What if you wrote a perfectly good book -- that no one wants to read?

I was working on Sometimes a Dragon all day yesterday.  It appears I have finally broken through the logjam.

Later in the evening I sat back with a glass of wine and started browsing through the manuscript.

Something occurred to me that I don't think I'd ever thought before: What if a book is a perfectly good book and no one wants to read it?

What I mean by a perfectly good book is that it is true to itself, well done for what it is trying to accomplish, and satisfying to me.

It really does open up the whole question of what is good and what isn't.  Whether people reading it is the standard to which I ought to strive, or whether people liking it, or whether a book can be finished to my satisfaction, but in such a way that I know it won't be read.  Either because it seems different, or because there is something about it that is off-putting.

Generally, I operate under the assumption that if I like it, other people will like it.  Usually, I don't think that will be a problem.  I think of myself as pretty "middle-brow" in my tastes, so usually my tastes and the tastes of the average reader are going to overlap -- I assume.

I'm not saying that what I'm writing is so great that no one understands it, or so experimental, or groundbreakingly different.

Just that it might have just enough things in it that appeal to me, but don't appeal to others.

It's been known to happen.

I'm trying to not let this be an excuse for a bad book, or me not trying.  The book has to fulfill it's full dimensions on its own terms. 

But for the first time, I realizing those dimensions may be outside the what other people want to read.

Like I said, I don't think I'm an outsider artist.  But even so, I suppose occasionally just in pursuit of my inclinations, I'm going to write stuff that is outsider.

Of course, everything I write may end up being outsider in the since of not being read -- but that's different.