"What Are You Doing? Buy This Book Now!"

by Strawberry Sunrise


An Unfortunate Misprint

Once upon a time, there was an alicorn named Twilight Sparkle. Twilight Sparkle lived in a town called Ponyville, where she had many friends. Among these friends were, in no particular order, a pegasus named Rainbow Dash, a pegasus named Fluttershy, a unicorn named Rarity, an earth pony named Applejack, and an earth pony named Pinkie Pie. She also had a friend named Spike, who was a dragon. And of course, she had other friends, too, like Moondancer and Celestia and Luna and so on, but those were the main ones.

One day, Twilight decided that she needed to buy a new book for her library. “I don’t have enough books in my library,” she thought. “I need fifty thousand and three and I only have fifty thousand and two.” So Twilight went to the store and started looking at the books. The first book she looked at was “How to Water Your Garden” by Horsey McHorseface. The next book she looked at was “The Rise and Fall of the Griffon Empire” by Stallion McNabb. And finally, she looked at the book “What Are You Doing? Buy This Book Now!” by Flimmy McFlammerson. She felt compelled to buy this last book for some reason, despite not even having read the blurb on the back cover or anything. So she did.

When she got back to her house, she started to read “What Are You Doing? Buy This Book Now!” by Flimmy McFlammerson. Unfortunately, it turned out that all of the pages were blank except for page three hundred eighty-seven, which had the word “Sucker!” on it. She was perplexed. She had been sure that it would be an interesting book, but it seemed that the publishing company must have misprinted it and mistakenly caused it to only say “Sucker!” and nothing else.

So she decided to call the publishing company. “Hello, this is Twilight Sparkle,” Twilight said, calling from her cell phone. She would often make calls late at night, but today, she did it in the afternoon because she figured that the publishing company probably wouldn’t have anypony taking calls at night. “I bought the book ‘What Are You Doing? Buy This Book Now!’ by Flimmy McFlammerson from the store down in Ponyville and I was disappointed to see that it did not have a story. It only said the word ‘Sucker!’ on page three hundred eighty-seven and that was it.”

“We’re very sorry to hear that,” the pony on the other line said. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“I told you, I’m Twilight. Twilight Sparkle,” Twilight said. “Why does it matter?”

“So we can make a note that we need to send you a new copy,” the pony on the other line said. “Now, could we please get your address and your credit card number?”

Twilight, who was very confused, gave them this information. “Thank you,” the pony on the other line said, and hung up. Little did Twilight know that she had just made a horrible mistake. But that won’t come up again until later.

Still confused, but satisfied that she would be getting a new copy of “What Are You Doing? Buy This Book Now!” by Flimmy McFlammerson soon enough, she decided to go see what Applejack was doing.