Quote:
Originally Posted by frahse
Should an author be a public person beyond publishing their books?
Should an author give advance drafts to the dying and in fact do so very publicly?
Should an author take ill fans to dinner, to a dance, to gala author events? (Yes there are a few. Conventions, dinners, award functions and the like.)
I say that an author can do those things if they wish, but sometimes an author's personality is such that doing those things may not only be difficult, but in fact may harm their capacity for work and in the end be detrimental.
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Unless they're writing under a pseudonym, successful writers are in fact public personalities. It comes with success. The bigger the success, the bigger the issue; just ask King or Rowling. Some come to mind that *exploit* their celebrity (Gore vidal for one) while others strive for annonymity amid their success because they think the celebrity is deterimental. Depends on the person and their situation.
Publicity value? Well, it's not as if they held a press conference. This sorta filtered out. Even CNET got it from another site who got it...
Acts like this do get publicized so, as long as it is incidental...
(shrug)
The fact is a *lot* of acts of kindness like this happen every day that don't filter out, even when they involve celebrities or public figures. There's the various "Make a wish"-type foundations, for starters. Not every celebrity holds a gala to announce they're doing a good deed. Most just quietly do it and we never hear about it. A few we do. Which makes them notable.
In the SF/Fantasy field there is the case of "Jenny Elf", a drunk-driver victim that Piers Anthony and Richard&Wendy Pini engaged with and helped during her recovery.
http://www.jimloy.com/books/jenny.htm
(Not everybody seems to think publishing the letters, much later, was a good idea. Without knowing where the revenue from the volume ended up I can't judge, myself.)
Authors are people and some are good people.
A reminder now and then can't hurt, can it?