Author Matt Wallace recently tweeted:

Being an author online often feels like this…

Author: Hey, you folks like books, right?

Folks: Omg we LOVE books! We LIVE for books! Our TBR pile is a mile high!

Author: Oh wow sweet so you’ll love my book, right?

Folks: FUCK no. We won’t even acknowledge your book exists.

That hit me right in the feels.

I share my books, and my excitement about having written said books, with my friends both in and out of the kink community. They always say how happy they are for me, or how proud they are, or how interested they are… but when it comes to actually reading my books, well… nah.

I have plenty of people who tell me they’re interested in beta-reading, but they have lives and never get around to reading the books and giving me feedback. Which is fine, but I’d really like to be told something like, “hey, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to have time to get to your book.” That’s way better than being kept in limbo, waiting for feedback and never getting it.

I have plenty of people who tell me they’ll buy my books when they come out, but when I check my Amazon stats, there are precious few actual sales. Now, I do get a lot of pages read on Kindle Unlimited, and maybe those people have KU, but how am I to know?

Well, for one thing, they could rate or review my books.

Spoiler alert: they don’t.

As of this writing, the last review I got on a book was July 10 of this year. Prior to that, the most recent review was December 12 of last year. Look, I know people are reading my stuff; would it kill them to at least rate the books? After every Kindle book I read, I will at least give it a star rating, even if I don’t sit down and write an entire review. It takes literally five seconds.

The demoralizing truth about being an author is this: unless you are at least somewhat famous, the odds of your friends reading and reviewing your books are slim and none.

Go on. Prove me wrong.