It has proved to be a very busy 8 weeks!
On Monday 19th November I was thrilled when I had the first 11 orders for my photobook 'Malvern Common in Spring and Summer'. I had taken the first trial copy to my Chance to Dance class at Malvern Theatres and immediately had a wonderful response to it. I was aiming at selling 50 copies in total.
The Spring and Summer of 2012, although largely wet and un summer like proved to be an exceptional year for the flowers of Malvern Common which is right outside my home. With the purchase of a new but very simple camera in late May, I took hundreds of photos of the huge carpet of wild orchids and many other flowers on what is really a wild flower meadow.
In mid summer I bought a Groupon coupon for a 60 page photobook thinking I would present some of these photos in it. In the first week of October I had a reminder that my coupon would soon run out! I frantically started to upload about 270 photos and begin to design the pages. My computer was incredibly slow and working backwards and forwards through 60 pages was excrutiatingly painful. This is the excuse I use for the various typos I failed to spot. I also thought I was using some very discrete backgrounds. It was only when it was eventually delivered, having been printed in Australia, that I realised I had choses palm trees and planes! Hardly appropriate. However, despite these errors I was basically very pleased with it and showed to a few friends. When several expressed an interest in having a copy I began to explore possibilities.
My friend Gill Gwilliam is a Director at The Coaster Company Printing Services. Many of you will know their sister company The Coaster Company if you have had your child's art work printed on to coasters etc. That was Gill's brain child many years back when our now 24/5 year old offspring were merely at KS1!
She told me she would be delighted to print a version of my photobook. It needed to be less pages to be more economical. I then spent many hours ever day for the next 2 weeks recomposing the pages, reducing the 60 pages down to 38. It was all produced using Photoshop Element 2, version 11 being out now!!
Gill produced the first trial copy and orders began to come in!
My initial aim was to sell 50. Each copy selling for £10 and producing a profit of £5 the sale of 50 would produce £250. This would cover the cost of training and licensing of the tour guides in Janjanbureh.
Imagine my surprise when it proved so popular we have now printed 250 and needing to print another 25 this week!
Many copies were bought for Christmas presents and since then there have been several reorders from recipients buying for their friends. There have been some really beautiful comments about it.
Had I planned to do this was back in the Spring I am sure it would not have developed so successfully!
