If they're reading it because you asked, it isn't working
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R. S. Breed Founder
Something I think every author should hear early. Honestly I think it's the most useful thing you can learn about getting a book read.
If someone is reading your book because you told them to, you're wasting everyone's time.
Think about who we usually ask first. Friends, family, people at work, the writing group. They're picked because they like us, not because they like the kind of book we wrote. So some of them read it, and then they say "yeah it's good, well done". And a little bit of them resents being put in that spot, because now they owe you an opinion on something they never would have picked up.
You walk away thinking it went fine. It didn't. You learned nothing about your book, and you spent goodwill on a reader who was never your reader.
It's an audience mismatch, and it's nobody's fault. Your mum not loving your horror novel says nothing about your horror novel.
What actually works is slower and a bit less comfortable:
- Describe the book honestly, including who it's not for. The right reader recognises it straight away, and the wrong one walks past without resenting you.
- Go where readers of that kind of book already hang out, and be useful there before you ever mention your own.
- Let people choose. Someone who picked your book because it sounded like exactly their thing will finish it, tell somebody, and leave a review that actually means something.
Telling people your book exists isn't the problem. That's just information, and people need it. "You should read my book" is asking for a favour, and favours make bad readers.
Anyone else had the "yeah it's good, well done" moment and only worked out later what it meant?