Didn’t think I’d be back home quite so quickly

I’d been preparing for a large book sale event for weeks, increased my stock (my bedroom really does look like Del Boy’s now) and had spent ages on spread sheets etc. And then it rained and rained and rained and it didn’t stop raining. We turned up to the site this morning and we were in a tent with open sides, we just couldn’t risk our stock . So we went home again.

So I’m still trying to do my bit (as it’s for a good cause) and donating money from any sales (not that I normally get any lol) on my book selling website if an event code is used. I just hope my next two events do better than this!

I’m at a loss now and don’t know what to do with my day!

Book ‘selling’

I am in three million different minds regarding my book selling, I’m just back from my monthly event where I sold a grand total of two books and that was only because there’s a sale on at the moment and they were heavily discounted to 99p each. About a book a month is pretty average for me, which makes an appalling business model, I know I could sell elsewhere and I do around Christmas (Christmas wasn’t too bad) but right now I think anywhere I sold at locally I would have about as much success. I think I have to learn to trust my gut instincts, as someone selling children’s books, I am my ‘average’ customer, in fact I am more than the average customer really as I do have a bit of a book buying habit but still my children’s bedroom is always drowning under a sea of books (and not necessarily all ones I got cheaply wholesale) and I as a parent hold books as highly important for my children, however even with me like that I am currently not buying children’s books regularly, the kids got a few around Christmas and that will be it for a while and chances are when I buy them some more books (when not one of my wholesale books) they will be from a ‘real’ or online store where I’ve got them for quite a discount, so therefore I, Mrs. Average Shopper would be highly unlikely to buy a book from a direct seller offering the titles (most of the time) at full price only, specially when I live in a part of London which has three large, major chain book shops, all offering books at discount just down the road and with me being on overly friendly terms with Amazon! And of course the credit crunch doesn’t help! I wish I’d thought this through a bit more before signing up to this, but like I say I’m in three million minds about this, I’m glad I’ve done it because before I signed up I was looking at various direct selling companies and I think I would of continued looking until I had signed up for something and it could have easily have been something even less successful (thinking of a stall I was near at a Christmas fair, someone direct selling clothes and didn’t get a single purchase whereas I sold £85 worth of books), so now I know that at least in my area and with the financial climate as it is, it doesn’t really work because I wouldn’t have quite believed it until I had literally seen it for myself. The majority of the books I sell are also lovely and I am a sucker for children’s books so there is the pleasure aspect and the fact that my kids book pile has increased even more thank to all the cheap books I can get. Also after next Christmas Boy Lacer will hopefully have a playgroup place where although the place will be free we have to donate stuff to keep the playgroup going, so I’ll have a great source of cheap books to donate, which is going to be nicer to do than donating kitchen roll! But it still brings me back to the question, is my monthly selling event worth it? I guess the answer is if I didn’t do it I currently wouldn’t be doing any book selling at all, I’d just be left with a crate or two of books not going anywhere other than as a seemingly endless supply of birthday presents for birthday parties (Girl Lacer has a birthday party tomorrow, guess what she’s taking?). Also the location of the event is somewhere were I take my children anyway, so I might as well take my books to!

Sales – Bah Humbug!

Boxing Day was spent at the mother-in-laws, including a party at Mr. Lacer’s aunt’s in the evening, where the kids were to be fed; Girl Lacer was in heaven, chocolate biscuits galore, poor Boy Lacer though, everything down to the Pringle crisps (sour cream and chive flavour) had dairy, dairy and more dairy in, so he had just some bread to eat and throwed a paddy when I wouldn’t let him have any Pringles, with the mother-in-law going, “Oh just let him have the crisps”, yes very helpful. Anyway in theory my idea of Boxing Day bliss is actually shopping, like it seems the rest of the nation, although that is at it turns out only in theory.

Anyway we came back from the mother-in-laws relatively early and several traffic jams later we were back in town and using the flimsy but relevant excuse that we needed some more goats milk, Mr. Lacer dropped me in town before he and the kids headed home. Town was heaving and it instantly foxes me why so many people want to go out shopping to spend a small fortune on stuff that is in the sales because nobody wanted to buy it before Christmas, when they’ve already probably spent a small fortune pre-Christmas and if they’ve been paid early (like Mr. Lacer) it makes it looong time before the next pay check comes. Anyway I needed to go sale shopping because even though the cynical portion of me is getting bigger by the year, I still have my inner shopper and I needed to get some more trousers for Boy Lacer as he’s resolutely refused to grow out of 18 – 24 month size trousers and I can’t keep on dressing him in summer weight trousers (you watch, he’ll have a growth spurt now), I also was rather disappointed that Santa hadn’t got me this

