Marketing one’s book can be challenging. Knowing the target audience , I have discovered, is the biggest challenge. “If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment. It is a deeply satisfying feeling,” writes Mary Gaitkill on the Oprah Winfrey website’s Advice to Aspiring Authors.
Who are the wrong readers? Are they people with different points of view or belief systems? Are they people with closed minds looking for confirmation of their already held beliefs? And, who are the right readers? Those who can look past semantics to meaning? Those who are open to testing the waters of new language or willing to go to scary places to explore truth? Do you read a book to confirm who you have constructed yourself to be, or do you seek new vistas that strain your view, leaving you with questions? For me, books are dabbles in new realities, so that the one I am creating keeps me interested.