The switch finally happened — from old website to new one. An email shot went out to hundreds of people to announce this. Then, as requested, masses of you registered with the site so you could use the shop and comment on this blog.
Then we realised there was a snag. It was not enough just to register. People needed to get to the point of sale (because this is when full details are saved in the database) for us to be able to apply the subscriber discount (and lots of you are subscribers).
Hell’s bells! The frenzy of activity! When people sent their emails asking to have subscriber discount applied, we had to reply asking them to buy something and then cancel, so we could adjust them to discount status. Dutifully, people did as asked, but the orders just came through to me as real orders, not as cancelled ones. I had lost the plot by then anyway and posted out whatever was ordered, forgetting it was probably not a real purchase, just a way of getting details entered.
We changed the strategy then and asked people to ‘buy’ one of the free downloads (which obviously doesn’t involve me putting anything in an envelope) and things started to settle down, apart from the dozens of spammers attempting to register.
This website development has been happening since early August. Lots of work has been done, financed by Michael Marks. Some of it is still work in progress. Our pamphlets, being all on cream card, looked a bit boring in the shop. Yesterday, Sarah had the brilliant idea of scanning them all against coloured paper. Take a look — what a difference!
Sample poems for all publications will be in place soon. They’re not there yet. It would be easier if my Mac was more prepared to talk to the technology. I ordered a Windows laptop yesterday, just for the web work. All of this — everything that is used to make up this website — is freeware. And when such marvellous resources are free, you can’t complain.
While this electronic mayhem was in progress, in the background I was folding and printing. I am still folding and printing actually. Folding the new cards and flyers, printing price lists, updating the subscriber list, printing the address labels. All this is so things can go out by snail mail this week. I’m up to letter J.
So if you are a subscriber, you should have an interesting brown envelope dropping through your letter box this week with various things inside it. The aim was to raise the subscription list to 200 by the end of this year. In fact, 193 people have subscribed in the last 4 years, but we have lost some of them. About 30 have lapsed, and a few have died. That means we still need more. Talk to your friends — any that like poetry — this is such a good deal. They can’t lose.
And if you should be a person who aspires to have work published here, subscribe! Keep the press going.
There’s much more to say but you’ll get bored. I’ll save it for later . . .