> There is no trust between writers & readers. People either distrust and scrutinize or they like or dislike how the reading went. Some don't even judge but just shrug it off whatever impact the reading might have had.

I interpret this more as an underlying social contract: Both writing a book and reading it used to be laborious. Now they're not.

Reaching out to an author about specific details used to mean you've deeply engaged with the work. Writing a book used to mean you spent lots of time understanding and writing about the topic.

Neither is now true, so it makes it harder to distinguish what's worth paying attention to.

I've definitely seen this happen with myself. When I shop for books, I do extra research into the author and publisher for anything published after 2022.