Cath Kidston House Sewing Basket (from cathkidston.co.uk)

Although I wasn’t really expecting this from Santa, at £40 it’s a little expensive and I don’t think Santa is overly aware of my crafty ambitions. I do have a ‘sewing box’, well I brought a beginners sewing kit a few years ago, but my collection of sewing stuff has grown a little and now the lid won’t fit on, so I do need a new sewing box, not quite sure though that spending £40 on something used 98% of the time for sewing name tags on is quite appropriate, but still it’s soooo lovely! The roof is on a hinge, there’s a tray inside and it lifts off to reveal a red lined basket. Currently I also have a cupboard (we have four kitchen cupboards on our living room wall which we use for storage) which has various balls of wool, bits of fabric etc. in, so that’d free some space up to. However putting sharp pointy things in something I know Girl Lacer also finds irresistable, is probably not a fantastic idea. Anyway, so I went into town looking for more trousers for Boy Lacer and the sewing box, hoping it’d be discounted.

On the sewing box front, I know now even more that if you’re a retailer (from my experience with my book selling) you only discount what you can’t sell and there are a lot of soppy, retro obsessed, craft fiends (like me) out there who’d happily pay £40 for a sewing basket in the shape of a house. So not only wasn’t it not in the sale, it wasn’t even in the shops (I’d seen it in the Cath Kidston shop and in John Lewis previously), they’d sold out. Luckily though, although it has sold out also on the John Lewis website (where it was £2 cheaper, sob), it is still on the Cath Kidston website. I know, I’m meant to be saving for Boy Lacer’s playgroup, but as the most exciting thing Father Christmas brought me this year is some underbed storage (I kid you not) I needed something nice!

As for the trousers, well I struggled through the crowds in ZaraKids, John Lewis, Next (why oh why do people go on about the Next sale so much, the Next sale biannually reduces a shop with normally quite nice clothes into something resembling a jumble sale) and I couldn’t find any 18 – 24 month trousers, so I braved Marks and Spencer, which looked only slightly less like a jumble sale and found two pairs of trousers, a lovely soft cashmere jumper and two packets of socks for Boy Lacer for the reasonable total of £32 and guess what, none of it was in the sale!

On the way out of time I walked past Clarks and despite the store looking not particularly attractive either I was drawn in by some sort of magnetic attraction (I needed some more winter shoes, Converses do make one’s toes cold!) and I found a lovely pair of ankle boots, Gore-tex (so waterproof) and lined (so warm) and £20 off, so one good thing about sales.

A Horror Movie Moment

Toddlers today, where I was holding my last book sale of the year, where I didn’t actually sell anything (I’ve been successful there before), not surprising really as it’s the remains of the same stock I’ve been lugging round countless events this Christmas and even with me discounting it, nobody’s buying. Basically I’ve sold all my good stuff (I have been fairly successful) and now I’ve got the stuff nobody wants. Some of it to be honest if I never sell it, I know my kids would appreciate it when they’re slightly older, there’s one absolutely beautiful book which I think I’d be quite gutted if it went, other stuff and one book in particular though I feel almost embarrassed trying to sell.

Anyway so after a morning of not selling anything I was packing my books up and my kids were with the other kids sitting around a table waiting for snack time, then I heard Boy Lacer crying, I look over and he’s sitting on the floor crying. I go over to him and pick him up and although he’s crying he otherwise looks fine. So I pick him up, give him a cuddle and walk back over with him to my book table, then I look down at his face and there’s blood pouring out of his eye, it looked just like one of those horror movies, you know where there’s some horrible disease going round causing everyone to bleed from their eyes. At first I had no idea where the blood was coming from as his eye had swollen dramatically, I didn’t know whether it was from his eye or his eye lid but with some careful cleaning and cold compresses, I located the source of the cut, ‘thankfully’ only his upper eye lid. He must have fallen and cut his eye on the corner of the table poor thing. I did pop him into our local doctors just to make sure, but other than one hell of a shiner he’ll be ok. The poor thing though, he’d spent the entire session happily walking unaided round the room, I hadn’t seen him walk so much, but now he’s had another fright (he fell over head first onto concrete the other day) once again he’s back to bum shuffling till he gets his confidence back again.

