One of the disconcerting things about writing for publication is that you're trying to clear your little parcel of land in a field where Taste is king - and, as we all know, there's no accounting for Taste.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It's a grave mistake in publishing, whether you're talking about Internet or print publication, to try to play to a limited repertoire of established reader interests.
You're a reader as well as a writer, so write what you'd want to read.
When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.
To be a writer, you must be a reader, yet as many as 30 per cent of my writing students were not readers.
That's why editors and publishers will never be obsolete: a reader wants someone with taste and authority to point them in the direction of the good stuff, and to keep the awful stuff away from their door.
When you're a writer, everything that interests you feeds into your work.
I think that if you write what you love to read, that will be what your audience wants to read, too.
I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.
Forget market or publishers or whatever. Just write with fire and joy, and in my own experience, those are the stories of mine people have wanted to read.
It's a funny habit to write encyclopedia entries. It's not a mass taste.