You’ve been critical of, um, certain-other-authors for their negative interactions with fans. What is the proper relationship or interactions between an author and readers?
Ha! You’ve done your homework, I see.
My own philosophy is to look at the author as beholden to the people who pay him/her—and that is the public! In the old days, an artist would be supported by a wealthy benefactor. Nowadays, it hasn’t actually changed all that much. That wealthy benefactor is now a group made up of the public who buy books.
I LOVE writing. It’s the most amazing job I think I could imagine. The fact that the people who pay for my books support me in this addiction of mine is very humbling. I can do this, day by day, because of the generosity and encouragement of my readers. I feel, then, that I owe them something. Great books, first off. But, beyond that, I think I owe them respect. That means not calling them names or getting angry at them, even if they didn’t like a particular book of mine. They paid for it, they pay for my family to eat, they have a right to tell me what they think of the job I’m doing.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.