The loss was personal, but it was also widely shared: PG Wodehouse is by far the most popular English-language writer in India, his readership exceeding that of Agatha Christie or John Grisham.
Dad had retired in the summer from his readership in pure mathematics, and though, externally at least, this change had made little difference – he still cycled in to his old department every day, where he was working on a book on Banach algebra, and he still played an active part in college life – Mum thought the loss of his professional role might be having an impact on him.
To help him stay in touch with his readership while working from Lyon, France, Farivar took all of 10 minutes to set up a Twitter account, which blasts a post every time he writes a blog entry; the same goes for his Facebook page.
Although his dig is less pointed than Updike's, Murakami will have known the effect that even such a glancing nod to the Swedish Academy will have had on his readership: in Japan, fans have taken to gathering in cafes with champagne on ice on the day that the news comes from Stockholm.
With the onset of his illness, he had recently taken early retirement from his tutorial fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, and his readership in modern British history.
Later, though, when tastes in poetry changed, it was the shorter poems in "Lyrical Ballads" that kept his readership from dwindling.
Profiled in Entertainment Weekly, he described his readership as "a little bit of everything.
A legion of dull, identikit "grimdark" fantasy novels have been churned out in recent years to capture his readership, but without exception their authors lack the writing chops to match the master.
Does this "masterpiece" belong to Baldwin's family, or to his readership (a readership forever in danger of shrinking)?
Steve Breckler, executive director for science for the American Psychological Association, worried that even a 12-month delay before posting papers could harm journals in his field because readership of psychology papers remains high for years after they're published.
