Were you concerned at all about writing a story about a reality show?

I was worried that potential readers might dismiss the book as being fluffy based on the premise alone, or that people who don’t like reality TV would assume the book wouldn’t be interesting for them.  As much as I enjoyed writing the reality TV aspect of the book, it’s really just the skeleton that I hung the story on; the real substance of the story lies in the characters and the relationships between them.  I faced the same issue with The Dogs of Babel; some people are fascinated by the idea of a man teaching a dog to talk, and some people think it sounds stupid, all before they’ve even picked up the book.  But again, I tried not to think too much about hypothetical readers while I was working on the book; I just wrote about what interested me and hoped it would find its audience.