Free books! Who doesn’t love free books? A few people, apparently.
Fictionwise was recently offering some of the Nebula nominated works for free, including a short piece, “The Story of Love,” by Vera Nazarian. I had never read Nazarian, so I eagerly downloaded the story and read it. And thought about it. And looked up the rest of her books so I could decide what to buy next. And thought about the story some more. In fact, I’ve thought more deliberately about that short story than I have about some of the recent full-length novels I’ve read. And paid for.
But recently, Harlan Ellison and Laura Kinsale have been talking about how creating artistic work for free demeans the status of the writer and the value of the work. I definitely share their worry that the commodification of art will reduce its “soul” value to the point where books mean no more to publishers and editors than widgets. But I’m not convinced that the current trend toward offering free stories and books (and the contemplation of books subscription services) robs the art and the artist of value.
The core of Kinsale’s argument seems to be this:
Once the book is finished, though, the money and the sense of proprietary ownership in my own work do matter. Just turning it loose, saying, “Here, I wrote this, you can read it if you want”—That is a de facto devaluation of not only the work itself, but of the time and the significant part of myself that I put into it. It says, I put all this time and work into this, but it has no specific value to me or to anyone else. It’s free. It belongs to everyone, and by belonging to everyone, it erases me. . . .
Gaiman and many others say the value is that someone will come back and read my other stuff. I guess this is just too cerebral for me. I can grasp it intellectually but it’s too cold a calculation. It’s a sales pitch, a commodity strategy. And my books are not, to me, commodities.
The way I read it, Kinsale is arguing that her value as creator is obliterated by the commercial demand for her work, a demand that sets its monetary value at zero and its artistic value as thoroughly disconnected from the artist herself. I’m tempted to read her argument as an appeal against the public space in which all art circulates and is claimed by the public as an object of consumption and comment, but I don’t really think that’s where she’s going. Instead I think she’s trying to uncover the dark side of commercial fiction where the calculated imperatives of commerce cannibalize the integrity of art and of artists.
As a scholar, I’ve been trained to believe that “pure” (objective) scholarship requires a certain independence from specific financial compensation. And yet I also believe that people have the right to be paid for their work, whether that be writing fiction or advertising copy. The starving artist motif has about as much appeal for me as the fiction writer for hire.
Where the argument stumbles a bit for me, though, is across the space between valuing art by paying for it and valuing art as separate from commerce. In commercial fiction (and I know Ellison and Kinsale both understand this), art is intrinsically bound up with commerce. So it’s one thing, I think, to want to be paid fairly for one’s work, to have people expect that books are not machine-produced widgets. But it is quite another to suggest that giving books away for free devalues them and their creators. I think one could actually make a compelling case for providing more public access to art, but I’m not trying to do that here. I can only speak to my experience as a reader and a lifelong lover of books and say that getting a book for free does not make me value the book or the author any less (or more, for that matter). Whatever a free book may be to the author (cold commercial logic or sentimental generosity), for me it is an open door and a welcoming gesture for me to know and appreciate an author’s work the only way I know how – with my time and talk and money.
What about Kinsale’s concern, though, that “if the reader takes what I wrote for free, they take my time and my mind for free. They get the fun, or fulfillment, or just something to wonder about, and I get zip.” It would require far more space than this column allows for me to break out my response to this statement, but maybe it ultimately breaks down to an unbreachable divide between author and reader. I may believe with all my heart and soul that I do not steal from the author when I read her work for free, and she may believe that I do. I wonder, in fact, if this is a basic point of tension between authors and readers and if most other issues are merely versions of this primal conflict.
But here’s my question for everyone else: what do you think about the trend toward authors and publishers offering work for free? Are authors who do this selling out? Are readers who like it being greedy and insensitive?
And what about the possibility of a subscription service for genre fiction — would it be a blow against art or a way to keeping art commercially viable and accessible?
No related posts.
Karen, you illustrate several excellent points!
Robin, when I said that people expect things for free, I wasn’t talking about romance readers in particularly. In fact, I think that readers as a GROUP like to purchase and own books, either for themselves (keeper shelves) or to be able to give away. I was talking about a broader observation about today’s culture in general. It really started, IMO, with music pirating–so many people (not just teens) think it doesn’t *hurt* anyone to download a song without paying for it. It’s illegal, but they don’t care. This is the same mentality as people who steal credit cards. This happened to me recently–the magnetic strip of my card was stole, a new card created, and someone purchased over $6,000 worth of stuff. Drinks, movies, a television, car parts, yada yada. Did I have to pay for it? No. It cost me about four hours of my time to file reports to my bank and the police department. (My time IS money because I had to do this during my normal writing hours, but I’ll put that aside for now.)
