Skye At Night book project

Tobers said:
Phew, that went well. I've never been to a book launch before, let along held one myself. Here's a little video of the proceedings...

https://www.tiktok.com/video/7398881152125242657
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Well done to you. It so heart-warming to see a 'project' actually manifest into an outcome. The book launch looked really good and everyone was smiling and having a good time. Inspiring, really inspiring. Thanks for sharing your journey (so far !).
 
Fixer said:
Well done to you. It so heart-warming to see a 'project' actually manifest into an outcome. The book launch looked really good and everyone was smiling and having a good time. Inspiring, really inspiring. Thanks for sharing your journey (so far !).
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Thanks! Online orders keep coming in all the time too. Planning to put it up on Amazon soon as well.
 
First review published in the West Highland Free Press.

"A gem of a book"

"The best photographic book highlighting the Isle of Skye to be published this century"

Chuffed to bits. I'm used to seeing my pictures in the papers (football and rugby when I used to shoot sports). It's a different thing when it's a review of five years of hard work.

WHFP review paper small.jpg
 
Tobers said:
First review published in the West Highland Free Press.

"A gem of a book"

"The best photographic book highlighting the Isle of Skye to be published this century"

Chuffed to bits. I'm used to seeing my pictures in the papers (football and rugby when I used to shoot sports). It's a different thing when it's a review of five years of hard work.

View attachment 431257
Click to expand...
Very rewarding - well done. :clap:
 
mstphoto said:
Just watched you on "Living the Skye Life" with Willie & Sarah.
Book looks amazing!!
Good luck with the sales ;)
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Thanks very much. I've sold out of the first print run of 250 and have over 100 pre orders for the next print run which is being produced now.
 
This is an unwelcome development. A significant proportion of my latest print run have a binding error and 4 pages are in the wrong place. Of course I only found this out after despatching 150 pre-orders, so they’ll all need to be sent replacements. And it was a small-ish print run of 250 copies.

Thankfully my printing company are sorting things out and printing a new run at no cost, and despatching the replacements. What a total PITA. I guess these are the things one has to handle when moving from being a photographer to being a publisher.
 
Everything is back up and running again, with properly printed books selling nicely again. I've just sent another £1000 donation to the Skye Mountain Rescue Team from the profits on recent sales.
 
I’ve commissioned my 4th print run. This sounds impressive, but the runs are “just” 250 books each.

In reality I’m delighted to just sell the first 250, so things are going well, albeit the 2nd print run had a load of misprints in it so only really I’ve sold about 500 so far.

The initial online demand has tailed off somewhat so I’m working out ways to keep stimulating sales. I’m going to some local Skye Christmas fairs in the next couple of weeks where I imagine I’ll sell quite a few. Additionally, selling direct is the lowest cost method which is great.

Talking about cost of sales, I’ve also just turned on Amazon, which has been a horrendously complex process. To make matters worse, Amazon take about £8/book in “referral fees” which is quite horrendous. I then need to factor in postage, packing and inventory storage costs and that leaves only about £5/book profit for the Skye Mountain Rescue Team. However, that’ll be £5 they wouldn’t have had otherwise therefore it’s worth doing, however distasteful it feels.

On promotion, I thought I would be in The Times last week, but that didn’t happen. I’m not sure what’s going on as the picture editor isn’t getting back to me. I’ll keep trying.

It’s complicated this book stuff.
 
Next week I’ll send another donation to the Skye Mountain Rescue Team, making the total up to £5000 which I’m sure they’ll be delighted by, and is well above my expectations.

I was at my 3rd Christmas fair today here in sunny Skye. These are lovely community events, and I sold another 16 books which is great.

Things have calmed down a bit from an online perspective. I’ve made the book available on Amazon, but not many sales so far (about 7 I think). I’m not too worried as Amazon take a stupid amount of money (about £8) and to make matters worse the hold onto a load of my money as a float incase of returns etc. So I’ve yet to see a penny from them. I haven’t however set up an Amazon keyword ad campaign to see how that works, so if anyone searches for the Isle of Skye they will hopefully see my book pop up.

I haven’t however set to say that selling books is not nearly as interesting as taking the photographs for them.
 
That’s that.

The final book from my online stock sold on Christmas Eve. There won’t be any more. I have decided not to do another print run simply due to the large up-front cost of printing and the sheer logistics of handling boxes of hundreds and hundreds of books.

So I am closing this chapter of my life, literally. It has been a tremendous success with over a thousand books sold in just over a year. I thought I’d be lucky to get a hundred sold over the first two years. Today I sent the last donation to the Skye Mountain Rescue Team (to whom I donate all profits from book sales), bringing the total donated to £6,625. I am very pleased about this, and thank all my customers who have helped by buying a copy.

Cheers!
 
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