In the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a number of experiments. I had to be patient because results from the festival would determine which experiment would take priority going forward. It is astonishing that payments from Laggan are still coming in. Last week I received money from two people who each picked up a copy from there on different days in May! With that in mind, it is always possible that the Edinburgh phase might suddenly take off. Over 300 people have now paid and the project is still on track, but payments from the festival are slower than I’d hoped for. The project is still on target simply because Laggan was so successful that it could withstand a downturn.

The takeaway lesson is one that any businessman could have told me – targeting is all. As I write, there is almost a factor of ten between the rate from Laggan and Edinburgh. This is a blow because I had hoped to use Edinburgh as a model to speed up distribution. The signs are that if I repeated such a scatter-gun give-away in other cities, the project would soon be in jeopardy.

With such a fabulous return, it seems obvious that I should stick with Arran but, with winter on its way, there will be no-one passing the cottage for months. With Laggan at its core, I will be able to build on the success there but only starting in the spring. It is tempting to switch to writing-mode, get book two out and continue building the series by working on the draft of book three. That is the sensible thing to do and my preferred route. The story is burning in my head and I want to get it out there.

The other option is to figure out a way to match the targeting associated with Laggan that can also scale and is not seasonal. I’m in the middle of preparing the ground for such an experiment and pretty excited by it because it has the potential to positively impact someone else’s life. Before I can try it however, I have to perform some due diligence. That is my task for this week.