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

Promoting the published book

After several drafts and redrafts, Andy came up with a great looking cover design, with a much more professional finish than the ones I tried before.  After receiving my ISBN from Lulu (and the magic number is 978-1-84753-841-3), I patiently waited for my book to appear on the Amazon listings. I discovered the wonderful http://us.bookbutler.com which automatically tracks listings and prices of books on websites throughout the world.  I checked it frequently.  I also joined the Lulu support forums where I could communicate with hundreds of other people who had already published their books.

It can take up to six or eight weeks for the ISBN to appear in the online bookstores. However thanks to Book Butler, I was able to discover that my book was beginning to appear on several sites, including (bizarrely) Amazon Japan, Blackwell's UK and finally - Amazon UK.  Now it really did seem real.  Amazon.com and many other sites were quick to follow.  Of course, I continued to check every day to make sure it was still there (it was).  Unfortunately, at first there would be a delay for anybody ordering the book from Amazon, as the book was not kept in stock.  Amazon would need to order the book from Lulu or the wholesalers, which meant there could be a delay of two weeks or more due to the POD process.  This was far from ideal.

I had read on the forums that once demand was sufficiently high, Amazon would keep the book in stock.  So I went out of my way to publicise it.  With my website now receiving hundreds of visitors each week, I had a good place to spread the news.  An additional vehicle was the email newsletter which I send out each month to thousands of subscribers and this soon carried news of the book.  I also took copies of the book to my local bookshops.  Borders immediately agreed to buy some copies.  Waterstones was initially resistant but luckily I made contact with some of the sales staff though social networks (one of the managers is one of my yoga students) and now my book is to be found in every bookshop in Norwich!  Once a book appears online, it can be ordered by any bookshop from the main UK suppliers - Gardners and Bertrams.

I sent the book to be reviewed by relevant professional publications.  One magazine agreed and this furnished me with some useful quotes to use in my publicity.  A further stroke of luck came when the same publication asked if they could use the book as part of a sales promotion.  Teaching Drama magazine initially ordered 75 copies, which they offered free as part of their campaign for new subscribers.  This meant that my book was professionally promoted to every high school in the UK without me having to pay a penny.  The campaign was particularly successful with the result that the magazine eventually bought 350 copies.  Initially they offered quite a low price per book, but I negotiated a higher figure. I didn't make much from the deal, but the way I looked at it, it would give the book a lot more kudos.

Another successful way of increasing book sales is selling them at talks and presentations.  I recently ran a series of drama workshops with Primary School teachers from Spain, who were on an English teaching course.  I led a one hour workshop with them demonstrating activities from my book which could be useful for language learning and  then offered the book for sale at the end.  At first I didn't bring along too many books as I didn't want it to look like I was "pushing" them.  However at the second workshop I sold out of the 10 I had brought along and had to send 20 more to the school the following day to the others who had wanted them!  A friend suggested offering to sign them, and despite my plea of modesty this seemed to help the sales.  During the seven workshops I sold around 100 copies.

Meanwhile, things were starting to look better on Amazon, with 56 books sold in the fourth month and then a staggering 177 during September, presumably linked to the new school term.  This also meant that the book was stocked by Amazon and could be delivered within 24 hours.  Despite this good news, I wanted to make sure that sales continued so I came up with some additional marketing strategies.

• Part One: Moving from e-books to paperbacks
• Part Two: Discovering Print on Demand (POD)
• Part Four: Further Marketing