So, here we are; the BIG ASK! After busying away for a month I’ve come up with a whole menu of things to offer people as part of the next scary adventure: getting the book and film made, with your help.
If you’ve not come across crowd funding (often referred to as doing a Kickstarter), the idea is that anyone can have a project that needs cash to get off the ground. You put together a campaign and invite people to pledge money to help you reach your target. In return they get a choice of ‘rewards’ – copies of the book and film, and other goodies like, in my case, walks with Chico and photographic prints on donkey poo paper! If we don’t make the target we don’t get anything – no one gets charged and we lick our wounds and start phoning traditional publishers.
Want to see it? Here it is! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hannahme/seaside-donkey-1000-miles-around-wales-with-a-donk
After being pretty much exhausted for a month I am at last recovered and hopping about with excitement about the next phase. There’s so much to do, and doing it this way means that there’s nothing I can’t be intimately involved with – rather than sending a Word document to a publisher, I’ll be finding a cover illustrator, choosing songs for the film, making maps, cutting up sheets of donkey poo paper, looking over the shoulder of the editor, learning how to make ebooks, buying an ISPN number, making sandwiches for the Chico walks, and somehow writing the book too. I’ve always liked having fingers in pies, and it sounds like heaven. And perhaps occasionally hell.
So, it’s all explained in great detail here, and there’s a film too! Enjoy, and then tell everyone you know, if you’d be so kind… It’s a frightening amount of money to be looking for, so if you can think of anyone who would enjoy being able to say ‘I helped this folly get off the ground’, please tell ’em I need ’em.
But what’s the worst that can happen? We don’t make it this time, and we bother you again in February, that’s what! Even if it goes really badly no children stand to get trampled, and that ought to make this Wednesday morning less scary than the previous twenty-two…
You’re beautiful Hannah. Keep doing what you’re doing. I believe that a few of us candles can brighten the world… a world that has perfected the ways to complain about the darkness.
Beautiful sweet words! I think every single person has a candle, but it’s a life’s work to figure out how to shine – we’re all flickering brighter and dimmer all the time. I’m just so grateful to everyone for responding so kindly to my efforts!