On “Readers’ Spaces”

One of the reasons I limited my time on socials this past year was to avoid taking psychic damage from whatever stupid drama was going on through booktwt/booksky/bookstagram/whatever the fuck. However, I’ve had to come back for the promo circuit to share news about the new books and events and all of that.

In my brief return, I’ve been catching strays.

In the last few days, I’ve caught the edge of some drama that really has nothing to do with me because I’m moisturized, in my lane, etc. And probably that author did make some unwise comments, act without as much decorum as they probably should have.

However.

In the great vendetta against them by readers, I kept seeing bandied about a phrase that comes up often any time readers get mad at something an author says:

“They should have stayed out of readers’ spaces.”

“Why are they even in readers’ spaces?!”

Usually, this is about Goodreads. (Which we’ll get to later.)

But this time, the drama went down on Twitter. Twitter is the “readers’ space” in question.

Only, Twitter is not a readers’ space—or at least, it’s not only that. In addition to being a general cess pool, it’s also a writers’ space (it’s where I met my agent AND my editor AND many of my colleagues!). It’s a place readers go to connect with their favorite authors on purpose and vice versa! It’s a place where people dabble across multiple fandoms and interests, write fanfic and share fan art. It’s a place where all of these blend together because—wild, but bear with me on this—it’s a public forum.

It’s a public forum that is made stronger because everyone is there. (Hence, the weakening of the platforms since Twitter’s enshittification; as everyone scatters, all the platforms are weaker for it because there’s no critical mass of cross-pollination.)

Before the aggregate public forums of social media, if you wanted to be a dick about a topic on the internet, including, say, a book, you had to do it on your own blog, or with your friends. Or you had to be writing for a periodical like the NYT or something. And if you were doing it in public for a periodical, you had to have some sort of credentials, so an author might actually want to know what you thought about their book, as a peer. (Though even that was not without its risks: see Colson Whitehead and Richard Ford.) And the author could easily avoid a personal website; someone would have to actually send them a link. (Piracy also happened in private.)

This is different from the casual psychic attacks of walking down the public internet streets and seeing people post pretty posed images about how much they hated your book, or how you should have written it THIS way (because they would have), or how they plan on…acquiring it…when it comes out.

It’s simply…not nice.

And you can say that the author shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be in “readers’ spaces” but does that mean they need to get off Twitter? Off bsky or bopsky or whatever? Get off the internet entirely? That’s hardly fair.

When readers snap back with that retort, it really just seems like a fig leaf for bad behavior and the entitlement people feel to be rude without consequences. It’s the reaction of people who haven’t learned to coexist with others, who don’t respect anyone but themselves. People who ignore the very obvious fact that writers are also readers who have fandoms, who like to be engaged in conversations about books, who are probably pretty passionate about books! And with the way these public forums work (algorithms that feed users associated topics), we can’t always help getting fed critiques of our work.

(For example, I’m very publicly a fan of Arcane/CaitVi, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Gideon the Ninth, and other tragic sapphic books. I also wrote in the world of Arcane. I also write tragic sapphic books. I’m often tagged in tweets about Arcane, Ambessa, and Touraine and Luca. I post about them myself. Guess what the internet thinks I’d like to see more of, whether I’m tagged in it or not? Surprise!)

I also use Goodreads—I’m a reader, too!—and it actually has an entire portal for authors to monitor stats and some authors use that to make business decisions. For business reasons, readers’ spaces are authors’ spaces. Now, does this mean I should go seek out every review and name search my books? No. That would be unwise. At least on Goodreads, we know we know where the reviews are and can avoid them if we wish.

But this “the customer is always right” mentality applied to communities really doesn’t work. Where is there a place where only readers go? Nowhere! Unless you create it yourself—private spaces like book clubs, discords, blogs, where you invite authors of the books your discussing only when you want to, and some ground rules can be set for such events. (This “customer is always right” mentality also seems to imply that authors are not allowed to have opinions about the world we live in—including the book-o-sphere. Which is…odd.)

It also feels a bit like the anonymized cruelty of the internet—the glee people feel when they get to feel superior by talking about their taste. And it gets clicks! People love to spread it, love to read it and gossip about it with their friends. And these public forums are where we convene with our pocket friends. And authors want their books to be discussed! There are a lot of contradictions! There are a lot of exceptions! It’s not a perfect system.

Because it isn’t a perfect system, and we’re all in it together, it’s worth considering how you talk about things and to whom. A little tact never cost anybody anything. A little empathy. (This is about book-internet; this is not about book-internet.) Readers should be able to speak candidly about the work they’ve read, whether they enjoyed it or not, and authors should be able to handle that. I’m also not a fan of the over-kindness toward books and authors that precludes actual worthy critique of a story that’s wanting. But in a public forum, it’s worth asking—would I say it like this if the author was standing in front of me? For some people, the answer is still going to be yes, no matter what, and good luck to them. But for others…maybe save the total panning of books for a personal website, or the discord.

I’m also not a fan of the over-kindness toward books and authors that precludes actual worthy critique of a story that’s wanting.

There are things that authors can do, too. Don’t interact with reviews or anything you’re not tagged in. If you’re going to stalk them, live by the “I do not see it 😌” rule. Don’t lash out at people who just don’t like your book a normal amount. We don’t have to agree that my book is the best thing since sliced bread, but if they’re not going to be shitty about it, that’s cool. But also, don’t lash out at people, even if they have no manners. It can be upsetting, and you may feel the need to justify yourself or your work, to set the record straight, but those people aren’t worth it; they’ll turn around and make your life hell with no compunction.

But this is a community. Readers and authors are symbiotic, and the roles are not so static as people like to pretend.

It’s about time people remembered that, and learned to act like it.