Consumer Alert

I had a weird moment about selling my own stuff when I thought of something really simple: “How do I shop? Me. Myself. Personally?” I’ve always approached potential book readers as people who weren’t like me. They were “possible readers,” an abstract, uncomfortable group of people who couldn’t be farther from me because I wanted to induce them to consider my books and they wanted to do literally everything else. But you know, I buy things too. I shop. I watch movies and sometimes I even read. (Although I am a writer and easily get word-nausea.)

Wow! How do I buy things? Potential readers think just the way I do, once I stopped the “buy my books” view of them. I’ve always had a conservative budget, so I’m not going to be cranking out money for new items all the time. I buy them in resale, used, discounted, and rarely—all things that wouldn’t give the original creators of that product a dime. I have to do that. But I also watch TV and visit libraries and I know about long-term exposure. Long, long, long term exposure.

I am a reluctant purchaser, so If something can reach me, it really was a very effective method. And nothing ever fails to work on me like patient, long-term free exposure. (That’s one reason short freebie bursts like on Kindle don’t always work.) We’re talking months. Years, even. Just steadily, steadily making it available. I’ve become interested in movies I’d ignored at first because they began to run regularly as marathons on TV—over and over, over and over. Eventually, I just got interested and felt enough trust to start making the movie more permanent—aka. BUY IT. I’ve bought DVDs often after checking them out from the library, even multiple times.

I’m also a loyal consumer and when I buy something I tend to be very involved with it from then on.
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And there will be more updates.