Quotes About Readers

You cannot invent an algorithm that is as good at recommending books as a good bookseller, and that's the secret weapon of the bookstore - is that no algorithm will ever understand readers the way that other readers can understand readers.

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.

Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers, my preordained readers. Of what account are the rest? The rest are simply... humanity. One must be superior to humanity in power, in loftiness of soul- in contempt.

People will ask me, "How do you approach writing books for young readers differently than for adults?" My answer is always: I don't change anything about the story itself. I'm going to tell kids the way things really were. What I don't do - and this is the only thing I do differently in writing for kids - is that I don't revel in the gory details. I allow readers to fill in the details as necessary. But I don’t force kids to have to digest something they’re not mature enough or ready for yet. If they are, they can fill in the details even better than I could, just with their imaginations.

I've always kind of thought that reviews written by readers for readers are a kind of private space between consumers. It's their right to say anything they like about your material, and authors need to know that and respect that. As for my end, I'm aware of what my sales are, so I know that my books are working in the marketplace, at least for now, and beyond that, I have to just do my thing and stay focused.

Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level.

I do open endings on purpose. I expect a lot from my readers. I want them to do much of the work, because I believe that the story is built by the reader, not by the writer. I like having an open ending to a standalone fantasy, because it allows a continuing story to be written in the hearts of the readers.

The New York Times and PBS are gatekeepers of a sort. And they perform that role of gatekeeping with a set of rules and aspirations about where they want to lead their viewers and their readers. They value objective facts, and they attempt to transmit a comprehensive view of the world. And they do have values. And they do lead their viewers and their readers to certain conclusions. But it's different than such monopolies as Apple or Google which are dissecting information into these bits and pieces, which they're then transmitting to people. And it's about clicks.

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

Chats are so new to newspapers, historically. But they're so incredibly valuable because editors/reporters/columnists get to find out what's on the minds of our readers, what you think we should be writing about, what ticks you off, what makes you happy. Sometimes it can confirm what you think readers are interested in; sometimes it can turn you around 180 degrees.

Listen, people like Brian Bendis did great things for comic readers, great things for comic readers.

I live in the same house I’ve lived in for 25 years. I haven’t gone off and bought mansions, you know, even though my subject is living… living in a mansion wouldn’t do for my readers. I have to keep my credibility alive with my readers, so we’re in the same place. I just make that place nicer and nicer. And… and that’s a secret. And people don’t know that. People think, oh, she lives in this fabulous place, it’s the same old place. It started out like a farm, it got to be a farmette, then it got to be an estatelet. I built a wall, it helped a lot. But it’s the same place, the same grounded nature.

In his exciting debut novel, Jerel Law transports readers to a place where supernatural forces of good and evil collide. Young readers will be entertained and inspired by Spirit Fighter. I heartily recommend it.

The rules of grammar exist in large part to permit readers and writers to operate from a shared set of expectations.

[When] Johnny Mnemonic was coming out and I realized that all the kids that worked in 7-11 knew more - or thought they knew more - about feature film production than I did. And that was from reading Premiere, that was from this change that came from magazines that treat their readers as players. Magazines that purport to sell you the inside experience.

To grow, to become spiritually alive, and vibrant, you really have to struggle. Without struggle, you do not move at all...I would appreciate it if readers who come to my work would try very, very, very hard not to think narrowly as we are taught to think in America.

The funniest novel you've never read. . . . Afternoon Men is a revelation to sophisticated readers of every stripe, but especially to a certain kind of artist manqu on the brink of discovering that life is a more difficult business than he ever had reason to expect. . . . The subject matter is 'relatable,' as my students like to say. Better still, though, is what you can learn about the craft of writing from this marvelous book. . . . Indeed, if you're looking for a funny, nonportentous Hemingway, then the early Powell is your man.

I read a lot; I tried to understand the mechanisms that made the books I liked successful, and I went that route. So, as for readers - when I think about them I like to think they read the same books I do.

While I hear from readers all the time that they love learning new things, I never want to do an "info-dump." Boring! I try to include enticing details and skip all the rest.

Southern writing is regional: it includes dialect, settings, and cultural traditions from that region. However the themes and story conflicts are universal. My challenge is to write regional fiction without falling into the trap of nostalgia. There are important issues facing the south that I believe should be raised in the stories to make them contemporary, believable, and relevant to today's readers.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.

