Author Appreciation Day Update
As originally posted to the blog’s affiliated Twitter account.
In advance of tomorrow’s reminder for Author Appreciation Day, I need to voice something.
I realize that people have lives outside of the fandom and that taking a short poll takes a lot less time than signing up for and writing a short thank you message. 39 people (out of my over 1400 followers) participated in the You Pick the Tag Event last week, which is one of the highest numbers I’ve had in nearly a year and a half of operating the blog. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely excited that people seem to like this event and want to take part in it.
But we’ll be halfway through the Thank You Card Writer sign-ups this week, only needing 26 people total to take part in it, and to have well under half of the number of You Pick the Tag participants signed up (and well under half of the number needed for every author to be written to) is a little disheartening. I hoped readers especially would want to take a bit of time to thank an author in the fandom.
Like I said, I realize that people have things going on and time can be extremely precious. But the same can be said for the time authors spend thinking about, planning, writing, editing, and re-writing fics that they freely share with all of us. They spend days, months, even years on beautiful, elaborate pieces of art that we get to read because they take time out of their busy schedules to make that happen. And the fact that over half of the people who have signed up are authors themselves who want to spend more of their time showing gratitude and support to their fellow writers doesn’t surprise me at all, because the authors in this fandom are always beyond supportive of each other.
But I would really like to see more readers sign up as well, because fic writers don’t get nearly the amount of credit that they deserve for all of their hard work and dedication.
So let me break down the Thank You Card Writer responsibilities, just in case they aren’t clear.
- You need to choose an author to write to from the Author Claims List, as these are authors who have provided me with mailing information, enabling me to send their card to them. You can view it by clicking here.
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You need to write a personalized thank you message. It does not need to be extremely long or elaborate. Therefore, you do not need to spend a long time on it if you’re keeping it relatively short. This is your message; what you write is completely up to you.
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Submissions aren’t due until August 1st. You will have a month and a half to write and submit it, so you have quite a bit of time to work with. You can complete it based on when you have availability in your schedule.
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Once you submit it, your responsibilities are complete. You do NOT need to purchase a thank you card yourself. You do NOT need to send the thank you card yourself or pay for postage. I will take care of all of that once the thank you messages have been submitted.
This really is not meant to come across as aggressive or like a guilt trip. I simply want to make the event’s progress as transparent as possible, lay out exactly what is expected from participants, and hopefully encourage anyone who is considering participating to please sign up at their earliest convenience. You can do so by clicking here. Sign-ups close on June 12th.
To the authors who signed up to receive a card and may be reading this: rest assured that you WILL receive one, regardless of how low participation ends up being. I will write them myself if I have to. Thank you all for sharing your wonderful representations of Alec & Magnus!
Malec Fic Library 