I was reimbursed for every dime stolen. No loss, right? Except that we ALL pay because the credit card company (in this case, my bank) eats that loss, passing on the charges to everyone through higher fees for service. People who steal these cards don’t think they’re hurting anyone because they know that most people don’t have to pay for it–it’s the rich banks. Seriously. And they don’t care. And this is just a small part of cc theft.
For my last book, KILLING FEAR, my publisher offered a free copy of THE PREY for the first 2500 people who sent back proof of purchase. I don’t get paid on those 2500 copies, but to me that’s a great promotion because it’s encouraging people to buy my current book (i.e. “two for one.”) I have seven books on the shelves, and I hope if they like the books they’ve read, one for “free”, that they’ll buy more.
I’m not opposed to the concept of giving away content. I’m opposed to the expectation that something SHOULD be given away. I don’t think at this point that readers are demanding free content, so I guess I don’t quite understand where the controversy started. As far as Gaiman’s assertion that eventually it’ll all be free and we’ll be paid by advertising, the libertarian in me would balk at being forced to “advertise” in my books. If I want to advertise something, I’ll do it because I want to. My characters drink Starbucks. I love Starbucks. I don’t get paid to put that in, but I wouldn’t want to get paid to say my character drink Folgers (for example.) What characters eat and drink is a matter of character, not advertising.
I recently order THE LONG TAIL just to read for myself what Gaiman talks about. From what I’ve heard, I’m not in agreement, but of course, I like to check things out for myself
On an aside, writers tend to be very generous with their time and content. The anthology I was part of, no one got paid and there were other NYT bestselling authors. In the Thriller antho, no one got paid and the money went to the organization. We speak, often for free, and we go online and share our knowledge and information with other authors and aspiring authors. We give a lot for free, but I’ve never thought about it like that until now.
Karen: how would you feel about a subscription-based service, where readers don’t pay directly for specific books, and where at least some of the income is derived from advertising? In other words, does it matter to you how you get paid, or just that you do?
Do you mean ad revenue generated on the site in general? Frankly, the thought of trying to figure out how to apportion such revenue to authors makes my brain hurt, but I’m no financial wizard.
If, say, that revenue was roughly equivalent to my royalties, per book, I’d have no problem with it. Or if such a subscription service proved more popular than swap sites or buying at ubs — which earn authors nothing — then even a smaller cut might still be worth it.
IOW, no, I don’t really care how I’m paid.
And the scenario I’m picturing — where authors are still paid according to the number of times a book is rented, or whatever — would still give me a good idea of readership numbers, which is very important.
However…I’m assuming Netflix buys their DVDs as one-shot deals, then rents them out as many times as they can with no further compensation to the movie folk. If that were the model for the subscription service, I might not be as interested. It would depend on what kind of numbers we were talking, and how much it would cut into my traditional, toss-it-into-your-Walmart-cart sales figures.
IOW, could be good, could be disastrous (for authors, I’m talking). It would just depend on how the service was set up.
Also, are there any provisions in your contract for those promotional giveaways? In other words, can the publisher simply decide to do that, or does the author have to agree?
We give them permission to use the book as a promotional tool with every contract, at the aforementioned two-and-a-half cent rate. And I really don’t have an issue with that — as I said, they were older books, anyway. Were they to give away 90,000 copies of my NEW book, however…
It wouldn’t be pretty.
And one last thing: do you know anything about how the Harlequin Christmas giveaway was conceptualized or how it is seen in retrospect — was it intended to generate more sales or to reward customer loyalty or to promote certain authors or incite new readers to Harlequin, for example?
All of the above. Clearly, as a commercial venture, they don’t do anything that isn’t, in some way, about selling more books. No publisher does. So while Har definitely considers those freebies (they run two or three every month, often in serial form to keep readers coming back to the site) “gifts” to the readers, it would be disingenuous to think they’re not hoping for something in return.
Allison: have you seen the blog that accompanies The Long Tail (http://www.thelongtail.com/the_long_tail/)? It will be interesting to see how this all goes.
