A Question...

...for my writerly friends out there, specifically those of you who have been published, who have people reading your book(s), who might actually be receiving some form of fan mail:

What question is most frequently asked of you by your readers?

And when I say 'readers', I'm not talking about people like me, i.e., someone who is working on joining you on the 'published author' side of the line. I'm talking about actual readers, people who don't necessarily read with one eye on sentence structure or character development, people who aren't parsing your words because they're reading to improve their own writing even as they read for enjoyment. I'm talking about people who read for the sake of reading, goshdarnit, people who have no ulterior motive other than enjoying a good story. What is it they want to know?

Earlier this week, agent Rachelle Gardner did a post over at her agency's blog about privacy, and she talked a bit about the connection between reader and author. That made me ask a question in the comments section (one that she hasn't answered yet, though I've found her to be responsive in the past), which I'll repeat here:

  "Does the average reader really care that much about making connections with authors beyond what's on the page?"

I really wonder about this, hence I asked the question, and hence I asked the question of my published friends up top. See, here's the thing: when I finish a book that I really enjoyed, I don't immediately hop on to social media and seek the author out. I don't look for their website, or their twitter feed or stalk their facebook page. What do I do? I move on to the next thing in my To Be Read pile. If the book is by an author I've never read before, and that book is more than a couple of years old, I might go to the web to see if they have something newer--which will probably lead me to Amazon or Wikipedia, maybe an author's personal webpage. But even if I do go to said author's webpage, I'm not off to follow on twitter, etc.

Am I just a holdover from a bygone era, a dinosaur in a world of mammals? Am I totally off my rocker? Does the average reader really want something more than just a good book from a favorite author? I'm curious what you all think about this, and I'm curious about your experiences with actual readers (who are not writers).

Yeah, this could be me.

I'm looking forward to hearing what you think. Meanwhile, how are your NaNos or other projects going? I hit chapter 10 in BARTON'S WOMEN last night; it was a slow night due to other things happening, but I've shaved about 1500 words from the manuscript so far--and I still like it. Have a nice weekend, all.

Being Heard Over the Band

A week ago tomorrow (no, that's not awkward at all, is it?), we ran an event. Let me first say it went pretty well overall, thank you all for your comments and best wishes. Let me also add that I barely got through this week. Monday afternoon, I felt the scratchy throat coming. On Tuesday, I made it to work but probably should have stayed home. Wednesday and Thursday were better, and today is better still, though colds have a tendency to linger, and I still feel a bit like I'm under water. Anyway...

The event was pitched to me as an 'awareness raiser'. It wasn't a fundraiser, but we didn't want to lose money, either. What we wanted was, to borrow a phrase from the movie, Slap Shot, "Let them know we're here." To that end we had our name on everything that went out--the posters, the press releases, the ads in the paper, the ad on TV. When it came to setting up the event, we had more tables than anyone, and had the primary place in the exhibit tent. You couldn't swing a dead cat around this event without seeing our name somewhere.

This was NOT our polka band

Yet at the end of the day, I don't know that it worked. Oh, we had a couple hundred people come out, and most people--attendees, exhibitors and vendors--seemed to have a good time, but as an awareness raiser? As a generator of new memberships? Not so much. You see, it seems the principal draw on the day was--wait for it-- the polka band.* Yes, that's right, the polka band was the big attraction. They were a rock-n-roll polka band who have been around for years. A lot of people came specifically for them. I talked to people who said things like, "We saw them in Norwich last night," and, "These guys are great; I follow them all over." It was like talking to Deadheads back in the day, except these folks were even older than the band. These people came down, they paid their money, and they spent almost all day in the entertainment tent listening to the band (and there was some dancing, too). The good thing is they left happy; the bad thing is, they probably have no idea who we are as an organization.

And so I find myself thinking of the struggle of writers. Whether we're agented or not, self- or traditionally-published, or not yet published at all we hammer away. We write the best stories we can and we send them out, or we publish them ourselves. And we try to build a name. We blog and we tweet and we Facebook, and we do this even if we're fortunate enough to have a publisher that puts time, effort and cash into promotion and marketing, and we do even more if we don't have that sort of publisher. We even do it when we don't have anything published, because we hope it will pay off some day. All in the name of recognition and sales. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

In looking back at last weekend's event, and thinking over much energy (and money) went into pulling it off, part of me thinks the best approach is to let the organization's works speak for themselves. Rather than creating an event specifically to get our name out there, maybe we should just go on doing what we do, and send out press releases when we do something noteworthy. At this point, I'm no longer sure about the connection of this post to writing, except that the powers that be tell us we need to start building audience, name recognition, and--dare I say it?--platform before we're published. That way, when we have our book launches and cover reveals and all that stuff, people will say, "Oh, I've heard of him! Let me check that out." It's a nice idea. The problem is, until we get to that point, we're just one person of many trying to be heard over the polka band.

Have a great weekend, all!

Image of the Bavarian Sauerkrauts
*I should point out, while it's kind of fun to make fun of polka, the band was actually very good, and the music itself--the traditional and non-traditional polkas both--are quite catchy.