In reading circles, reader access to authors is at a level unsurpassed in history.
Even a few decades ago, not many authors were known faces. Readers often didn’t know what the authors of their beloved books looked like. There was curiosity, but not much of it was satisfied. The boundaries between authors and readers were clearly drawn, and were only occasionally crossed at live, in-person meetings.
Blurred lines: Increased Reader Access to Authors
With the advent of self-publishing and social media, those lines have blurred. Authors, both self and trad, now reach out directly to their readers. Readers can watch their favorite authors on their social media, and not just doing bookish things. They’re privy to an author’s everyday minutiae. Many authors who have created a successful internet presence or brand have been able to make readers feel like the readers know them.
In an age where everyone’s given the opportunity to be their own megaphone, authors have started creating their own brands, and advocating for their own work, be it self-publishing or trad. (I’ve been no exception, so there’s no judgment here. There’s really no other way if you want to help move the needle even a little.) Readers no longer buy only the book. An increasing number of them buy into an author-image, a persona the author has often painstakingly constructed over years: the writing life, the coffee, the food, the travels, the pets, the book signings. The podcast. The celebrity-like appearances.
Marketing, in short.
Reader Access Through Social Media: Pros and Cons
Yes, some authors are celebrities these days. (And many entertainment, political and sports celebrities cash in on their fame by writing books, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Big names in trad publishing are sponsored by their publishers and sent on book tours. Many self and trad authors have created Booktok and Bookstagram accounts with massive followings running into tens and hundreds of thousands. Book influencers have become a force to be reckoned with: they’re often paid to advertise a book, interview an author, host a podcast.
Some of them are self-published authors (many of whom are now being successfully courted by trad publishers), and others have made a career out of talking about books on their social media accounts. This has shifted the balance of power, somewhat. Bookstores now often feature a shelf featuring Booktok recommendations.
While that’s a good thing, it can lead to difficult situations for authors. Some readers now believe they’re owed knowledge of the author’s life. Others have decided that authors with ideologies different from their own deserve to be ‘review-bombed’: one-star reviews on Goodreads and Amazon, which can affect self and trad authors alike. Authors are often DMed, with an expectation of a prompt and grateful response. Some readers feel entitled to tag authors in negative reviews: something akin to knocking on an author’s door and telling them their book sucks.
When is Reader Access Too Much?
The other day, a reader said to me that authors should read reviews and ‘learn from them’, and ‘improve their craft.’ It reminded me of fans of the game of cricket in India ( a game that is akin to religion, but I digress). Fans often shout advice at the players from the stands. A Goodreads reviewer asking an author to take advice from them is something like that. Just like a professional cricket player will only listen to advice from their coach, peers and manager, an author will pay heed to their editor, their agent (if trad-pubbed), and their beta readers.
Most reviewers are supportive, kind, book lovers that encourage authors whose work they like, and keep their negative opinions of an author’s work limited to reader spaces. They understand that the creative process needs certain conditions, a safe creative space being one of them. They also know that not all books are for everyone, and it’s okay not to love a book, but that there’s really no need to knock on an author’s door in order to school them.
It’s true that other creative artists, be it film actors or musicians, endure within an environment of image and gossip, but those fields are often based on direct audience interaction. Writing, however, isn’t a spectator sport.
Balancing Author Safety and Reader Access
Capitalism has reduced publishing into mostly-business, but the fact remains that there’s an author, a real human behind each book (other than the AI-generated slop, of course). Creative souls are usually a sensitive lot, and the argument that authors have written something for mass consumption and thus should be subjected to mass harassment (directly reaching out with negativity to an author be it via DMs or tagging is harassment, imo) is as bad as it sounds.
I don’t have all the answers, but I’m glad some authors push back, and protect their creative safe spaces. Just like authors shouldn’t police or respond to reviews on various platforms, readers might like to remember that their reviews are meant for other readers, not authors. Authors may read reviews and they may not. That choice should remain with authors.
