I'm a novelist. When I first started addressing my readers, sending out ARC invitations, newsletters, and such, I felt that I needed to call them something. I needed a pet name to call all of them that showed my love for them without the hassle of writing to each of them individually. Here were the choices:
Bookworms: I have never liked this term. On a lower level, I dislike it because of all the little cartoons of worms with glasses that inhabit libraries. If books represent the highest form of imagination, as books can be about every subject in the world, then why are they always being represented by a worm with glasses? BORING!
On a higher level, I think about some of the fanciest libraries in the world and how quite a few of them house colonies of bats to eat the bugs that are trying to eat the books. Can you imagine how desperate you'd have to be to intentionally house a colony of bats? You'd rather clean up after the bats than have your books eaten from the inside by silverfish, booklice, and linoleum beetles. Seriously, opening your book and realizing it has one of these problems is probably worse than noticing your child has lice. Your kid just needs a hair treatment. How much of that book has already been eaten?
The whole thing is so disgusting, I can't bear to call my readers bookworms.
Read Rats: When I hear this term, I think of two things. One is using the word rat in a personified sense, meaning people who skip out on other things they are supposed to be doing in order to read... which is cute. On the other hand, it is also the word rat, which makes me think of a literal rat, an animal with no blatter control who can't help but smear his pee with him everywhere he tracks his little rattish butt... which is not cute.
I can't call my readers something that leaves a pee pattern wherever it goes.
Library Mouse: I can't help but wonder what sorts of experiences people have had with mice over the course of human history that has made them ever want to personify a mouse. Yet this happens all the time. Mice shred paper to nest in. So, the idea of a mouse (or a rat) living in the wall in the library makes me want to get the traps out, not write a children's book where mice live happy little lives in the walls. Were the mice just an inevitable part of library culture for so long that people decided to draw cute pictures of them? Thinking something like, "We're not getting rid of them, so we may as well draw them in fancy clothes dancing around."
Okay... but that's not the world I live in. No non-flying rodents in the library. .... .... ... Yes, I know. Bats aren't bugs... or rodents.
Book Horse: I think of someone dangling a book in front of their horse instead of a carrot. Then I strike that image from my mind and imagine a boy carrying his backpack on one shoulder and a pretty girl's backpack on the other. He thought he was doing her a favor by offering to carry her bag for her, except she has The Stand by Stephen King and all the Wheel of Time books. That boy is a book horse.
Book Moth: I find this a thousand times more appealing than the bookworm thing because the design opportunities to replace those bespectacled worm posters are so resplendent. However, as soon as I think of moths in the closet, it's all over. You don't want a moth in your closet, your hair, or your bookroom.
Book Shark: This sounds like a plagiarist or some other pest who keeps stealing the book you want.
Book Caterpillar: A thousand times cuter than a worm because I think of a furry worm instead of a naked one. This should be a thing. Not a thing for my readers, but a thing for somebody.
Book Swallower: This is a good one. It does things to me. Mostly I think of the man swallowing chains in The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.
Reading Maggot: The first person to be called this did something unforgivable. They know what they did.
I gave my own definition to the next three.
Book Slut: This is what your mom calls you when she finds your erotica collection.
Word Wasp: This is what you call someone who keeps throwing insults at you that are way over your head.
Page Mage: This is what you call your child when you can't get them to read anything except Harry Potter and you want to make them feel like they can read more.
Book Bug: Not great, but still better than a worm. It also has that nice alliteration.
Book Eater: If I was a man, I may have gone for this one or book swallower. They both have nice masculine edges to them.
Ink Drinkers: This is translated from a French term. I love it. As soon as I saw it, I knew this was the one I was going to use. When I hear this term, in my mind's eye, I see a woman wearing a black dress with tassels at the hem. She's sitting in a grungy art club in the 1920s. Aside from the dark flapper dress, her hair is shingled and she's wearing a headband with a single black ostrich feather arched over her head. The walls are green/black grunge and a yellow flower is flourishing in a green glass bottle, offsetting the environment, especially the weird white lightbulb that hangs over the table. A waiter in a white shirt and black vest brings her order. It's a martini glass containing the darkest of black ink. It is garnished with a quill that has had most of its feathers sheared almost like the fletchings of an arrow. What that sharp length of the quill is spearing inside the drink is a mystery because the ink is completely opaque. We already know that the ink is something she should not drink, but what is speared inside? Certainly no olive. She raises the triangular goblet to her blood-red lips, closes her eyes, and... Blink! When next she opens her eyes, she knows something she didn't know before, a kind of knowledge that only the daring acquire.
And that my Ink Drinkers, is how I think of you.
When I was finished writing this, I asked my husband which term he liked best. He replied that all of them are weird. Which one is your favorite?
If you'd like to become one of my beloved Ink Drinkers, please sign up for my newsletter on my website. It's free and sent out quarterly. https://tigrix1.wixsite.com/stephanievanorman
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