"If I announce on Facebook that something of mine has been published, non-literary relatives and acquaintances, for whom publication seems to be something like winning the lottery, will offer their mandatory congratulations. That is not, of course, the same as their reading what I have written. However, “No prophet is taken seriously in his home town”, as one translation of Jesus’s remark would have it. It’s even less likely that a writer of serious fiction would be taken as serious by their acquaintances. Non-readers have always outnumbered readers, of course. But my impression at the moment is that writers outnumber readers. I have not profited from my literary efforts materially in any significant way. Serious dedication to authorship, or to the arts generally, is unlikely to have practical consequences of a happy kind, as everyone working in this sector knows. Ego-boosting rewards of a less material kind have actually been rather paltry, too. When an editor publishes something...