Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Joanne Harris issues call for greater respect from readers

The Chocolat author is due to present a 12-point ‘writer’s manifesto’ aiming to combat the idea that authors are employees of their audience


Joanne Harris.
‘Fiction is not democratic’ ... Joanne Harris. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
The blurring of the line between authors and readers in the digital age has led to a “false sense of entitlement” from some readers, according to the bestselling novelist Joanne Harris, but writers are not “employees, writing books to order”, and the relationship needs to be based on “mutual respect”.

Harris, whose 14 novels include the bestselling Chocolat, is due to deliver this provocative message at the Manchester Literature Festival on Monday evening. Entitled A Writer’s Manifesto, it will argue that the internet has “blurred the line between readers and writers almost to invisibility”. Harris herself is an active Twitter user with more than 25,000 followers, and blogs regularly, taking on issues from the gendered packaging of children’s books to authors’ income.
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