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This feels important to share with others
Why I hate Aleron Kong and why I think every reader would too, if you looked into him.
I am an avid reader and will devour just about anything you put in front of me, and while I won’t enjoy everything to the same degree I will almost certainly take something away from any book I touch.
However, I am also a believer in reading responsibly.
By this I mean: actively supporting authors who are just beginning to show promise in the early years of their career, buying from bookstores instead of amazon, buying from independent bookstores instead of chains when I can, donating books to the library when I’m done with them, and most crucially avoiding books from authors who I would deem “toxic”, a label that could have a number of meanings and applications.
This is where Aleron Kong comes in.
Aleron Kong is the author of a book series called “The Land”. While it’s not terribly famous in the wider entertainment or even book community, “The Land” has an incredibly avid following within its own niche genre known as LitRPG, a genre of books which feature a mechanic where the main character is in someway absorbed into a game of some kind, usually fantasy or scifi in nature. “The Land” is one of if not the most popular book series within that genre, though it is worth noting that it is by no means the first book in that genre. (Saying that might seem unimportant but it will come up later).
My dad turned me onto the LitRPG genre, and it fit in with the rest of my geekdom flawlessly. I found “The Land” series (I don’t remember where), and we both started in on it. It seems that there is a consensus opinion from impartial fans of the genre that Aleron Kong’s books are good but not great, and that the primary reason for their popularity is Aleron’s incredible marketing skills, marketing skills which employ controversial tactics I will get into later.
Personally, that was where I fell. I thought it was good, a solid three or four star book in a series I might continue, but it didn’t change my life. My dad, however, loved it and obsessed over it. Finishing all the books that were out at that point in rapid succession, he liked Aleron on Facebook to see when the next one would come out, and this is when it all unraveled.
To begin, it’s never a good sign (In fact, I would argue it’s an incredibly arrogant sign) when an author nicknames themself. Aleron Kong, for example, named himself the “Father of American LitRPG”, a genre, I must stress, that Aleron Kong did not invent or father. It is generally concluded by many that Aleron did this as a ploy to market himself and in an attempt to take control of the future of the genre for himself.
Remember when the FineBros tried to copyright “React”? Which was ridiculous because they weren’t the first people to do react videos and react videos were an entire category on YouTube in and of themselves? Well, Aleron Kong is trying to copyright LitRPG. Yep, he‘s trying to copyright a book genre, a genre, again, that Aleron Kong did not invent or father. Imagine Stephen King coming out and trying to copyright the word horror, because that’s about what this would be. He may be one of the more popular authors in his genre. Yet, Edgar Allan Poe would beg to fucking differ that Stephen King invented it or fathered it, and copyrighting the word would prove detrimental to the future of a genre where every book needs one author’s stamp of approval. (Even worse for the genre’s future when the author with the stamp is an egomaniac like Aleron). For more information on that, I suggest looking at this LitRPG forum that predates this copyright crisis.
His arrogance extends to his fans. Aleron Kong has booted or banned a number of fans from his Facebook page (including my father now) for the grievous sin of… wait for it… mentioning other books. Yes, people who mention other books are banned from Aleron’s page. Whether you are recommending other books his fans should read, giving an analysis of the genre as a whole, comparing two similar books in this niche genre, or even praising “The Land” in context of other books you love (like my dad), if you mention another book in any of Aleron’s comment sections he will kick you off. Because he seems to be misled by the notions that A) his books are the only books worth reading and B) you will only ever buy one book in the universe and it must be his.
Probably his worst offense of all. It recently came to my attention that Aleron was rigging his book reviews. He has a small following of incredibly overdedicated fans whom he weaponizes against bad reviews. He does this by encouraging his fans to, for example, downvote bad reviews on Amazon as “unhelpful” till they drop off the first page or disappear entirely. He also, emotionally manipulated fans into leaving good reviews, claiming he would starve if they didn’t. See link here. (…he’s a doctor, so to make that claim is a bit of a reach).
These are just the offenses I am aware of, but glancing down the LitRPG subreddit there are dozens and dozens more stories of Aleron Kong being an ass to fans and other authors, abusing his following to make money at the expense of a genre he claims to “father”, and generally attempting to take control of something that doesn’t belong to him for the sake of stroking his fragile ego.
If you love books, like I do, you won’t read books from a man who is so blatantly harming a literary genre that, for many, is a gateway into reading when they otherwise wouldn’t have been partaking in books.