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The New Kitchen Garden – an update

by MarkDiac |

So yesterday was an interesting day. I was listening to Lauren Laverne while working and she played Martine Girault’s Revival…a song I last remember hearing when I saw her live in a subterranean club in Canterbury 20 odd years ago. It was an evening where Murphys and cider had been taken in ill-advised combination, as I recall.

As it played, the first copy of The New Kitchen Garden went out to someone unable to pay for it.

A few hours earlier, I made the new book available as pay what you can afford.  I spoke to a few people before I did and I had four responses: “careful of the liberty takers, people will think you must be minted and take try it on”, “risky but a lovely idea”, “some will see it as cynical promotion” and “I reckon you should do it for a limited time or you’ll be cleaned out”.

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10 hours after it went live, unbelievably, over 90% of those buying the book had paid the higher price. 11 people who otherwise might not have had the book have it heading to them. Three community projects, one in Northern Ireland run by a mental health charity, two homecarers on low incomes who said it would make a real difference to the quality of their lives and those they care for, etc etc. And those community projects mean even more than the addressee will get some use out of the book. That is exactly the point.

So, everyone is winning in one way or another.

I’m not sure what is most affecting, knowing the difference growing a little food can make to people’s lives or the fact that so many people have taken the ball out of my hands and run with it. I wanted to do something useful with the book and all you lot have done is leave me sitting in the middle like a lemon. Over 90% paying £5 over the cost price so that others unable to pay can benefit is extraordinary. People really are alright aren’t they.

So, hats off to you all, whatever you are able to pay.

As for the snarkers who think it’s just promotion, let em snark. If I wanted to promote it to best effect, I’d tell you to go and buy it from Amazon, where everybody sees it, and to review it generously. As Lucy Inglis so perfectly put it, no good deed goes unpunished. Except it’s not me doing the good deed, it’s everyone else: I’m just sat in the middle. And so it will be when the kitchen garden school opens, we will find a way to offer what we do to people on the same basis.

So, on we go. Keep paying what you can and I’ll pledge to make no money from books sold through the shop. If there is any ongoing excess – ie people buying at the higher price outstrips those we are able to discount it to – I’ll think of a fine home for it and let you know. Judging from the emails, I don’t think that’s too likely – there are plenty of opportunities to get the book into the deserving hands of those that need it. So thank you. This has turned into proper, generous, heartwarming (if accidental) crowdfunding, this.

  • Hi Mark, Reading that you had decided to offer the book available on a pay-as-you-can-afford basis made my day a couple of days ago, and reading this response makes today. Generosity and open-heartedness is such a wonderful thing to see and experience, and yes, people really are alright! Winners all round, including people like me who get such a kick out of seeing how this is working out. Thanks for doing it this way. I’m so looking forward to seeing the book!
    I’m visiting the UK from Aotearoa/New Zealand in June. Do you guys have any way of visiting Otter Farm set up?

    • Hi Lois
      I hope you like it when you get yr hands on it.
      June will (I hope) mean the place is a building site with the kitchen garden school etc going up but it seems a long way off…email nearer the time..

  • I was in the camp of ‘careful of the liberty takers’ as I mentally listed the reasons I could easily draw a deserving picture. There again, liberty takers…who desparately want a gardening book? That venn diagram can only have the tiniest crossover!

    I’ll pay the full price when I can afford it, and I see I can look forward to recieving a signed bookmark 🙂

    Anyway, I wish you well, it’s a genuinely lovely thing you are doing.

    Adrian

  • I got my copy on Friday, and couldn’t put it down all weekend, so inspiring and really clear and well laid out, it’s so difficult to be selective and pick which of the wonderful plants I’m going to grow! To anybody who hasn’t bought it yet, don’t hesitate, it is 100% worth the £22 price tag, mine will certainly be paying for itself with all the amazing home grown food I’ll get!

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