The past two weeks have been hectic. I took delivery of 10,000 books on the 24th and immediately put them into storage. Up until that point, with no experience in the printing and publishing world, the risk of making a fatal mistake was huge. Until I saw the books, held them in my hands and checked them thoroughly, I could not spend another penny. My budget is embarrassingly tight and I remain homeless until this plays out one way or the other.
I took a giant risk by printing in Asia and it paid off. In time, I will put all the details into an easy pack for anyone who wishes to understand the route I took and perhaps use the same company to print their own.
I now needed a van. Everything I do is on a shoestring and so it took almost a week of research, going to a real-world car auction and hundreds of visits to eBay and gumtree. I now have a little Peugeot Partner MPV – a sort of car/van hybrid. My plan is to load up with a thousand books or so and tour the country, sleeping in the cab or in my tent depending on where I am.
On Easter Sunday, I took my first experimental step into the public arena by going to a car boot sale in Crossford, Lanark. After a 5 am rise, I drove under cloudy skies to the site, praying that the weather would obey the forecast. It did not. Instead of eight hours of bright and breezy trading, I had a little over two and a half of muddy drizzle that soon became a downpour. Still, it was interesting and, I might even say, enjoyable. It will take a couple of weeks before I get an idea of how successful the trip was but I feel good about it. Easter Monday was wet; otherwise I would have jumped at the chance of going again.
The upside to being trapped indoors was that I managed to finish the new Dreamwords website, get the eBook version of Book One on the Amazon Kindle and, through Smashwords, get it onto the iPAD for its launch day, with Sony, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and others on the conveyor belt.
Now I watch the weather again. The forecast tells me that The Highlands will be clear tomorrow. If that looks to be true in the dark hours then I will rise stupidly early and drive North. I have my sights set on the Pass of Glencoe as a starting point. It’s the wrong time of year – there will be no tourists, but that’s OK. This is toe-dipping time. I need to get an idea of how many books – in absolute and percentage terms – will make it to honest readers who appreciate the value of the story.
One thing I forgot to say: The money is beginning to trickle in. It’s a trickle but it demonstrates what I thought to be true. There are honest people out there and Dreamwords can find them. Now all I need is a few thousand to find their true home before I run out of money. That can only happen when I’ve released thousands into the wild. I need a break in the weather and, with luck, clear skies will come to The Highlands tomorrow.