The other Booktrovert now has a section called Reader Deals. Hand-picked favorites at special prices. Build your library for less. We read that card four times, out loud, in the dark, the way you're supposed to.
We want you to know, before you go any further, before you agree to anything, that Booktrovert.org also has Reader Deals. We have had them since 1997. Ours are not discounts. This is the part people scroll past, and it is the only part that matters.
When they say deal, they mean a lower price. When we say deal, we mean the older thing. The kind you shake on. The kind Doug drafted in 1997 on the back of a diner napkin that we have since laminated and cannot locate. A Reader Deal at this website is an arrangement. You receive a book. In return you agree to a clause, and the clause is written in a font so small that you cannot read it without the very book you are about to receive, which is, if you are following along, the deal.
People ask what the special price is. The special price is the regular price. We do not lower it. Authors are fragile organisms and rent is not a metaphor. What is special is the transaction itself, which is conducted by hand, in a back room, under the supervision of the Ghost of Mark Twain, who does not haggle and does not accept coupons and once stared at a man holding a promo code until the man simply left.
Randy witnesses every deal. This is Randy's one confirmed job. Randy does not speak during the proceedings. Randy nods once, slowly, and the nod is legally binding in three states and one feeling. If Randy does not nod, there is no deal, and you go home with the book anyway, because we are not monsters, we are just poorly organized.
You should know there is fine print. There is always fine print. Ours runs along the bottom of every page in ink the color of the paper, so that reading it requires holding the book at an angle to a window in October, which is the only month the light is correct. Most readers never find it. The ones who do report that it says, in full, "please, for the love of everything, buy the book." We stand by this. We drafted it. We meant it.
We understand the confusion. You typed booktrovert into a search bar looking for a bargain, a real one, a book at a friendly number, and you have arrived instead at a man named #88 explaining a pact. It happens. We laid out the differences between us and them once, in a table, and we have also, at length, begged the general public to actually pay for the books they love, which remains our entire economic model and our only prayer.
So here is the honest signpost. If you came for the discounts, the special prices, the build-your-library-for-less of it all, that is a good and normal thing to want, and it lives here: booktrovert.com. Go. Save money. We are happy for you and only a little haunted about it.
But if you would like to make a different kind of deal, the room is warm, the napkin is somewhere, and Twain is already reaching out his hand. Do not let go first. He remembers who lets go first.
Bindingly,
Booktrovert #88