Author Blogs...TMI or Meeting (not) Reader Expectations...

I've been buried deep in a book, so I haven't been on the road or online all that much lately. But I did hear of a particular blog post from a variety of sources (hmm, makes me wonder if I should take this as a hint) that has really made me think about the online book world.

In a post about entitlement issues, author Neil Gaiman deals with a reader's questions that came up after this reader started reading another author's blog. The author has a long-running series, and apparently fans are getting impatient for the next book in the series. In his blog, the author doesn't seem to talk much about that book and when it might be finished and published. Instead, he talks about other things he's doing. That leads some readers to feel somehow cheated -- like, how dare he do all that other stuff when he has a book to write! Doesn't he know there are readers dying to get their hands on that book? He got them hooked on this series, and now he owes it to them to finish it before he allows himself to play. And worse, how dare he actually tell readers that he's not working on that book?

Gaiman politely but sternly reminded the reader that writers don't work for them. When you buy a book, you're buying that book, not the author's future labors. Authors are human (well, most of us, more or less, in varying degrees depending on the proximity of a deadline), and we have lives. We also have brains that don't always work according to command.

It occurred to me that this probably wasn't an issue in the Dark Ages before the Internet. We knew a new book was coming out when we saw it in bookstores, or maybe if we read about it in a magazine or newspaper. We didn't have a timeline very far ahead of publication. We also had no idea what the author was up to in the meantime, unless maybe we saw an interview in a magazine or ran into the author at an event. We had no way of knowing if an author had spent the entire time since the last book's publication slaving away over the next one or if he'd written the next one in one furious month and the rest of the intervening time was spent gardening, traveling or getting a pilot's license.

Now that so many authors are blogging and allowing peeks into our daily lives and writing processes, is that too much information? It's like we're airing our dirty little secrets -- when we're having a bad day and the words just won't flow, when we decided to skip work for a day to go see the new Star Trek movie with friends (guilty!), how long it takes to write a draft, what else we might be working on, etc. Readers know if we're being "unfaithful" to their favorite series by writing something else, and they know when we're not plugging away like good little word slaves.

The thing is, knowing this doesn't really change anything. You'll still get the book when it comes out, which is almost exactly the same way it would have happened if you didn't get to see behind the scenes. I suppose my recommendation is to enjoy author blogs for giving you more insight into your favorite authors and their work, but don't be tempted to see these blogs as some kind of project status report for evaluating their accountability.

Until next time ... Shanna

Shanna Swendson writes "Fairy Tales for Modern Times" and is the author of the Enchanted, Inc. series about a Texan in New York City, a magical NYC. Visit her website or blog for more information.