Apologies for the crappy title, been trying to word it for a while.

A few days ago, a fic I've been following on AO3 ended, and the author began writing a new fic.

Then the day after the first mentioned fic ended, I got an email saying they uploaded a new chapter, so I excitedly opened it, thinking they made an epilogue...

The entire "chapter" was literally just a single line where they advertised their new fic. No actual content to speak of.

Naturally I'm disappointed, and a bit annoyed, so I wrote a comment saying "aww man, I thought it was an epilogue", which I honestly think is fair considering there was nothing indicating it was just an advertisement until you acrually opened the chapter.

Not only do they get defensive, writing something to the likes of "ah yes, what every author wants to hear... 'ah yes, this isn't what I wanted'...", they also deleted my comment after replying to me. But... who would even want an advertisement when by all accounts, it looks as though you've written a new chapter or an epilogue?

It also just feels to me like doing advertisements like that is... I'm not really sure of the right word in English, but it doesn't feel like it should be okay to do? I realize that there's probably no rules against it, but to me, it just feel like a thing that is at the very least frowned upon? They could have made an author's note on the other chapters or the like, I really don't see the need to have made it into a chapter personally.

Phew, that got a bit long... thanks for reading along!