Do book critics still matter in the age of influencers?

It’s that time of year again when, as a book critic, I’m expected to compile a list of my favourite reads of 2025. My colleagues and I have done such a roundup, but even as I was going through the exercise, I couldn’t help wondering what it means to be a reviewer today, when social media is flooded with reading recommendations from influencers.

Do professional critics—that dwindling tribe paid by media platforms to review books—matter when so much of public taste is curated by algorithms and influencers promoting books for cash or traction? This question feels especially urgent in India, where the market for English language books is much smaller than those in Indian languages, making the role of the reviewer even more niche.

In the last 20 years, as a critic (and, briefly, as a book editor), I have heard prophecies of print media being eclipsed by digital platforms. I have noticed writing styles becoming chattier and more opinionated. I have seen the space for book reviews shrink, move to the blogosphere, then migrate to social media.

Instead of a well-argued review of a new book, you’re more likely to see reels telling you to get out of your reading slump by shelving your books according to the colours of the rainbow. Someone parroting the publicity material of their “favourite read” on camera. Or simply an aesthetic photo of a book next to wilting flowers and a steaming beverage, with templated praise in the caption. In case a writer or publisher is so inclined, all these services can be bought for a neat sum of money. (Earlier this year, Lounge columnist Sandip Roy wrote about the rate cards offered by “reviewers” to promote his book.)

To be fair, it’s not just influencers but the publishing industry as a whole that is responsible for lowering the bar. The proliferation of literature festivals is a case in point. Over the years, the list of invitees has been heavily decided by sponsorship deals, nepotism, and the public’s appetite for personality worship. Actors, politicians and sportspersons headline these events as “crowd-pullers”. As for the rest, an unchanging list of sycophants remains a fixture. Recently, a writer of four highly acclaimed books, published internationally, told me that their Indian publisher had asked them to write to the director of a literary extravaganza asking for an invitation. An ego massage, presumably, is the key to unlocking access.

Such practices notwithstanding, there is a silver lining to the fact that so many platforms are seemingly making books more egalitarian. Away from gate-keeping by professional critics and snooty booksellers, such a vibrant reading culture ought to work wonders for book sales in India. But ask any publisher or seller of English language books, and you will hear a lament about the decline in sales. Clearly, the correlation between the personal brand of a writer and the business they generate isn’t predictable. But this hasn’t stopped editors from commissioning books from influencers with large social media following—people who may share interesting thoughts online, but are incapable of putting their ideas into a coherent narrative.

A decade ago, when I last held a full-time job in the industry, editors would focus their best energies on pitching new manuscripts and proposals at acquisitions meetings. Sometimes they would end by mentioning the writer’s social media presence as a proof of the latter’s clout. Now, insiders tell me, the process is reverse-engineered. A bad book by a writer with a sizable social media following has a better chance of being published than a good book by someone with a modest online presence.

Professional reviewers aren’t exempt from diluting the critical discourse into feel-good chit chat, as they peddle anodyne interviews and effusive profiles of writers over in-depth evaluations of their work. Throw in some trivia about a writer’s habits to make them seem “relatable”—Tea or coffee? Cats or dogs? Longhand or laptop?—and they get the Likes and Shares the media platform needs as well as generate advertising for the publisher.

“These days so many reviews, especially those on social media, rarely go beyond a gist of the book and what the reviewer was made to feel. Which is of course fine,” says writer and Booker Prize-winning translator Deepa Bhasthi. “But while it is lovely to hear how much someone loved your book, alongside an aesthetic reel or photo, these things do not exactly critically engage with the book. I miss that.”

‘A DUTY OF SCEPTICISM’

“Editors and critics belong to a profession with a duty of scepticism,” critic Christian Lorentzen wrote in Harper’s Magazine in 2019. “Instead we find a class of journalists drunk on the gush.” His deep dive took off on American writer and critic Elizabeth Hardwick’s essay The Decline of Book Reviewing (1959), also published in Harper’s magazine six decades earlier, where she bemoaned the state of criticism in 1950s New York and London. “A book is born into a puddle of treacle; the brine of hostile criticism is only a memory,” Hardwick wrote. “Everyone is found to have ‘filled a need,’ and is to be ‘thanked’ for ‘minor faults in an otherwise excellent work’.”

