I genuinely wonder if people realize how many projects get abandoned because the readership "wasn't there", when in reality, the readership just stayed silent. It's a big thing in trad pub that book series get discontinued because readers pirate the books or wait until the series is finished to buy a copy, leading the publisher to think that nobody actually wants the book enough to continue the series, but it happens with indie creators too.
I've discontinued a lot of free, online series because it's not worth putting 3-5 hours a week into posting a project for no readers. Sometimes I finish the series for me but just never post it again, other times I don't finish it at all because it feels more worthwhile to put my time into other things. Sometimes I hear from readers who are sad or upset that I didn't finish something they were liking, but the *reason* it never got finished is because I didn't know anyone liked it. If you like something, tell the creator, tell your friends, make some noise about it. If you would be sad if a story never finished, make that interest known because one of my biggest considerations before discontinuing a series is "will people miss this? Will I be letting people down" and 9/10 times, I come to the conclusion of "no, it doesn't even seem like anyone's reading this" only to learn after I've moved on that apparently someone was.
I've said this before in a different way, and this post said it so well. With real examples. If you like something, tell people.
If you want more content from an artist or author, if you like their stuff, tell them. It will give them creative fuel to keep going. And often it gives them other resources as well. Recommend a work to other people. Leave a comment or a review. It doesn't have to be long, just genuine, a sentence or two. Not many people know that a book's success is judged by book reviews as well as sales. Review the book on Amazon or another site to help it pass the metric of success and be recognized by publishers and retailers.
Talking about it amongst yourselves in a Discord server or whatever doesn't count, by the way. You have to tell the creator, too. They're not going to hear about anything that gets said in your little server unless you tell them about it.
