I came across a post by Holly over at Book Binge, that I have to say, surprised me somewhat.

The subject was authors asking for personal donations on the web.

Holly starts:

With the economy being what it is, we’ve seen an increasing number of authors asking for help from their readers. The reasons are many and varied: because of the death of a loved one, because of a spouse losing a job or just because they’ve fallen on hard times.

I’m obviously not reading as many blogs as I used to, because I can only remember two author requests for personal donations in the last year, one of them being the Sharon Cullars one that I supported on here (and to be fair, that was driven by Roslyn Holcomb, not Cullars herself), the other being the request for help for Dee Tenorio’s sister who died.

Holly Continues:

But should these authors ask us, as readers/fans/bloggers, to help them to keep theirs?

Because on the other hand, I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable visiting the blog of a favorite author and seeing him/her begging for money. I really do understand that sometimes you don’t have a choice – that all other options have been exhausted and so you set your pride aside and do what needs to be done. But is taking your problems online the answer?

I understand where Holly’s coming from, and if I had financial difficulties, asking for money online, probably isn’t the way that I would go about trying to resolve my issues, but then again, my pride is such that I’d probably rather starve than ask for money from you guys to help me personally, but for some people though, casting one’s pride aside, and asking for help, may be their only hope.

Holly goes on to add: (more…)