ONE BOOK AT A TIME...THANKYOU!

With thanks to Tania Hershman's blog , I can post a précis of what has happened in Salt’s Just One Book Campaign which started on Wednesday.
But before I do, a THANKYOU to everyone who loves reading and who values the importance of independent publishing. Especially those who have bought ‘just one book’ over the last few days. Have a little drink on me!

Oh my goodness. There I am with a HARDBACK book, which don’t sell easily at the best of times, (just so’s I can nod to my late Mum, a librarian, and say ‘Look, its beautiful, this book…). And despite that, you lovely lot made my book rise to unheard of heights in the Amazon charts, bobbing about in the top 100 short story collections with the best of them. Kafka. Miranda July. Ms Hershman’s The White Road. Lots of erotica collections. And several other Salt collections… David Gaffney’s Sawn Off Tales and Elizabeth Baines’ Balancing on the Edge of the World.

My little hardback Glass Bubble bobbed about fine, thanks! Held her own just as you’d expect from a lassie wearing a pink jumper.

Here’s Tania’s précis of Chris Hamilton- Emery’s post today.

Wednesday 23rd: In the next eight hours, I receive hundreds of notes of support. We receive 122 orders and sales begin to grow, around £2,600 before we switch off our lights and close the bedroom laptops. Something extraordinary is beginning.

Thursday, 21 May, Jen can’t wait to see Tom’s face in the office. It’s the largest number of orders we’ve had in a day......

....Hundreds more orders have come in. Everyone is picking books from the shelves, packing and franking post. There’s a system emerging. Tom handles the UK, Jen is drop shipping orders in the US, Charlotte is handling unusual and awkward orders where stocks are in multiple locations. I’m given the task to spread the word. By the end of the day we’ve taken a further 260 orders and the news of Salt’s plight is going global. ...Hits to the Web site explode.

Friday 22 May, the team have managed to catch up with the previous afternoon’s orders. The Bookseller pick up on the story. The phone doesn’t stop ringing. During the course of the day, a further 157 orders come in. Twitter is full of the news, our authors are picking up on the story. It seems as if everyone we’ve known is pulling together to save Salt. We’re overwhelmed. All I can think of is the closing scenes of Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life and Jen and I are James Stewart and Donna Reed. I wonder if it will continue, if it does, in 18 days we’ll be saved, in 30 we’ll be able to take the business forward.

Saturday 23 May. A further 51 orders have come in this morning. We’ve vowed to stop drinking in the evenings. We need all our wits. ...I soft launch the new author portal. I cycle back to feed the kids and swap over with Jen. She heads off to package up more orders. We’re overwhelmed, astonished, humbled. Humbled. How often do we use that word in business?


Little drink pic from HERE