A protest poster of a website that sells a memoir direct
Gary Clark is a trade unionist and activist with a stammer, and a memoir on the way: You Will Hear Me Speak. He had a cover, a launch date and readers waiting, but no website. He wanted to take pre-orders himself rather than through Amazon, and keep every sale in his own account.
The challenge
The book is a not-for-profit project, priced low, so a marketplace cut was not an option. Gary sells at rallies, union branches and conferences, and he posts every copy himself. A branch might order ten at a time. Readers in Austria and the Gambia had already asked how to buy.
The site had to do three things at once: look like the book, take a pre-order in under a minute on a phone, and handle the awkward cases, such as international postage and bulk orders, without a shop platform behind it.
What we built
Two pages that borrow their look from the cover itself: red, ink and paper, heavy condensed capitals, halftone and grain, and the book rendered in 3D from the real cover artwork.
Buy direct, on his account
An order panel on the page hands the card payment to SumUp and the money lands in Gary's own account. He gets an order email with the address to post to, the buyer gets a receipt, and Freshweb takes nothing from the sale.
Pricing that runs itself
A pre-order price until the end of October, then the full price, switched automatically at midnight. Ten copies for the price of nine for branches and groups. UK and international postage, chosen by the buyer.
The launch and the endorsements
The launch night in Leith with an add-to-calendar file, and the words of Philip Stott and Terry Pullinger set as they were given, not reworded.
A biography with sources
Every claim about Gary's life comes from his own published writing, linked from the page, so nothing on the site was invented on his behalf.
Plus terms of sale written for selling goods to consumers, a privacy policy that names the payment provider, and structured data that tells search engines this is a book by this author.
The result
The site is live on Gary's own domain, www.garyclarkauthor.com, with his SumUp account connected. An order is paid on SumUp's page and confirmed to both Gary and the buyer by email within a minute. Gary runs it from his inbox: an order arrives, he posts a book.