Karen: good question about Netflix — I don’t know how the fees for those purchases work, but books would likely be a different situation anyway, I think, because of the different technology involved. I know there’s a service now for books — Paper Spine — that is the literary equivalent of Netflix, but I don’t know a lot about it. Got to look into that.
I had no idea about the contract clause regarding promotional books, but it makes sense. I wonder if some authors don’t want their older books reissued — if they don’t want to be represented by anything other than their current work. Yet it seems like a good compromise when it comes to offering up free books in a promotional context. I wonder if the Harlequin authors whose books were offered during the holidays have seen any increase in their sales. Although I really don’t know how one would measure that definitively, especially since I can see where the effect might be cumulative rather than immediate. There are many interesting facets of this issue, IMO. Thanks for your feedback!
Thanks to everyone for your comments; I’ve learned a lot and have a lot to think more about.
The Har promotionals aren’t reissues — my guess is that they decide to use the book for promotion and print a whole bunch of extra copies in the beginning, then hold them back for later use. Readers want current work, too, so those promotional books are rarely more than a few months old, at most. And since their purpose is to entice people into the bookclubs, it occurs to me now it would be nearly impossible to quantify their effects on individual authors’ sales, there being no picking and choosing in that scenario.
But one would assume that — since bookclub memberships seem to fluctuate a great deal, and not everyone who gets the freebies subscribes — that at least some of those freebies should influence retail sales as well. In my (admittedly limited) experience, I didn’t see it.
Well, lots of interesting points and directions of discussion. To address just a couple:
1) Nobody needs to call me “Ms. Kinsale.” I just got back from raking up dog poop in my yard, that should be reason enuf.
2) Demean vs Devalue. To me, “demean” is an intentional effort to insult, disrespect and devalue someone or something. It may include devaluation but it is a larger and more malicious concept because of the intentional element. You demean a woman if you call her a whore. If you just won’t pay her as much as you’d pay a man for the same work, you devalue her.
3) Robyn wrote: ,“In general, I think she has VERY STRONG and IMO pretty narrow views on the author’s proprietary interest in her own work.”
I have to admit this goes over my head. “Pretty narrow” views on the author’s proprietary interest in her own work? I’m not even sure what this means. It implies that my ownership interest should be wider. But how do I widen my ownership of my own work? Do I say, “I wrote this, but it belongs to my readers?” or maybe just, “This belongs to the universe?” When it comes to Mrs. Giggles’ scathing review, neither my readers nor the universe will be taking ownership of the criticism, I can assure you.
I wrote it. I take the flack, and I take the credit for whatever worth it may have. If I hadn’t written it, it wouldn’t exist. If I decide to donate the proceeds from a new novel to a charity, I donate the proceeds; they don’t put their name on the cover as the authors.
I care about the quality of my work. I care because it is MY work. Corporations spend millions on workshops trying to get employees to take ownership in their work, because the sense of ownership is what creates intense and passionate commitment to bringing something of high value into being.
So yeah, I get a little fussy when my sense of proprietary interest in my own work is looked upon as something narrow. Because in the longer view, my sense of ownership is probably the most unselfish thing about it. I will give readers the absolute best I can produce, because I own it.
4) The interesting question was raised of “who’s making authors feel pressured to write books for free?”
I’m glad people here are taking the time to read The Long Tail and some of the very very VERY strongly pushed meme of “free content.” I can’t possibly go into all the details, and I’ll admit I don’t understand a lot of the reasoning myself. But what I see is the same kind of tidal wave of pressure to change to a new model that has driven the music industry and newspapers over the past decade. Once you begin to offer free content on the web in a limited way, you can’t go back. Subscription content on the web has largely been a disaster.
There are promotional efforts in many industries that end up taking on a life of their own. Years and years ago, one publisher decided to give retailers the opportunity to return unsold books. This was so successful in terms of getting copies into stores that all the other publishers hurried to do the same. This resulted in a whole new system, called “returns.” Every authors’ royalty statement contains a “reserve against returns” because they publisher says they can’t pay the royalty on books that are still out there that might be returned. Hundreds of thousands of books are printed and then returned and literally destroyed. Paperback books are stripped. Their covers are sent back as “returns” and the books are supposed to be destroyed, though many make their way to black markets. It’s extremely inefficient and has added to the price of books, not to mention killed a lot of trees, but once the system got going, no publisher could drop out of it. It’s like frequent flyer miles. Airlines hate them but none of them can afford not to have them.