I like to think I'm generally accessible, but I give readers the benefit of the doubt of being reasonably culturally-literate.

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

I... recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for.

I always point people to the article '1,000 True Fans' by Kevin Kelly. If you choose your thousand ideal customers or readers properly and find the single author blog that targets that audience, you never have to do any more marketing. You're done. That is a lesson that very few product developers and marketers have learned, and it's unfortunate.

I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in Space.

Mann is widely recognized as a master of irony and ambiguity, yet it's remarkable how quickly people foreclose options he carefully leaves open. Lots of readers - including eminent critics - jump to conclusions: that Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy is a central background text, that Aschenbach is an inferior writer, that he's never been attracted by pubescent male beauty before, that he dies of cholera.

What's impossible not to notice, though - it's all around us - is the diminution of American prose: How pedestrian it has become. Pick up any short story and listen to its voice, the tedious easy vernacular that mistakes transcription for realism. This would display an understandable pragmatism if it were a pandering to common-denominator readers; but it is, in fact, a kind of hifalultin literary ideology, the less-is-more Hemingway legacy put through an up-to-the-minute industrial blender.

Publishing should be a collaboration between authors and their smartest readers - and at some point the distinction should become meaningless.

Only that, nothing more - a tiny beam of light to show some hidden aspect of reality, to help decipher and understand it and thus to initiate, if possible, a change in the conscience of some readers.

Do not address your readers as though they were gathered together in a stadium. When people read your copy, they are alone. Pretend you are writing to each of them a letter on behalf of your client.

As a writer, its important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God.

My experience may be different than theirs, readers can identify with trying to save for retirement or their own kid's college fund. In truth, the name of the column, "The Color of Money," has less to do with my race than the fact that the color of money is green and it's green we all need to live a good life.

Readers of novels are a strange folk, upon whose probable or even possible tastes no wise book-maker would ever venture to bet.

I'm a strong believer in telling stories through a limited but very tight third person point of view. I have used other techniques during my career, like the first person or the omniscient view point, but I actually hate the omniscient viewpoint. None of us have an omniscient viewpoint; we are alone in the universe. We hear what we can hear... we are very limited. If a plane crashes behind you I would see it but you wouldn't. That's the way we perceive the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters.

I have always admired the work of Phil Farmer and was glad for the chance to work with him. Readers today may be too young to remember his classics like The Lovers.

Ive been told by readers that they love how my heroes fall in love fast, first, and with conviction.

I would also hope that readers receive a larger understanding, or a different understanding, of what it means to be human, than they might have had before. We suffer from being quick to judge, quick to make excuses for ourselves and others, and I would like the reader to feel that we are all, more or less, in a similar state as we love and disappoint one another, and that we try, most of us, as best we can, and that to fail and succeed is what we do.

One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective.... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero.

As populations crowd toward the ocean's edge and the sea encroaches menacingly toward the land, John R. Gillis looks at the history of the world from a fresh perspective and enables readers to see it in a new light. That he has managed to do so in a single conceptual work is nothing short of astounding.

Eve Byron has a permanent place on my must-buy list. Her characters are three-dimensional men and women who live on in readers' hearts long after they've turned the last page. ONLY IN MY DREAMS is pure Eve Byron, which means it's a pure delight. I fell in love with Lorelei and Dane, two of the most delightful characters I've encountered in a very long time. Byron's magical touch never falters. ONLY IN MY DREAMS is a surefire hit!

I love doing readings. I could really give a crap about reviews. It's kind of about the readers.

Okay, if this is what falling in love feels like, someone please kill me now. (Not literally, overzealous readers.) But it was all too much - too much emotion, too much happiness, too much longing, perhaps too much ice cream.

Many, if not most, of the best and most lasting children’s books have multiple levels, some of which are not fully accessible to their most likely readers…at least, not on their first read-through at age eight or ten or fifteen.

That the Op-Ed page is very important in readers' and the nation's perception of the Times, the perception of its editorial positions, and of its implicit editorial positions as expressed by the publisher's choice of people who are given the freedom to write opinion columns.

I'd like the reader to decide if he is willing to pay minute sums for content. I'd like the economics of web to be controlled between authors and readers, not advertiser.

Whether it's viewers of the show or readers of my columns and books, I'm consistently impressed with their wit, humor and insight. That goes for about 95 percent of the audience. The other five percent are why the 'Delete' option and restraining orders were invented.

If you’re a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.