This is the first part of an article detailing the successful story behind the publishing of 101 Drama Games and Activities.

Moving from e-books to paperbacks

Sad but true – as soon as I received the first copy of my self-published book, I popped down to my favourite book shop and sneaked it onto the shelf in the Drama section - just to see what it would look like next to all the other "real" books. Of course, I took it home again.  Just one year later I am selling up to 300 copies a month, mainly through Amazon. It is currently the top-selling book published by Lulu.com in Great Britain and the top search for "drama" on Amazon.co.uk.  As I published the book through a Print on Demand website, my royalty is up to ten times higher than I would have earned if I had gone down the traditional publishing route. 

I originally posted fifty of my drama games onto one page of my personal website back in 1996, when the opportunity to publish ideas which would beinstantly available across the world seemed quite innovative.  Irealised I was onto a good thing in 2005 when I discovered that mywebsite was top of the Google ratings for "drama games".  It seemed my initial altruism had brought its own reward.  However, I was about to go freelance and needed to startgenerating my own income. Suddenly I had a bright idea. I would bundle even more of my ideas into an e-book and try selling it. 

I went through all my notebooks and put together an electronic edition of 101 games and exercises, leaving a lotfewer freely available on the website. Using the facilities of www.payloadz.com and www.paypal.com, I enabled people to automatically download the PDF file. Immediately the e-book startedto fly off the virtual shelf.  Iwas soon earning royalties without lifting a finger – with the addedbonus that the only cost involved was the relatively small Paypal feeon each transaction and my monthly payment of a few dollars toPayloadz. The fact that there was still free content on the websitekept it high in the Google ratings and I spent a lot of time honing theblurb on the sales page.

After the initial splurge, sales settled down to a fairly reasonablelevel.  Because they downloaded the book, a lot ofpeople sent me emails, including some very positive commentsthat I was able to use on the website.  E-books seemed quite popularwith people who were happy to browse through them on their computer oreven print them out.  Added to this, there was virtually no delaybetween paying for the book and getting hold of a copy – a boon forteachers working late at night in any part of the world.  However I began to wonder whetherthere were more customers out there who might like to purchase a realbook to carry around and use on a day-to-day basis. 

In 2006 I discovered a new technology – Print on Demand (POD). It hadsuddenly become possible to simply upload a Word document to a website,have it converted into an Acrobat file and printed out as a paperback(or hardback).  The real beauty of POD is that the book is immediatelyavailable worldwide and you can order as few or as many copies as youwish.  I decided to try it out.  There was a lot of work to be done informatting the book to the correct size, proofing the text, checkingthe layout and producing a cover.  Keen to learn new skills, I spent a great deal of time learning the techniques involved and designedthe cover myself using Photoshop. When everything wasfinally ready, I uploaded my files to www.lulu.com (one of the firstautomated POD websites), sat back, crossed my fingers and waited.

• Part Two: Discovering Print on Demand (POD)
• Part Three: Promoting the published book
• Part Four: Further Marketing