So there’s a force that’s much bigger than just “readers” that’s driving toward free content. It’s what drove the internet bubble; it’s the young and smart and net savvy who are sure they see the future more clearly than anyone else. And they don’t mind saying so, and referring to anyone who might disagree as a fool. But like any bubble, it’s kinda fragile. It depends on a lot of things going a certain way, like most people saying, “I think I’ll not only pay $25.95 for this book that I just downloaded in .pdf, I’ll actually take the time to go to Amazon and put in my order and tell all my friends, “It’s a great book, you should order it!” instead of just emailing them the .pdf file.”
Free and convenient are very powerful forces.
Speaking of the Scott Seigler free download, Long Tail said “Either Crown believes that free downloads sell books or they don’t. There’s no coherent explanation for a ticking-bomb download like this one; it’s like the hesitation marks on the wrists of a half-ass suicide.” Then they got a Crown marketing manager to reply, “It was an experiment, but if we see it as successful, we’d only want to go further, not go back.” This an example of the kind of pressure I’m talking about. It’s not from readers, per se–it’s from the fact that of course readers will be happy with free content, why shouldn’t they be? And ergo we will give it to them, because according to the New Way, this will make us all rich. Somehow. I think it might make the savvy marketing managers temporarily rich, but then maybe I’ve lived too long.
5) Lisa said, “However, to say UNLESS the writing has been paid for, and handsomely, or the writing is worthless is just plain silly. Or greedy. Or both..
Yes, that would be silly. Maybe greedy. Lucky for me, I didn’t say that. I said this.
Karen: I wonder if Harlequin has a way of measuring the success or failure of these promo giveaways, and whether they look at it from a publisher pov (does it increase Harlequin business) or an author pov or both. It would be interesting to know if you could have (or if they already do) survey new customers to see if they got free books first.
Angela: I wonder how much the perpetual series comes from reader pressure and how much comes from publisher pressure, or even trend pressure. My own sense is that readers will clamor, but that they are also very adaptive, and if an author changes direction, will ultimately follow, as long as the books are entertaining to them (I hesitate to say “good” since that’s a matter of personal taste to some degree).
Laura:
re. demean v. devalue: thanks for the explanation. I have always see demean as sort of a two-sided word — as inclusive of both a loss of dignity and as humility, depending on how it’s used (and whatever definition you’re drawing on). Either way I’ve never associated it as particularly malicious, though, although I understand what you’re saying.
I have to admit this goes over my head. “Pretty narrow” views on the author’s proprietary interest in her own work? I’m not even sure what this means.
Well, it probably would have helped if I had been clearer in my statment.
Specifically I was thinking about your comments last month (?) on SBTB that you considered publicly circulated fan fiction to be comparable to what Cassie Edwards did. Other examples, not related to you, but that I’ll put out there before I try to explain myself a little bit, include authors who threaten legal action against fans who write fan fic from their work and authors who think that the selling of ARCs is illegal and/or unethical.
Now I’ll try to explain my thoughts on this better. Fan fiction especially occupies a gray area in the law, as to whether it purely derivative or transformative or somewhere in between. I mean, the judge in the Rowling case has been encouraging settlement because the pendulum can swing either way, and he acknowledged that. Anyway, as I’m sure you know, one of the central tensions in copyright law is between incentivizing creativity/protecting the creative labor of the artist and fostering public culture/protecting public exchange of ideas. There’s a point, as you pointed out in your SB remarks, where all so-called original work is itself built on the foundation of other works, and copyright law is negotiating this relationship, too.
Now most creators, I would guess, aren’t thinking about the law or about copyright limitations when they conceptualize their ownership of a work they create. But I have found some of the legal issues helpful for myself in thinking about some of these non-legal concepts, like how authors perceive their creative rights in a philosophical way. So while you see plagiarism as broadly inclusive, I see it as narrower: when, for example, one is writing fan fiction within a context in which everyone knows that some of it is derivative, I see it as very different from plagiarism, where the purpose is to deceive the reader into thinking that the work presented is all original. And I think there’s a reason, beyond generosity, that publishers aren’t pursuing legal action against fan ficcers.
So when I mentioned “narrow views,” it was kind of a stupid term, because I think I have narrower views of what an author does and doesn’t, can and can’t own than you might. And that your sense of the public’s rights might be narrower than mine. No philosophical right or wrong there, just a different perspective. And I don’t say that as just a reader, either, but as someone who creates original work in another context, so it’s not that I don’t have respect for the artist.
