a true landmark

This was the phone call midweek from a vets surgery in Bristol, back for the third time for an order of books. Only this time the order was for 50 books and the senior nurse, who came on the phone to me, said the books were going down ‘ a storm’ with their bereaved clients. Odd word to use but I know what she meant. She went on to say they’d started by offering the books to a few folk, but they’d been so well received they were now giving them to all their bereaved clients.

I was walking on air for the rest of the day. Writing an invoice for £100 was exciting, but even more thrilling was that sense all writers strive for of really connecting with people. Losing a pet does seem to be filling a need, and since the need in me is being useful, we’re all satisfied.

 Even found myself musing that Pocket, whose death triggered the book, must have been an even more special cat that we realised, having, in death, left such a legacy.

Now to find an affordable way of letting every other vet in the country know that a) the book exists, and b) that some of their clients need it.

And the orders flood in!

Well not exactly. But there’s enough of an interested trickle to tell me I’ve hit a nerve with Losing a Pet. Somewhere in the UK a few people have visited their local bookstore and asked them to order a copy. For the last three mornings I’ve had a message from Neilsen Bookdata who, for other publishing virgins like me, helpfully act as an intermediary to save bookstores the hassle of speaking to each of us separately.

A couple of things I never costed in when I started this malarkey – padded envelopes, stamps, plus trips to the PO. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to overheads.

But I remember my mum going on a small business course in the days she thought she might run a guest house, and coming away at the end of the week realising she’s never turn a profit. If I’d sat down and done a business plan at the start I’d have come to the same conclusion.

On the other hand, those big orders may be just around the corner. To date the biggest has been 20 books for the local borders, closely followed by 12 for Cats Protection. But over in Victoria, Australia, there’s talk of ordering 50 books.  I plan to toast the first half century with champagne!

All those blogs, started and forgotten

At least that’s what I read in the Rough Guide to Blogging the other day. And it sent one of those uncomfortable shivers through me, thinking how months back I set out to record how an author can turn into a small publisher….and then got so distracted being that publisher I never found time to write anything down.

Now the temptation is to record an essay of book-length proportions, as I try and describe what the last few months have been like. And bore even myself!!!

So here’s it in that condensed book style – along with a promise to myself to do better next time:

• decide I need to test the market since the whole point of publishing is to sell the books, so send flyers out to all the vets in Avon (the first county on the database) and get six advance orders, proving to myself there is a market for a short book on pet bereavement
• now the books are – apparently – sitting just outside Felixstowe as it is too stormy for that tedious boat from china to land
• the books turn up six days before Christmas; not much point starting the publicity campaign now
• new year, new resolve…except I’m a bit distracted by the idea of publishing some beautiful blank affirmation cards as an alternative to the scrappy bits of card I’ve been using. Affirmations are a big part of my own timetable and what I teach in my Heal your Life workshops. So the book marketing has to wait while I get heavily involved in selecting images, deciding how many I can afford to print etc
• then I get the bright idea of putting affirmations on fridge magnets where they are right under people’s noses; more distractions
• am beginning to realise that it is the creative bit of running small books that really turns me on, and these bits of insight into what makes us tick are like gold
• nevertheless, by the end of january there is nothing more to distract me so, finally,  off go the press releases, review copies, and I even find the courage to pick up the phone
• there is no quick fix when it comes to marketing; but every time someone reacts with recognition – the sort that says “You are right, we all know people whose pets are like their children and this book is exactly what they need to help them see they are not crazy to be mourning and missing an animal” – I am fired up enough to make another call
• best of all, one of those early Avon vets phones for fresh stock; they may have only had 3 first time round and 10 on their second order but that means they’ve found them useful – and somewhere in the UK’s smallest county the book has helped a couple of people cope with bereavement. That’s good enough for me.

wonderful distractions

For a small publisher I seem to have spent far more time in cyberspace than on creating  more books, or selling the first small books title.  The last fortnight has been an adventure, fiddling about with widgets and html, crossing my fingers every time that pages full of gibberish will translate into a website that actually works. Not as satisfying as writing books but having a website gives me a) a more professional shopfront to demonstrate to the people I want to sell to that I can be taken seriously (ish) and b) proof to myself that I really am doing this!

Now it’s up, thanks to the brilliant Nikki Zalewski- whose emails have been arriving later and later into the night as she tweaks and tinkers with the pages (get some sleep now Nik!) – I just want to get on with the business of being a publisher rather than a web wizard.

I’m terrified someone’s going to stumble on the site and ask why it’s not called ’small book’ since we’ve only actually published one title – and even that’s  currently in the hold of a ship on its way from China.

Time to let the website out on its own for a while and concentrate on hitting the phones and the keys on my laptop.

Confessions of a small publisher

Like every journalist I know (and a lot of others besides) my real ambition was to write books.

So now I’ve been there, done that, and have a rather random collection of titles by me on the bookshelf. And I mean random: my well-researched history of the Dreadnought Seamen’s Hospital in Greenwich, Welcome Aboard,  is about as far removed from book beside it, Lose that Loser, as Pot Noodles are from Sunday roast.

Still, it was what I thought I wanted: a line of books (four to be precise, or five if you count second editions) with my name on the spine.

I don’t know at what precise point that ambition to write books expanded into a dream of publishing them too. Could have been the royalty cheque for The Carer’s Handbook, which represents around three month’s solid work (and before that the five years I spent as a carer which was where the idea came from). All those 50pences I get for every book sold added up to around £1,000, which is a long way short of being enough to give up the day job (my long-term ambition!) We’re not talking J.K.Rowling here!

So…small books. Which sort of evolved from a small book I’d written, as I realised I could publish it myself and cut out the middle folk, since publishers want you to do most of the promotion yourself anyway.

As for this blog, here’s my chance to record how it’s done (or not done). Watch this space!

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