Christmas fairs and sound business plans

Today was the Christmas fair, as a nursery rep I was setting up the candy floss stall, which turned out to be very popular with the kids who probably didn’t want their lunches after that. It was a little frustrating though, we were opposite the raffle stall and I could see the prizes, now I had offered to donate a prize from my book selling business but they never got back to me, now I thought maybe my prize wasn’t expensive enough (£25 worth of books) but there were plenty of £25 prizes there, so it wasn’t that, grrhhh. It’s not for the first time I’ve tried to offer free books to that school or tried to advertise on their notice boards (where they let everyone advertise) to be faced with a metaphorical brick wall. That along with the fact that I’ve run two free prize draws recently and neither winners have even claimed their prizes makes me wonder whether I’m unique in actually liking this publishers books, as I seemingly can’t even give them away. Makes me wonder what Alan Sugar or one of the Dragons from Dragon’s Den would think of this selling children’s book thing I’m doing, whether they’d think of it as business sense, I suspect they wouldn’t, the books are a niche market product, yes I know childrens books should be a pretty big market but these books aren’t as run of the mill as other childrens books, ok I think what makes them unique is absolutely lovely but I am no longer the customer, I’m the seller. They’re also compared to a lot of books expensive plus there’s too much competition, from the publisher itself who sells the books directly as well as the other sellers, for example I’ve upped my web advertising recently and I was getting more hits on my book selling website and then one of the other sellers started advertising in the same place and guess what my hit rate has dropped. Fair enough though, she’s just as entitled to advertise there as well but I like to think of the principals of first come gets it sort of thing, maybe I’m too ‘decent’ for business, a friend, also one of the sellers was advertising somewhere, so I deliberately didn’t advertise there but chose instead a similar place to advertise instead and for a while like I said the hit rate was good, now when the hit rate dropped I checked on the advertising only to discover this other seller outbidding me and advertising above my advert, grrhh, she’s obviously got more money than me, as the advertising isn’t cheap and she’s definitely got more money than me as I checked on my friend’s advert on the other advertising venue and guess what this person was advertising above my friend to, so she must be paying a fortune! So all in all I do not think Alan Sugar would disprove of this as a sound business idea.

But back to the fair Girl Lacer at least liked it, she went with Mr. Lacer and Boy Lacer whilst I was on the stall, she won a FurReal Kitten toy (which does not despite the weird sounding name have real fur I hasten to add), it’s one of those moving toy things. Boy Lacer hated the fair and was sobbing his little heart out poor thing, too noisy and crowded for him.

Tuesday stuff (toddler group, playgroup, miserable toddlers and NaNoWriMo)

A pretty average Tuesday today, my that’s going to inspire you to read on isn’t it? We tried out a ‘new’ toddler group this morning, I say ‘new’ toddler group because I took Girl Lacer there once or twice when Boy Lacer was a baby, so it’s not that new but it’s under new management now. I’m afraid one of my motives for today’s visit was business related as I’m scouting for new toddler groups to target with my book selling. This toddler group seemed busy enough and in an affluent enough area but the normal person running it was off today so I didn’t approach them. I did bump into an old friend though who’s son goes to a nursery in a different school and she said they were looking for people to run stalls at their Christmas fair, so after I’ve posted this (and Boy Lacer has reliably gone to sleep) I’ll give them a ring. I’m getting downhearted about trying to sell my books through various ways at my daughter’s school (I will point out here that I am offering them my profit margin back in free books) as they’re well and truly in bed with Scholastic and don’t seem interested in any other publishers.

Anyway there was another reason for today’s visit as well, despite my money making scheming, obviously it’s good to take the kids somewhere to play but also today’s toddler group is in the same building that Boy Lacer’s playgroup is in, which he starts the first Friday after half term, so I thought it’d be nice if he got used to the building. He seemed to quite like the toddler group and wasn’t too worried where I was so that was a good sign. They had some photos up of the playgroup, there doesn’t seem to be that many kids in it, which is probably a good thing for Boy Lacer right now and they seem to be exclusively boys, including one with the same name as Boy Lacer (and it’s a not exactly common name) so that will confuse him.

Anyway, so all in all a nice morning BUT it really tired poor Boy Lacer out, so he was miserable from about lunchtime and I could have put him down for a nap straight after lunch but no he had to stay awake for another hour as we had to go and take Girl Lacer to nursery, so he was absolutely miserable and spent most of the time screaming his head off. So I decided that instead of being stuck at home listening to him screaming his head off, we’d just go to nursery early. I stuck him in the pushchair and dashed back inside for a banana for Girl Lacer’s snack at nursery, the screaming intensifies, shortly followed by Girl Lacer coming in (I was only gone a second) “Mummy, the pushchair has fallen over”, so I rushed over finding the pushchair on it’s side with Boy Lacer still in it, in the mud. He was ok but he wasn’t having a good day! So once I had cleaned the mud off him, off we went to nursery with him wearing just a t-shirt and trousers in cold drizzly autumnal weather, he has a thing about coats you see (and blankets and quite a lot of jumpers and long sleeved tops) and it’s on the best of days a screaming match to get his coat on but today I wasn’t even going to try, not with the amount of screaming he was already doing, so bad mummy took my 2 year old out today without a coat, whereas everyone elses little ones were all layered up. A friend with an autistic son reckons Boy Lacer may have some sensory issues regarding the coat and blanket thing and I think she may have a point, argh we so need that second developmental check!

