Kickstarter week 1 update - Nana Duck

Kickstarter week 1 update

Nana Duck has been live on Kickstarter for almost a week and we have… 12 backers.  The backer report tells me that 11 of them are from the UK and one is all the way from the USA.  I was ever so chuffed to see names on the backer list that I didn’t know but I now know from experience that people can and do cancel pledges.  I’m still pretty pleased to have got off the mark and in the spirit of full disclosure, one is my mum, one is my dad and one is my best mate!  However, that is still 9 who haven’t had their arms twisted too hard.

During the first week I have sent out a number of press releases and to be honest I am a little disappointed at the lack of contact so far.  A huge thank you to Dan at the Stone & Eccleshall Gazette who posted my press release to their website on Monday, to Dave at Creative Stoke – the facebook group, who allowed my post (and liked it!) and to the Staffordshire University Graduate Relations team who have explained to me how I can post to their LinkedIn (I did my MBA at Staffs).

I’m trying to be upbeat but as this is meant to be a blog about the process of self-publishing, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit disappointed.  It was particularly disheartening when a backer cancelled their pledge because it took me from over £200 to below that milestone again.  I had been really excited to get over the £200 (10%) mark.  It is very difficult to log on each day and see no new backers (or, even worse, a lower total than the day before) especially as we worked so hard on the project.  My husband tells me that I must be more positive about things.  I think I prefer being pessimistic (realistic?) because at least I won’t then have a huge disappointment at the end.  I didn’t expect everything to be easy though, so I am spending lots of time researching different places where I can try and get more awareness of my project.

Today I decided I’d set myself a challenge where I could control the outcome to cheer myself up a bit.  My daughter was with my parents so I headed out to the beautiful Peak District for a walk.  The challenge was in two parts.  Firstly, could I get all the way round my intended route?  This was a favourite walk of ours a few years ago (from Hartington) but we haven’t been able to complete it in recent years for a number of reasons.  It is about 8 miles in total with some quite big hills.  This might not sound like much but I haven’t had much exercising time since my daughter was born so it wasn’t a certainty that I would make it.  I had a couple of options for making it shorter.  The second part of the challenge was to do it from memory.  I was pretty sure that I could remember it so I didn’t take a map.  Luckily my overconfidence wasn’t my weakness… I did remember it and did make it all the way with the help of a yummy bit of carrot cake!

My next objective is pretty clear, get people more interested in the project. The question is how and the answer (to me at least) isn’t quite that obvious so if anyone has any ideas please let me know.  I would like to access the ex-Stokies out there but am not sure how to do so.  I think it would be lovely for people who live away to have a children’s book that would show their kids what it was like where they came from.  Surely the perfect book for say, Robbie Williams’ son Charlie?!  Any chance of a tweet Robbie?  A book that has people calling each other Duck, a canal and oatcakes… what’s not to like?

 

 

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