Caitering To Readers

[greenwizard]

Ok, I've been thinking about something. As of today I now have 2 people who want me to email them when I update. Is it really an authors job to sit and send out a bunch of emails so the readers can convienently know when to come read again?

I'm not really bitching here... I'm glad they like it that much. I'm just interested in what the rest of you feel about the subject.

[shinigamiinochi]

Author's really don't have any 'responsibilities', especially with fanfiction. With payable fiction, one could argue that they owe their readers because they pay for their work, but that's not true with fanfiction. Fanfiction's kind of strange that way. An author will put his/her heart out there and the only thing that they ask for is some feedback, yet we get flames and crappy reviews. If a reader likes a story, it's there responsibility to follow it. I would ask Stephen King to notify me of when he's writing a new book. It's disrespectful and egotistical. With some sites, you can just get the option for e-mail notification. However, I have a better system. If there's a fic I like, but it's a work in progress, I just save it to my favorites and check up on it every once in awhile.

[scottishfae]

Ok, I've been thinking about something. As of today I now have 2 people who want me to email them when I update. Is it really an authors job to sit and send out a bunch of emails so the readers can convienently know when to come read again?

I'm not really bitching here... I'm glad they like it that much. I'm just interested in what the rest of you feel about the subject.

Some sites do that for the author. AFF obviously doesn't, but if you post your fiction on other sites that do email updates, perhaps funneling people over to those sites for emailed updates is more probable.

Honestly, I used to do the whole "email" thing. I would simply make up a mailing list (pretty easy with hotmail and gmail) and send out a quick message to everyone. It's not hard to do, but I often forget--which mostly is due to the fact that I post my stories on tons of sites to begin with and things get forgotten easily in that process.

I suppose, in the end, it's up to the author if they want to keep up with that responsibility. Readers should definitely never expect it though. Writing in itself is so much of a consuming process and it really is dependent on the author how much they can handle.

[Solaris]

If the e-mails were visible like they were in the begining of the site on the review board, it would be easy to get the e-mails of those who requested notification of a new chapter, but because it was changed because someone complained about getting spam, getting e-mails is now a chore and sometimes the readers do not even put their e-mails in their reviews so the author can get their e-mails even when signed in, the e-mails are not there for you to see.

So I basically try to hit all the fanfiction lists that is about that fandom that I am writing about to alert them of a new chapter up on the site or another site like my webpage.

Beth

[cu-kid9]

I don't think you have any responsibility to notify readers when you post a new story/chapter. If a reader loves a story, they'll check to see if it's been updated (which some of us do obsessive compulsively ).

I agree with scottishfae -it's not a hard thing to do, but it's really up to whether you want the added work on top of writing. I used to do a mailing list, but I would post, forget to send the e-mail, and the next day or day after feel bad.

[Guest Monsterking]

i say as long as you update at least an minimum of once an month you are being responsible to your readers.