A Lesson About Readers

Rummage Sales and Readers
A while back I spent the day at a rummage sale to benefit the Phoenix Art Museum. Vendors sold old clothing, art, potted plants, candles, eight-track tapes, and the china one inevitably inherits after parents pass on.

Local Arizona Authors
This was my first author event, and I had the jitters. A friend had advised me to buy a Square so that I could handle credit cards. I bought one, and while waiting for customers, took it out of the box. I read the instructions and connected the Square to my husband's iPad, but I couldn't get online. Be calm, I told myself.

Meeting actual readers was a new enough experience, let alone figuring out how to take their money and talk about what I had written. Barricaded behind a stack of books, I felt shy and ill at ease.

When a gray-haired woman approached the table where I, and three other Arizona authors, sat, ready to peddle our wares, I was relieved. The woman would break the ice. I was all wound up for no reason.

She asked what my book was about. I told her, "caregiving and ALS," which was the honest truth. She leapt back, as if spattered by hot oil.

"My son died of ALS," she said. "That's the last thing I want to read." She fled without a backward glance.

"Did you see that?" the author sitting next to me said. "She actually recoiled!"

"I'm not surprised," I said. "I've had that reaction from several folks."

"I thought you could promote that book to the ALS community," she said, "but apparently not."

"It's just too painful," I said.

Too Close for Comfort
Readers who have friends with ALS or who are nurses for those with the disease respond very differently. My novel opens a window and helps them understand why family dynamics can seem so fraught when illness disrupts so-called normal life.

Readers who've had parents with Alzheimer's have told me that the book helped them forgive themselves for moments of impatience or for times when they "just couldn't deal with it." One man told me, "Marylee, I don't think you know what kind of book you've written."

That's true. It's weird, but I've spent twelve years writing a novel that I still cannot reduce to an elevator pitch.

Readers vs. Non-readers
After the woman left, I sat there thinking that my fellow authors would sell many more books than I could possibly sell. One had written a novel about a woman's place in the Trojan War. Another had written three detective novels with a female p.i. The third showcased three novels about the Roman empire. We clearly had very different kinds of books, including several that might be characterized as "escape literature." Montpelier Tomorrow is not a book to bring to the beach, and that is what many people enjoy reading.

What I hadn't expected were the many reasons people gave for not reading. I mean, like zero, nada, zip. A blonde real estate agent said she hadn't read a book in seven years, but that when life slowed down, she meant to start reading again. A woman with long, black hair and a desert-dweller's lizard complexion, said that when she turned sixty, she could no longer concentrate on a book. The most she could deal with was the newspaper.

A remodeling contractor stopped by to hand each of us his card. My colleague asked what kinds of books he liked to read. His wife was the reader, he said, as if that absolved him from whiling away his free time watching football.

But then the readers sidled up to the table. One woman purchased an audio book. Another said she never read anything unless it was about Turkey.

"Have I got the book for you!" The author of the book about the Trojan War jumped to her feet.

A book about Turkey! Of all things. If my chapbook, The Rug Bazaar had been out then, I would have had a buyer.

The Bond Between Writer and Reader
Despite the slow start, I sold six books and came away with a new appreciation for the bond between writer and reader. Some readers will not or cannot read anything in your "genre." (In my case, that's literary fiction or women's fiction.) Some readers aren't interested in your subject. Some read nothing but Westerns set in Texas. Others won't touch a paperback. And one reader (we now know) doesn't read anything but books about Turkey. But, gosh, was she ever knowledgeable about archeological sites!

All of this is a round-about way of saying how grateful I am that Goodreads exists. The enthusiasm for the act of reading, no matter what kind of book, heartens me.