Several years ago, when Timothy was updating the BryonySeries website design, he also updated the calendar of events page to resemble an advent calendar.
Because he thought every day of every month should offer a BryonySeries related event, activity, craft... something.
Now Timothy's updated that calendar a few times since he's created it. Each design has become more user-friendly (I'm terrible at technology).
But every month, I post an entirely new collection of events, etc.
About a year (or two) ago, I began adding a giveaway of a free book on one (or more) dates on the calendar - you know, just to see if people were clicking through.
That's because analytics showed some activity on some of the dates. But many of the dates had zero activity. And the dates for free books never showed any activity.
So for last month, in honor of Calkins Day, I added an offer for free books on at least half a dozen of the dates, hoping a couple of people might request a book.
Side note: the offer for a free book expires with at the end of the month, and we do have a notice at the top of the calendar that says just that.
Still, we made it halfway through the month and received no requests for free books.
Here's where it gets fun.
One night in mid-February, as I was shutting my phone at bedtime, a request for Denise M. Baran-Unland's Irish Genealogy came through the bryonyseries email.
This book is a collection of humorous essays Ed wrote a dozen years ago for this blog that I published into a book for Calkins Day 2018. So, naturally, it was one of the books I offered for free.
Anyway, that first request was quickly followed by a second request.
I was super excited!!!
So I dashed into Rebekah's room to share the good news, even though she was nearly asleep.
Four more requests came in after that.
And I had more in the morning.
I panicked.
What was going on? Was I being spammed? But the emails didn't appear to be spam.
They appeared to be real people requesting the book and sharing their home addresses. The requests came (mostly) from all over the U.S.
And the requests kept coming - sixty in all by the time the requests trickled down.
So not "viral" in the standard term of the word. But definitely "viral-ish" by our definition because in all the years since BryonySeries went live more than a decade ago, we'd never experienced such widespread sharing of our information.
A little internet detective work provided the answers.
Someone (or a few someones) had shared the giveaway post on sites that offer items for free.
Since the offer is good for the entire month, well, I was certainly glad February only had twenty-eight days.
My kids were excited. I worried we'd get so many requests, we couldn't pay bills. That didn't happen, of course. Everything is paid.
However, we were very glad we had the rush on a book with fifty-three pages. We were very glad I hadn't foolishly offered free copies of Before the Blood, which has one thousand two hundred and fifty-one pages. (emphasis mine, in case you missed that).
Rebekah spent an hour every night after work for more than a week fulfilling requests.
We also received some really sweet notes from quite a few of the requesters, saying how excited they were to get the book and that they were eagerly awaiting its arrival.
Naturally, I responded to every email, letting requesters know the approximate delivery date and wishing them a Happy Calkins Day.
Two sent back notes once they had received the book and read it, saying how much they enjoyed it and thanking me for the gift.
For future giveaways, we'll clearly state how many books exactly we will give away (Timothy's idea. I wasn't smart enough to put a cap on it).
But.- still...
Who'd have thought???
