What’s an author to do?

I was in the gym last week, running nowhere on a treadmill when I noticed that the woman beside me was reading SOMETHING MISSING. 

I was thrilled.  One of my first discoveries of my book “in the wild.” 

But just as quickly as the adrenaline shot through my body,  I was stuck. 

What to do?

As a reader, if the author of a book that I was reading was standing beside me, I think I’d want to know and would hope that he or she would speak up.

But as an author, it’s not so easy to look across exercise equipment at a complete stranger and say, “Guess what?  I wrote that book.”

Is there any way to let a reader know that you are present without sounding like a stalker or a loser?

Comments

[TonyG]

Oh wow, that would be interesting. I think I would ask if the person likes the book, and if the reaction was reasonably positive I would mention how I liked writing it... Assuming I wasn't flustered to start with, which would seem quite possible.

I agree though if I was a reader and the author spotted me reading his/her book, I think I would like it if the author mentioned it.

[Simcha]

This post of yours really got me wondering what I would actually do if an author approached me while I was reading their book and what I think an appropriate comment for the author to make, would be. And so I contacted a few different authors to find out what they would do in this situation and I asked a few different book bloggers if they would want to be approached by the author. I put up all the results in a blog post, today, which you can take a look at here, if you are interested: http://blog.42scifi-fantasy.com/2010/02/readers-in-wild-what-should-authors-do.html
Thanks for the interesting question!

[Matthew Dicks]

Thanks, Simcha! I'll give it a look-see!