Sometimes, authors have legitimate reasons to avoid the public eye. Whether it be through the use of a pen name, or the abandoning of a book signing, some authors usually have good reasons for doing this. Some of the material they write may be controversial, such as when a highly respected surgeon decides to write splatter horror on the side. Other times, they just want to keep their private lives a secret. And for any sane reader, that’s all right. After all, some readers are writers themselves, and partake in those rituals every day, so they can certainly understand the need for some privacy. That privacy, however, can be breached.

For example, Val McDermid, author of A Suitable Job for a Woman, literally had ink thrown all over her. The one who threw the ink was a woman named Sandra Botham, who believed that a small part of McDermid’s book was degrading her. However, McDermid wasn’t the only author subjected to this treatment. Peter James was stalked for 10 years by an obsessed fan who emailed him several times, even going as far as sending him a picture of a shrine dedicated to the author himself. Other famous authors, such as JK Rowling and Patricia Cornwell, have also had their fair share of fan harassment. 

But of course, these are marketing events that the author, publisher, or agent had set up. And since this is a public event, there’s always room for humiliation. That said, writers can also harass their readers. 

This was, unfortunately, seen when an author started stalking a reviewer from Goodreads. Kathleen Hale was a young adult author who wanted to unmask the reviewer that wrote a negative review about her debut book. While there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the review, with the book reviewer even being placed on a list of Goodreads bullies, Hale couldn’t let the review go. Rather, she started cyberstalking the reviewer, going as far as attempting to unmask her. And when she did, Hale revealed personal details of the reviewer’s life, to the point where Hale even asked herself whether or not she was crazy. Of course, the fact that she published all of this in a big news outlet like The Guardian didn’t help her case. The whole incident invited a slew of criticism and one-starred reviews from other reviewers and fellow authors. One even said that they’d always wanted their own stalker. 

There’s no doubt that the literary world is full of wondrous talent. Whether you’re writing, or reading, or proofreading, or even marketing, there’s a certain magic to books that we can’t explain. These books help motivate people to do amazing things, from forming communities around those books, to even starting up businesses involving those books. It’s this very magic that drew me into this industry to begin with. However, when it gets to the point where both readers and writers are being harassed simply for posting something online, to the point where legal authorities have to get involved, it’s clear that boundaries need to be placed between the dedicated, and the obsessed.

Because as hard as it may be to accept it, we still live in the real world.