23 to abysmal Goodreads ratings, but that’s not unusual for an internet-famous book in the era of review-bombing. Some called it false advertising, and others called it advertising in the BookTok era.

At its core, BookTok exists to reward certain authors and books for their virality, and Aster’s greatest successes followed her social media stardom.Īster was also called out because the “ spicy” scenes in her book she hyped up on TikTok didn’t make the final copy, and though the author said it was a result of routine editing, people felt misled. She has also personally shared that her parents own a car dealership and she saved money by living with them after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with no student debt. According to Forbes, Aster’s twin sister Daniella Pierson is one of the “richest self-made women in the U.S.,” but Aster has openly posted about her. With every success Aster shared, the people of BookTok began to question if she had been downplaying her privilege in favor of dramatizing her success story, and surmised that she might be an “ industry plant.” Eventually, there were so many negative posts about Aster that discourse shifted to whether BookTok has a toxicity problem.Īs explained in a TikTok, Aster has never claimed that she’s living a “rags to riches” story - just that she has frequently been rejected. 1 book at Barnes & Noble, I’m a full-time author in NYC in my 20s, and today I went to a coffee shop, bought flowers at the farmers market, and went to a famous bookstore to visit my books.” Now, her posts celebrate her accomplishments, with captions like “I have the No.

It scored Aster a payout that she described as “more zeros than I’ve seen in my life.”Īfter “hundreds of rejections” over a decade, Aster positioned the publication of Lightlark as a story of resilience, and shared TikToks about how her first agent dropped her because she wouldn’t give up on the story and how an ex printed a first draft of her book to make fun of it.

Hollywood said yes, and before the book’s initial release in July 2022, Aster announced in another viral TikTok that Universal bought the rights to make Lightlark into a movie.

Lightlark by Alex Aster