MINE TO DIE GETS CLOSE TO ANOTHER PRINT RUN

 My original print run for Mine to Die was 200; it had been 300 for Dying to Know and that seemed excessive given the number of unsold copies. A pity because DTK is a good piece of writing with very important messages about our misgovernment during the pandemic, some interesting bits of autobiography, and great photographs. If you haven't got a copy yet for yourself or if you are looking for a present for someone else, please press this link for a way to purchase. So I limited MTD to 200 copies with the hope that maybe the fates would be kind and the book would sell well enough to warrant another print run. 

I am getting closer to fulfilling that hope as you will read below. First, though, here is an extract from an earlier blogpost I wrote in March this year, shortly after MTD's initial publication:

"I am circulating this blogpost around the forty or so people in my network. If any of you are interested in buying a copy of any of my Matador books, they are available from that publisher, or from me directly for a signed copy using my website or just email me, or from any bookshop. I avoid Amazon myself, if I can (I only get around £2.50 for each copy sold by them and their warehouse system is not good news for their workers). It would be much to my advantage if you referenced any of my Matador publications in conversation with friends and family, encouraging others to support a writer whose only ambition is to be read more widely." 

The rock drill the miners called 'The Widow Maker'. This image was taken by J.C. Burrows in 1904 and appears in MTD on p.30. The account of rock drilling developments is on pp.28-33.

If and when you have read Mine to Die, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a review on the Matador and Waterstones website. There are nine good reviews of Dying to Know on the Matador website and three on the Waterstones webpage. It all helps. I do have two reviews for MTD on the Amazon UK Books site and they needed verified purchases - so only if you must!

Thank you all for any part you can play in this exciting adventure which isn't just about me; those young Cornish miners and their families from the 19th and 20th centuries with their tales of bravery, strength, and suffering are the core of my story. MTD is my

memorial to them. 

Crowns Engine Houses, Botallack Mine

These details about sales of MTD that follow have a wider interest than just me and my latest book. They are indicative of how much sales of books depend on what the author does to encourage market opportunities. 

• Make sure your local bookshops know about you and your book - visit in person at a quiet time such as the start of their day shortly after they have opened. 
• This I did when I was in Penzance where there is a fine independent bookshop: The Edge of the World. They have stocked my first two books (The Road to Corbyn and Dying to Know) and this time they ordered six copies of MTD, all of which I signed and a photo was taken of that signing which then appeared in their own online marketing. Since June when they first started stocking MTD, they have sold 16 copies. 
• They order from Gardners, the book trade wholesalers, who in turn get their copies from the warehouse of my publisher, Troubador/Matador. To date 90 copies of MTD have been sold and left the warehouse - leaving 23 copies in the store.  

Lest they be forgotten - weathering has made it difficult to read the script on this memorial plaque, close to the surface remains of the Wheal Owles mine disaster in 1893. See p.83 in MTD for the full  list of the 20 miners who died.

• Where have other sold copies gone? Well I approached the admirable bookshop in St Ives, the St Ives Bookseller, following my usual pattern, and they have now sold 8 copies of MTD. Where else? The inescapable reality is that Amazon Books have a large slice of the market. Most copies of a writer's work are sold on Amazon. That's where most of my sales have been. I remember back in the Spring of this year shortly after MTD was published, I alerted Catz (St Catherine's College, Oxford where I took my first degree) to its appearance. They have an online site which has an alumni publications section - and the Catz Development Office kindly added details of MTD to that page and provided a link to enable purchase - through Amazon. In the next month, the sales figures that Matador provide for my book ticked over very healthfully. 
• A chance meeting with a visiting Quaker at our Sunday Meeting led me, a couple of months later, to be a guest at a local reading group. They were discussing that month's book-to-read: none other than MTD. My visiting Quaker was Sowenna Sylvester from Come to Good Meeting who organizes the Maningham Reading Group in Illogan, Cornwall. She had been impressed enough with MTD to make it the book to read for that month. I understand the local Camborne Library bought 10 copies for lending to support the group.
• I made phone-call and email contact with local history sites in the early summer and out of those contacts I now have copies of MTD for sale in the Geevor Mine Museum Shop and the King Edward Mine Museum Shop. Geevor have sold 8 copies in four weeks; I don't yet have the up-to-date KEM sales figures but they have now sold 4 copies and taken six for sale. They have purchased their copies from my personal stock which comprised 78 of the 200 copies in the print-run. 
• I gifted 32 of my personal stock to friends and family and have so far sold a further 13 copies to individuals and 19 copies to the two Mine Museum shops 

The author needs to be a marketer and a seller as well as a writer. It's all good! 

 

The man-engine at Dolcoath Mine in 1893 - see p.165 in MTD.