It’s about time I did more than just praise Nik Peachey on LinkedIn and in Twitter posts!

Another six months has passed, the royalties from ‘30 Role Plays for TEFL’ are in. They’ve covered a dentist bill, a crate of beer, and one month’s life insurance premium. Blimey, that last bit makes me feel old.

‘30 Role Plays…’ was great fun to write. See here for details of how it came about. It reminds me of some fun times at the British Council, when the crew at our tiny centre in Bangkok were alive with ideas!

At first we shared the book on our blogs. Maybe we didn’t make enough of it. Maybe it had no value. Maybe we just had no reach (likely). We sold a modest amount, but got good feedback (maybe friends being nice, or my mum). I mentioned this in one of my materials writing updates:

Cue Nik Peachey. He gets in touch after seeing the link to Peachey Publications. He’s like ‘cool, you wrote an ebook! And you’re giving me some free promo, so cheers. Tell you what, as a thanks for the promo, let’s work on that book a bit together. It seems useful, but maybe we can enhance it a bit and help it reach a wider audience’.

Not exact words obvs. Nik doesn’t talk in Pete-isms.

So, Nik offered us a freebie. No fees, his hard work to enhance the design, his thorough content and copy edit, his digital add ons (such as genially resources, plus an app with the second edition). He wanted us to make the resource a tad more teacher friendly, we obliged.

Less than 6 weeks later, we had our ebook back, super-upgraded. The difference between our version and our collaboration with Nik was… wow. Slick, much more comprehensive, tighter writing in general after a good edit, procedural notes, nice visuals, great add-ons for classroom presentation…

Out it went to the world. Nik Peachey drove the promo. He has a massive reach across social media. It sold. Well!

Royalties were every quarter to begin with. 50/50 split between us and Nik – you can’t beat these independent publishers! The first two royalties payments, believe me, were a surprise. ‘These are on Nik’ became the go-to phrase for our post-work beers.

The royalties are every six months these days. No, me and Rich aren’t about to holiday in the Cayman Islands and sip martinis on the beach (Long, 2015). But ‘30 Role Plays…’ continues to sell.

This is the part where I’d like to say ‘but it’s the feedback from the learners that really counts’. Yes, yes… not about the money, I know. In truth, we had more feedback from our self-publication – that’s because we gave it away to teaching mates and they told us how it went down in class. The connection between us and the end user now isn’t really there, so we rely on voluntary feedback. Noone has messaged to say the resource is crap, so that’s something!

Anyhow, what do you REALLY get from working with Nik at Peachey Publications?

He’s very knowledgeable. Patient. Supportive. Fair, and respects the effort you put into a project. Great at marketing. A good eye for editorial changes and so on. Communicates well, and often, during a project. Guidance very clear. Encourages feedback on his digital additions to the project, and welcomes feedback on design issues too. Just… yeah, great.

Peachey Publications would be perfect for those teachers who have an idea for an ebook – I feel Nik would offer a great level of support during both the writing and design process. Royalties split is also very good.

I said Nik waivered his fees. When PPub started, the idea was that paid subscribers could put a resource forward for publication and get Nik’s support with editing/design/promo. I don’t know if a subscription is necessary in order to publish with Peachey these days – best ask him yourself or maybe check the comments in this post.

In a nutshell, Nik turned what was an honest teacher’s (pair of teachers) raw(ish) materials into a publishable resource. We remain grateful and cheers him every six months. He provides a great service which could be a good springboard for new writers. Highly recommended.

You can buy the book here (affiliate)

You can read more from Peachey Pubs here.

Categories: General, reviews

Tags: books, elt, ESL, lesson ideas, materials development, materials writing, publishing, role-play, tefl, writer advice