I Wrote the Book, but Would Anyone Read It?

Steve R. Hartwig looks over his books and considers the question every author eventually faces: Once the book is written, will anyone read it?

Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established. — Proverbs 16:3 (KJV)

I had written the books. Now came the harder question.

Last week, I wrote about the moment I realized something had changed.

I had become an author.

There were books with my name on the cover. Stories that had once existed only in my imagination could now be held in someone's hands.

That should have been the end of the story.

It wasn't.

Because after you write a book, another question eventually arrives.

Will anyone read it?

Writing had been something I could do largely by myself.

Finding readers was different.

I knew very little about marketing books. I didn't have a publishing company introducing me to bookstores or reviewers. I didn't have a large audience waiting for my next release.

I was simply an author living in León, Nicaragua, with some books I believed in.

So I began learning.

One Reader at a Time

At first, finding readers wasn't about advertising campaigns or sales numbers.

It was much more personal than that.

I gave books to people.

I put copies into the hands of friends.

Some found their way to young people I knew through the skatepark.

Others traveled farther than I expected.

And then something wonderful began happening.

People actually read them.

Not thousands.

Not hundreds.

Sometimes just one.

But I began discovering that one reader matters.

A book sitting on my computer was my story.

A book being read by someone else had become something more.

Then Came the First Responses

Someone would tell me what they liked.

Someone would mention a character.

Someone would notice something in the story that I hadn't expected them to notice.

And occasionally, someone would write a review.

Those moments changed the way I thought about writing.

A review wasn't simply a collection of stars beside a book title.

It meant somebody had spent hours inside a world I had created.

They had met my characters.

They had followed them through their struggles.

And when they reached the last page, the story had mattered enough that they wanted to say something about it.

That is a remarkable gift to an author.

And Then Came Mateo

By the time Mateo and the Secrets of the Eternal Word was ready to leave my computer, I understood something I hadn't understood when I finished my first book.

Publishing the book wasn't the finish line.

It was another beginning.

Now I had to help Mateo find his readers.

And so another education began.

Websites. Blogs. Social media. Reviewers. Author pages. Book sites. Promotions.

Some things worked.

Some didn't.

Some produced surprises.

And quite a few taught me what not to do again. 😊

But slowly, Mateo began traveling beyond Nicaragua.

People I had never met began seeing his name.

A few began reading his story.

And each time that happened, the circle grew just a little wider.

Maybe That's How Books Find Their Way

I'm still learning how all of this works.

I suspect I will be for quite some time.

But I've begun to think that perhaps finding readers isn't always about reaching the largest number of people.

Maybe it's about reaching the right person.

One reader tells another.

One review introduces a book to someone new.

One social-media post reaches somebody who would never have known the book existed.

One copy gets passed from one pair of hands to another.

And somewhere along the way, a story that began quietly in one person's imagination develops a life of its own.

I had become an author.

Now I was learning what came next.

I was learning how to find my readers.