Tuesday, March 01, 2011

More Coverage than Dulux One Coat

Today has been a steady one in the shop. Nothing too spectacular, but still well ahead of the kind of sales we were making last week.

Our online sales continue to be outstanding and to give you some idea of the appeal of our er.... appeal, last week we were getting around 40 visitors a day to http://www.biggreenbookshop.com/, whereas today for example, so far we've had 550 unique visitors and double figure sales (usually we sell about 2 books a week online).
A lot of this new traffic is because people are talking about us on the internet. We've noticed some wonderful blog posts like these...

This one from Lucy

This from Christopher Fowler

This from Sam Enthoven

This by Jayne Joso

This one here too

I found these all very easily with a quick search of our name (if i've missed anybody out, i'm really sorry. I've had about 4 hours sleep in the last 5 days).We've been tweeted about fiercely by hundreds of wonderful people. A nice retweet from someone like Simon Pegg or Stephen Fry would be nice though...

And following on from our bit in the Times yesterday, there was this spectacular article on the Guardian website by Stuart Evers. The article has certainly got people talking judging by the number of comments, and we are absolutely made up that all these people i've mentioned above would want to say such lovely things about little old us.

Things that people have asked us.
Do you have a facebook Group? YES. It's called 'A Decent Bookshop in Wood Green (revisited).
Why is it called that, you pillock? Because, we started the group before we had a name for the bookshop.
What is Your Twitter Name? @biggreenbooks
Why is it called that, you pillock? Because that's the name of our shop (almost)
The book I want isn't on your website, can you get it? YES. We manually list the titles onto our website, so we only have 400 odd titles on there. We stock around 8,000 and can order pretty much anything.
When are you going to show us the Strugglometer? NOW.

OK, the strugglometer has risen by 2% today. Not massive, but still, we can't expect every day to be monumental. Let's not get downhearted. Come on, chin up, there's a long way to go.

Tomorrow is my son Ollie's first birthday. We are going to be spending the day on a farm in Hertfordshire looking at sheep and eating sandwiches. Tim will be at one of our local Schools with two brilliant authors, Sarah Matthias and Sam Enthoven. Mark will be at the shop. Go and say hello to Mark if you're in the area, he makes a lovely cup of tea.

7 comments:

Isabel Losada said...

Somehow you have become the only blog I read Simon. It's exciting. Am slightly worried on your behalf that if an article in The Guardian only put the struggleometer up 2% - what on earth are you going to need to get to the top? x isabel losada

Simon Key said...

Hello Isabel. The strugglometer is linked purely to sales & donations above our budget.
Today was a good day for sales, and the strugglometer went up.
Next week is the big week and the fact that the Strugglometer is already at 30% is brilliant.
I just hope that it continues. See you soon.

Robin Parker said...

No mention of the Acid Folk event [had hoped to go but childcare beckoned] How did it go? Or was it cancelled for some reason?

Anonymous said...

Acid Folk event happened and was interesting. Attended well enough to make a bit of a squash

Helen said...

Hello. I read about you through that Grauniad article you mentioned above, and then wrote my own little blog post about you, which has already had a few views.

Your shop seems Oh! So! Lovely! and I'll be there next week. Because it will be my birthday week, I shall buy more than one book.

Helen x

Anwen said...

Phill Jupitus just tweeted thus: http://twitter.com/jupitusphillip/statuses/43011011904679936

Melissa said...

Hey, that's my blog at the end! I was going to let you know I posted about you guys in the facebook group but you beat me to it. Good luck with everything, I'll be by Saturday.