I just had a long convo with the printers – the Diary will be with them in a week. I just have to write the Sky at Night stuff, proof the whole lot and we’re off!
It’s hard to believe that I’m doing all this, by myself. Of course, I still have to market and sell the Diary, but that’s falling into place as well. I have the email addresses of about 250 of last year’s Elfin Diary customers (the ones who ordered via the website shop), so I can start off with a mass email out to them. After that, if I can find the dosh for the stamps, I can start posting out flyers to some of the other past customers.
Fortunately, I won’t have to find the money for the envelopes. Caroline’s system of keeping customer details was to write their names and addresses onto C5 envelopes that were then filed away in boxes. She had no truck with computerised records at all; she didn’t even print out address labels. Consequently, I have around 400 of these hand-addressed envelopes, neatly filed in alphabetical order. Unless I want to bring on RSI by typing all of them into the computer, I’ll have to just use the envelopes for sending out sales flyers and potentially lose all those name and address details.
Caroline, why did you have to be such a technophobe?
There’s still a couple of loose ends. For instance, I’m still waiting for the paperwork that will let me transfer ownership of the elfindiaries.co.uk domain name. The hosting will come to an end in only five weeks’ time, so that’s getting rather urgent. I do have a Plan B – I’ve bought elfindiary.co.uk and can use that if needs be. However, that will lose all the Google-goodness that the original domain name has acquired over seven or eight years – which is why it’s strictly Plan B.
And I have no records of the shops that stocked the Diary, nor of any of her suppliers. If the bloke who printed her T-shirts hadn’t contacted me, I’d probably not have bothered with printing Elfin T-shirts; and I’m still trying to find the wholesaler for the incense that she sold.
But, that’s all teething troubles – I will have a Diary to sell!