The Totally Locally book “The Economics of Being Nice” has launched! It’s been a labour of love, but well worth it to see the reaction it’s getting. The book has lots of stories from towns that have managed to change their High Streets for themselves (no funding, no government backing – just collaboration & not waiting for someone else to do it) including Burntisland, Bedford, Leek, Teddington and of course Calderdale where it all started.
The book has taken quite a while to write because we wrote it ourselves… edited, designed, proofed, rewrote and proofed again (too many times to mention!) and finally self-published it. Writing isn’t easy but we did decide to jump in at the deep-end and cover all these parts of the process ourselves. We also had it printed locally here in Yorkshire by our local printer on recycled paper. It was fascinating to watch the whole printing and binding process in person.
As well as telling the Totally Locally story, it’s a guide to running our Town Kit and shares the ideas and methods of running a successful independent high street campaign based on our working with small towns over a decade across the UK and further afield. It also shares mistakes we made, so you don’t have to make them yourself!
The book also includes the now-massive Fiver Fest which, every time it happens, sees over 100 towns collaborating to drive footfall, say thank you to local customers and build community amongst businesses.
We hope you like it, and we’re happy for you to buy a copy and pass it on as much as you like. It’s not about making loads of money, it’s just sharing what we hope can help others to start and run a successful campaign for free in their town.
Contributions in the book include Incredible Edible C.I.C., Dan Thompson, The Booksellers Association, Emma Corfield-Walters, Very Tipico (Portugal) & Just A Card.
If you want to buy a copy, it’s available here in our online shop and also with some splendid notebook bundles. We hope to also distribute to independent bookshops soon and all proceeds from sales go to help run the Totally Locally campaign.
Our book is not available on Amazon – for obvious reasons!
If you have bought a copy we would love to hear your feedback – you can leave a review on the book product page itself, email us, tag us on social media or post this below.
Here is a little taste of what people are saying about our book:
