On the 18th of February, with the delivery of 83 boxes, The hidden world of diatoms has officially changed status, from being a dream project to becoming reality. I knew, obviously, that the moment was coming, but being surrounded by boxes filled with copies of my book was incredible, almost unbelievable.
Reality also means, that The hidden world of microorganisms is now a business, and as such it needs to be managed. The first job has been to ship out the rewards to all my kickstarter backers. Yet another occasion to thank them for their trust, but also to organise the most efficient set up of the headquarters. I had to accept that maybe having the office in the attic was not the best idea, at least not when you have 83 boxes to bring up two floors, and down again once they are ready to ship to their new homes, so some things had to be reorganised.
Since then a few books have arrived at their destination and I am proud to say that I have received very good reviews that I would like to share with you:
“I loved your book. What a beautiful experience. You led us to a great journey through the universe of living things! It’s also a piece of art. The drawings are so lovely, and make it also very enjoyable for the eyes! Congratulations!” -MB-
“Absolutely fantastic. My child loved it. She found the book engaging and informative (even I learnt lots).” -MSA-
“Beautifully illustrated and perfectly pitched for children (and adults!) to introduce about the often unknown yet incredibly important world of diatoms. Lovely book.” -EW-
I’ll stop here, because I don’t want to bore you with too many, but each and every comment is very much appreciated. One comment has broken my heart though, alas the inevitable mistake that always manage to slip through the innumerable checks has happened. Well, here it is: I mis-captioned one of the diatom species shown on the microscope pictures at the end of the book. I expect most of you would not have guessed, but the beautiful specimen shown on page 52 at the top, is not Diploneis finnica, it is actually called Encyonema caespitosum. If I will be lucky enough to have to run a reprinting, I promise I will have this changed, but for now, I apologise to the diatomists out there that might be totally horrified by my mistake, and to everyone else for the misinformation.
Probably the most important part of a business is marketing, so I have also started to work on that. I am quite proud of the little video I created and posted on my socials at the end of last week. I admit it took me quite some time to get it right, what with the squeaking chair, the giggling daughter mocking my accent and the word stumbling. But it was fun. And now it’s out there living its life and hopefully spreading interest for the book. If you liked it, share it, if you didn’t, please let me know why, so I can improve it.