain, slowly, piece by piece, putting together the puzzle of their blooming romance, it's interesting, I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm living through that same moral questioning and shame and reluctance and acceptance as the hero. 
If I open the first page and I already know they're gonna be lovers, then why bother reading. The romance won't feel as interesting and won't land the way the author wanted to. 
Same thing when books have plot twists. The fun of it is the unknown, it's when you're slapped in the face by something utterly unexpected and you began questioning every single page and all those clues you missed suddenly become evident. If you're trying to sell me a book and advertise the plot twist in the tropes, then it's already ruined. I already know. It won't hit as it should. The infamous 'betrayal' trope comes to mind: by selling your book under that trope, you've already told me I should not trust any of the characters close to our main. The experience is ruined. 

More so, even if you're the kind of reader that doesn't mind spoilers, trope marketing is setting certain expectations that inevitably are never met, because we all have pre-conceived notions of certain tropes or how they should be done. So when we're told 'there's xyz trope in there' then we have a certain timeline, a certain framework around that xyz trope in our minds that's impossible to shake away. That leads to dissapointment, 9 times out of 10. 

Circling back to authors, that leads to poor reviews no matter how good your writing, plot, and story was - because your reader got in because of a trope and will judge the excecution of said trope, not the story you told. They'll focus on those details and how they believe you failed to live up to it, whereas I'm certain if they'd been unaware, they'd have enjoyed it more. 

As the over-thinker I am, I can't help but to feel like there is a correlation between the rise of trope-marketing and the decline of media literacy in general. 
It's begun to feel like the beginning of a dystopian novel. I sound dramatic, but think about how in Fahrenheit 451 books are banned and burned and the only available literature are condensed versions that are more easily digestible and require no thinking or engaging with the book. Isn't that what we're going through right now? With the rise of AI summaries, people using chatgpt to explain novels they don't wanna read, or readers that call themselves 'passenger princesses' who are just there for the vibes and not the substance?
You can't convince me that the 'gen z marketing vs millenial marketing' trend isn't a clear example of this, where elevator pitches of books that give you context, genre and themes in a well written one or two line paragraphs are erased to favor witty one-liners that give you no information on the book's content.
You can't convince me this isn't the start of a very slippery slope towards the death of our collective ability to engage with literature and art in general. 

So this is my protest, my way to fight against the decline of media literacy. 
If you want to engage with my work, my books, then you'll have to read a synopsys or read my posts that talk about them in great lenghts. Yes, I've used trope marketing in the past. 
No, I won't take those posts down. I'm transparent about my choices and my evolution. 
I won't be using it for the foreseeable future. 

Cheers, 

M.