Okay, so I was actually thinking about deleting my “Alright, so…”, a.k.a. rant tag category, because I was starting to realize that I have nothing to rant about.

Oh, no, no, no…I have something to rant about today.

Listen.

There’s a new “””romance trend””” going on in the writing world that lives online. I first noticed it on Wattpad a few months ago, and it bugged me then, but I was also able to control my urge to scream and throw my laptop across the room for some time because it was just happening on Wattpad.

I was so wrong.

A day or two ago, I found that this trend lurks on many ebook platforms now as well. So… what is this god-awful, stomach-wrenching, heart-piercing trend???

The number of books I see with the phrase “””the bad boy””” in the title.

Ugh.

Where do I even start?

Okay, I’m just tired of seeing an over-abundance of stories with cliché plotlines that are usually not actually written very well and have grammar errors galore and the same book cover that I’ve already seen used on twenty books before get a billion more reads and reviews and comments than the similarly tacky story next to it just because it has the words “the bad boy” in its name. Honestly, I don’t know what readers find so fascinating about, basically, reading the same book they’ve read before. I mean, if they’ve all got similar titles, then don’t you think what’s underneath the cover is probably pretty similar, too?

When I first took notice in this trend on Wattpad, I was annoyed, but I understood the mechanics of what was going on. Wattpad users are usually teens and young adults… and young adults and teens like romance and adventure. Every bad boy story was listed under romance, so I assumed they were all romance, and the whole bad boy idea, to me, implies a sense of adventure or doing wild and crazy things. Many Wattpad users are female, too, so that explains the demand for bad boys and not bad girls (although there were a number of those, too, just not as many).

But really, though.

If you even go on Wattpad right now and search the hot section of the romance stories, I guarantee you’ll see a story with “”bad boy”” in the title within a few seconds of scrolling. Better yet, search for stories tagged #badboy.

Well… if you don’t wanna, that’s okay, because I already did.

The number of stories tagged with #badboy on Wattpad is a whopping 69.2k. THAT’S 69 THOUSAND. Way too many.

Now, let’s search for how many stories are tagged with #romance. 876k. That’s a lot more, which makes me feel better… but still.

So I just have to ask… why is everyone jumping on the bad boy bandwagon? (That should be my next bad boy novel… I bet you it’d get a lot of reads!) What’s so great about just the term ‘bad boy’? Why does everyone have to use the same phrase? Why can’t anyone get a little creative and come up with some synonyms to use instead of steal the same story title that’s been used by so many on the past few months?

When it all comes down to it, though, I’m mainly just mad that it seems like so many authors are getting ahead of everyone else just because they put “bad boy” in their story title. Like… that’s all it took? You spent a few months typing out a rendition of some movie you watched or reused a form of some plot you read in a book last year, took another book’s cover picture and slapped the title “blah blah blah the bad boy did this” on it, and somehow shoot to the top of the reading charts because of it? While, at the same time, a billion other authors, myself included, spend years trying to perfect one story and work night and day to promote it and gain readers because it might not be the trendiest thing in the world, but you know people would like it if they just cracked it open?

And, yes, I know not every book like that out there was just thrown together and/or shot to the top at all because of the title… but really, after trying to read some of the popular things like them, I kind of just had to… well, think about it.

Okay, I’m done for now. If you’ve written a “bad boy” story… then sorry, but I’m not sorry. If you haven’t and you’re just as annoyed as I am, then please let me know I’m not alone!

As quoted by Gwen Stefani/ No Doubt in one of my favorite 2000 songs…

“Why do the good girls always want the bad boys?”

Until my next rant!

-iKari