Why Authors Should Have A Personal Account

Disclaimer: This post isn’t meant to hurt anyone or cause hate towards any of the authors mentioned below. All of these thoughts are my own. I will include screenshots of everything I mention.

If you active on Twitter than you probably have already seen the incest drama over there and how some authors are shipping it. Basically the whole issue was about them shipping incest characters on Game of Thrones. Honestly I wouldn’t see this as a big deal if it wasn’t on their author platform. A lot of debates have mentioned that they shouldn’t be posting this because they write young adult books that are targeted towards teens. That teens are young and impressionable. As this may be true in some aspects I don’t believe this to be a valid reason in this case. Most teens are well aware of things that are considered to be morally right or socially acceptable at a young age thanks to media and parenting. As I can’t say that teens without a doubt will be influenced by incest shown in TV shows I believe that the chance is highly unlikely. However, there is one thing that people are saying that I most definitely agree with. What about the victims of incest. The ones who didn’t go in to it willingly, the ones who were sexually assaulted. The authors need to be a bit more considerate in that aspect.

Back to the main point of this post. I believe authors need to not post their personal options that aren’t related to their book in anyway, shape or form on their author account. A few examples could be when an author doesn’t like a book and posts that they hated this book or when an author talks about politics constantly on their social media. I don’t know about you but when an author talks a lot about politics I tend to unfollow them and not be as excited about their book. I go to an author page to connect with them about their characters and books. To escape the world and all the current issues going on. I don’t like to be reminded about how the world has gone to shit. I want to hear about your next book and how your writing is going.

A few examples of the things I have seen on Twitter where I think the author needed to either post it on a personal account or not post it at all are shown below:

*When Tomi Adeyemi posted on her Twitter how she was annoyed that people were riding her coat tail of fame and copying her. Saying that Nora Roberts copied her title and was trying to use her fame to make her book popular. First thing first Nora Roberts has been in the publishing game way longer than Tomi and she doesn’t need any help getting fame. She already has it. She writes multiple genres and has a crap ton of books out in the world. She’s a house hold name. Secondly you can not copyright a title. And thirdly Tomi should have brought up this issue with her agent before posting it on social media. (The tweet has since then been deleted)

*This is a more recent one. Emily Duncan posted on Twitter saying how reviews aren’t helpful for authors. She doesn’t understand that the reviews are for other readers. I constantly look at reviews to help me decide if a book is for me. I feel like if she read the reviews and got some feedback from them that would be great. From all the posts on Twitter I’ve seen people didn’t like her book that much. They thought the ending was rather unfinished than a cliff hanger. Which I could totally see. This happens a lot to me in book and it just leaves you confused, especially if the author didn’t explain things very well through the book. Emily went on to say that she’s not like other fantasy authors and won’t hold your hand. I thought this was extremely rude and it truly seems like she doesn’t care for her readers with that comment. Another author went along with Emily to say that no teens are on book twitter and they don’t use Goodreads. That people that are angry are 30 year olds. Emily seriously need to post this on her personal account or get someone to help her write appropriate tweets. A lot of people are saying they wont be reading her book and many more are changing their reviews on Goodreads.

While there are a lot of authors that do the things I’ve mentioned above there’s a lot of authors who are keeping their noses clean and are talking with fans about their books and that’s it. A few are Holly Black, my dark fae queen. Jay Kristoff who I think is one of the funniest authors and kindest. He’s always replying to his fans and making them feel loved.

Overall I believe authors should stick strictly to talking about their own books and characters on their author accounts. They shouldn’t attack their readers or stalk them for giving a bad review. If they feel the need to rant out into the world do it on your personal account where your thousands of followers won’t go and change their reviews because of things you say. If every author did this or just watched what they posted the book twitter community wouldn’t be so crazy. We wouldn’t have no tea to spill about authors and maybe the cancel culture of book twitter wouldn’t be so popular.

Let me know how you feel about all this drama and let me know your thoughts on whether or not you think they should have personal accounts separate from their author one.