Today during a check on our fav bookshop, I counted our books on his shelves and noted that a good number of them have moved since last recon. This is lovely news.
Decided on a (hopefully better) strategy for 2014. Will it work? Well that remains to be seen.
In the interim hubbs has started another book site online, namely exactly for that kind of book P'kaboo won't place, but which entertains us (only we don't want our kids to read it). An over-18 bookshop, called Honeymead Books. Ebooks only; that is until enough ebook copies sell to warrant a paper run.
This sounds counterintuitive at first, as our paper books sell consistently better than our ebooks, but it might just work a lot better, who knows. We have 3 juicy titles in there by now, from 3 different juicy authors.
But as for me, I'm a bit punch-drunk (no, that's not the Christmas punch we're going to have on the 25th). I can't look printers in the oi any longer. Clearing up I found two more copies of books well-written, carefully edited, beautifully designed, laid out and printed - and then bound in such a bloody mess that they are not sellable. The binders can stuff up a book and lose a publisher money!
One is bound upside-down and back-to-front, to be turned on its head and then opened from the back and read like a Japanese picture novel; and the other - unspeakable, the pages are in complete chaos, as though the insides were dropped, hastily gathered up and stuck any which way into the binding by the jolly binders.
That's a bookbinder I'll never use again!
So I've done this for now
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2013 was an awful, horrible year in which nothing at all was achieved (and I nearly died).
2014 will start with new karma. I'm throwing out all old proof copies except the most essential ones; they're all going to the second-hand bookshop. Unbound printed proofs in great A3 sheets are designated for paper mache. The kids are happy about this. I've moved "P'kaboo Corner" to where I can see it. Done my stocktake... low on all stock, that ought to be good news. Perhaps putting books on "sales tables" is a hasty idea and should be put on ice first. (Don't fess yerselves, I'm not that desperate! Sales table! Fie!)
So right now I'm relaxing and, if anything, writing, and focusing on Christmas and what must happen before the new year precipitates.
There used to be a best-selling book in Zimbabwe: "Next year will be better." Wonder if there are any copies of that one.
