Thursday. The book launches Thursday. If you’ve been patiently screaming for me to shut up about it, I hear ya. Maybe that was me screaming. I just want it to launch at this point. Again, the point of a pre-order is to give the publisher, in this case, me, time to market the book – to build a buzz. Yeah, no. I mean I understand all that but like I said before, for me, when I am interested in something, I want to take action now! That is, IF, I’m all that hot to have it. More often than not, I’ll think about it and then ponder it some more. Then I’ll make sure I really REALLY want to spend the money. Yeah, I’m that cheap. It’s a $4.99 book for goodness sake. Fact is, as I get older, the less I sweat about the money part. Seriously. That doesn’t stop me from coming back to the idea of making a purchase a few times. But when I decide I want it, I want it NOW. Don’t. Make. Me. Wait. All of this is an afterthought from when I first put the book on preorder. At the time my concern was to give me time to make sure it was just how I want it. Well, I’m over that. Let’s do this thing.
But wait! Back up a bit. That process I go through when deciding to buy something… don’t we all do that to some extent? Sure there are those impulse buyers but I’d think even most of those want to make a good decision on something like, say, life insurance… right? This is off the cuff as I didn’t intend to turn this post into any sort of a sales pitch but there are a couple of things I’d hope you’d take time to consider.
First of all, life insurance, appropriate life insurance, is something most everyone should have. By most, I mean anyone who cares about those left behind. That is one reason I focus on a family solution instead of individuals. Any death in a family is devastating. With someone’s passing, there is almost always a financial burden. Life insurance cannot help the emotional toll but it can ease money worries when money is the last thing a family needs to be concerned about. Bottom line… it is important for each member of a family to have basic life insurance.
Sadly, most families are not covered. It is not because it is not affordable, but rather due to a lack of knowledge. As with most things in this world there is too much unfiltered information and too few looking at it from a common sense perspective. Why do you think “final expense” insurance is so lucrative? Why is it such a hot market? It is because too many of my generation didn’t understand the importance of life insurance or how to buy it. If we did there would be little or no “final expense” niche because we’d already have decent life insurance and probably a nice cushion in the cash value department.
So if you agree, life insurance is a good, an important, thing to have, let me ask you… what’s stopping you from filling that gap? Most likely it is a lack of knowledge. Mark Twain once said “Everybody’s ignorant, just on different subjects”. This book fills in the blanks. It’s an easy read and costs very little so anyone can have a good handle on what to look for a good life insurance policy and how to buy one. Even if you decide to go a different route than my “family approach”, you’d still have solid information enabling you find the insurance you want. You can bypass the salesy pitches and go straight for the express lane because you’ll know what you want and how to get it.
For the record, if I had the information in this book decades ago, this book would not be available today. The only thoughts I’d have about life insurance is asking myself what am I going to do about the cash value that’s built up. I can’t say for sure, alternate realities are tricky things. What I can say is I would have used this information to secure a decent policy decades ago and that very likely would have been a life-changing thing.
Update on the domain name sale. It sold and I still haven’t received payment. Nor have I heard a single word from the buyer. I just checked again and finally, it looks like the buyer has added it to a web host. The host is one I am familiar with and not at all one I would ever recommend. Over the years, I’ve hosted sites with a number of them, including this one. I did not like them. If memory serves correct, they lowballed the first year and then jacked up the price bigtime. I also seem to remember I didn’t like their setup or support. For whatever reason I decided I didn’t want to got back to them… ever. What the buyer, if it is the fellow who’d emailed me, did to is apparently go with a WordPress site. I’m glad he at least did that as it is one of the easiest and cleanest ways to build a site these days. I haven’t heard from him since he bought the domain. I’m pretty sure he bought it or I would have heard from him. So I gather, he never read the agent version of the book I sent him or if he did, he thinks I’m full of it. His choice. I tried.
So what else am I doing? At this point my focus is on my garden. I’m not much of a gardener but I have seen enough improvement in my results to double down on last year’s efforts. Even without all the talk about food shortages and such, I like the idea of producing my own food. The sauce we had the other day from tomatoes I grew myself tasted fine. I actually like my homemade salsa better than store bought. Hopefully I can improve on these efforts. In any case, it seems prudent to garden this year and this is the time it needs doing so that is where my focus is for the next couple of weeks. Last year, once the garden was in, it only took a few minutes at the end of the day to tend to it. In that way it is a lot like writing – a lot of work up front and then maintenance after that.
Beyond that I need to build out a better description for the hard copy of the consumer edition. Yes, there will be a print version available. The cover will be different, more plain, but I just want anyone who desires a print copy to be able to get one. I’ll also ready the agent version for publication about a month from now. Then I get back to work on my first fiction publication.
