A writer's ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in a hundred years' time.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Even if I only had 10 readers, I'd rather do the book for them than for a million readers online.
A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.
It's been said that I am the most widely read writer of the 20th century. The number of books I've sold runs into untold millions.
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.
To the best of my knowledge, my youngest reader is 10 and the oldest is 95.
Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It's a way of being alive for the writer.
Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.
More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross; but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about.
I feel I've got 10 books in me.
And I have finally realized that, you know, it's not a given that my lifespan will accommodate my writing aspirations. It could be that it would take me 12 more books at six years each to get it - which means I would have to live to be 126. Which I fully intend to do, of course.
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