There are seven hundred people subscribed to this newsletter. I know because I check the number every morning with the devotion of a monk counting prayer beads, each digit both blessing and wound. Seven hundred souls who have chosen to receive my weekly hemorrhaging directly into their inbox. Some days this feels like an army. Other days, it feels like whispers in an empty cathedral.

This week I watched a video of an author announcing their book hit the New York Times bestseller list. The camera caught them mid-celebration—champagne, confetti, the kind of joy that photographs well. I closed my laptop and stared at the wall for twenty-three minutes, calculating how many copies that represents, how many readers, how many lives touched by their words. The math was devastating.

But here's what they don't show you in those celebration videos: the writer alone at 3 AM, wondering if anyone really read those books or just bought them. The difference between being purchased and being consumed. Between being bestselling and being beloved.

I write novels that seven people read. Sometimes twelve, if I'm lucky and the algorithm gods smile upon my existential dread. I pour months into crafting sentences that will live and die in the space between someone's morning coffee and their first meeting. I architect entire worlds that exist only in the consciousness of strangers I'll never meet, who may forget my name before they finish the last paragraph.

There's a particular brand of loneliness that comes with being a writer without an audience—not the absence of readers, but the presence of just enough to make you believe, incorrectly, that you matter. Enough to keep you writing, not enough to make you feel heard. It's the artistic equivalent of being perpetually on the verge of success, which might be more torturous than guaranteed failure.

I know the names of my regular readers. Not because I'm successful, but because I'm grateful.

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to have hundreds of thousands of readers, to write words that ripple across continents, to trend and be discussed and debated. But then I think about the purity of writing for seven hundred people who chose to be here, who aren't here because an algorithm told them to be or because I'm the literary equivalent of fast food. They're here because something I wrote once made them feel less alone in the world.

The publishing industry runs on the mythology of overnight success, of books that explode into cultural consciousness like literary bombs. But most of us exist in the spaces between explosions—in the quiet corners where stories are born and sometimes die without fanfare. We are the writers who check our book rankings obsessively, who celebrate a single five-star review like it's a Nobel Prize, who know the exact number of copies we've sold because we can count them on our fingers.

Yet I keep writing. Not because I believe it will lead somewhere, but because the alternative—silence—feels like a kind of death. The words come whether forty-seven people read them or forty-seven thousand. The stories demand to be told regardless of their reception. The characters insist on existing even if they live only in my imagination and the brief attention spans of strangers on the internet.

Maybe this is what faith looks like for writers: continuing to believe in the power of words even when the evidence suggests otherwise. Writing not because we know we'll be read, but because not writing would mean letting the silence win.

Tonight I'll write another story. Tomorrow, I'll send it into the digital void with the same hope I've carried for years—that somewhere, someone will read it and feel something shift inside them. That for a moment, we'll be less alone.

Seven hundred people. It's not nothing. It's not everything. But it's enough to keep the words coming.

The business of being an unread writer is its own form of performance art. We master the dance of self-promotion while dying inside, crafting social media posts that project confidence we don't feel, writing bios that make our minimal accomplishments sound significant. We become experts at celebrating tiny victories—a retweet, a comment, a single sale—while secretly mourning the bigger dreams.

The craft challenge isn't just writing well; it's writing with integrity when no one's watching. When you know only a handful of people will read your story, every word carries more weight. There's no hiding behind volume or viral moments. Each sentence has to justify its existence to the seven people who might notice.

I've started thinking of my small readership as my literary family rather than my failure. They know my voice, my obsessions, the way I circle back to certain themes. They've earned the right to my honesty by showing up consistently. Writing for them feels more intimate than writing for strangers, more like correspondence than publication.

The paradox: having fewer readers has made me a better writer. When you can't rely on marketing or buzz, the work has to stand on its own. Every story becomes a love letter to the people who care enough to read it.

The Week's Stats

Newsletter subscribers: 723 (unchanged, but each one counted)
Story views this week: 23
Comments received: 3 (treasured like archaeological artifacts)
Hours spent checking analytics: 4.7
Times I questioned why I do this: 12
Moments of pure gratitude for my readers: 1 (but it lasted three hours)
Words written for the seven hundred: 12,847
Stories that mattered to someone: At least 1 (Elena's email confirmed it)

Revelation of the week: Obscurity might be the most honest place to write from.

One Line That Killed Me

"I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork." — Peter De Vries

The Uncomfortable Question

If you knew for certain that only five people would ever read your work, would you still write it?

Until next week, when I confess something else that probably should stay hidden,
Cristian