A rewarding three-day event at the New York Society Library in New York City--one of the few member libraries left in this country--helped me to think further about MY READER. The emphasis in publishing on the number of books sold, the best seller list, the merchandising of books by the chains, and the decline of readers has, I think, induced most of us who are writers to think in terms of bulk: so many thousand copies sold, rather than of the individual reader. Since writers make very little money, even when a book sells well, the fruit of this frame of mind is, basically, the publisher's profit. This leads to a lack of appreciation of the singular reader (singular, perhaps, in both senses) who makes the increasingly serious decision to buy a book and to read it, and even, perhaps, to read something else by the same writer.

It is precisely this singular reader that I want to honor. it is her (most readers of fiction are women, which is a loss for men) reaction, her acknowledgement of the existence of my newest boo, and, by extension, of my existence as a writer, that supports and authorizes my endeavor. I may never meet her, may never know whether she found my books satisfying, but her existence provides the invaluable link in the slender chain that connects me with my audieence. Each of those links is equally precious, from the woman browsing in an independent bookstore who happens on one of my books, and is attracted it it (usually for mysterious reasons), to the reader alone in her room, reading, to the thoughtful critic who talks about my book to her friends, or even writers an on-line review.

I plan to address you, my singular reader, more frequently on this webpage, in the hope that we may set up a correspondance. Your views, your reactions, are precious to me. The seal of silence that has been set between reader and writer needs to be broken.

My books exist because of you--not you in your thousands, or in your hundreds, but in your singularity.

Blessings on you. SB