Day Twenty: Going viral (in a small way)

This week has been about getting my Drama Book published and up online, but it has also been about engaging an audience. When I shared the idea for the book with the lovely – and very friendly – people on the Drama Teachers’ Sharing Group on Facebook, I thought four or five would request a review copy. Wow, was I wrong. 500 people eventually asked me for a review copy of the book. This was a very different from publishing my book on novel writing, when I also gave away review copies but it was much harder to reach people. As I said in an earlier post, I had really found my niche, partly by accident, partly through research, partly because I used to be a drama teacher myself and still am occasionally! My niche was BUSY TEACHERS. At least one person told me to stop giving out review copies because I wouldn’t make any money, but I decided to go ahead and do what I had promised: I like to honour my commitments, and also here were the exact people that I set out wanting to help way back in 2002.

But 500 people! How did I manage them all? How did I communicate? How did I get the book to them? This really was starting to feel like yet another big distraction. So was camping (I’m writing this from a distance again, but from the perspective of 11th August, camping is TOMORROW! I’m on a deadline). In a way both things were distractions from my novel. In a way both things were important parts of my life. (Sharing my teaching work, and spending time with my family.) Life in a garret – whatever that would mean – isn’t for me. By the way, if you’re waiting for the moment when you get to spend time in a garret in order to start writing your novel, maybe you should just start writing. But I have almost finished my novel. I needed to restructure it. Imagine me sitting at my desk with Drama Book? Part-time teaching? Camping? Childcare? all above my head in speech bubbles. No restructuring focus time for me, not yet anyway.

• By the way, I figured out eventually that the best way for me to deliver review copies of ebooks was to use Bookfunnel. (I’m not getting commission from them – just thought I’d share as it is much easier than writing individual emails.)
• I also used Mailchimp a little bit, although I’m still getting the hang of it.

That’s it until after the camping trip, which involved two storms, a runaway cow, and madly pulling pegs out of the ground in the rain, but I’ll leave that to your imagination….