Defying the digital age with a debut novel might seem a challenging task, but I do believe there are far more readers out there than headlines indicate, and I am delighted that so many of them are reaching for mine. Crazy String got her launch party and readers came through with support and encouragement, so big thanks is due, especially to those who are reading my novel while the baby naps, or before they head to work, or after giving feedback on a pile of student essays, or instead of all the distractions found on their many screens.

Despite all the dire reports that “The End of Reading is Here“, and while English teachers all around the globe might nod in the affirmative, there are signs this is not completely true. “Actually, in America, the reading of books is up. Sales of print books have increased nearly twenty-five per cent from a decade ago. The number of independent bookstores in the United States has climbed steeply since 2009, with a seventy-per-cent increase since 2020. A survey by the Pew Research Center found that thirty-eight per cent of American adults read one to five books in 2025, and fourteen per cent read at least twenty. The global book market is expected to grow five per cent annually for the next several years; for the generation now entering college, book sales are at a lifetime high” (Heller, “The New Age of Reading,” The New Yorker). In my mind, this translates to Crazy String having a chance of being read by more and more people, and that feels like hope for me and writers everywhere.

“Every single year of my bookselling life, somebody has popped up and said, ‘Literary fiction is dead!’ Now it’s ‘Nobody is reading nonfiction!’ ” His stores [James Daunt, Chief Executive of both the largest bookstore chain in the United States, Barnes & Noble, and the largest in the United Kingdom, Waterstones] suggested the opposite. One of Barnes & Noble’s pandemic best-sellers had been “Middlemarch,” bought largely by people younger than forty-five. At all six stores in New York this summer, one of the top-selling books—helped along by Hollywood—was Emily Wilson’s twelve-thousand-one-hundred-and-ten-line verse translation of the Odyssey” (Heller, “The New Age of Reading,” The New Yorker). Middlemarch and The Odyssey are complex explorations of the human experience, and anyone who navigates through either arrives at a different understanding of themselves and our world by the end. What more could you ask of a book than that? Imagine all that you might learn about George Eliot’s late-Georgian Era or Homer’s Heroic Age from reading such literary classics? “Daunt holds that a literary culture is something booksellers are well placed to build. “Books aren’t a fixed market,” he told me in his office. “The more bookshops there are, the more people will read. The better bookshops are, the more people discover things. Online is an efficient place, but it’s not a place that can excite in itself” (Heller).

It is very easy to blame our phones with distractions like Facebook and Instagram or the commodity seller Amazon for the lack of excitement about books, yet a buzz is indeed building. “For most of us, ideas about the state of literature are the result of a cohort experience. Reading is private—or has been since at least the sixth century, before which the Western habit was to read everything aloud. But conversing about reading is a social activity” (Heller). Our need for social connection just might be driving us back to the novel, to books, and to all the richness that words have to offer us, like empathy and understanding. Think Book Clubs. Think coffee shops and all the places people congregate to share their favorite book. This “conversing” is the very core of sites such as Goodreads and connecting hashtags like #BookTok, and is perhaps fueling a new genre such as “Romantasy.”

I for one can’t wait to talk about my novel or your poem or her song lyrics or his memoir or their collection of short stories. Imagine all the nuances and perspectives and truths we might discover as readers. Imagine all the room for differing viewpoints. Imagine the  commonality. Let’s chat about all the printed words out there. Let’s be revolutionary and be readers together.

Photos: Vibelizabeth

Book Launch Venue: SoCalVibesCO

Organizers: The Cachet Creative

Publisher: WeBook Publishing

Moderator: Tate Donovan

Marketing: ArtCity Creative

Styling: Marnika Weiss