BookTok Drama and Mob Mentality: The Audra Winter Backlash
- Jacqueline Sahlin
- Sep 29, 2025
- 9 min read
Updated: Jan 23
From hype to hate, what BookTok drama says about readers, reviews, and trending content
Since the rise of TikTok and the emergence of the BookTok niche, we have seen numerous developments resulting from the community that BookTok has fostered. Increasingly more physical books have been bought. More indie-published books are being traditionally republished. The bookstore franchises that were going out of business are now busier than ever and building new stores.
And of course, there is drama.
And of course, I have thoughts.
Shocking. I know.
The problem with general internet drama, but especially BookTok, is that I don’t usually want to be part of the online conversation. People are too busy giving their “opinion” when half the time they are just saying what they know will get them views. Who knows, maybe they convince themselves that they actually believe what they say? But how can you know when they’re caught up in mob mentality?
Yet, like everyone else, I have an opinion. While I don’t assume that my opinion is important to anyone (other than Amy, whom I badger with the latest internet gossip on the regular), I’m here nonetheless with a proverbial soapbox.
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Should we add to the BookTok drama by sharing our opinions online?
In our greatest fantasies, the Subtext Society Journal is a community space. As much as we hope to share our thoughts on what is trending and about the books that have captured our minds, we want just as much (if not more) to hear from our podcast listeners and fellow readers. We talk all the time about wanting to write a paper about things we are passionate about, so why not share them here? Why not create a community of people who want to have meaningful conversations about some of our favorite stories?
Frankly, some of the topics we plan to discuss on this platform are part of these larger conversations where everyone has something to say, and people can’t help but insert themselves. Until now, Amy and I have never had a desire to stick ourselves in those online conversations in a public way. Not because we don’t believe what we have to say is important (hello, Substack), but when it comes to these larger conversations, they are often filled with voices that only care about views.
Which is self-serving in many ways.
Which is something I struggle with, although clearly not too much.
(Hello, Substack.)
Social media becomes an echo chamber where many voices bounce off one another, repeating duplicate content, where few find meaning or purpose. I say this as someone who works with social media as my daytime job, in addition to my podcast work and for personal enjoyment.
I believe social media can bring together communities and unite people in honest and good ways. But when the internet gets filled with the icky moments, I don’t usually feel a desire to add to the ick.
Audra Winter: The controversy that convinced me it was time to contribute to the conversation
For anyone who is not on TikTok, allow me to set the stage.
Audra Winter is a young author who built her platform by discussing her book, The Age of Scorpius. From what I understand, she has been very open and honest about the process of writing a book. Her content has teased her viewers with snippets from her book and provided details about the fantasy world she has created. She posted almost daily for years, taking her viewers on a journey that has been, from her vantage point, 10-years in the making .
Honestly, it sounds like good marketing. Kudos to Audra for being honest about her process and giving people a peak behind the curtain. That’s an incredibly vulnerable thing to.
(I would know because when I talked to our friend, fellow reader, and podcast listener Savannah Gilbo about the romance book I wrote, I had my ass handed to me. No, that’s dramatic. Savannah was incredibly nice and beyond helpful for taking me through her process. I just had no idea how unprepared I was. You can listen to the whole mortifying process on Book Talk for BookTok in the widget below.)
The thing that stood out to me as people posted about Audra and The Age of Scorpius was the whole concept that “she dedicated 10 years of her life to this.”
To the best of my knowledge, Audra is 22. I don’t point that out to undermine a story constructed by a youth, but Audra has barely stepped into adulthood. Even Sarah J. Maas didn’t publish Throne of Glass until she was 26.
There’s no age when it’s right to publish or when an author is “ready.” If you write a good story, you should publish it. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. But when you’re self-publishing, you are doing this alone. There are no professionals from a publishing company who have been doing this for years to guide you. There are no years of making connections with other authors (self-published or traditionally published) to gather their feedback.
Audra is , in essence, a young woman trying to figure it out as she goes.
So, when The Age of Scorpius was finally ready to be published, the preorders were in, and over 6,000 people had purchased the book.
The book gets delivered.
And the readers read it.
And then the reviews started to come out.
And the readers hated it.
If you think of every horrible thing you could possibly have to say about a book, that’s what they were saying about The Age of Scorpius.
“Poorly written, poorly developed, poorly edited.”
“The characters are flat. The dialogue is trash.”
Now some things are valid. Apparently, there were many spelling mistakes, including the characters’ names at various points.
But it quickly became about more than bad reviews. People demanded a refund. Some even called Audra a scammer.
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BookTok’s obsession with “Best” and “Worst” books
If there is anything you should know about me, it’s this: I do not trust book content online.
Everyone in the social media space is pushing for views, and when harmful content starts to trend, it is likely that the negativity is no longer really about the book.
“Here are my 6-star, GOD tier books!”
“Here are the worst books of 2025 that are so bad I wouldn’t even use them to light a fire.”
Everyone is so dramatic. Every statement is about the absolute best or absolute worst. Whatever it takes to get views, that’s the hook content creators are going to use.
I do not pretend I’m any better. I post videos to get views. More views mean more listeners for my podcast. More listeners mean more growth. More growth means that one day, my podcast could become my full-time job. There is not a video I post where I’m not hustling, trying to make it viral-worthy.
