Hot Girls Don't Weaponize Trademarks Against Small Businesses: The Book Community Might Have a Greed Problem

On trademarks, intellectual property, and the “Hot Girls Read” situation

If you’ve been on Threads over the past 24 hours, you’ve probably seen a certain bookish creator @/allieroseco announce that she trademarked the phrase “Hot Girls Read.” The response from the online writing/book community was immediate and predictable: it imploded.

You can see the original post from Allie Rose here:

There’s a lot to unpack here, particularly in the Instagram post announcing the trademark. But my personal favorite part is the implication that buying the trademark on a community phrase to police other creators is somehow “for the girls.”

So what’s the deal? Why is everyone pissed? Well, this situation beautifully highlights the greed problem online communities have been facing: stealing intellectual property for profit. “Hot Girls Read” isn’t a thing people associate with one creator. It’s a community phrase. It’s a joke, a meme, a slogan that emerged organically from internet reading culture. It belongs to the same category as phrases like “book boyfriend,” “touch her and die,” or “enemies to lovers.” All of these terms, “hot girls read” included, were pieces of a collective language built by thousands of readers interacting in the bookish spaces. Yet, we do have someone claiming to own it regardless of that—and who wants to use her trademark to shut down competing merch designers who have been selling “hot girls read” merch for a while now.

Now, whoa, whoa, Emma. Isn’t it a bit dramatic to say this trademark could hurt small businesses?

Well… is it though?

Because Allieroseco wasted very little time clarifying what ownership of that trademark means in practice. In a follow-up Instagram post, she “very gently” reminded other businesses that if they were selling products featuring the phrase “Hot Girls Read,” those listings needed to come down. I immediately got the impression that if they did not, there would be legal takedowns forcing these business owners to take their product down. But it’s okay because “peace and love,” right?

A screenshot of @allierosco’s instagram story.

Allieroseco makes it very clear: she owns the trademark and she does not want other businesses infringing on it.

I’ve spent enough time poring over trademark disputes to know how these things play out. I’ve seen the takedown notices and the emails threatening further legal action if a shop owner doesn’t comply. Trademarks don’t exist in some vacuum fantasy land. They’re enforced. And it sounds like Allieroseco will be doing that.

Which really irks me. The phrase in question has been used by countless independent creators, Etsy sellers, and small businesses for years; it’s hard for me to take claims of exclusive ownership seriously. The very people who helped turn “Hot Girls Read” into a recognizable piece of bookish culture are now being told they can no longer participate in it commercially because one person secured a trademark registration.

According to Allieroseco’s trademark, she coined the term in 2021—but in her Instagram caption announcing the trademark, she’s only been in the bookish space since 2023. And her shop has only been around since then. So, who the hell owns “hot girls read”? I can tell you this much: it isn’t Allieroseco, and it isn’t any other single creator, either. You don’t walk into a community, slap your name on something everyone has been saying for years, and call it yours. Especially not so you can profit from it.

Don’t take my word for it. A user on threads (thank you @/tatumcoi), went ahead and found a plethora of instances where people online have said “hot girls read” long before 2021.

People are pointing out the alleged hypocrisy of selling unlicensed merchandise while simultaneously policing the intellectual property rights of others. As of writing this post, some of those products appear to have been removed from her site, though screenshots, as the internet loves to remind us, are forever.

But this Substack isn’t an Allieroseco takedown piece. Threads is already pointing out the many ways this move to trademark a community term is predatory, and I hope it will deter future creators from doing something like this.

No, what I’m interested in is the culture that made Allieroseco possible. Simply put, Allie isn’t the first person to think this way. She won’t be the last, either. She’s simply the latest expression of a growing problem: the commercialization and ownership mindset that’s been creeping into bookish spaces for years.

Look, I have my own opinion about how authors own their IP and enforce it. That’s a rabbit hole for another day. There’s a reason why authors have been refused for trying to trademark the names of their characters, and then laughed at for it. You can’t trademark a name that real humans have! I can’t trademark Alya or Nikolay, two characters in one of my books, or any other names for that matter. Trust me, the Kardashians tried. It’s ridiculous to think I own the names Alya or Nikolay just because I named two lead characters in my book that. It’s almost as ridiculous as trying to trademark “hot girls read.” Almost.

Personally, I love it when authors create licensing opportunities that let artists and small businesses participate in the community they’ve built while also earning a profit. Taking those opportunities away? I find that pretty annoying. It has happened, and it irks me every time, because I think it sucks to watch small businesses lose the ability to sell their designs and earn an income from them.

But hey. It’s your IP. It’s also your readership you’re affecting. Do what you want. I won’t be doing it if I ever get to that stage in my career, but to each their own.

When I entered the writing community in 2021, there was a strong culture of mutual aid. Established writers regularly offered free query critiques. During major pitch events, the months leading up to them were filled with people volunteering their time to help other writers succeed, offering a variety of free critiques and mood board giveaways. If someone had knowledge, resources, or experience, they shared it. It was so commonplace that when a writer was looking for someone to take a look at their query, all you had to say was, “Oh, x is doing a giveaway and picking 5 people. Try there!” and that’s IF they didn’t offer to take a look at it first. Genuinely, the community was the easiest way to get help.

I know this because I benefited from it! When I was preparing my DAGGER OF THE TSAR queries in 2021, I used feedback from giveaway critiques offered by writers who had already secured agents or book deals.

Today, most of those services have been monetized.

And to be clear: writers deserve to be paid for their labor. I’m not arguing otherwise. But damn, I mourn the loss of the community that came with all those free events. (And, I’m also guilty of it. I’ve monetized my critique services, and I’m still struggling with that, to be honest, because there isn’t a balance right now between paid and free community services).

Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking, “How can I help someone out in the community?” and started asking, “How can I monetize my place within it?”

I remember when a big pitch event was going on (shoutout PitMad), basically, the 3 months leading up to it were filled with people offering FREE services to prep writers for success in the pitch events. Q&As, query/synopsis critiques, you name it. I understand, partly, why it died (I already talked about my huge issue with pitch events in the writing community in another newsletter), but I think another component was this shift towards a profit-based writing community.

The same thing happened in bookish spaces.

People used to create free Canva templates and share them with other readers for their bookish wraps. Now those templates are products. Again, creators deserve compensation for their work. But the shift is noticeable. Resources that once circulated freely through the community increasingly exist behind a paywall.

Even recently, I watched a pitch-event organizer advertise paid poster-design services to writers participating in the event they created. It struck me as super odd. Particularly the power dynamics behind it. You’re creating the event and thus the demand for promotional graphics. Then you’re… selling the solution to a problem that only exists because of the event you created in the first place? See! The ethics around that get weird fast.

That’s why the “Hot Girls Read” trademark debacle feels less like an isolated incident and more like a logical endpoint. Of course, we ended up here. We’ve monetized everything else. Why should others make a profit from a phrase EYE think I made up?

When every community resource becomes a product, every shared experience becomes content, and every post becomes a business opportunity, it becomes inevitable that someone eventually looks at something and thinks: that should be mine. Or, that is something I can use.

Not something to contribute to or build connections with. Something to own.

Oh! And then monetize the shit out of it!

If you want to aid in the appeal letter to restore the rights of small business owners to use “hot girls read” in their designs, please reach out here.

Anyways, I’m going to leave you guys with one thing that a friend shared with me that really echoed this entire piece I angrily typed at 10 PM. Thank you, Martin Shaw for writing it in your book Liturgies of the Wild.

Anyway, until next time.

Sincerely,

emma (wrote what?!)