I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.
Lord Chamberlain's readers or controllers, which were a handful of people working directly to him, were a very assorted group of people and some of them tried very hard to be as liberal as they could.
I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career.
I know what it's like to be from an incredibly small town and the oppressiveness of it and the desire to get out. But I didn't realize that readers in Seattle, New York, and San Francisco might not get that so instinctively.
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.
Once I found this possibility to use Twitter and Facebook and my blog to connect to my readers, I'm going to use it, to connect to them and to share thoughts that I cannot use in the book.
The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed.
I think readers are always patient. Look at the 'Harry Potter' series. Some have given up on this generation of kids as game and TV addicts, but lots of people spend lots of time patiently reading through hundreds of pages of dense prose. I think reading a comic by comparison is a lot more immediate.
All of my books now come from readers' ideas.
The problem with 'Don't Be Afraid of the Dark' was that it was designed to be a PG-13 movie. It was literally a horror movie for a younger generation. I was trying to do the film equivalent of teenage, young adult readers, and when they gave it an R rating, the movie couldn't sustain an R.
Look realistically at espionage thrillers again. They're not only alive, readers are excited about them.
Cam disappears at the end of 'Rapture.' It was the only way for me to say good-bye to him at the time, and it's the way he prefers to split, anyway. I always knew I would return to him. He's been my favorite from the start. Readers have long asked what happened to him, but I had to wait for his story to come to me on its own.
I've put everything I had and I've given my readers 120 percent, and that's the truth.
Aside from sales, the letters from readers have been primarily positive.
To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of.
'StrengthsFinder 2.0' is an effort to get the core message and language out to a much broader audience. We had no idea how well received the first strengths book would be by general readers - it was oriented more toward managers - or that the energy and excitement would continue to grow.
I receive about 10,000 letters a year from readers, and in the first year after a book is published, perhaps 5,000 letters will deal specifically with that piece of work.
It's not my job to tell people what to think. If I can actually in some way help the readers' own creative thinking, then that's got to be to everybody's benefit.
Myths are part of our DNA. We're a civilisation with a continuous culture. The effort to modernize it keeps it alive. Readers connect with it.
Because the majority of my readers are women, I feel that one public service I can provide to them is to spread the message of regular mammograms and early detection within the strip.
I feel that there is not an endlessly expandable universe of fiction readers.
Some critics of my work took the view that a satirist should defer to the finer feelings of his readers and respect widely held beliefs.
People who are readers of fiction aren't particularly interested in comic books.
Of John Le Carre's books, I've only read 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,' and I haven't read anything by Graham Greene, but I've heard a great deal about how 'Your Republic Is Calling You' reminded English readers of those two writers. I don't really have any particular interest in Cold War spy novels.
There is a whole industry in America of people who want to write, and those who teach it. Even if the students don't end up writing, what's good about them taking the courses is, they become great readers, learning to appreciate the writing.
In the old fairy tales, often a 'moral' was tacked on at the end of the story - say, if a book was going to be marketed to young readers. And the morals don't really suit the stories at all, which makes them super weird - part of why I love the tradition so much. I do play with this, though I am more concerned with ethics than morals.
I want readers to rehearse that day when everything shatters and think through what they'll hang onto when that happens.
The futuristic city on 'Legends Walking's cover rejects any connection with the contemporary setting of 'Changer.' It was as if every effort was made to keep readers of 'Changer' from finding this stand-alone sequel.
Readers want to visualize your story as they read it. The more exact words you give them, the more clearly they see it, smell it, hear it, taste it. Thus, a dog should be an 'Airedale,' not just a 'dog.' A taste should not be merely 'good' but 'creamy and sweet' or 'sharply salty' or 'buttery on the tongue.'
There's not much about me that readers don't know because I am equal parts open and boring. If there is one thing readers do know about me, it's that I am very un-domestic.
I think we in journalism were really late to social networks. We had a built-in network already in terms of our readers, and we didn't capitalize on that.
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.'
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.
Readers want to see, hear, feel, smell the action of your story, even if that action is just two people having a quiet conversation.
The kids who speak well, are articulate and intelligent, are all readers.
I rely heavily on my beta readers' honest critiques.
