Jen Carter's Blog - Posts Tagged "clean-reads"

Yesterday, someone kindly posted a positive review on Amazon for Chasing Paris. In the review, she talked about how it's a clean, easy-to-read book, and I’ve been thinking about this since first seeing the review. Other reviewers have also mentioned that Chasing Paris is a clean read—it doesn’t have sex or violence, and the language is no worse than what we hear on television. Before publishing the book, I didn’t know what people would say about it, but I’m really glad to see some have noted that it’s clean.

When I first started writing, I was told that there wasn't a market for books without sex and/or violence. Of course I didn’t know if this was true, but I still found the statement disheartening. Those are things that I’m just not interested in writing about. Other writers do it (brilliantly, in fact), and there’s definitely a market for it, but it’s not who I am. Also, I knew that my mom would read Chasing Paris once it was complete. That was enough to keep me from even entertaining the idea of a sex scene.

Now I’m a mother of two young girls. I hope one day that they will want to read what I’ve written, and this is another reason I can’t see myself writing with sex and/or violence. Yes, it may be prudish, but that’s who I am.

So I am wondering: do people seek out clean reads? Is this something that readers think about when choosing books? I know that I do, but am I one of a very few? Or might this be bigger than I think?

Does anyone have thoughts on this? I’d love to hear them!