Preorders taken now

A Hat in Time, a charity knitting/crotchet book with 35 different hat patterns celebrating the work of Save the Children while raising funds for this charity, will be published in about two weeks as an ebook on Lulu. This will be the cheapest option for me and for anyone buying it. Ebook means that the book can be downloaded as a pdf file.

This is not great for giving the book as a present or for those among Save the Children supporters who prefer an actual book. A Hat in Time will therefore also be available as an on demand book through Lulu and through Amazon. It will cost significantly more because both Amazon and Lulu incur charges for production/marketing.

Finally, for those not online, the plan is to also have a limited number of printed books. Here is my dilemma with this: To cut costs and make it viable, I need to print a run of 2500 books. I'm positive that these can be sold if all available channels are used. The book will be out well before Christmas and it would be an ideal Christmas present. This printed book would be reasonably priced at £6.99 which leaves a significant donation for Save the Children. The disadvantage is the outlay cost. I've done my sums and the outlay would be paid for if 585 books were sold.

A small risk considering the total funds that could be raised by going down this route, which is close to £15,000.

Yet, I do not have the cash for the up front cost of printing these books. So I'm trying to raise this. It occurred to me that this could be done through pre orders. Consider this: I need £4,100, which is equivalent to 40 people pre-ordering 15 books which they would then sell or give away as presents. That sounds manageable, doesn't it?

So, as of today, you can pre-order A Hat in Time. If you think you will be able to sell/give as present any number of copies, you can order and pay for them up front and they will be posted to you as soon as printed, with plenty of time before Christmas. There is be a shopping cart/paypal button on this page and I can issue a receipt. So you don't think I'm some stranger taking money off you, I can verify that I'm employed by Save the Children, and provide my work and home address to those of you who pre-order.

Of course, I'm the first person to pre-order 15 books.

To pre-order, simply click on the cart button at the top right of this page. For more details or any questions, please email me at s.keir @ savethechildren dot org.uk (deleting the spaces in the address and substituting dot with a .).

Please pass this on to anyone you think would support this, retweet etc. THANK YOU!

Preorders taken now