Are You Feeling Charitable?

Buoyed by your continued, welcome support for ‘Challenge 69’; with a steadily increasing ‘readership’ and lots of positive feedback, I’ve been considering once again (as a sort of New Year’s resolution) how best to structure my ‘phase two’ strategy for trying to tempt a traditional publisher into taking on the book.

Naively or otherwise, I still believe there is a big enough potential market (with music lovers, quiz aficionados, and mystery fans) to see ‘Challenge 69 - A Musical Maverick Mystery’ eventually make it onto the pages of Amazon, and the shelves at Waterstones.

To strengthen my case though, I could do with some help.

If you’ve been enjoying the story to date, then there are a couple of different ways (both outlined below) in which you could assist me in building a ‘convincing case’ for prospective publishers.

Firstly:

While I can now quote ‘hundreds’ of ‘Challenge 69’ readers, my understanding is that this claim would make a significantly more persuasive argument if I could add an assurance that at least some of these were ‘paying’ rather than ‘free’ subscribers.

I’ve never had any real drive or desire for this ‘Substack’ serialisation of my novel to become a ‘money making’ exercise, and I certainly don’t want to put any of you off from reading the remainder of the story, so please be rest assured I won’t be putting any of the ‘Challenge 69’ story behind a compulsory paywall.

However, from an entirely voluntary perspective, I have just introduced a ‘paid subscriber’ option; which I’ve set (or tried to!) at the minimum available UK Substack pricing points of £4 per month, or an annual subscription of £30. (PS. I’ve never attempted this before, so here’s hoping the functionality works first time!) With eight months left to run on the ‘Challenge 69’ story these price points have been deliberately set to keep the monthly/annual options broadly similar.

If at least a few of you felt able to support such an initiative it could, I’ve been advised, help tremendously in reassuring potential publishers about the novel’s marketability.

So, here’s the deal!

For anybody who volunteers to take out a paid subscription to ‘C69’ (presuming the functionality has now gone live!) you can simply let me know, at the same time, which Charity you would like to see supported through your subscription, and I’ll make a ‘matched’ donation accordingly.

Hopefully this can prove a win-win option for some of you; I will get the ‘paid subscriber’ numbers boost that I need, to help make a persuasive case, while you can simultaneously ‘do your bit’ for one of your favourite causes.

If you feel ready to go ahead with this option straight away (and if so, thanks again), then you can, hopefully, change to a ‘paid’ subscription today, via the button below.

Or, if you have any further questions on how ‘paid subscriptions’ will work then please let me know by replying to this post by email.

Alternatively:

I fully understand, especially in such ‘cash straitened’ times, that the option above won’t be attractive, or even viable, for some of you. However there is still a way you might be able to help me to build my ‘publisher plan’.

If you’ve been enjoying ‘Challenge 69’ to date, please consider taking a few moments to pen an honest review of what you’ve enjoyed about the book so far, and send it to me by replying to this email/post.

If I can compile a few such ‘testimonials’ then these can only help me to build a more persuasive case for ‘traditional’ publication of the book.

Thanks for reading, and if you do feel able to help with either of these initiatives (or better still both!) then your support will, as always, be gratefully appreciated.

If the book does ever get published, then I will happily include everybody who assisted (in either of these ways) in my ‘thanks from the author’ section!

How about that for a promise of jam tomorrow!

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As always, I couldn’t resist trying to think of a song/video that I could use to appropriately sign-off on this ‘begging letter’ of a post; and I finally hit upon …

… ‘You’ve Got To Pay’ by The Only Ones.

You don’t really need to take Peter literally of course, but it was too good a pop song for me to pass over simply because of semantics!