Tina and I will be at the Central Council Meeting and Roadshow in Sheffield on the weekend of 6th/7th September. Tina will mostly be busy with the council meeting, but I have booked a stand at the roadshow so that I can sell Change-Ringing on Handbells. There will also be an eBells stand.
In preparation for the roadshow I have produced a revised version of Volume 2, incorporating several corrections from a very thorough proof-reading by Laura Ward. (If you're thinking of ordering it, wait a few days to make sure you get the new version.) While working with the Amazon publishing system, I took the opportunity to look at the sales reports for both volumes. I won't bore you with a completely detailed breakdown, but the headline figures are 497 sales of Volume 1 (391 paperback and 106 Kindle) and 161 sales of Volume 2 (125 paperback and 36 Kindle). In both cases, about 75% of the sales are in the UK, about 25% in the USA, and a handful in other countries. That's a much higher proportion in the USA than you would expect based on the distribution of ringers, so the conclusion is that handbell ringing is much more popular there, relatively speaking.
The distribution between the paperback and Kindle editions is interesting. I'm not surprised that most people prefer the print edition, but the Kindle edition is much cheaper and has the bonus that all the method diagrams and compositions link through to CompLib for easy reference. To read it on a Kindle device you need a fancy model - I don't think it works on my basic black-and-white version - but you can also read it using the Kindle app on a phone, tablet or computer.
We unfortunately had to increase the prices of both volumes a while ago because Amazon increased the printing costs. However, at the roadshow I will have copies to sell at a significant discount: £18 for Volume 1 (normal price £25.50), £23 for Volume 2 (normal price £33.50), or a special price of £38 for both volumes together.
It's a pity that Amazon's pricing system requires us to set the normal price so high. Amazon takes a hefty cut, and we only make a few pounds per copy. We can order copies at a much lower price, just the printing cost, and sell them ourselves (for example at the roadshow), but we don't have the time or enthusiasm to make that the primary means of distribution. The benefits of publishing through Amazon include the whole payment and shipping system and the fact that we can sell worldwide with no extra effort.
Also at the roadshow I will have mugs with the interlocking handbell design in either blue (Volume 1) or orange (Volume 2), for £8. You can see a picture of a blue mug here at redbubble.com.