To fight this strain of anti-intellectualism, Hardwick, along with her husband, poet Robert Lowell, Jason Epstein, Barbara Epstein, and Robert B. Silvers founded the iconic New York Review of Books (NYRB) in 1963, which continues to publish robust debates on literary and current affairs. Magazines like NYRB and the London Review of Books (1979) created a space for the “review essay”—an immersive, wide-ranging engagement with a work, locating it within multiple intellectual and affective traditions, drawing on history, biography, social sciences, philosophy and, of course, a lifetime of richly varied experience of reading.

“Today, reviews are only seen as a mechanism to sell more books. But this is not the idea of a review,” says philosopher and novelist Sundar Sarukkai. “Reviews in the academic domain are a useful contrast. They place the book under review in a particular scholarly or problem-oriented tradition, and then discuss the uniqueness of the book. They... list the limitations of the book in terms of what it attempts to do, but it is never about dismissing a book without due diligence.”

For Sarukkai, reviewing begins with the act of reading, which is “never about the content but the how of the text and the how of reading it.” “The critic,” he goes on to explain, “trains the perception of the reader, influences how the reader can actually read the book and perhaps even why they should read the book.” In contrast, “interviews are the author’s perspective and not an analytical perspective of a critic,” he adds.

The best book reviewers are not just sharp critical thinkers but also excellent writers. They are stylists of language, deft with irony, praise or barb, able to entertain their readers, while whetting their appetite about a book. In India, critics like Richard Bartholomew, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Dom Moraes, Shanta Gokhale, among others, were not just reviewers but luminous writers in their own right. Their dispatches were literary pieces, expressed in the form of a deep caring towards their chosen field of criticism. That tradition of writing has waned over the last 20 years, with digital media platforms demanding easily digestible and shareable content to generate revenue online.

READER AND REVIEWER

It would, however, be unfair to dismiss trends like ‘bookstagram’ as posturing. Whether you like them or not, influencers bring vibrancy and visibility to the scene of reading, especially as the coverage of books becomes scarcer in mainstream media platforms. But their ubiquity comes with its own problems. Sharing opinions is free on social media, which creates the illusion that anyone who reads is a “reviewer”. There is a clear line between being a reader with strong opinions and a professional critic, who must analyse, question, contextualise and find the right vocabulary to present their point of view, while remaining dispassionate.

“When a book review is well thought out, one gets to hear what a discerning reader thinks about your book. You want that, as a writer,” says Bhasthi. “You want to know what worked, or didn’t. You want to know what your work reminded this reader of, if they could trace a lineage in the style and tone, if there were other writers and styles and choices and mechanics of language that the book being reviewed made them think of.”

The truth is, most critics don’t aspire to exacting levels of excellence any more, especially since the competition to their few hundred words of prose is a reel by an influencer. The balance is skewed further, if you consider the mechanics of the creator economy. It is possible to make a living as a full-time bookstagrammer, assuming you are at the top of your game. In contrast, after putting in hours to read a book and review it, freelance critics usually make a pittance in the strained media landscape of budget cuts.

The one form of review that still has the potential to outdo the reach of a viral reel is the hatchet job. Unsurprisingly, this form of writing, as with its obverse—the glowing review—mimics the logic of social media, i.e. instant judgement. Love or hate? Good or bad? Yes or no? But what happens when there are subtleties that can neither be dismissed nor praised? When a book provokes feelings that cannot be captured by a thumbs up or thumbs down emoji?

That is where the conscientious critic must step in, not just to help the reader make up their mind about a book, but to also invite them to be part of a conversation that transient social media applause cannot sustain. Looking beyond “must read” lists and other trappings of internet virality, professional critics need to protect the golden rules of their trade, not only to stay relevant but also to continue providing a uniquely valuable service to the publishing ecosystem.