…you’re also prepared to give someone the gift of Eight Guilt-Free Hours.
An author normally wouldn’t say this, but it’s become the one condition I’ve quietly placed on anyone thinking about buying my memoir.
I published my memoir six months ago and, like most first-time authors, I immediately started trying to understand how readers discover books. I read publishing advice, watched what other authors were doing and tried to work out how my memoir would find the people I’d written it for. Two months ago I deliberately stopped marketing. Not because I’d lost faith in the book, but because I realised I was trying to solve a problem I didn’t yet understand. I wanted to organise everything I’d been observing before deciding what to do next.
The more I looked at publishing, the more obvious something became. Almost every conversation revolves around people who already enjoy books. They’re looking for their next read, following authors, comparing reviews and deciding which title deserves their time. That’s exactly how publishing should work because those readers keep books alive.
As I listened to those conversations, I found myself thinking about completely different people. I kept thinking about the people who always say they’d like to read more but never seem to find the time. The people who buy books with every intention of reading them, only to watch them quietly become part of the bedside table. The people who once loved reading but gradually stopped because life slowly filled every spare hour they had. I also thought about the people who never really became readers at all, despite spending their lives learning through conversations, articles, documentaries and experience. I recognised those people because, for much of my own life, I’d been one of them.
It slowly dawned on me that I may never naturally find many of the people my memoir was written for because they aren’t looking for another book. They’re looking for an opportunity to enjoy one, and the people most likely to help me find them aren’t readers at all. They’re the partners, parents, children, friends and family members who already know someone deserves a little more time for themselves.
It also made me realise that my memoir probably isn’t written for people who spend the whole journey standing outside the story, quietly deciding what number they’ll give it when they reach the end. Reviews help books find readers, and I’m grateful for every one of them, but I didn’t write this memoir hoping people would constantly compare it with every other book they’d read. I wrote it hoping someone would become absorbed in the journey, meet the people I met, notice the things I noticed and only begin judging the experience once it was over. I wrote it for women and men who simply enjoy disappearing into a good story.
That changed the way I think about giving books.
If you’re thinking about buying someone a book for Father’s Day, a birthday or Christmas, don’t make the book the whole gift. Think about the person you’re buying it for. Are they always saying they’d love to read more one day? Do they spend every weekend taking children to sport, washing the cars, catching up on the laundry, preparing meals for the week ahead, doing the grocery shopping and trying to fit everything else into two short days before Monday arrives? Are they always doing things for everyone else before they ever make time for themselves?
If that sounds like someone you know, don’t just choose a book that suits them. Create the opportunity for them to enjoy it.
Offer to cook for the family. Take the children where they need to be. Wash the cars. Fold the laundry. Do the grocery shopping. Catch up on the jobs that would normally fill their day. Give them something that’s surprisingly difficult for many of us to give ourselves - the gift of Eight Guilt-Free Hours.
Then choose a book that suits them.
It might be the novel they’ve been meaning to read for years. It might be the biography that’s been waiting patiently on the shelf. It might be the memoir a friend has recommended for months but they’ve never quite found the time to begin. If it suits, it might even be mine.
The title isn’t really the point. The opportunity is.
I’ve realised that I don’t simply want people to discover my book. I want more people to rediscover books. If my memoir becomes part of that journey, I’ll be incredibly grateful. If another author’s book becomes the story they finally find time to enjoy, I’ll be just as pleased, because I think we’ve become so focused on choosing the right book that we’ve forgotten to create the opportunity to enjoy it.
If enough of us begin giving the gift of Eight Guilt-Free Hours, I think more books will be opened, more stories will be discovered and more people will rediscover something they quietly thought they’d lost. If that happens, I suspect I’ll finally begin finding many of the readers my memoir was written for.
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