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.
Please
add to this list, and pass it along.
Every book-lover will enjoy the list and anyone who should be a book fan
may be inspired to become one.
DON’T MISS: ALL NEW RESOURCE OF THE YEAR
2015 Book PR &
Marketing Toolkit: All New
Brian Feinblum’s views,
opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his
employer. You can follow him
on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels
more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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