Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

A couple of years back when you decided to go public with Facebook, you made drastic changes to pages set up by authors to promote themselves to the public. You eliminated the newsfeed. You curtailed distribution of posts. You started cluttering up the page.

You evidently think that your average run-of-the-mill author has buckets of cash sitting around just waiting to spend on Facebook promotions.

I have nearly a thousand followers for my author page. Previous to your money grab, virtually all my followers saw my posts. Now, the average distribution on my posts is 7-10 viewers. SEVEN TO TEN! If I want to go past a dozen viewers, I have to spend money. For me, that’s not an option.

Aside from this craven manipulation of data flow to choke free interchange of ideas, you’ve also mucked up the intercommunication between authors and followers by eliminating page newsfeeds. The newsfeed on my author page used to be a way to communicate not only with my followers but also with other authors. I enjoyed seeing other authors’ posts. We had a community. Now that’s gone. If I want to other author pages, I have to visit them singly. No room for dialogue, no community.

So much for your touted goal of “giving people the power to build a global community that works for all of us.” What you mean is giving people with money power to whatever.

Yes, in theory I could ‘friend’ other authors from my personal page—which I have done. But that’s my personal page. It connects with member’s newsfeeds. There, the dialogue isn’t just professional talk. It’s mixed in with mostly personal stuff like kids, food, sickness, politics, and much more that has nothing to do with writing. What’s the point of any page if we can’t function through Facebook in a particular professional role?

Then there’s the mess you’ve made of the page itself. In order to actually see the content of my page, I have to scroll past over-sized boxes giving me choices of what I want to post—create an event, create an offer, advertise my business, start a live video, public a job post, and more. What’s wrong with regular-sized choice boxes like on my personal page? Or a freaking list? At any rate, all these choices are available on the sidebar. WHY cram up the timeline?

Once I scroll past this mess, then I’ve got another big section showing stats for this week and, once again, offers in big button boxes for “more page likes,” promote your website,” “boost a post,” “continually reach more people,” “get more page likes,” and “promote ‘shop now’.” None of this is necessary. It’s easy to accomplish any of these promotional tasks by heading to the left menu or the options across the top of the page. These obstructions are here strictly to get in my way, force me to slow down and stumble around the Facebook obsession with money money money.

Still scrolling down, trying to see actual feedback on my latest post, I’m confronted with a huge blog of photos. Photos I have posted. Why do I need to see this on my page? There’s a photo section I can pull up if I want to see photos I’ve posted. This is more bullshit in my way to functioning efficiently in my goal to communicate with people about my writing. I don’t have time for this!

Then finally we get to my posts. But WAIT! Only a couple, because this is yet another teaser. Once I see the latest two posts, then there’s another big box for events. As in, a chance for me to create an event. And SPEND MONEY!

You know, if I wanted to know about events, I could visit the left side of my screen and click on ‘Events.’ If I want to schedule an event. Or see what’s already scheduled. This is just one more barrier to efficient use of my page. One more in-your-face, poke-in-the-chest assault by Facebook.

Then, FINALLY, I can scroll down through my posts. Sadly, this is no longer the community I once knew but rather dismal evidence that five or seven or ten people saw the post. No dialogue. No fun. Nothing of the promise of what a page is supposed to offer.

So, hey, why not just kill author pages entirely? Why pretend Facebook offers anything more to struggling writers than a way to spend money? Because that’s what you’ve done. Aside from a very few more successful authors who can afford to drops hundreds of dollars to blast their latest post out to thousands of Facebook members day after day, none of the rest of us starving artists get a damn thing from having a page.

Would it kill you to distribute my posts to my followers without squeezing me for money? When and if some of us scrape together enough money to boost a post, we’d still boost. We do want to grow our audience and spending money on Facebook is a good way to do that.

But since your policy changes, we face a situation where we can’t afford to promote our work, meaning we’re selling less than ever, and you’ve thereby decreased our chance to ever have the money to pay for a boost.

Maybe other Facebook member pages aren’t like those of authors. I don’t know all the options for members who set up pages. I just know that you’ve hurt us, taken away one key resource that gave us a chance, and that impact is rippling through the entire indie-author community.

It’s cold. It’s mean. And it’s not making you or your stockholders any richer.