Anyway now onto something completely different, after umming and ahhing about it yesterday I have signed up for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I had (when signing up) decided that I was going to do my mid war Venice story but since then thinking about it, I’m really not sure it could make 50,000 words as it’s a kids book and I think would probably make around the 30,000 mark, so I could try and write it and add another 20,000 words of tosh but what’s the point of that? So an idea has been circling my head that I could possibly try, it’s an adult story (I see myself primarily as a children’s writer, so this is a departure) with a sci-fi theme. I complained yesterday that I couldn’t ever think of any sci-fi plots (considering I’m a trained scientist) but this possible NaNoWriMo plot has been actually, in various bits and pieces been littering my head for some time, it’s just that these ideas have been the results of day dreams and what ifs? And have been very disjointed, whereas my ideas for children stories come to me in a completely different way, where I can usually see the outline of the story a lot more clearly. So, so far for this sci-fi idea I have my main character, I have her location and her profession and I have a number of dilemmas on a big and small scale for her to face but as of yet I don’t have any concrete plot. Part of me thinks it’s be fun just to start out with this character in the situation she’s in and see where she takes me, as I’m seeing NaNoWriMo as ultimately fun and some writing practice, not an exercise to produce publishable work as I still see myself as an (unpublished) children’s writer. We’ll see, I’ve still got a few weeks to think about my main character some more to see if some more concrete plot does come to me.

Knackered

Excuse me whilst my head hits the keyboard and I start snoring. Talk about Girl Lacer being tired since she started nursery, what about her poor mummy? I’m knackered to. I’ve been thinking about it today and my very scribbled upon calendar and I was convinced that if I went back and looked at say February that it’d be virtually blank, as life feels alot busier these days. I did succumb and look this evening and was surprised to find that February (and the other months around it) were just as scribbled on, so what’s the difference? I guess back then if we had something on that day (it was usually one of Boy Lacer’s appointments or a tuition client), it was the only thing that day, now I have multiple things, that’s the difference and other things (like writing) that I’m trying to cram in as well, you know how it is, two small  tiny businesses, trying to develop a career in a third, two small kids and a chaotic shoe box of a house with a storage problem (honestly today even the meter reading guy suggested I may need to do some tidying at some point!). So the short of it I’m knackered.

Doesn’t help that, like I said Girl Lacer is also knackered and is currently a tantruming little madam (honestly she’s nearly 4, when do they stop?) She came home from nursery today with the proof of her school photo (which was today, bad mummy alert: I knew it was today but wasn’t organised enough to make sure she had a clean dry uniform for the photo, so she went to nursery in her slightly damp polo shirt / jumper uniform, but honestly who in their wisdom chose a school uniform that parents had to buy that couldn’t be tumble dried?). Anyway she came home today with the proof of her school photo and she looks so cute and sweet and adorable, pure butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but in the space of the journey home which is 10 minutes if that (and that included a detour round the corner to the post office) she had three tantrums and then preceded to have more at home. Can I have the sweet little girl in the photo please?

Oh well, it’s night now, all is quiet, me and Mr. Lacer have had the ‘gourmet’ meal of oven chips with melted cheese and pancetta on them, a common dish from our student days (well maybe the pancetta was replaced with plain old bacon) and tonight’s version felt wrong without serving it in a polystyrene tray (not that I did mind you), but it was good old comfort food and more importantly reasonably quick. Anyone following my cooking posts will have noticed I haven’t really spoken on those matters for some time, bar Boy Lacer’s birthday baking (and I’ve got another round of that coming up with Girl Lacer’s birthday in two weeks). Cooking for me at the moment is a cheese sandwich. Maybe I wouldn’t be so knackered if I fed myself properly. I’m even getting fed up of my favourite comfort dish, sphagetti with chilli and pancetta, oh well I suppose it was only a matter of time, but will mean evenmore cheese sandwiches. I know I could be doing some Nigella (Express stylie) but honestly I don’t have her food budget! Although I still love her but it did make me laugh with her express breakfasts last Monday, honestly a breakfast can’t get any more express than some cereal and a bit of toast!