My Letter to Authors

I know that without authors I would not be able to indulge in my favorite hobby of all time...reading. So I’m writing this to authors everywhere to let you know how I feel.

Did you know that I don’t like whipped cream? I don’t care for pies either or peach cobbler for that matter. I don’t drink coffee and I don’t like horror movies or roller coasters. I also can’t stand Thanksgiving Day food and Oreos give me Migraines. Someone out there gasped at one of those! This just goes to show that we all vary widely in our likes and dislikes, and as the old saying goes, “one person’s garbage is another’s treasure”.

I’d like to think that my role in the process is to get word of your work out to more readers whether I loved your book, liked your book, or thought it was ok. No matter my personal rating, I still feel that someone, somewhere would enjoy knowing more about it and may find those particular things about it that I didn’t like more to their tastes.

Just because I didn’t like one aspect of your book (like insta-love, a love triangle, or a character’s reaction to a circumstance), there are other readers out there who crave these elements in their readings. I like to be specific when I say that I felt something was ‘bad’ in a book because other readers out there may really enjoy it instead.

Now, let me just say that I’m in graphic design and have been for 11 years now. I hear comments like, “I hate that!” and “Oh, that’s beautiful!” all the time. Generally, without anything constructive said. It is a good thing that I have thick skin or the comments would probably bother me. Thankfully, I know that we each have different tastes so I don’t take things personally when I hear them tear down something that I may have spent days on with a one sentence comment of dislike.

I hope that by mentioning all the things that I do like about the books that I read along with whatever I disliked, you don’t feel like you have to be as tough-skinned because someone is tearing apart your baby. What I mean is that I hope you focus on those positive statements and only look to the negative if you agree that those are ways that you can improve your work.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts, ideas, and stories with me. I have the utmost respect for the imaginative worlds you can weave with your words and the characters you create that I dearly want to learn more about.

Thank you!