You bought it...now what?

By Jenny Hilborne

Author of Mysteries and Thrillers

Who has at least one item of clothing in their closet or one pair of shoes they've bought and never worn? We see a bargain and buy it, but it's not a bargain at all if we never use it. These are often impulse buys. The same thing applies to books. With so many offered free or at low promotional prices of less than $1, we're downloading more than ever before. Are we reading these books? Does buying more mean we are reading more?

I buy loads of books. My Kindle currently holds 179 items, many of which I haven't yet read. I love e-Readers for their portability, the ease with which we can take hundreds of books with us when we travel, and the fact the digital books are so inexpensive to download. Reading is easier and cheaper than ever before, and we have far more choices available to us, including genres that might never have emerged without the changes in the publishing industry. 

With new genres should come new readers, you might think. But how many new readers has the digital explosion created, or are many of them existing physical book readers who have switched to digital?

Everyone loves to get something free or at a fraction of the cost. Marketers know it and use this strategy to give us what we want. They play on consumer emotions and affect our purchasing decisions by guiding us toward products we might not be seeking. Authors offer promotions to entice readers and grow their readership. Is it working?

Does the free or low price of an eBook entice you to make spur of the moment decisions and download a book you might never have considered, or one for which you would never pay the full price? If it does, what are the chances you will read it? Do these books sit stored and forgotten in your eReader, like that pair of bargain shoes gathering dust at the back of your closet? Or does the sweet deal of a free or cheap book stir up your passion for reading?

Books are not big ticket items, so we can afford to give in to our emotions and buy based on those emotions rather than on rational decisions. If we go into a bookstore, we might take hours choosing a book, one we will pay a lot more money for and will almost certainly read. Free and cheap provides instant gratification and encourages impulse buys; quick and irrational decisions. Downloading takes seconds, and we don't even need a bookshelf to store all those books. How likely are consumers to use (read) products they bought based on an irrational decision?

EBooks continue to be popular. But are we loading up our eReaders for no reason? Many readers complain in various online forums that they have TBR (to-be-read) lists that will take them years. So, what are the chances that many of these free and cheap books will ever be read? When the pleasure of a free download wears off, do most readers forget about the book, or discover they don't want the product after all?

Does free or cheap turn you off? Or does it encourage you to try a new author or a new genre? Has the eReader increased your enjoyment of reading? Does paying less for your hobby encourage you to buy more...and does this mean you read more?

      

Damaged Goods?

By Andrew E. Kaufman

For those of you who haven’t heard me shouting it from the rooftops, I’ve just released my second novel. A lot of things happen to me during the course of writing a book. Quite often between my fits of frustration and desperation, I also have bursts of revelation, and those moments seem golden. As I dig deep within myself to create my characters and my stories, I also discover things about myself and about the world that I never knew before. Sometimes those discoveries are immediate, but sometimes I don’t see them until after I’ve had a chance to decompress and breathe a little.

In this case, my main protagonist taught me the lesson. His name is Patrick, and to date, I think he’s the one I’ve enjoyed writing the most. Like many of my characters, he’s deeply flawed. Some would call him damaged goods, but I don’t see him that way at all; he’s human, and like all of us, he has challenges. When I created him, I wanted to raise the stakes like I’ve never done with any other character before, to push obstacles in his way that seemed insurmountable—at least to him—both on an internal and external level. Then I wanted to see him fight like hell to overcome them. Funny thing happened in that process: as I wrote the book, I found myself struggling right alongside him like I’ve never done before—I had to, in order make the story come to life.

Patrick suffered a horribly abusive childhood, has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and as if that weren’t enough, he’s a bleeder. The blood disease is a metaphor; he’s been deeply injured, and as a result, is deeply vulnerable. On a physical level, he lives with the day-to-day fear of being injured, of bleeding to death, and his emotional state is much the same—he’s scared of being exposed, of being wounded. Because of those internal and external fears, instead of living his life, he becomes imprisoned by it.

Enter the next layer. With the OCD, his particular compulsion is listing; he writes the same words over and over. To raise the stakes even more, he’s a journalist: a writer, trapped by his own words. The irony in that fascinated me, and I used it as a device to show his tension. As his situation becomes more dangerous, his disorder becomes more pervasive, so he's fighting his battles on two levels.

I grew to love Patrick just as I would my own child. It happens with many of my characters, and I’ve often tried to figure out exactly why that is. True, I create them, and in order to portray them in a realistic and meaningful way, I often need to throw myself into their minds and experience their emotions much as they would. Mentally, it can be exhausting, however, in the process, I suppose, some sort of bond occurs. But I’ve always suspected there was more to it than just that; I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

Then Patrick showed me.

I began to realize that the reason I liked him so much was because those very flaws, the ones he felt so crippled by, were the ones that made him seem so much more real, and as a result they endeared me to him.

Imperfections aren’t what separate us; they’re what connect us as humans because we all have them. And just as in real life, watching people triumph over them makes us feel like we can do the same. Think about it (I’m dating myself here): how did it make you feel watching Rocky climb to the top of those steps while that exuberant theme song played? For me, I might as well have been right there alongside him; I sure felt like I was.

Being vulnerable is like opening a door; it allows people in, helps them understand us a little better, helps us connect.

Patrick taught me that.