Your Friends Aren’t Going to Read Your Book (And That’s Okay)

Your friends probably won’t read your book – and here’s why that’s not the betrayal it feels like.

As a writer, it breaks my heart that strangers are more likely to support a small time indie writer than friends or family. However, I’m going to tell you why.

So, you did something awesome. Perhaps wrote a book. What’s the harm in your friends saying, “Nice one Beth,” then actually buying a copy, sitting down one afternoon and giving it a go? Maybe every now and then they could ask, “How’s your writing going? Sold many books?” Because writing has become your life, you do it every moment you can; before and after work, weekends, 3am when your brain won’t let you sleep until you’ve written down every word of the most amazing plotline you’ve ever thought of.

And yet your friends and family are nonplussed. To put it bluntly, they couldn’t give a shit.

How do I know this?

Because I am one of those writers, suffering in the silence of conversations that never turn to my latest book, that actively sidestep ‘how’s the writing going?’” where it becomes this chasm of unsaid-ness. I talk around it, ask about what they’re doing, how’s work, their kids, life. But the hurt is there, in the knowledge that whether they love or hate my art, they aren’t willing to support it or acknowledge my writing. And it’s tough, in all honesty.

However, I’ve come to realise that it’s not their responsibility to make me feel good about what I’m creating. They don’t owe me feel good compliments, or hours of their time creating feedback. I decided to embark on this writing journey, not them. My friends and family owe me nothing.

And they are also categorically not my target audience.

It’s massively unlikely that your friends and family will all be into whatever it is you’re creating.

How can we expect people to enjoy, and be actively interested in writing that wasn’t meant for them?

If you’re dreaming up fantasy novel plots and they barely ever pick up a book, it’s unlikely – and unrealistic – to expect them to change their ways. If you’re creating abstract art, and the last time they went to a museum was in 1995. Or you’ve created the most beautiful love song, and their musical tastes swerve towards post rock, you aren’t going to convince them of your incredible melodies if its just not their thing.

I know people who love Agatha Christie novels, but I can’t get in to them. Millions of others would say I’m wrong.

It’s probably a given that your friends won’t be objective with their opinion’s either.

Who wants to be hyper critical of someone’s dream project that might have taken years to finish?

No-one wants that responsibility.

Which means they’ll likely tell you it’s awesome in the hopes of boosting your ego and getting themselves off the hook of tearing your book apart. But you’ll receive no noteworthy edits to help you improve as a writer therefore making the feedback irrelevant.

It’s easy to read an author’s work who you’ve never met, but when it’s your friend you’ve known since childhood, how can they not read your work in your voice? It’ll feel like a story directly told from your mouth, which will certainly ruin the aesthetics.  It’s also unlikely they’ve read much ‘rough text’ before, so you handing them your 50,000 novella is a lot for anyone to get through.

And they have lives. Busy ones.

You are not entitled to their time; they don’t have to share your work. They owe you nothing.

I know feedback is helpful for us aspiring writers and artists, hoping our friends and family will be the kindest and most honest with their constructive notes, helping us on our little journeys of improvement, but again, if they aren’t your target audience, you’re just asking the wrong people.

However, I can promise you, the right people will stumble across your art at some point. The right audience, the right fans, and the right supporters who will like, love, share, and celebrate what you’ve created.

In the meantime, continue to work on evolving as a writer.

Take classes where you can (there are plenty of free ones), read intentionally (the best way to learn), come back after some time away and re-edit your own writing, post on writers forums, send your work to beta readers – to get the best kind of feedback, have conversations with other writers (who probably have the same struggles as you). Keep writing, and writing, and writing some more.

A love letter to indie writers, and a gentle nudge to the people who love them.

I’d like to take a moment to talk directly to any friends/family of a writer who’ve somehow stumbled their way onto this blog and managed to get to this point.

Please, if your friend creates art, if they write, if they spend their free time daydreaming about their first fanfiction novel, or have a story they can’t seem to stop tumbling from their fingertips, and they ask you to read it. Please, for the love of God consume it.

No, you probably won’t love it.

You may not even like it.

And it will most likely be a bit uncomfortable. Because it might be vulnerable, and messy.

They aren’t going to sugar-coat their pain here, they won’t say everything’s fine when it isn’t. Their writing is going to lay the hurt down and ask you to witness it. And in those first drafts, it might mirror real life a little too much. So it won’t always be pretty, or beautiful. It might make you cringe – whether through its rawness, or that it’s not that good yet.

Yet what a wonderful honour it is for them to seek you opinion, that they would give you this opportunity to dive through a window into their soul before it’s truly ready to be seen, by anyone other than those closest to them.

They’re quite literally asking you to know them in the most vulnerable way you could ever know a person – by seeing this rough version of their writing. The unpolished, achingly hopeful, possibly cringe inducing draft that they’ve spent years dreaming about and have now produced, all around their full-time jobs and their busy life.

And then they’ve handed it to you.

Who, let’s be honest, couldn’t give a shit. And it’s okay that you couldn’t give a shit. You owe your friend no shits, to be honest.

But what a wonderful thing it is to be given the opportunity to make someone’s dreams feel real, possible, and respected. What a thing it is to hold hope in your hands. Their hope, so fragile, and wanting, needing even. When they do this, never forget they’ve just passed you a little piece of their soul.

And no, you don’t owe them anything, but wouldn’t it be nice to give them a little hope?

I don’t mean to not be honest or be true to what feedback needs to be given. I mean in caring enough about the responsibility they’ve placed in you, to give them authentic feedback that might help the grow as a writer. Or, if you will never have any intention of reading it because it’s too far from what you enjoy, to say “Gerry, I’m not a horror fan, this book isn’t right for me, so I won’t read it, but I will share it once you publish and help you find the right audience, I can support you that way as a friend.”

Supporting their journey, whether you love or loathe what they’re creating. You’re acknowledgement and encouragement, your little likes and shares, I can tell you it means the world to them.

And no, you don’t owe them any of this. But I do know we should support our friends more. Especially when they’re just little people with big dreams.

And to you, dear writer, here in the trenches with me.

To my little indie authors with massively huge dreams, please don’t be downhearted if those around you aren’t as supportive as you’d hoped. You just need to reach a little further. Towards strangers, local bookstores, beta reader forums, share your work more widely, because your inner circle is not where your dreams come true.

Your dreams will come true in the hands of people you don’t know, who fall in love with you through your pages.