Reader Love...

For some odd reason, maybe as a fallout to that craziness mentioned a few entries ago, everyone has been talking about readers on the web.  Whether its about writing more books so your readers don't forget you or keeping yourself away from reviews as a way of preserving your author health, readers seem to be on everyone's mind.

Which is how it should be.

It's hard to remember sometimes, when we're wrapped up in our wars of words, but readers are who we do this for.  Let me just say that again: READERS ARE WHO WE DO THIS FOR.  I don't care if you consider yourself an "artist" or if you HAVE TO WRITE so your heart doesn't die... that's fine, but if you put yourself out there, take the leap, try to get published in any way... it becomes all about the reader.

Sometimes I think reader love takes a wrong turn into unrequited love territory.  You know what I mean.  You have a crush, you give your heart away, then your crush basically says to you: "You suck, you're ugly, oh and by the way I'm going to make everyone hate you."  You go home, drink a bottle of wine and start drunk posting on FB (or twitter, as the case may be) about how terrible this person is, how they need to die a horrible death and how you never really liked them anyway.

True love is so great, isn't it?  In a perfect world, every reader would read your books, fall madly in love and start telling all their friends how they're so lucky to have met you.  In the real world, though, like love, there are people who will love you, like you, despise you, and not care really one way the other.  There are people in your life who will meet you once, seem to like you, but never make an effort to be your friend.  Believe me, you will find readers who are much the same.

If we could all just take the view that we need to find our TRUE reader loves, I don't think it would hurt as much.  As a person, you don't want everyone in the world to love you, do you?  Friends are great, and so are husbands, but I personally wouldn't want a hundred of each.  Granted, the reader/author relationship is a bit different, but if we could just somehow realize that it's okay when readers love us and it's okay when they don't, because despite pouring our hearts and minds out onto the "page" we understand that not everyone is going to love us.

And that's okay.  Because it's not personal.  Let me just say that again, too.  IT'S NOT PERSONAL.  Even though it feels like it.  Even though, like all the people in the world have done at one time or another, you want to scream to the skies, "Why doesn't he/she love me???"  They just don't.  They're not right for you.  It never would have worked anyway.  It wasn't meant to be.

If you take one thing away from being a writer, let it be about finding the RIGHT readers.  The ones who WILL love you, cheer you on, treat you like the special author you are.  They're out there, waiting.  All you have to do is find them.

Here are a few of the great entries I'm talking about:
Book Bloggers HELP indie authors
Write More Books for Your Readers!
Interesting Take on Genre Fiction
Why You Probably Shouldn't Read Reviews, Authors.


Happy Reading!

PS- My ROW week has been pretty productive.  Doing lots of editing and writing(though not on Aeris, though I plan to get to that next week, fingers crossed!)  Good luck to all the other participants.