It’s All About the Reader

The nov­el, avail­able on Ama­zon.

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a mys­tery nov­el, a mys­tery nov­el that only one agent and zero edi­tors believed in. This mys­tery nov­el was read by edi­tors at top pub­lish­ing hous­es includ­ing Dut­ton, Harp­er, St. Mar­t­in’s Press, Har­court, Tor and Poi­soned Pen. It was even read by a major movie stu­dio. Yet none of them were will­ing to take a risk on the nov­el.

“The mys­tery mar­ket is too crowd­ed,” they said. “We don’t see how it can stand out.”

Nev­er, though, did they say it was­n’t good enough, that it was­n’t well-writ­ten.

So, for many rea­sons, A Real Piece of Work nev­er found a home among main­stream pub­lish­ers. Which is why, about a month ago, I final­ly self-pub­lished it as a Kin­dle ebook.

Since then, between Ama­zon US and Ama­zon UK the nov­el has net­ted 21 reviews—19 of them 5‑star raves. Read­ers write how they lost sleep over A Real Piece of Work. The most recent review­er writes, “Read this book when you have a day to spare. You won’t be able to put it down.”

A for­lorn slush pile.

Had I not pub­lished it on Kin­dle myself, the nov­el would have lain dor­mant on my hard dri­ve or a slush pile some­where, and I would have always won­dered what read­ers thought of the book. It turns out they think a lot of it. They love it—some so much as to beg me to release the sec­ond one in the series tomor­row.

I’m tremen­dous­ly grate­ful to read­ers who have post­ed reviews or told their friends about the book, but the most impor­tant thing they’ve done for me is to remind me that it’s all about them. It’s all about the read­ers, not the agents and edi­tors.

All read­ers care about is whether a book is a good read, a well-writ­ten sto­ry. But because my pur­suit was agent- and edi­tor-cen­tric for so long, I for­got whose opin­ion I real­ly cared about—the read­er’s.

I read this somewhere—I can’t remem­ber where—and I real­ize it’s more true now than ever: “The read­er’s opin­ion is the only one that counts.” I’ve always writ­ten with the read­er in mind, but now I’m going to write that tru­ism on a 3“x5” note­card and post it above my writ­ing desk.

The read­ers have spo­ken, and I have lis­tened. It’s all about the read­er.

 

By Chris Orcutt

CHRIS ORCUTT is an American novelist and fiction writer with over 30 years' writing experience and more than a dozen books in his oeuvre. Since 2015, Chris been working exclusively on his magnum opus. Bodaciously True & Totally Awesome: The Legendary Adventures of Avery “Ace” Craig is a 9-episode novel about teens in the 1980s. It’s about ’80s teens, but for adults (in other words, it’s decidedly not YA literature), and he’s applied this epic storytelling approach to the least examined, most misunderstood, most marginalized narrative space in American literature: the lives and inner worlds of teenagers.

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