Boneheaded Business Decisions: “Hot Girls Read” Edition

Never has the book community been so united as it was in the past week or so, when a small business owner trademarked an extremely popular, extremely common phrase.

Last week, Allie Mitrovich, owner of the small business Allie Rose Co, announced in a now deleted Instagram post that she had successfully trademarked the phrase “hot girls read”. In a now archived Insta story, she clarified the situation further, revealing the various products for which she had the trademark and asking (“with peace and love”) that anyone selling products with that phrase on it remove them from their shops.

Like with the Tumblr fiasco back in March, the backlash was swift and brutal. While she did have some supporters, the vast majority of the book community could not believe her audacity. That would be like, say, a YouTube channel trying to trademark the word “react”. Or an American university trying to trademark the word “the”. (And actually succeeding, is the crazy part. And yes, this is my alma mater. And yes, I agree that it’s stupid.)

People looked up her trademark application and combed through it, discovering that while she claimed her first products with the phrase were from 2021, a press release issued in 2023 revealed that she did not add “hot girls read” merchandise to her shop until February of that year.

However, anyone who has ever been on the internet, anyone who has the ability to perform a simple Google search (although perhaps not now, but that’s another issue), could tell you that “hot girls read” has been around for literal decades. Many people will probably claim that it rose to popularity in 2019 with the virality of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl Summer” trend – hot girl walks, hot girl dinner, etc. But the truth is that people were saying “hot girls read” well before 2019. Some users dredged up screenshots of their MySpace pages with the phrase emblazoned on those glitter stickers all the way back in 2005.

The truth of the matter is that Allie Rose Co did not invent the phrase, nor did she popularize it. Nor was she, as she claimed, the only person selling “hot girls read” merch at the time she launched her first products. If she had tried to trademark some of her designs, that would be understandable. Everyone can understand trying to protect your intellectual property. If it was the name of her business, that would also be understandable.

But it’s an incredibly common phrase. There’s no singular business that comes to mind when you mention the phrase, and I believe that most people stumble across something with the phrase on it rather than specifically seeking it out. Honestly, a lot of people were baffled that her trademark was even approved. Surely it’s someone’s job to verify the information on a trademark application?

In her first response to the backlash, Allie claimed that she was simply trying to prevent people from copying her products, and that she had been advised to pursue the trademark. (Fire that attorney; you got some bad advice.) The thing is, personally, I don’t find Allie’s products to be all that appealing. They tend to be very basic – just bookmarks and sweatshirts and things with “hot girls read” on them. It’s not even in a particularly interesting-looking font. So it wouldn’t be all that hard to copy her merch, and thus would be incredibly easy to point at anyone and claim theft.

Another point that she made was that she did not intend to go after small businesses that were selling “hot girls read” merch, even though her announcement asked everyone to take down their products. This was another thing that baffled people, because if she didn’t actually intend to go after people for selling “hot girls read” stuff, why trademark the phrase at all? After all, acquiring the trademark is only half of it; you then have to defend it. That means sending cease and desist letters and taking people who don’t comply to court. If you don’t defend your trademark, you can lose it.

The internet did what the internet does, which is 1) gossip, 2) mock, and 3) be petty. I’m not on BookTok, but I do follow a couple of BookTubers, which is where I learned about this (and where all of my information comes from), and there were a multitude of reaction videos that popped up almost immediately after Allie’s announcement. I also saw a couple of posts and videos making a meme about the situation by claiming that they had decided to trademark other common phrases. And people learned that Allie had not trademarked her business name and started crowdfunding to do that. (Though most agreed that that was too far.)

In the end, what seemed to do the trick was people funding the application to challenge her trademark. (There is a 30-day period immediately after approval during which a trademark can be contested. Allie conveniently waited until well after that time frame to announce that she had even applied. After 30 days, it costs money to file a challenge.) It would not be that difficult to prove that the phrase belonged to Allie as much as it belonged to literally anyone else, and indeed the challenge petition was something like 16 pages and included a variety of images verifying that the phrase existed before Allie put it on her products.

Allie announced earlier this week that she was cancelling her trademark and donating profits from her new line (because this was all part of a drop of new “hot girls read” merchandise) to charity. This is honestly the best (and probably only) thing that she could have done to maintain any sort of goodwill with the community. But she did herself no favors by doing this in the first place, and only time will tell if her business will suffer for it. With all her assertions that this was strictly a business decision, you have to wonder how she expected this to go, and whether it was ultimately worth it.

Sources (watch these for the receipts!):

This Trademark Ruined Her Business & Is This An Apology? (Hot Girls Read Part 2) from Laura Rae Says

The “Hot Girls Read” Fiasco from Meredith Novaco

Trademarkgate – How to Ruin Your Business in 24 Hours & Allie Rose Co – The Apology from Darkstar’s Book Cavern

The “Hot Girls Read” BookTok Drama – With Update from Skullie by the Sea

Everything You Need to Know about the “Hot Girls Read” Trademark Controversy from Do We Know Them?

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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