How much slack does an author earn after one great book?

Your loyalty as a reader: a discussion thread

Hello to all my new subscribers, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ll be back in the bookshop on Friday, and I’ll tell you all about it in the free Receipt from the Bookshop then, but in the meantime today’s post is for my paid subscribers. If you enjoy reading my work please consider a paid subscription to access everything. You can pre-order my book, Receipts From the Bookshop here. All Shares, Restacks and Recommendations are really appreciated. Now let’s get to it…

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Most avid readers have their special authors that they’ll buy anything from: it doesn’t matter what the synopsis is about, or what the reviews say - if your favourite author is putting something new out, chances are you want to get it. There are plenty of authors who survive bad books because they’ve built up loyalty from their readers that they continue to cash in; at some point that loyalty will run out for some readers, but for others it’ll never expire. In fact, there are plenty of beloved writers whose fanbases openly agree on books where the author got too complacent, needed more editing, or lost the plot entirely…

and just like that, I realised I didn’t care anymore

I recently read two books that I’d been really looking forward to, by authors I was excited to read more from. In both cases, I felt disappointed on some level by the new books, though I still wrote about how much I admired the writers, even using these new less-good books as evidence. I had to ask myself how much leniency I was granting these new books on the bases of the writers’ other work. If these two new books were debuts, would I ever buy anything by these authors again? It sound brutal to say it’s one strike and out for new writers, but in a world where too many books are being published and concentration is an endurance event, sometimes that’s how it is.