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J.K. Rowling has been upsetting quite a few of her readers recently, with her repeated incursions into the Harry Potter mythology.

On each outing – whether speaking at a festival, on her own Pottermore site, or in an interview – she adds some new detail about the Harry Potter characters, in the process skewing somewhat our perception of a closed world.

Closed, because the series has ended. Some readers are arguing: if she wants to add more to it, couldn’t she just do a Conan Doyle and reprise her characters in another novel? If David Lynch can reprise Twin Peaks after a 25-year hiatus, why can’t she?

Of course, there are just as many Potter fans who rejoice at every fresh word to come out of Pottermore and the online debates about an author’s right or otherwise to impose an interpretation and change their own literary world, have become rather animated.

But I’ve no intention of wading into that argument and getting in the way of all the flying shrapnel – do I look that stupid? I’m mentioning Rowling’s online chatter because it’s reminded me of how contentious the question is, of how much an author should interact with their readers.

In pre-internet days this was necessarily circumscribed by geography. An author would do author visits and readings in bookshops and libraries, pen the occasional article in a newspaper or sit for an interview, and that would more or less be it.

Nowadays, social media has changed all that. Authors are expected – by pesky marketing-obsessed publishers, oh that horrid breed of soul-sucking monsters – to have and maintain a website, to juggle a Facebook page, a Twitter handle, an Instagram profile and whichever the social media flavour of the month happens to be.

And you and I are familiar with – no names – both extremes of authors’ presence online. At the one end we have authors who barely have a Facebook page, with an outdated or obscure profile photo and an absent feed, who are content to let their books do the talking and virtually disappear in between publication outings.

At the other end we have those authors whose tireless online chatter means we know everything about them down to the regularity of their bowel movements.

For a publisher, both extremes are somewhat problematic, or at least potentially so.

Gaiman is in a league of his own when it comes to masterful use of social media

In this age of 24/7 online presence and blink-and-you’ve-missed-it attention spans, being absent from the scene for the one to two years or more in between publishing a new book can mean courting obsolescence.

In The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, by Joel Dicker (a good read if you like small-town drama and mysterious goings-on – but don’t make my mistake of getting it in audio, as the American accent of the reader is irritating beyond belief and is spoiling my enjoyment of it), the main character is a bestselling author.

The author is being hounded by his publisher and agent to write a follow-up novel, fast, because readers are moving on to the newer, fresher sensation, warning him that he’ll soon be forgotten and consigned to the has-beens of literature.

This breed of authors will argue that what they have to say is best said through their preferred medium of communication: writing.

An author who bares all online will have nothing fresh to propose to his or her readers, come the next publication deadline. Or so they say.

Maintaining an active media presence for the 21st century author, on the other hand, is a high-stakes game.

It is, from a marketing point of view, highly desirable and has been shown to help an author’s standing in the eyes of his readers.

Not to mention that, done well, this online presence serves to build a rapport with the fanbase that can then be leveraged to promote the newest book. But therein lies the catch, in the words ‘done well’. An actual manuscript has been carefully drafted, been through dozens of revisions, thoroughly edited, feedbacked by trusted readers and so, the resultant output, is highly curated.

Online posts are more instinctive and impulsive and generally less thought-through. Social media, unless highly cynical, is bound to reveal a less-guarded impression.

Which is great for the reader getting to know the author better, but can be troublesome for the image his writing has been trying to convey. Somehow, a Hemingway Instagraming his morning croissant being dunked into a café au lait might have altered our impression of him. Or not.

Which is not to say it cannot be done well. Two authors I follow online who have the whole social media presence perfected to a tee, are David Nicholls (him of One Day, and now Us) and Neil Gaiman. Nicholls has been engaging his readers on Facebook with a hotelroomby hotelroom account of his book launch tour. Gaiman, of course, is in a league of his own when it comes to masterful use of social media.

So next time you follow an author’s online musings, perhaps have a think about their published work and whether you suddenly want to read their books more, or less.