Who reads my books anyway?

My target audience—that is who the marketing guys would call the readers for my books—should be carefully, coldly viewed and—yes, targeted. I should be writing to them; to their taste and reading level. That last one really hurts. Reading rather grown-up books at an early age, I learned not only to comprehend and appreciate the melody of words and to be an excellent speller, I also learned about people, about their feelings, and about the world. It is a never-ending journey.

I enjoy composing the perfect sentence with the perfect nuance. It has a rhythm, a melody. That’s how I like, nay, must write. But it is not how to sell. Not to today’s speed reader who prefers action over substance. Hence, I sell very few copies of my fiction, and almost none of my non-fiction book about my cat and other shelter animals.

So, how to be successful? Writing vapid romance? Steamy sex? Mindless violence? Little volumes with those themes sell like the proverbial hotcakes. I should take heed. The trouble is, if one still needs to know what one writes about, I am too old, too conservative, and likely too uptight to let loose with stories like that. Maybe it’s just sour grapes.

Wherein then lies the answer? I do not know. Meantime, however, I shall continue to write what I love to write. And I shall try to do the best I can with it. YOU are my audience, my readers. I write for you. No survey shall diminish that.

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Perhaps I need to appeal to Toth, the Egyptian God of Writing