It has been a week since the soft launch and I now gnaw my fingernails awaiting the jury. 250 copies are gone – most of them from the Pass of Glencoe.

With no manual to work from, I made a lot of assumptions in my plan. I split the distributed books into three approximate blocks depending on who might pick them up. A proportion will go to waste, as some people take simply because there is no barrier not to. The rest will roughly slot into avid and occasional readers.

An avid reader is likely to have a book on the go already and, with a busy life, may start Dreamwords up to a week after picking it up. The Honesty Edition would be an opportunistic acquisition and not a planned purchase. Two weeks, therefore, was my best guess for payments to start trickling in.

A keen or occasional reader with a busy lifestyle might take four to six weeks to start and then finish the book. I do not expect instant results.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was thrilled when payments started to appear less than 24 hours after the experiment began. Beyond these super-fast readers (and I am so grateful to them for such an unexpected early boost) I hope that a good proportion of the initial 250 books is now being enjoyed by future fans of the series. If I am not just being an idiot, another small wave of honesty payments will follow a week later.

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The first was Moira, who read the complete book within a day after she picked it up from the Clyde Valley at the launch…

“.. I was hooked… once I started reading… no house work… had 25 pages to go by the end of the night, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open… first thing the following morning the book was in my hands…”

Iain:  “…Thank you for a great book which I am half way through…. my wife and mum drove up the Glencoe pass… they came across your pile of books. My wife took one for me and my mum took one for herself. Glad to say we are both reading it and I will pass my copy on to a friend once I have finished. I really hope all goes well and that the people that picked it up are honest. I would love to see the next book and your trust in people rewarded… a lot more should come that way from the book my wife picked up on that day!”

Hugo (Blog Comment): “…Got a copy yesterday on the Pass of Glencoe. I paid the full price after reading the chapter 4. This book looks really good and I think I’ll spend the whole night reading it…”

And by text “… thanks for trust. Read in one sitting. Circulating to all friends. Very strange and evocative writing. Compulsive…”

Thanks to those above,  to those of you who paid anonymously and also to those who ordered a copy online.

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Do I expect everyone to like the book? Will everyone who likes it pay? Absolutely not.

I fully understand the risk I am taking and this is why I am pausing to learn the outcome of this first foray. There are so many subtleties involved that I need to act smart, not just fast. One thing is certain: Dreamwords Book One is reaching readers who are honest, willing and motivated enough to pay for the book on trust. Mad, yes. But, how mad?