Anyway, this is something I can talk about interminably, so I’ll stop myself now and hope I was a little clearer here.
It depends on a lot of things going a certain way, like most people saying, “I think I’ll not only pay $25.95 for this book that I just downloaded in .pdf, I’ll actually take the time to go to Amazon and put in my order and tell all my friends, “It’s a great book, you should order it!” instead of just emailing them the .pdf file.”
It’s so interesting that you should use this example, because just yesterday I was talking with a friend about this issue, the friend, btw, who introduced me to Romance and to your work specifically. We were talking about how we both have bought your books in print AND ebook, because as we both read more in electronic format we want the books we love in that format because of the portability. And as someone who regularly receives ARCs to review, I know that I’m not the only one who purchases the final copy of the books I like (my fellow bloggers do this, as well, as do many others I know).
I do think that there’s a certain underestimation of readers in some of these discussions, a generalized perception of this great yawning maw at the gates of the free content compound. And I’m not going to deny that there are readers who pirate books and who feel entitled to free books. I guess I just start to feel a little frustrated at the ‘ungrateful reader’ refrain (and I’m not attributing this to you, just saying it’s something I feel lately floating around).
And also, I think that with all the changes in the technology that it’s time to get proactive about where it’s all going and about how business models of publishing can and will change. There is so much room for innovation here, IMO, so much space for creative approaches that haven’t even been conceptualized yet, that I’d like to think that there are ways to adapt to inevitable change without completely depersonalizing the reader/author relationship, cheating the author, and/or dis-incentivizing creative effort.
Karen: I wonder if Harlequin has a way of measuring the success or failure of these promo giveaways, and whether they look at it from a publisher pov (does it increase Harlequin business) or an author pov or both. It would be interesting to know if you could have (or if they already do) survey new customers to see if they got free books first.
Well, if they end up subscribing to one of the bookclubs after they’ve received their freebies, that’s a pretty obvious correlation. If they get the freebies and decide not to subscribe, but start buying regularly from eHar, that’’s easy to pin down, too. If they take their business elsewhere, though…that’s a little trickier to figure out.
And it’s always about promoting Harlequin, then the line, then — with the exception of the bigger names, the Macombers and the Palmers, etc. — the author. They want people to buy lots and lots and books, and no one author puts out enough books to meet that goal.
Angela: I wonder how much the perpetual series comes from reader pressure and how much comes from publisher pressure, or even trend pressure. My own sense is that readers will clamor, but that they are also very adaptive, and if an author changes direction, will ultimately follow, as long as the books are entertaining to them (I hesitate to say “good” since that’s a matter of personal taste to some degree).
Reader pressure = publisher pressure. If sales for a series are strong to phenomenal, the publisher is of course going to encourage the author to write more. Just the other day I happened on a reader discussion about how they hoped I’d continue a series just now finishing. I’ve already moved on to something else, but it was interesting how attached these readers had become to the family I’d created, so they wanted more stories — about characters who don’t even exist, mind you, because I’ve written the stories for all the ones already introduced!
So it’s always reader-motivated, in one way or another.
Reader pressure = publisher pressure.
Where do I sign up to be one of those readers the publishers listen to and try to please??????
Seriously, though, I understand what you’re saying but think that sales figures are not necessarily a good way to anticipate reader tastes, because so often we buy books and hate them, but we don’t know that *until* we buy. And, of course, just because we like something doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like something *else* just as much. Sometimes I think the whole system is loony.
Seriously, though, I understand what you’re saying but think that sales figures are not necessarily a good way to anticipate reader tastes, because so often we buy books and hate them, but we don’t know that *until* we buy. And, of course, just because we like something doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like something *else* just as much. Sometimes I think the whole system is loony.
Heaven knows I won’t argue with publishing being loony
, but one can’t dismiss sales figures out of hand as not being an indicator of What People Want. Not *all* people, all the time, certainly, but publishing is a business, selling a product — books, in this case — which means they want to sell as many of each title to as many people as possible. So publishers do their market research, keep an eye on the trends, and watch sales figures.
As do authors. By the time you hit twenty or more books, you can start to see patterns, which storylines appeal to more readers than others. It’s like putting out twenty dishes on the buffet table, but some go faster than others (shrimp, anybody?).