Positive interactions between readers and authors are a beautiful thing. For an author to feel safe in these situations, we need to think long and hard on reader access to readers. Authors sharing their lives on social media should be a voluntary thing, an act of sharing and camaraderie, not an imperative, and certainly not something readers feel entitled to.
To authors, where do you draw your boundaries? Do you welcome readers in your private spaces? To readers, are you curious about the authors of the books you buy?
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My Amazon-bestselling literary crime novels, The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon are on Kindle Unlimited. Add to Goodreads or snag a copy to make my day !
And if you’d like to read a book outside the series, you can check out You Beneath Your Skin. Find all info about my books on my Amazon page or Linktree.
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Damyanti, we call the critics of football “armchair quarterbacks,” and it is the same when criticizing authors, actors, etc. I don’t remember ever criticizing an author because if their novel doesn’t grab me in the first chapter or two, I have a hard time finishing it. Usually I don’t. Plus, I’m not an expert or an editor. I would much rather read an exceptionally good novel and leave an exceptionally good review than to be a downer for an author who my be struggling or still learning. On another note, you can see that in America, some people rejoice or find “fun” in trolling and berating others for many reasons and that drives me insane. What kind of life is it when you have to constantly criticize, berate or call people names? How does that make anyone happy?
Have a wonderful November, Damyanti!
Dear Damyanti
As a trad author, I especially read so-called negative critiques. People idealise authors, and that’s dangerous. You tend not to learn any longer. Well, if you are lucky, your editor or agent criticises you. If not, you always write the same. Maybe you fans like it, but it’s boring for you. A lot of blogs are boring because the visitors are only affirmative.
I absolutely agree, people want to see and touch the author. I always liked the confrontation with the readers in talk shows, during book signings, and on lecture tours. Actually, to write a book is easy nowadays. Everyone can do that, but to sell your books is the art of the trade. To live a kind of normal middle-class life, you have to sell between 150.000 and 200.000 books at least every third year. You only get these numbers sold if your agent gets you into the media. For me, social media was not really important. It was TV and (women’s) magazines.
In former times, f.e. during the times of the Romantics, authors didn’t need to sell such a lot of copies. By far the biggest bestseller was Goethe’s “Die Leiden des jungen Werther”. A book which sold about 9000 copies in the beginning. To sell 9000 copies only you don’t need to have direct contact with your readers. But you can’t live on selling 9000 copies of your book only nowadays.
Happy Halloween
Klausbernd 🙂
It’s a valid point as privacy declines. I lived in a part of Pennsylvania where photographing a being with a soul is forbidden. But people who don’t practice that religion, and people who can’t be bothered to respect it, just do it anyway. Reducing safe places for those people. Even traffic lights take photographs, so don’t count on a government supporting the situation. And that’s only one small aspect.
May your memories continue to inspire on this Day of the Dead.
Hopefully your Halloween was “Spooktacular.” 🎃
“Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we’re opened, we’re red.” – Clive Barker
J (he/him 👨🏽 or 🧑🏽 they/them) @JLenniDorner ~ Speculative Fiction & Reference Author and Co-host of the April Blogging #AtoZChallenge
It’s a dangerous world, and we need to be guarded. Spare a thought for Salman Rushdie, who was seriously injured (and nearly died) in what must be the ultimate bad review. Maybe it’s just as well I’ve never been able to sell many books (due in part at least to my lack of enthusiasm for marketing). Particularly as my WIP is a comedy drama ridiculing religion. (wish me luck!)
Excellent points and I agree with them. These are the very reasons I’ve backed away from much social media. I write for me, filling that need to create, to tell a story. I don’t want to sound arrogant but I feel I don’t owe something to the reading audience. I do feel the need to provide something worth reading, but what that is exactly is up to me, not readers.
That is why I have tried very hard to keep my personal life personal. And in this day and age, when people are so divided, judgemental, and sensitive, it’s even more important to stay private. I think you have also done a good job with staying private.
I left my comment on the Damyanti Biswas page link above.
