I sometimes hear rumblings from authors about people passing books around to friends or checking out from the library. Maybe I’m just not monetarily motivated, but this doesn’t bother me. After all, I love the library. Once I lived in a sagebrush town, population 50, that had no library. The horror! A bookmobile came around every week or so, and woe befall the person who missed that day. You can’t expect someone to drop dollars on new books all the time–they are not cheap. And I love lending books to people whom I know will love them. I don’t have the space for a shelf of books in my cabin anyway.
I guess I just want people to read my book.
I don’t write for free very often anymore (just this blog and my hiking blog) but I still do appearances for free (depending on how far I have to go to get there). Maybe my perspective will change as time goes by. I get it, though, I really do. If writing is your main business, I understand why you might think differently than I do. Speaking as one who has yet to make a dime from my book (except for a couple stipends for travel, thank you, thank you), it is fair to say that I don’t do it for the money.
I just write about what I love and I want people to read my book.
Is this deeply weird? Let me know what you think. You can always contact me using the contact tab.
And support your library.