Opinion

How Authors’ Openness on Social Media Makes Reading Better

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Leah Rachel von Essen

Senior Contributor

Leah Rachel von Essen reviews genre-bending fiction for Booklist, and writes regularly as a senior contributor at Book Riot. Her blog While Reading and Walking has over 10,000 dedicated followers over several social media outlets, including Instagram. She writes passionately about books in translation, chronic illness and bias in healthcare, queer books, twisty SFF, and magical realism and folklore. She was one of a select few bookstagrammers named to NewCity’s Chicago Lit50 in 2022. She is an avid traveler, a passionate fan of women’s basketball and soccer, and a lifelong learner. Twitter: @reading_while

I read Vicious only three days before I received a copy of Vengeful in the mail. I didn’t have time to hotly anticipate the sequel, not really. But I’d been rooting for this novel for months—because I had watched V.E. Schwab write it.

There’s a lot that’s toxic about social media, for authors, fans, and reviewers alike. But one thing that’s really rewarding for readers and aspiring writers is the transparency that many published authors have brought to Twitter and Instagram about the writing and publishing process, in all its good, bad, and in-between.

Thanks to them, I am headed into the industry with a much more realistic view of what might happen next than if I hadn’t followed them over the last few years. Thanks to them, I know that I am not alone in thinking that writing books is hard.

Schwab’s feed in particular has really helped me look realistically at what my desired future of writing books full-time would actually look like.

And for the last several months, I’ve watched as she started over completely on Vengeful. I watched as she laid out the pages on the floor. As she struggled with tours and releases and working on a book all at the same time. She was very open and honest about all the struggles that came with the process.

This window into the world of books hasn’t always been there. It’s enabled by social media and the added closeness between readers and authors that it brings. Even now, many authors are hesitant to share as much as Schwab does about her process and the difficulties of the publishing world, the struggle to write sequels, the pain that comes with juggling the many deadlines that will result in many published books.

It makes what Schwab does all the more special. I wasn’t really there with her as she rewrote Vengeful, but I and other readers felt like we were part of this. And so for months, I have been rooting for Schwab. I have watched her agonize over this book, consider cancelling it, and finally finish the new draft. And now the book is out and in my hands, and it feels like such a celebration. A victory, a win. For all of us.

As a writer, the resource of seeing living full-time writers work their way through novels is immensely valuable. And as a reader, it lends even more beauty to an object that I already highly valued. I can hold a book and feel the months that went into it, and feel thrilled by its existence.