Val over at Obsidian Bookshelf asked a while ago how often an author has to publish to stay relevant. There are some interesting answers and be sure to check out the thread over there. I remembered this thread when I started feeling overwhelmed by keeping up with author releases.

What stands out to me though is that lately authors seem to be publishing at lightening fast rates. Gone are the lengthy waits of six months to a year for your next author piece. With the instant publishing of electronic publishing (and decreasing quality of cover art, editing, and proofreading), there are dozens of new books every day in every genre. Lately it seems you can’t trip over your front step without falling on an author or aspiring author.

To that, I can only say thank god. As a reader, I love authors. So write, write, write.

Yet the caveat to that is that I’m finding I can’t keep up with even favorite authors, let alone new ones. In the past two months, there have been a total of 32 short stories, novellas, anthologies, novels, and free reads by authors that I consider “auto buys.” And believe me, this is not an extensive list. It’s still in single digits.

This list doesn’t include the some dozen + new releases being touted within the upcoming month and I’m left with fatigue trying to keep up with a list to buy, let alone read, and all those new authors? Yea good luck. All of this and I consider myself a pretty fast reader.

I can see why the novella is the best selling length. Who has time to sit down and a read a novel anymore? I’ve started checking page count and actually had to remind myself that I read for *PLEASURE* and thus, word count doesn’t matter. If it takes me *gulp* a week to finish a book, it’s ok.

And honestly this has nothing to do with reviewing. It’s just the fear of getting so far behind on the never ending crush of new releases that I’ve totally given up on my old release pile.

With new books introduced every single day and authors publishing numerous times a month, how does any reader keep up? How do you even –remember- all the new releases, names, titles, publishers?

I know everyone likes to say there is no competition within writing since it’s about individual choice but come on. There are only so many hours in my day and dollars in my budget I can allocate to reading and if I can’t keep up with my favorite authors, how am I ever going to discover that rare gem?

How do you do it? Because frankly I’ve already forgotten the title of the new JCP I wanted to buy and there’s a new Lethe Press that caught my eye and somewhere I forgot where I put my copy of The Coming Storm…and well.. you get the picture.

And authors – while I adore you (really I do) – why are you publishing so fast and so much? I promise I’ll still read your new releases even if you don’t publish 2 a month. I pinky swear.