“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

As you mentioned, you are outside, not fitting into any acceptable mold. The general public, moreover, in those terms does not know how to respond. Many, picking up those paperbacks, do so on impulse, and are unfamiliar with any such books. They cannot laugh the matter off. The books require personal questioning. Some people are frightened. They are also intrigued. But many put off spending more money, say, for a hardcover book, because this would involve a commitment involving the ideas themselves.

The paperback Personal Reality will be highly important in the ultimate changes that do take place. You are in an in-between period. If you went out in a grand manner, publicizing the books, appearing on shows, you could indeed quicken the pace—but in so doing other intangibles would also be altered. There is a great difference between keeping the people always in mind, and playing to the crowd for whatever reasons, but there would be a tendency for purposes to be altered.

It is not that those challenges would not be met, but in meeting them you would end up with a different kind of work and experience.

I have nothing against bestsellers, and as I predicted the books will succeed financially beyond anything you would have thought—but over a period of time, in a dependable fashion, and in a way that will also best be suited to the temper of the times. That is, the books will have a strong active part to play over the period of your lifetimes, rather than for example selling in the millions in a year or two, then vanishing from the scene.

To be an overnight financial sensation, however, would present a reality that does not fit into your joint plans and purposes. This does not mean there is anything wrong with such an overnight sensation. Most likely, Ruburt will do some teaching in the future, not immediately, with a different format entirely. Your purposes and the purposes of the three publishers all mix and merge, with unconscious knowledge of the importance of the books, and the ways in which they are to be presented—not that there won’t also be some “natural” misunderstandings here and there, also.

The paperbacks have not cut down the occult market that you had secured. Those people have already read the books, and are waiting for more. There would have been a lag in sales until the next book, which then triggers the loyal to pick up any of the others they might have missed along the way.

The paperbacks in the meantime are .picking up new readership that will broaden your base. Saleswise, then, you would more or less be in the same position now, whether or not the books had been sold to mass markets. The advantage, however, has not yet shown; for the people are still immersed in the books they have.