Anyone in the public eye whether they be in writing, music, politics, profession or administration seem to be fair game for the arm chair expert these days and such armchair experts range from disaffected jealous they are not famous or those with mental disorders. I’m afraid there is no effective protective boundary I can think of to protect those in the public eye. The most sinister are those who are not jealous or mental but just look on it as a game. Video games have reduced the images of cyber people to just play things to be manipulated or destroyed and this crosses over in an adolescent mind eventually to looking on real humans as just playthings to be used to achieve a goal without any form of moral compass involved as adults. So the solution as I see it is either legislation to provide those boundaries or just developing a thick skin and getting on with what you enjoy rather than let negative comments hurt and destroy. AI with the benefits it could have to us all unfortunately is now being used as a tool to destroy, You can take an actual event and manipulate the presenters to do and say things they never said or did. Check out YouTube for example and try and find one that has not been falsely presented. Politicians have found a good use for AI to try and destroy the opposition. I do not favour legislation as legislation punishes the majority for lapses of the minority in too many cases. So that leaves developing a thick skin and a healthy feeling of self-worth to rise above unfounded criticism.
As an author, I don’t use social media, just my blog and my reviews on Goodreads. As a reader, I don’t want to know everything (or even a lot) about the authors whose books I enjoy. A few biographical details are enough.
I’ve never really got into this. I know that a lot of people follow their favourite authors on Facebook or X or Instagram, but I’ve never tried it.
Moot point for me – I’m chronically ill and rarely get out of my apartment.
Online garbage is easier to ignore than in-person garbage, if it happens. I DO read my reviews (and copy them all to a Scrivener marketing project file). If they’re particularly good, I may ask the reviewer for permission to use their words.
If they’re not good reviews, I check my marketing – that person usually shouldn’t have read my book, but I attracted them somehow, so even that is useful information.
What I’d really like to do is get some of those people to talk to me and tell me what they liked and why, but even that would be extremely limited, as I have no energy, and a book to finish. Support is rare in this business, and those stored good reviews can change my mood when I’m feeling invisible. When you put decades into a story, it’s nice for someone to notice.
I’d like to add that I think my credentials for writing Pride’s Children ARE important – I live with it, participate in online communities about it, have experienced many of its problems when I was younger (as have my online friends). ME/CFS is a complicated illness with many levels – but the ones I have chosen to portray in fiction are all very real, and known to me personally.
And I KNOW it hasn’t gone away in the thirty-six years I’ve had it. And have lost too many friends to it.
I’ve had authors tell me that they wish they’d used a pen name, instead of their real name, because it opens them up to more situations where they feel too exposed. When we didn’t know who our favorite authors were as people the lines between art and artist were clearer–for better and worse. Really interesting shifts in how we think about the art of writing–and the real people behind it, thanks!
Unfortunately, there are a lot of self-absorbed people/readers who will punish an author for an opinion, and even try to harass authors. I’ve seen it. As for me I’ve only written one book, aside from my dissertation in robotics, which was not for the public. It was a Leonberger dog book featuring no opinions, so I have not suffered this. But I have author friends who have faced horrible and disgusting harassment. Being an independent author is tough.
I have strict boundary lines. Readers are not allowed in my private space. I take after J. D. Salinger, who was known as a hermit. No one was allowed to come to his house unless invited. I don’t hype my books, make TikTok or Instagram videos of me living my life, eating food, etc. People make the choice to pry inside someone’s life, and writers make the choice to let them. Too many authors spend too much on social media trying to curry favor and sale books instead of spending their time writing books worth reading.
I so relate to–and so appreciate–your observations and insights here, Damyanti!
I think author privacy is important, but there’s the other side where the author invites themselves into conversations outside of their book. I’m appalled by the growing attitude among writers that they must be activists for a cause. No–don’t go there! What was that line–“Shut up and sing!” In this case, write!
I follow LitMag News on Substack, and I’ve been taken aback and disheartened by the politization of literary magazines, to the point of retracting offers of publication and blackballing of both authors and editors. I don’t want any part of that mess.
You are so right. Thank you.
You’re welcome.