Reader Awareness Quotes

This morning I looked at the books on my shelves and thought that they have no knowledge of my existence. They come to life because I open them and turn their pages, and yet they don't know that I am their reader.

Debut novels are difficult because nobody knows you... they just don't find a huge audience, because that's how the market works.

For me, as a writer, I desperately want to be read. I'm very conscious of readers as I'm writing. I think, 'If you write for yourself, then why don't you just keep it under the bed,' so I definitely write for other people.

Young readers can sense when you're not addressing what's actually going on.

Whenever I write, I'm always thinking of the reader.

In order for a narrative to work, the primary character should have a concrete desire - a need that drives her story - and the story's writer should make this goal known to the reader pretty early in the narrative.

I don't read memoirs. But if you write a memoir, I would think you'd want people to know, "O.K., look, I've taken some liberties here." It's just a matter of being open with your readers.

I contend that in the kind of nonfiction I write, and that other people also pursue, anything is permissible provided the reader knows what you're taking liberties with.

I don't mind a narrator who's self-deceiving, but the clues for their truth have to be there for the reader to see.

If you aren't aware of the reader, you're working in a vacuum.

When I'm writing, I really want to satisfy myself. I've got a story that I am working on and struggling with, and I want to tell it the most effective way I can. That's really what I struggle with. And the thought of who may be reading it may be there somewhere in the back of my mind - I'll never say it's not there because I don't know - but it's not really what I'm thinking about.

I'm very aware of the presence of a reader, and that probably is a reaction against a lot of poems that I do read which seem oblivious to my presence as a reader.

Never, ever underestimate your readers. Everything you do registers.

When the venture has been made of dealing with historical events and characters, it always seems fair towards the reader to avow what liberties have been taken, and how much of the sketch is founded on history.

Don't hire anyone - no matter what they offer - who promises you they'll sell 'X' copies of your book. Every book is different. The best any marketing company or PR firm can do for your book is make potential readers aware of it.

Novelisation doesn't imply the truth. Readers are sophisticated enough to know that.

I think it's a fallacy to say that a good book sells itself. It doesn't happen. I'm a voracious reader and I can give you a long list of books which should have been best sellers but they aren't. How can you buy a book if you haven't heard of it?

There certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks.

The secret at the heart of 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter' is something everybody, except for some of the characters, knows in Chapter 1. Some of the narrative tension comes from that distance between what the readers know and what the characters know.

I've mis-signed many a book Rollins or Clemens. My readers quickly become aware. Booksellers will often promote me under both names, and I do plug both at signings. Generally, the fantasy reader has no problem going into the suspense genre. It's harder for the typical suspense reader to go the other direction.

I don't think she is underappreciated, certainly not among writers, but Alice Munro is the classic underappreciated writer among readers. It is almost a cliche now to wonder why this living legend is not more widely read.

I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming aware of as they move into their teens.

From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there.

The ways in which readers encounter and relate to information is dramatically influenced by their education as well as their awareness of the pitfalls relating to the information source.

I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people read your thoughts!