But this is the same reason why the podcast Amy and I host never does book reviews. (Well, that and because book reviews really aren’t our thing.)
At the time of originally writing this article, I had read nearly 50 books this year, and roughly only 5 of those were REALLY good. And only 2 were bad.
You know what, though? I really enjoyed those other 43 books.
However, I also didn’t post TikTok videos about them.
“Here are 10 books that I enjoyed but wouldn’t claim to be great.”
Let’s be honest with ourselves and each other: The majority of books we read in our lifetime will likely be mid-tier. And that’s okay.
But you know what it’s not? It’s not good for views.
Women critiquing women: The darker side of BookTok culture
So there we were in August 2025, with people on TikTok who decided it was okay to destroy a young woman over a book she published at 22 years old. Their videos were getting hundreds and thousands of views when they started flooding in last month, all because they wanted to talk about how bad The Age of Scorpius was and how bad of an author Audra Winter is.
Mind you, any video on TikTok that’s longer than one minute will get money for its views. While a video has to reach millions of views to make enough money to be of consequence, let’s not forget that the goal is always to get more views on videos longer than one minute.
A screenshot of the first page of this “horrible, horrible” book started to trend, which gave everyone something to latch onto. People who had never even read The Age of Scorpius or heard of Audra Winter started to make videos where they would read the first page and laugh at how bad it was.
Women (because almost every single video but two that I saw were from women) were relishing the opportunity to critique this book.
I read the first page, and, to be perfectly honest, it was no worse than some of the other popular books that are currently trending.
In fact, I read a book last year that was particularly bad, and I love bad, but it was so poorly written that I couldn’t finish it. Now I see special editions of this book available. (No, it’s not a Romantasy book or anything we’ve talked about on the podcast.) So to say I take other people’s opinions with a grain of salt is putting it lightly.
Another video I came across that discussed The Age of Scorpius was made by a self-proclaimed editor (who knows, maybe she is an editor for work, maybe she’s not), who took the viewer line-by-line and described why the first page of writing was so bad. The moment this “editor” pointed out that the description of the forest in the first paragraph gave her “nothing,” no sense of time, location, or temperature, I knew she wasn’t an editor I would trust.
(What author provides those facts in the first paragraph? Who would take a book seriously if all that information were in the first paragraph?)
It confuses me what people are willing to forgive in writing versus what people find appalling. My guess is that it ultimately comes down to mob mentality. And I think BookTok breeds some of the worst culprits.
People salivate at the opportunity to be part of a conversation, especially when that conversation involves tearing down women. The fact that it’s women tearing down other women frustrates me to no end.
Now, I’m not saying readers should not have opinions. We should all have opinions, and we should express those opinions. We might even want to start a podcast entirely based on our opinions and interpretations, and then consider creating a Substack to solidify those opinions.
But my one request is that before you share your opinion, you stop and ask yourself, “why do I have that opinion?”
I know it’s easy to lose sight of our biases, and that’s okay. But it’s up to us to deconstruct those biases anyway.
Maybe women on BookTok were shitting on Audra Winter because she finished writing her book and published it, which was something that they had yet to do. Maybe they needed to feel validated because their opinion had never been validated before. Regardless of their reasons, there were too many unkind videos and even more unkind comments than I believe were unjustified.
No good deed goes unpunished
After all the negativity, Audra Winter took the high road. Instead of railing against her critics and telling them they were wrong, Audra posted a video stating that she had heard the criticism and would work with a new editor to republish The Age of Scorpius in December 2025. She promised the book would be improved, with more art and an even better cover. Which meant the physical book would end up costing a little more than the original.
Given the way women reacted, you would think Audra had spit in their Starbucks coffee and cursed their firstborn child. There were numerous videos featuring dramatic sighs and shaking heads, in which Audra’s critics suggested that she had completely missed the point and was being selfish for making the not-yet-published and improved version of The Age of Scorpius more expensive.
An author who has not only heard criticism but chooses to run with it to improve her book is an impressive author to me. Audra did not need to do that, and yet she did.
No one is demanding that these women buy the newer version of the book. Audra could have increased the book’s price by $100, and it wouldn’t make a difference because each of us is the master of our own money and doesn’t need to buy the book if we don’t want to.
Shocking. I know.
This is in no way an essay in defense of Audra Winter. I don’t know her, I haven’t read her book (other than the first page), and I haven’t watched all of her videos. For all I know, the book is as terrible as people claim, and maybe she’s been horrible to people in her initial response. Who knows? Not me, because I didn’t want to get into all the details.
What’s important, and why I decided to write this, is that we recognize when mob mentality takes over in our community. We shouldn’t allow other trending negative responses to a book inform our opinions of that book or its author. Had Audra said something egregious, racist, transphobic, or anything that spewed hate and vitriol, I would be the first to criticize her. But to the best of my knowledge, that’s not what happened.
And until then, it’s hard for me not to be wary of the critics and wonder why video views matter more than decent human courtesy.
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With an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a B.A. in Creative Writing, Jac Sahlin is a Californian with Chilean roots who once told her mom “my version is better”—and never stopped writing. Now she’s a Romantasy writer, podcaster, and unapologetic lover of smut.
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