One of the interesting things about YA books – I don’t know about Percy Jackson, but I do know about ‘Twilight’ and ‘Maximum Ride’: There are a lot of adult readers. In fact, we released ‘Maximum Ride’ both as a paperback for kids and as a mass release for adults.
Online is such a brilliant, brilliant way to connect with young readers – even if they just want to tweet, ‘Hey, I read your book!’ – that, absolutely, I connect with that. But I also treat writing as solitary and keep it to myself as long as I can.
I’d like to set a story in Australia, but I would need to feel confident my German and U.S. readers, for example, would stay with me.
I know one writer who has been subscribing authors without their permission and sending out what she thinks are helpful advice sheets, but they come off as if she’s a know-it-all. She thinks she’s marketing herself and her work. All she’s really doing is turning readers off.
I am trying to give the best performance possible in 400 pages. I want readers to be scared; I want them to be moved. Entertainment doesn’t necessarily mean something trivial, but it does mean people wanting to get to the end of a book.
The easiest way for readers to connect with characters and feel sympathy is to make the character entertaining, sympathetic and likeable.
We binge on instant knowledge, but we are learning the hazards, and readers are warier than they used to be of nanosecond-interpretations of Supreme Court decisions.
I get wonderful letters from kids and teachers. I must have the best readers in the world.
In writing a novel about George Sand, I hoped to present her as the talented, beguiling, complicated and occasionally infuriating woman I think she was, but I hope, too, that readers will enjoy the people she surrounded herself with.
I know the relationships, and I already know my characters and how I’m going to reveal my characters to my readers – how I’m going to feed them information about that character. That stuff doesn’t have to be in my outline.
You don’t create a magazine for your readers. You don’t take a poll, you know, like the politicians do, and find out what they’re thinking and what they want… You’re supposed to be telling people what the hell you think is exciting and dynamic and thought-provoking, and do it – and do it your way.
The single best piece of advice I give to aspiring writers is to always write about things that they know. I suggest that they write about people and places and events and conflicts they are familiar with. That way their writing will be real and hopefully readers will respond to it. I try to take my own advice.
I try to write stories that will attract younger readers and make them feel part of a wider readership. I do not feel able to write books that are about, or even for, teenagers; and I am inclined to be suspicious of books which ‘target’ them.
I will do everything in my power to keep my readers.
It’s a job. I entertain my readers. I get up in the morning, and I start typing.
I think the press has an interest in communicating to its viewers or readers, and their viewers or readers drive profit for those news organizations, so I think those news organizations have a certain bias toward their own readers. Yeah, I think they are a special interest. Of course they are.
Readers have told me that their children have learned to read after years of struggle after starting to read Garfield’s comic strip and many people who have moved to the United States have said that they, too, learned English by reading Garfield.
Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement.
Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.
There’s a unique bond of trust between readers and authors that I don’t believe exists in any other art form; as a reader, I trust a novelist to give me his or her best effort, however flawed.
Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.
Some people ask, ‘How do you attract the young and so many different people when your poetry is complicated and different?’ I say, ‘My accomplishment is that my readers trust me and accept my suggestions for change.’
My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories.
Well, there are more writers of blogs right now than there are readers, so that’s clearly a vanity phenomenon.
I have always argued that newspapers should not have any civic purpose beyond telling readers what is happening… A reporter who doesn’t quickly tell readers what they most want to know – the score – won’t last long. Better he should teach political science.
It was quite risky to open the book with one of my quieter stories; I’m kind of trying, I think, to lure readers into a false sense of security and then assault them with a couple really loud, really strange stories.
Many readers fail to realize this, but ‘The Color Purple’ is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one’s original God: the earth and nature.
As a writer, I have readers who will have a range of political views. I don’t think they look to me for political guidance.
I sort of wanted to reveal this other side of Asia: Southeast Asia, where the Chinese have been wealthy for generations and have different ways of relating to money. I wanted to sort of reveal this world to readers.
Even if I only had 10 readers, I’d rather do the book for them than for a million readers online.
My hope is that ‘The New World Haggadah’ will open a new world for readers who will see our heritage through a multilingual prism. I wanted to feature medieval and renaissance authors, resistance in World War II, crypto-Jews and activists during the Dirty War in Latin America, songs of protest, and songs of hope.
I’d read one too many crime novels where the victim was just a name: body number one, dead woman number 12. I understood fear, and I wanted to create characters who made readers say, ‘Please, don’t hurt this guy.’ That’s the key to suspense. It’s easy to disgust a reader. It’s much harder to make them care.
Theme is great for people who like to approach stories that way, but it’s an organizing principle that helps us write a story that has some weight; it’s not something that all readers have to care about.
I’m noticing a lot of the big bloggers who’ve posted about politics are experiencing an ugly backlash. Readers are angry because they went to the bloggers’ sites for a laugh, not a lecture. Again, it’s a question of being appropriate for the audience.
People who are readers of fiction aren’t particularly interested in comic books.
Whatever I’ve worked on, I’ve always tried to make my writing personal. I think that’s what makes my books somewhat different from what other scientists are doing. You have to tie concepts into everyday life, or they just won’t be interesting for readers.
When you’re free of editorial control, you owe it to yourself to obtain feedback from friends and readers. Some take those criticisms to heart and incorporate it into their work, and some ignore them.
Readers have actually changed the way I’ve done things, changed the course of my career even, about four or five times. Just from reader feedback.
Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I’ve spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan.
Children’s authors don’t talk down or patronise their younger readers.
Part of me becomes the characters I’m writing about. I think readers feel like they are there, the way I am, as a result.
I was one of the first authors to have an active website. I’m totally obsessed with technology. I’m always looking for ways to connect with my readers. I answer all my fan mail.
I think Amazon has been great for readers.
While I strongly encourage my readers to take advantage of the Internet and social networking platforms to gain a greater understanding of their personal finances, it is extremely important to be safe, smart, and responsible when it comes to sharing, discussing, and managing your finances online.
Journalism should be more like science. As far as possible, facts should be verifiable. If journalists want long-term credibility for their profession, they have to go in that direction. Have more respect for readers.
The written tone and the spoken tone change and the reporters’ disbelief in the veracity of the government spreads to the readers and the viewers.
Mostly I sit alone in a room and cry and do my job – so when they let me out of my cave to go on tour, I really listen to my readers.
The connection that readers have to ‘Rookie’ has only meant more and more to me as I get older.
The more of my readers I encounter who say, often apologetically, that they are actually listeners, the more I write for the ear rather than the eye. Small things like identifying speakers in dialogue rather than relying on paragraphing to mark the shifts.
With social media, you don’t just publish a book and figure you’ve done your part; your fans want to talk to you, have a conversation. It means, though, that you can connect with your readers like never before, so you don’t have to guess what they like – you can ask.
