Having a go for the good

This morning I started a new blog, a completely separate one to this.  I had the notion of blogging to raise awareness and understanding of MS without turning this one into a personal agenda forum.  Then I thought I don’t get that many views on this one, so why would a second achieve any more.  So I deleted it.

Then I had a think about what skills I have that I could use to raise awareness and understanding and also some cash for research and support.  Years ago I designed and sold cross stitch charts on eBay.  It was interesting to see that people actually wanted what I’d created and were willing to not only pay for it but sometimes get into bidding wars.  I had a best seller, a customer database with actual customers in it, and my stuff was going worldwide.  I shipped charts off to Australia, to China, to France and to Italy and all over the UK.  I never broke even though – the cost of listing, paypal fees, printing and postage alone was going to take years to win back.  I couldn’t give it the time it needed to make it go anywhere, and I couldn’t give up the day job because the design business would have cost me more than it made for quite some time, so I just stopped.  Sent the last customer her charts and never listed again.

But I still have all of those designs that people were willing to buy.  What about those?  Well I wasn’t going to down the eBay route again – already proven a failure and I want decent returns to be sending off to the MS Society – but what about Kindle?  I write and I will get something out there some day in the not too distant future, so I already have an Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing account and contract.  All I have to do is format up the charts into a Kindle eBook and publish.  I never have to touch it again.

No-one will be able to read the charts from a Kindle, you Muppet, I hear you cry.  Well I checked to see what’s already out there and there are some titles on Kindle.  The main complaint is that large charts are near impossible to read.  But what if I took the best seller, an Egyptian Sampler, and broke it down motif by motif into small charts that could be displayed better then take the buyers step by step through placing the motifs.  A guided jigsaw puzzle.  That would work.  So I started creating it in a Word document first.  Problem with that is the sheer number of images and the resolution they had to have made the document a bit large.  If your files are more than 1MB in size, you pay a surcharge from your royalties.  Canny, Amazon, very canny.  It would take a lot more working out how to minimise the file size. 

The motif’s though, are perfect little card and gift designs.  So what I have done and it’s taken ages to get the formatting just right (thank you Word, your HTML sucks but I’m supposed to include page breaks ), is take the first of several motifs, create its own little chart and key and its own instructions and call it part of the Egyptian Collection by Juliet Foster: In support of the MS Society.  It always sounds more marketable if you call it a collection and not just ‘stuff’.  Created my cover image (must find my PhotoShop disk because the injured laptop nearly didn’t boot) and after many run throughs  with Kindle Previewer, finally created a Kindle book where you can read the symbols on the chart and the key with no issues.  It’s been uploaded and is currently at status ‘in review’.  It has to be vetted in case I didn’t bother spending all that time compiling everything to spec.

So by tomorrow morning, I should know whether I’ve successfully published something for worldwide consumption for which all proceeds will go to the MS Society.  I’m quite pleased I found something I could do that might reach a lot more people than a blog, raise awareness, but more importantly raise some cash for a good cause too.  It might not sell.  It might just languish there for all eternity and never raise enough for Amazon to put a cheque (or check as they say) in the post.  For some reason I’m horrible nervous.  No idea why.  There’s absolutely no further obligation from me other than to do a few more of these little eBooklets, sit back, wait and see.  Of course I’ll also have to pay any money that comes in to the intended recipient, but that’s a simple matter – it won’t come in that often even if it does reach cheque proportions.  So why I’m nervous, I don’t know.  Maybe it’s because I might be secretly horrified if the Collection sells well and I’ve pledged all proceeds away, but I don’t think it’s that.  Maybe I’m just paranoid.  Anyone that stitches, watch this space for details!