Six months ago when I published the second edition of my book and began to promote it in earnest, I would never have dreamt in a million years that I would be in the position that I am in now, and sometimes I still have to pinch myself to make sure that it really is happening and I will not wake up tomorrow (Bobby Ewing style) and realise it was all just a dream ...
Following the announcement in August that Gardners, the largest wholesaler in the UK had taken my book on as a stocked title (only a handful of other POD titles in the whole country are in this esteemed position), I have been ringing book stores up and down the country at the rate of around 10 - 12 a day. This has been an exhausting and time consuming task, that at various times has left me both exacerbated and elated. It is now though I am proud to say, stocked in 122 out of the 296 Waterstones stores in the UK (not including those in Ireland or university shops).
The last month has been absolutely manic - with the number of stockists doubling in the run up to Christmas. Gardners have I just heard, placed their 3rd order for another 50 copies in the space of one month, and the back orders are piling up, as they no doubt are for other books as well. As Christmas though began to approach I set myself a target to achieve orders for 400 books by Christmas and today I have exceeded it - thanks to Norwich Castle Street who have agreed today to order 2 copies.
The figure is probably in actual fact higher than 400 copies (the order from Norwich actually brought the total to 401) since this does not take into account repeat orders or orders from branches I have not been able to get through to on the phone (I emailed them all as well). I suspect the fact that Gardners have ordered another 50 copies means that there have been a fair number of repeat orders, so the total may be 430 or even higher than that. Whatever it is though I am delighted and looking forward to a big fat royalty cheque in 4 months time.
Following on from yesterday though when I wrote of my concerns regarding the length of time that the book has now been out of stock, I rang Waterstones (the old Ottakars branch in Norfolk Street) in Kings Lynn to see if the copy they ordered had arrived, and it seems that at long last it has. The fact that Gardners are still showing as being out of stock means that as I suspected, that the first batch of 50 books has indeed arrived, but the high volume of back orders meant that in shipping them out, they promptly went out of stock again. The 50 copies that were ordered just over a week ago should then arrive very soon, which will hopefully cover the rest of the backlog, and then the next 50 copies should arrive sometime between Christmas and New Year - Lightning Source, Richard tells me, are currently taking around 10 days to fulfil orders.
This is then a manic time for all, so much so, that it has become apparent that I will be wasting my time now in continuing to ring the stores. Most of them are not answering their phones anyway, so in fairness to them and having reached my objective, I am giving myself three weeks of well earned rest from all this ringing round. I shall come back to it then in the New Year with renewed vigour and ready to take on not just Borders, but the whole world. So, 131 book shops (122 Waterstones), 401 books and counting ....
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