The ASTOUNDING pomposity of some nonfiction authors

Dave Asprey, Mark Manson & Sam Harris are among them...

The ASTOUNDING pomposity of some nonfiction authors - Limitless Mindset

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At Our Wits' End

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 here on my website 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 bought their books, link to their books, leave them thoughtful reviews on Amazon and GoodReads.com along with often recommend enthusiastically that people read them. And many authors are just above responding - which used to surprise me, I'm no Joe Rogan or Oprah but I'm also NOT a total nobody on the internet.

I'll call out the authors who have been so discourteous…

Dave Asprey

Dr. Mercola

Dan Buettner

Mike Adams - Natural News

Edward Dutton

Dr. Steven Gundry

Dr. Joe Dispenza

Matt Fradd

Sam Harris

Mark Manson

Steven Kotler

Ian Kerner 

Joshua Foer

I'll extend an olive branch of forgiveness to these authors - if you have a good excuse (other than "being busy") for not acknowledging my reviews, just drop a comment on this article letting us know that you do appreciate your readers and thoughtful reviewers.

This is a reminder to not idolize authors and gurus

Many are self-important narcissists (even some of 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 there are a lot of fragile egos out there.
Several authors (Graham Hancock among them) - who are clearly very busy people - have responded with a friendly "Thank you!" note and I've made some friends with a few this way. "Being busy" is no excuse for being discourteous to book reviewers, authors! You might not be able to respond to every fan email and social media comment, but if someone buys your book and publishes a thoughtful review, spreading the word further about it - that's worth taking 5 seconds out of your "very busy" day to write back "Thanks man, nice review." 
I've got a pretty good idea why so many authors have been so rude to me, I'm a middling "influencer" - I only have about 10,000 social media followers total -  I'm just not a big enough blip on their RADAR to justify acknowledgment. Also, I get that many influential authors have assistants that manage their email. And I'm also fine with simply being thanked by an assistant for my review - which has happened I think just once. I question, why the hell would you have an assistant if they can't even be bothered to send a simple thank you note to reviewers? Isn't that the sort of thing that you hire an assistant to do?

NEWSFLASH AUTHORS

Without fans buying your books and recommending them to others you wouldn't have such a cushy life, you'd have to get a normal job (working construction, driving for Uber, or getting carpal tunnel as an IT nerd) to pay the bills. So curb your pomposity a bit, you're not "too busy" to respond to reviewers (especially if you spend a lot of time on social media.)

J.D Barker, a very busy New York Times bestselling novelist, whose work my wife loves wasn't above responding to me on Twitter. And neither was best-selling author and TV screenwriter Anthony Horowitz. And my wife is now among the first readers of every new book they release. Superfan won!

I originally shared this sentiment in a readers and authors Facebook group and it was contentious, getting +300 comments. The shoddy defense of this lazy discourteousness is that apparently, some publishers advise authors not to engage with reviewers and readers, I think it's a misguided attempt to shield the product being sold from potential criticism - which is just stupid dinosaur thinking!

Am I entitled to an author's time? Well no, but I wrote two books, I'm very busy, and I respond to EVERY reader who contacts me via email or social media. So it's amazing to me that these authors can't take moments to write back "Thanks for the review!" or hit the retweet button, especially when they use Twitter often.

If you're an author and somebody reviews your book, take a second to say, "Thanks!" You may win a real superfan.