Impulse book buys on Amazon -- what provokes them? Tell your story

[Lenita]

I was at a low emotionally and had just watched Joyce Meyer. She was promoting her new book. As I have read other books by her before and liked them I bought her book21 Ways to Finding Peace and Happiness: Overcoming Anxiety, Fear, and Discontentment Every Day

[Alicia]

If the price is less than $5, and the subject is a publishing subject which fills in a hole in my knowledge-base, by someone who seems to know what they're talking about, I will often impulse buy. Though I'm getting savvier, because the last two or three were highly padded outlines with very little I didn't already know.

For fiction, I may support an author who's a friend or mentor by buying a very inexpensive novel copy (0.99); mostly I don't end up reading much of them, or reviewing, but it ups their sales count during a promotion.

Anything else gets a lot more deliberation. It's not the money, necessarily, so much as the time commitment and the fact that I will then have to make a delete decision - more time - some time in the future.

I don't download freebies, probably because I think it doesn't lead to much actual reading. Maybe for people with series that are well established, but if I like something, I'd rather pay for it.