.And while I know some will argue that the romance “buffet” seems pretty limited at present, I disagree. Despite the proliferation of a handful of trends, there’s actually more variety within the genre than ever. Not so long ago, “romance” meant bodice rippers, period. Now besides historicals (in which far fewer bodices are being ripped, praise be) there’s contemp and suspense and sweet and erotic and religious-themed and paranormal and all manner of hybrids of the aforementioned subgenres. So we’ve definitely come a long way in a relatively short time, IMO. And why is that?
Because readers made it know that they wanted contemp and suspense and erotic and sweet and inspirational and paranormal.
And publishers listened.
Now. About series books.
With a series, by the third book it’s usually fairly easy to see if it’s caught on or not. If sales of book 2 and book 3 have climbed, then the author might be asked to — or might consider on her own — continuing the series. If sales continue to climb, or at least stay steady, during subsequent books…
You get the picture.
Conversely, if sales start to wane, it’s time to wrap things up. Granted, there will be readers who’ll tire of the series earlier than others, but as long as those figures stay strong and the author is still on board, it only makes sense to continue something that’s actually making the publisher money. Especially these days.
As for moving to something new — there’s a multi-pronged issue for you.
Some readers are author-loyal, some are content-loyal (which is why Har pushes similarly-themed lines, rather than authors, in category romance, because those readers are looking for character types and themes they love. Who writes them is often immaterial.). Even J.K. Rowling knows that her post-HP books won’t, in all likelihood, be anywhere near as successful, because people were hooked on *that* story and *those* characters. Obviously, that story and those characters wouldn’t exist without Rowling, but the loyalty in this case is far more to the creation than the creator.
Other authors throughout literary history have encountered the same problem, Sir Arthur Conon Doyle being a prime example when he tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes. Although I don’t remember whether he wanted to write other stories or simply not write about Sherlock anymore, his fans had a fit and a half, and he eventually capitulated to them, IIRC.
So there are clearly pros and cons to writing series. A popular one can reap very nice rewards for the author, building a solid readership in a climate where solid readerships are not easy to build.
As long as she can maintain her enthusiasm and freshness (which, yes, I know, isn’t always a given 
), and readers continue to look forward to each new installment, what’s the harm? However, like the actress who plays a much loved character in a long-running TV show, becoming so linked to that character that her audience won’t accept her in any other role, the author whose name becomes so identified with a popular series may have a hard time convincing readers to give her other projects a try.
Building — and maintaining — momentum in this business is no mean feat these days. Certainly there are writers who are forging very solid careers writing stand-alones, but those seem to be fewer and farther between than ever. Most writers definitely feel the pressure to come up with that something “extra” to keep readers returning, and links between books is one way to do that.
As an amateur aspiring to be published, I began a blog to share short stories in hopes of getting my name out there as well as feedback. To me it doesn’t feel as though I’m giving anything away, but rather gaining readers’ interest in my work as well as inspiration to continue writing for them. People continuously ask me, “What happens next?” And, that is the greatest compliment of all.
I think it’s great to get a little taste of an author’s creativity on his or her website. I’m much more likely to go to the bookstore and buy a novel by an author that I already know I’m going to enjoy.
Karen: Thank you for making that point about author loyalty and content loyalty. That’s a really great point. I tend to be book loyal, but I’m not sure that’s even the same thing you’re talking about, since I tend to move on after a series I enjoy ends. But I’m probably more content loyal on your scale. And you’re right that authors who have content loyal readers are going to have to win them back over, so to speak, when they do something different, whereas author-loyal readers will go for the name alone. I think Nora Roberts is an author who inspires a lot of author loyalty in readers, although there are probably a lot of readers like me who only read her In Death books and don’t really cross over. So I guess an author is in the best position when s/he can command both author and content loyalty.
As a reader, I am of two minds about connected series. If the connection feels necessary or at least significant, I often love it, but if the connection feels forced or like pandering, I tend to hate it. But I see what you’re saying about authors feeling the need to keep readers happy (I’m thinking of how long, for example, Stephanie Laurens, has been writing those Cynster novels, lol).
I guess me own motto as a reader would be something like this: if you want to give me what I want, give me something I never expected.
L.S. Oliver: I think readers love to “discover” a new author, and the Internet has become a great way of accomplishing that, for both authors and readers.
Honestly, I believe that good work will sell itself, but some smart promotion can get good work out there in front of readers.