Book:
Progress is being made - as I said in my update circular, Jonathan Telfer will have something about the book in the May issue. I have also taken an advert in the May and June issues. I have now heard from Mike Wilson, editor of THE LINK - a magazine distributed to all NAWG members (i.e. The National Association of Writers Groups), and he is publishing an article about Alpha in the next (June) issue, which comes out at towards the end of May, I think. I also took a small advert in that magazine, because that is fairly well directed at the sort of people I'd expect to be interested.

Of the £780 grant I received, it is now almost all accounted for. A summary of my expenditure is below.

Cost of website	£14.69
NAWG Subscription	£12.00
Printing (inc carriage)	£631.50
Envelopes	£2.37
Postage on Complimentary copies	£27.47
Adverts in Writers News	£51.12
Advert in The Link	£20.00
Total Expenditure	£748.15

There are a few other minor expenses - like sending cheques, and printer ink in printing out draft copies, but these won't exceed the remainder. So the budget has worked out.

That leaves us with the income we can generate from sales - but we can't aim for a great profit, although we have more freedom if we reprint.

So far, members have purchased 11 copies at the reduced rate of £2, and that has yielded (after postage) just over £14.

If we go to a rerun, it will cost about £430 for 100 copies. In that case, I am going to suggest we ask £7 a copy (to include postage) - which means that we will make £2 margin a copy - about the same as we're making by selling the first ones at £3. There is a slight commercial risk in that in deciding to re-order: we would make a loss if we sold less than about 35 of the re-order quantity, but that shouldn't happen unless the demand goes seriously odd. I'm prepared to back my judgement on re-ordering! If anyone has any other observations on this price, please let me know.

Regular Challenges
Challenge 9: Your assessments should now be with Clare (though some are on the late side).

A fascinating array of entries for this challenge. I set this as a result of entering a similar challenge at Winchester a couple of years ago. Then the requirement was much freer - it was just a conversation at an airport.

I chose to write about a friend who had tried to get through security with a small spanner in her handbag - in real life, she used the spanner because the handle on her car sometimes jammed: but she'd left her car at home and was travelling by air. She had a sticky few minutes, as she was picked up at a German airport: she is a fluent Russian speaker.

At the end of Challenge 8 the overall rankings were:

1: Ann 14pts (including 1 win)
2: David 13pts (inc 1 win)
3: Sally 13pts (inc 1 win)
4: Zena 13 pts (inc 1 win)
5: Christine 13 pts (no wins)
6: Clare 12 pts (no wins)
7: Margaret 12 pts (inc 1 win)
8: Geoff 12 pts (no wins)
9: Laura 11pts (inc 2 wins)
10: Catherine 11pts (no wins)

(Chris was the other winner)

Challenge 10: I should by this evening have all the entries for this last challenge and you will shortly be receiving them for your last judging of this season.

See the Challenges page for details and results of all this year's challenges.

Longitudinal experiment:
Click here for details.

Group Creative Writing:
Click here for details.

Discussion:
I note that no-one has offered any comments with the subject box "CONTINUING", but there are some crucial decisions to be made shortly.

The first of these is clearly - "Do we want to continue as a group for another season starting in September?" I realise that commitments for some members might mean that another year might not be possible, but I should be sorry to lose anyone if we continue as a group.

If the answer to this is "Yes" then the follow-up is "In what form should we continue?"

I said last time that I think someone else should take over as a leader, but no-one has so far volunteered. In the absence of no-one coming forward, I am thinking about continuing the basic plan as this year, but with several modifications. But is the writing load too high?

I thoroughly enjoy belonging to such a wonderful group, but I want to be able to pit my wits and writing against you without having the advantage of knowing the challenges beforehand. So for the challenges next year (and I think it's important that we have challenges of all kind to rise to) I'd like to suggest that 10 (if it is to be 10) different people set the challenges, collect in the responses and organise the assessments. The only thing that the leader would have to do is to make sure the challenges represented a wide variety.

We might have a longitudinal exercise, but David's idea for a cliffhanger sequence is a longitudinal exercise, so we don't necessarily need another.

I think we should have a group exercise - it is a really nice thing to do: has anyone got any ideas?

At the back of my mind is a desire to create a full-length novel between us. To do this, we need to have an ingenious idea in a good plot which can explore new ideas in promoting book sales. You have to have this, because it is notoriously difficult for new writers to break into the fiction market, because publishers know that well-known authors, or books that are ghost-written for well-known individuals like footballers, usually command good and predictable sales. So why should they look particularly at some unknown author - there's a lot of risk, and finding a good new author is a bit of a lottery.

I believe I have a good plot which satisfies the conditions of an ingenious idea. I would like to have two members (who'll volunteer?) to look over the plot/idea and pass an opinion on it. If it is not appropriate for group writing, I'd be very happy to develop it with another member (or perhaps two).

Any thoughts you have about this, could you please circulate them with the subject box "CONTINUING".

Best wishes to you all

- Olaf