Gingerbread House Day - What do you read?

We all know that love makes a house a home.

What about gingerbread houses?

In honor of Gingerbread House Day - a holiday, I'm afraid I'd never heard of until this year, it may be the day to go shopping for your sweet gingerbread house decorations. 

Our family usually doesn't use the real thing, preferring the graham cracker method (above) to buying or making the gingerbread, but the results are fairly similar. Candy doors and windows, a lane of icing or snow, trees made out of colorful gumdrops.

Have you ever read a book that appeared to have all of the right elements - a plot, characters, setting, and dialogue, but the book was lacking something?

This 'lacking' may have been the takeaway value. It may have been the warmth that you somehow missed while reading the story. You may have been confused by the plot, or perhaps there were too many characters to keep track of, and you were continually skimming back through the book to find out who "Sue" was.

Books are kind of like gingerbread houses. They may have all of the right elements. But what makes a gingerbread house a gingerbread home, is how you feel when you read it.

The most eloquent words won't do that, but the placement of the words. And great authors know how to place them for optimum feeling - whether that feeling is the darkness called fear, the warmth of love, or even - sweet peace.

What's In It For Your Readers?

Sometimes, when writing and publishing, we writers tend to get focused inward. Although we have been told to write to a particular audience and to focus on filling the needs of our readers, we may find ourselves looking inward to when and where we're going to make the next buck.

Photo by: Wonderlane, courtesy of Flickr

Unfortunately, when we make book writing all about us; how much money we're going to make, how popular we're going to become, etc., we lose the reasons we may be writing our book in the first place.

Photo by: Takashi(aes256), courtesy of Flickr

Yes, I go there too, but be assured that I don't live there. I prefer to ask myself, "What's in it for my readers?" And then I try to make my book and marketing efforts an answer to that question.

• I want the words I have written to be the best I can put out there. That means I want to write inspired words; words that create meaning.
• I want my editing to be sharp. Will my books ever be perfectly edited? No, but they will be edited.
• I want my cover to appeal to readers who enjoy reading my particular genre.
• I want my book's price to be fair and manageable.  
• I want there to be a take away value. A 'so what' factor. If a particular reader finishes my book and says, 'so what?' that's a problem. If they can ask, 'so what?' and then answer that question with, "I learned...." "I experienced..." that's a great thing.
• I want readers to come back and read other books I've written because they enjoyed the first one they read.
• I want readers to share my book with others either literally or by word of mouth, so that someone else will have a desire to read my books.
• I want to continue to see excitement in my reader's eyes when a free gift is given at a book signing or a book purchase.

When I ask myself, "What's in it for you?" instead of "What's in it for me?" I find that everything is taken care of. I share what I have written and others buy a particular book when it is right for them. There is no need to push or shove, just to be there to share.

God takes care of the rest.