Wednesday, March 25, 2015
For authors and promoters to market books properly they should have an appreciation of why readers choose to read books in the first pace. It's our job to convince people why they should read the book we’re promoting. Look at why Americans are passionate book readers, and take a gander at this list, one that is surely incomplete.
I read books because I:
1. Can.
2. Feel that I should.
3. Want to read the word in my own voice and take ownership of them.
4. Value ideas and information being in one single volume.
5. Couldn’t remember everything they capture unless I could refer to them often.
6. Get a sanity check.
7. Can compare how my life measures with others.
8. Find an outlet to deliver the rant I want to actually go on.
9. Want to look and sound intelligent.
10. Want to gain entrance to a book club that provides a social payoff.
11. Will learn what others know and create an equal platform.
12. Want to gain information and insights that will help me negotiate with others.
13. Need to update and revise previously acquired knowledge.
14. Want my assumptions challenged.
15. Get to hear multiple sides or eye-witness accounts to history.
16. Want to compare it to the movie, play, or TV show version.
17. Want to tune out my environment.
18. Will feel hope and optimism.
19. Can validate what I know, feel, and think.
20. I can’t think of a better thing to do while in the bathroom, on a train to work, on a plane, or by the beach.
21. Enjoy doing it before I fall asleep.
22. Feel alive.
23. Feel I belong or am understood – and not alone.
24. Am given an environment that stimulates my thinking and allows me to contemplate, letting my mind wander freely.
25. Gain a supplement to fill in the void.
26. Garner a greater insight and understanding on a subject from a perspective and vantage point not otherwise available to me.
27. Can feel fear and anger without repercussions or an obligation to act.
28. Am able to see the other side and hear opposing viewpoints.
29. Can see the record corrected.
30. Want to see what’s on the next page.
31. Want to find something that’s quotable.
32. Seek ammunition to shoot down the arguments of others.
33. See books as inspiring freedom, educating us, and leading us to live a fuller and rewarding life.
34. Get sexually aroused.
35. Am aided in the practice of my faith.
36. Need a second, third, and fourth opinion.
37. Like to hear voices from other eras or distant lands.
38. Enjoy a well-researched, comprehensive body of work on a topic of interest to me.
39. Get to read to another – child, blind, illiterate – and pass on the joy of books.
40. Find something worth sharing with others.
41. Enjoy trivia.
42. Like to look at statistical data.
43. Feel I can be intimately put in touch with the lives of others.
44. Discover word games and puzzles.
45. Improve my vocabulary.
46. Enhance my communication skills.
47. Become a better writer.
48. Use books to study aid to help prepare for a test.
49. Want to be on the same page with others.
50. Learn something new.
51. Discover things I wasn’t aware existed.
52. Remain in touch with an activity I have done since I was a little boy.
53. Feel connected with others who read books.
54. Want to get a taste of any of the millions of stories that I could never have the time, courage, circumstance or ability to actually live out.
55. Feel compelled to.
56. Would feel like I am missing out if I didn’t read.
57. Know that history lives in books and dies without witnesses.
58. Couldn’t imagine wordls that could be behind with the ones others have blueprinted in their books.
59. Can live in another’s shoes without paying for them.
60. Believe life is better on a printed page than in reality.
61. Become informed of things we all should know about.
62. Need a good laugh.
63. Learn a new skill.
64. Come to understand how things really work.
65. Want to discover a philosophical truth.
66. Need to understand myself better.
67. Can use some good advice.
68. Need a good cry.
69. Want to learn something – anything – and be better for it.
70. Love being engaged in a lively debate.
71. Enjoy seeing an issue dissected and examined as if under a lab microscope or cross-examined in a court of law.
72. Want a stage to live out a fantasy.
73. Am inspired to achieve more professionally.
74. Want to see a new path to get what I want.
75. Am exposed to a fresh perspective on how to reach greater heights in my personal life.
76. Want to escape my life.
77. Need a suspension of society’s rules and mores.
78. Want to be in a world that doesn’t obey the science, history, and imitations of the real one.
79. Don’t find that other infotainment – blogs, movies, and TV – can serve all of my needs.
80. Can immerse myself in the life of another, whether real or fictional.
81. Find it's the one thing that separates me from animals and insects.
82. Find it’s an activity that requires you bring nothing to the table but an open mind – and to stay awake.
83. Can do it without needing another person.
84. Can do it anywhere, anytime.
85. Can do it without asking anyone’s permission.
86. Am curious and searching.
87. Seek to know life’s secrets.
88. Believe books are art.
89. Find books not only contain words, but images that dazzle and amaze.
90. Can be a voyeur to things I would never really want or be able to do, yet I want to see the way others watch a train wreck.
91. Feel like books can expose the world’s wrongs.
92. Want to correct the world’s shortcomings by understanding what they are and identifying solutions.
93. Believe even bad ideas need to be exposed.
94. Appreciate that my parents encouraged me to read and I repay them book by book.
95. Had a few good teachers who made book-reading fun and not a chore.
96. Want great ideas from the past to travel directly to me.
97. Love how words dance with one another – and then swap partners.
98. Ran out of battery on my smartphone.
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