THIS piece, which I initially titled “Books, Authors and Readers,” is about, well, books, authors and readers. Ho-hum. Lame, you say. Nobody reads books anymore, so who would read anything about books?

But don’t stop yet. Don’t turn the page yet. Please continue reading.

Are you still with me?

Guam recently produced three new novels: Tanya Chargaualaf Taimanglo’s "Attitude 13: A Daughter of Guam's Collection of Short Stories," Stephen Tenorio’s "Ocean in a Cup," and Steven LeFever’s "Beautiful Escape."

To be honest, I have not read any of them. They just caught my attention after reading Zita Taitano’s article in the June 18 issue of MVG, in which the authors appealed for support for local literature.

“There appears to be not enough emphasis on promoting or even getting books written by local authors into the classroom or available to the community,” according to Zita’s article.

To begin with, there appears to be not enough emphasis on promoting learning in our education system, whose focus has diverted from substance to form. But that is another story.

If this is any consolation to the three local authors, their resentment about scarce readership seems to be a universal pain among world writers.

While writing his novel, LeFever wondered who would be reading his book. I asked the same question when a friend of mine in New York, who has made it a hobby/career to publish “global Filipino” authors, repeatedly emailed me a reminder to send him my manuscript. But who will be reading my book? (My friends are not even buying the anthology books, in which my essays are published. Yeah, I'm joining the complaint club.)

The best literary treasures have been written. We haven’t even finished reading all of them. Some of us are probably waiting to retire to be able to read "War and Peace" and "Brothers Karamazov."

And then we are faced with the reality that there are now more writers than readers in the brave new world where starting a blog is as easy as opening a Facebook profile and publishing a book is easier than assembling a table from Kmart.

The November 2010 issue of Romance Writers Report cited statistics about readers' buying habits. More than 100 million adults did not buy a single solitary book in 2010. Domestic net sales of adult mass-market books were down 6.3 percent in 2010.

But we don’t really need statistics to conclude that reading is in peril and continues to face defeat in the battle with other forms of entertainment and activities. In the digital age, electronic devices snatch would-be readers from books.

But with e-publishing systems providing three-easy-steps-to-publish a book, amazon.com and Barnes and Noble will continue to be glutted with more titles to offer.

The pleasure of writing is the fault of the “mesolimbic system,” according to Sanford Rose, who writes for Weekly Hubris. He was referring to the part of the brain that controls the transport of dopamine – the feel-good neurotransmitter.

“Writing is a form of self-display,” Rose writes. “Self-display of any sort appears to raise the level of dopamine in the brain, much as does the ingestion of food, the acquisition of money or a sexual act.”

So this is why there are millions of new authors and writers. This is why I am writing my column. Blame it on dopamine.