January 2022 Girl Genius Sparks and Monsters Update!
about 2 years ago
– Tue, Apr 05, 2022 at 03:47:10 PM
Hello everyone, and Happy New Year!
As of the first week of December, we are now in the stage of the campaign where all but a few troublesome items have shipped. More on that below under “CRUNCHY SHIPPING INFORMATION.” Now is the time that I take care of shipments that have gone astray or been damaged, and handle the usual small problems that arise in the wake of a big shipment like this.
THE BACKERKIT STORE
I’ve finally got the BackerKit store opened to the general public, which is a huge relief. I wanted to do it sooner, but things kept getting in my way. (Emerald City ComicCon and Christmas being two big ones.) I also wanted to wait and make sure that anything coming in from the BK store wouldn't interfere with shipping to our actual backers, so there's that.
HARDCOVER ADVENTURES
We went through and counted all the HC books to make sure that we have enough set aside for all our backers, plus a bunch in case of damaged or lost shipments. This set had a LOT of damage for some reason, so we had to pull out a lot of unsellables, but we found that we have about 35 good volumes left over. We’re kind of surprised, we didn’t expect to be able to offer any on the BK store at all. The demand for hardcovers was surprisingly huge this time!
THE EXORCISM ENGINES
As for the next campaign, for Girl Genius Volume 20: The Exorcism Engines, I suspect that will be going live in early February. I’m always thinking about how to improve the Kickstarter campaigns, and this time, I’m getting all the artwork and extras planned out, drawn, colored, and in a few cases, printed, ahead of time. This should speed me up a lot. I’m also limiting this one to printed flat things, which should help with shipping costs. Later in the year, I’ll do another Kickstarter campaign with the medals, patches, and extras. I suspect that splitting things like this will bring in less money than usual, but it will have a huge advantage in that it will make the shipping process a LOT more manageable! (And, as I said, will hopefully improve speed and cut down on shipping costs.)
Thanks, everyone! I’ll be back with more later!
--Kaja
CRUNCHY SHIPPING INFORMATION
Here are the Shipping trouble spots:
The SCIENCE fobs are still on their way from the factory. I am expecting final samples this week. Once I’ve approved those I expect the full shipment to arrive a few weeks later. The fobs have been nothing but revisions and re-dos, but I think they’ll get it this time. I’ll ship those out right away when they come in, and I’ll post about it here.
Domestic orders that included fobs were sent out with a note that the fobs are backordered. International orders, I’m waiting to ship the whole thing, because shipping is so crashingly expensive that I only want to do it once. I’m sorry for the wait.
The other problem is…Australia. I still can’t ship stuff to Australia. Or New Zealand, apparently. This can’t last. Here’s the error text: “Unable to complete shipment purchase: deliveries are currently suspended and not available for purchase.” I’m checking every day, and I promise I will ship those out as soon as World events let me. Thank you for being so patient with us.
Late November Girl Genius Update and News!
about 2 years ago
– Sat, Feb 19, 2022 at 06:53:30 AM
Hello everyone--
This is an early update because I have some immediate news.
We Are Currently on Thanksgiving Holiday
First, off, please be aware that Chris Sorensen, who handles our email and correspondence, is on a well-deserved break with his family over our Thanksgiving holiday weekend. He says he’ll be back and ready to slog through the mail on Monday. So, if you write to us, please be patient! We’re running around catching turkeys and stalking potato beasts right now, but we’ll be back on the job soon.
I'm Very Nearly Done with the Shipping!
Next, and more exciting (for me, anyway) I am almost done with the shipping! Not completely, though. I still have a few more days of work before I can truly dust off my hands and sit down for a few minutes. And of course, there is still the Australia question, which I hope will sort itself out soon, and we hope to have the backordered Science fobs in any day now.) My fingerprints are gone from all the tape. For the big batches that we could pack assembly-line style, I dragged the kids into the fun, and we packed in front of the TV. This shipment is 99% brought to you by Broadway, and I feel like I’ll have Prologue: Into the Woods stuck in my head forever.
Phil will be at Emerald City Comic Con
Watch for Phil at the Girl Genius booth (118) at ECCC, Thursday, December 2 through Sunday, December 5! He’ll have lots of books and games, all of which make great Holiday presents! I’m not going, but I’m hoping to sign at least a few of the books before they leave the house, so I’ll have at least a small presence there.
Phil’s New Novel is Out!
Phil has written a new novel: The Night Sheriff. It’s the story of a vampire-like creature charged with the protection of a beloved theme park, and how he must defend himself, the park, and his fellow supernatural creatures from a mysterious outside threat. The book is now available from Amazon in paperback and kindle formats.
And Some Extra Thoughts:
While I’ve been packing your rewards, I’ve been writing down some thoughts I wanted to share with you all. Here they are in no particular order:
--In a lot of cases, the posters are inside the front covers of the books. It just seemed like a good way to protect them. If you think I’ve forgotten to include your poster, check there first!
--Unless it’s specifically noted on a packing slip, all your rewards should be arriving in one shipment. Fobs, of course, are the exception, they’re still walking here from the factory, and I’ll ship them when they come in. (I know there are a lot of supply issues out there right now, but why is it always the fobs?)
--I can’t say I love the binding on the hardcovers this year. I mean, they’re fine, they'll work, and I’ll have to cope, but I’m going to have a talk with the printer before the next book.
