Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion

I LOVE books, and I'm very opinionated so for years, I have written deep-dive book reviews, made (some very well-produced) videos about books, and even infographics. I publish this content on my website, Youtube, and social media channels where I have thousands of readers and viewers. And, of course, I would email the reviews to the authors.

AND, I get disappointingly little response from authors. I do link to their books and often recommend enthusiastically that people buy them. And many authors are just above responding, I'm no Joe Rogan or Oprah but I'm also NOT a nobody on the internet.

A few authors have responded, notably Graham Hancock, and I've made friends with a few authors this way.

I wrote two books and I respond to EVERY reader that contacts me via email or social media so it's amazing to me that these authors can't take moments to write back "Thanks man, nice review" or hit the retweet button.

I guess it's a reminder to not idolize authors, many are self-important narcissists (even the very enlightened seeming ones) that don't care much about their readers. Some of them probably had their books ghostwritten by publishers and don't care what people think. I can also count on authors not responding if I disagree with them on something, so a lot of fragile egos out there.

If you're an author and somebody reviews your book, take a moment to say, "Thanks!"

Absolutely, it's extremely rude not to.