We’ve all had that one artist, musician, or author we absolutely idolized. But as the old saying goes, you should never meet your heroes. Or, in the digital age, maybe it’s wiser not to comment on their Facebook pages.
Back before the pandemic hit, this woman used to read and buy books like crazy. Lately, she’s been trying to get back into reading on a more consistent basis, and she ended up checking out some used library book sales, which made her think back to an incident that happened with her favorite author a few years ago.
“She had 3 series at the time, one largely popular series and 2 less popular series. I bought (well, my parents bought) every single one of the more popular series as they came out,” she explained.
“The less popular series I got at the library (and were much more adult and I probably should not have been allowed to check them out, lol).”
“So when I was older with adult money but not a lot of it, I bought both of the other series off Thriftbooks for super cheap (this was when they still had some books for 3 dollars).”
She came across an announcement her favorite author made on Facebook one day about her most popular book series, and people were losing it in the comments.
One girl said in a comment on the post that she bought the first two books from the series; however, she didn’t have enough money to buy the remaining books, but she adored reading them.
She responded to that girl, revealing that she got the rest of the books in the series for less than $30 on the thrifted website. She was only trying to help, and that girl was so appreciative of her feedback on how to save money on the series.
“A little while later, I got a notification that the AUTHOR replied to my comment. I was like a 13-year-old if One Direction just looked at them, that’s how excited I was,” she added.
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“I tapped the notification, and [she] went off on me for trying to help this girl, saying that buying books used was STEALING from the author and how to only buy new to support her. It was a mini rant that had a ‘How Dare You’ vibe, to not mention used book websites on her page, and how if everyone bought used, authors wouldn’t make money.”
“I was in shock. I wanted to reply that not everyone could just afford to buy new, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I felt betrayed in a weird way. When she released another series, a sequel to the more popular one, I didn’t buy it new or used. It was just a strange and disheartening experience.”
While she still owns those books the author wrote, she has refused to purchase anything else she has released after such a bad experience.
This is so sad to me that her favorite author publicly attacked her! Does this woman know that libraries are a thing? She should be flattered for having an audience of adoring fans at all, and if that happened to me, I wouldn’t buy another book of hers (new or used) either for the rest of my days.
What do you think?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
