A tale of self-publishing, part 2
The publication
So the first print-run of the Whitley Bay Guide had arrived and 20,000 copies were in their boxes awaiting circulation, held back till our planned WB Chamber of Trade launch that evening. On that morning, however, we dropped-off a courtesy box or two to our ‘advisory’ hotelier chum. Then astonishingly, just an hour or so later, we received word from the Dept of Tourism that they would not be handing out our booklets after all, due to “several complaints” from hoteliers that our listings included a number of B&Bs and guesthouses not certified to Quality in Tourism standards. Strange that “several” hoteliers had voiced their complaints so quickly seeing as only one hotelier had actually received the guides by that point. Well.
Of course we wanted no part in such elitism — our independent guide was to promote all such businesses, however small, and we were not going to disclude, say, a guesthouse who had not the funds to assume a higher status. But a compromise was reached that, should one of our guides be mailed out through ‘official’ Tourism channels, a disclaimer slip would be enclosed (and added to future editions).
So then the big moment of truth arrived. The unveiling proper took place that evening at the Whitley Bay Chamber of Trade meeting. We took along several boxes of our pocket-sized wonder and, in front of the assembled proprietors and business folk, smugly ripped open the boxes and, in slow motion it seemed, flung our guides in generous handfuls across the lengthy board table. The enthusiastic reception was like feeding time in a monkey house — a big success in other words!
The following day a van was borrowed and, armed with the boxes and the counter display-holders we had purpose-made, off we tootled around each restaurant, bar, takeaway and pub, to spread the love to the masses. We were assisted by some rather more gracious hoteliers and landladies who made sure that each of their own received plenty guides to leave in the rooms and reception areas for guests. They were also given out in their thousands to the DFDS cruise ship passengers for whom they were originally intended.
What was fairly common as we began, on asking the nonplussed bar or restaurant owner would they care for some guides and a counter stand to display for their customers, they would respond with a “Never heard of it, mate, but leave us a few copies.” Then invariably, after a couple of hours came the phone call… “This is great, can you deliver a couple of boxes — they’ve all disappeared!”
Orders were coming in twenty-to-the-dozen, and so what we needed was the regular use of a van. Paul just happened to have going spare a little Japanese ‘bug-eyed’ S-Cargo runabout which was duly commissioned and liveried-up loudly in our familiar graphics to whizz us around the daily delivery circuit.
The response was tremendous — a lot of newspaper column inches were devoted to our cause, folks argued about us in the letters pages, our guide was discussed in the Houses of Parliament, and we had requests from places as far away as Canada. (It was also somehow flattering in an annoying way when a certain Whitley Bay newsagent was found to be putting his own price stickers on the covers of our free booklet.)
Our print run soon ran out, necessitating a couple of reprints to a total of 60,000 copies. Additional pages were added so advertisers who had missed out (or didn’t trust us) the first time round would be in. Those extra advertising spaces were snapped-up within an hour.
We did it again the following year. For 2009 we toyed with publishing not only a Whitley Bay Guide but also a ‘sister’ version to cover the next town, the Tynemouth Guide. But why not keep the printing costs down, increase the page count, and combine both as the Whitley Bay & Tynemouth Guide?
So that’s what we did. We received yet more benevolent funding and endorsement from local authorities. Another 60,000 were produced but with more pages, more content, and more features from another host of brilliant writers — that we managed to coax the great Ian La Frenais into writing 300 words for us still thrills to this day.
For 2010, with our ‘day jobs’ taking precedence again, we produced an online-only version. No problems there but that was a long time ago; perhaps the e-Book form or the App is the way forward should we ever decide to produce another guide in future.
But I’m an eternal book sniffer and the website admittedly failed to match the sense of wonder from holding a real booklet put together with so much love. The perfect A6 format and substantial ply of the pages, the smell of fresh print, and the little cooling zephyr of air as you flicked through was so much more inspiriting than prodding at a digital device.
Lovely, tactile printed books and magazines will still be around for generations to come. Should the lay of the land be suitable for us to make a comeback with a new Whitley Bay Guide in the not-too-distant future, let us never say never!
Return to A tale of self-publishing, part 1 >