Using Our Literature
Gordon Jackins, of Rational Island Publishers, noticed that literature orders from our Region were steadily climbing and wanted to know what we were up to.
This is our story:
In the last six years I have been including a journal or pamphlet as part of the fee of any workshop I organize or lead. I have given participants the choice of three different pamphlets -- usually We Who Were Raised Poor, What Is Wrong with the "Mental Health" System and What Can Be Done About It? or Counseling on Early Sexual Memories -- along with whatever liberation journal or issue of Present Time I thought would be most germane to the topic of the workshop.
After a while most people in my Region had all three pamphlets, so I needed to think of something new. Karen Kingsley and I came up with the idea of having a coupon in each workshop folder entitling the bearer to up to three dollars worth of literature from the literature table, good only for the duration of the workshop. (The three dollars for the coupon had been incorporated into each person's workshop fee.) We encouraged participants to purchase literature for themselves or their friends, or to give the coupon to someone else at the workshop. We called these coupons "Co-Co Bucks,"1 -- short for Co-Counseling dollars. We did skits during the large-group meetings based on the Cocoa Puffs2 commercials many of us USers saw as young people. We sang out that we were "cuckoo3 for Co-Co Bucks, cuckoo for Co-Co Bucks." These coupons have been a hit,4 and other leaders in my Region have used them with great success.
You are more than welcome to borrow this idea or to use it to inspire your own unique solution to encouraging people to buy or read more RC literature. I would love to hear about your successes.
Michael Luft
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
1 Bucks is slang for dollars.
2 Cocoa Puffs are a chocolate-flavored breakfast cereal.
3 Cuckoo means "crazy."
4 Been a hit means been very popular.