--I’m pretty sure that in a couple of cases I forgot to add the little “Thank you” letter. If I forgot yours, I’m sorry! I thank you all from the bottom of my heart, letter or no!
--I’ve put all the books in plastic bags this year, because a few of them went swimming on their way to Norway last time. Also, things are very damp here in the Pacific Northwest at this time of year.
--If it looks like someone has been opening your mail, it was probably me checking to see if the extra patch sitting on the table after I packed the batch was left out of someone’s order or if I just miscounted during setup. Whee!
--Medals come to me wrapped in plastic bags that have been folded over and stapled. I have to snip them free, so they lay down flat for packing. I can’t just pull them apart without winding up with staples in my fingers. I think next time I need to get them shipped on fancy little cards or something. You know, like the cool ones at Disneyland. We'll see. I'm getting quotes.
--If you got something extra in your order, you don’t need to write to us about it unless we accidentally packed our phone or keys or something in there. I sometimes make mistakes or add stuff on a whim, so don’t worry about it. So long as you got everything you ordered, we’re good!
And that's everything I can think of that I wanted to tell you right away. I'll still be packing things this holiday weekend, and in fact it's a bit frustrating to stop working on that to write this post, but I'm really hoping to be able to give you all good news when I post December's update. It's very thrilling!
Thank you, everyone, and have a wonderful rest of the week--
--Kaja
January Girl Genius Sparks and Monsters Campaign Update!
about 2 years ago
– Sat, Feb 19, 2022 at 06:53:11 AM
Hello everyone, and Happy Lunar New Year!
Here is the latest news:
FOBS–SAMPLES ARE HERE AND APPROVED! THE FOBS ARE FINALLY IN PRODUCTION!
The fob samples arrived, and they are beautiful! Our pin makers say I can start watching my mailbox for the fobs at the beginning of March. It is an uncomfortably long wait, but I will get to work with the shipping the minute they come in.
VOLUME 20 PLANS
I am still waiting for printer quotes for Girl Genius Volume 20. Since I can’t launch the next Kickstarter until I have all my math done, this means that we will probably not launch the next campaign until early March. This suits me since I would quite like to have at least a start on shipping those fobs before launching a new campaign, and it gives me a little extra time to get things set up nicely.
SIGN UP TO BE NOTIFIED!
I might actually have a few early-bird deals this time, so you can sign up to be notified when we go live here on the Kickstarter pre-launch page.
NEW HARDCOVER EDITIONS OF EARLY VOLUMES!
We’ll be printing the usual softcover and fancy puffy first edition hardcover of Volume 20, with all the usual flat paper extras. (We’re leaving things that can’t go book rate for another campaign.) We also need to reprint Volumes 1, 2 and 5, so those are going to be stretch goals. I'm waiting for the printer quotes so I know how much it will cost us to reprint those. The big news is that, twenty-odd years in, we're hoping to do a new, mass-market hardcover edition as we reprint those old volumes. It won't be the fancy first-edition version, those will still be the lovely collectible volumes they've always been, but it will still be nice.
CRUNCHY SHIPPING DETAILS--
Everything for our USA backers has shipped. I sent everything out except for the fobs, which will be sent along separately when they arrive.
Most packages for our overseas backers have shipped.
Overseas packages for backers whose orders need a fob are still waiting for the fobs to come in. I apologize for the wait. The extra expense of sending the fob later is frankly insane, so I’m just waiting. I don’t feel great about it.
We still can’t ship to Australia because of COVID, this is getting ridiculous. I have all your stuff set aside and I check the situation frequently.
FINALLY—
I’ve added volume 19 to the dropdown on our Kickstarter Backer Contact Form, so please, if possible, use that to contact us about problems with your order. It’s the best way to be sure we catch your question. Questions directly on Kickstarter sometimes get lost in the sea of comments, especially if they’re on older campaigns, and I really want to be sure you get your rewards.
I recently discovered that using ZenDesk to answer questions from Kickstarter sometimes means the answers don’t get through. If you didn't get an answer, it may be because I answered you and it didn't make it, and I am so sorry! We are no longer relying on our ZenDesk system to do anything except maybe tell us there’s a question on Kickstarter. It’s still great for other things, though.
And that’s all I have to tell you for now, but I hope there will be more soon. Thanks, everyone!
--Kaja
November 2021 Update!
over 2 years ago
– Wed, Nov 03, 2021 at 07:10:02 PM
Hello again everyone!
Not much new to say, I'm still putting things in boxes and shipping them. The living room is full of boxes and shipping activity, so if we want a Christmas tree this year, I'd better get this project finished up tout suite.
I have run into a problem that I hope won't stick around too long: I can't currently ship anything to Australia. I apologise profusely to all our Australian friends! I'm setting all the Australian shipments aside as I pack and hoping that things will change quickly. As I understand it, Australia doesn't want our germs, and so they're not accepting any post from us at the moment. It doesn't seem to work the other way, I just got the jar of Moccona I ordered with no trouble. (Did they change the formula? It tastes a bit off.) The only nice thing about this (I guess) is that it's making me really appreciate how many Australian backers we have, which makes me happy.
In other news, Phil's shoulder is healing nicely, and would be doing even better if he would stop doing things with it. Fortunately, one of the things he's doing is his physical therapy, so that's good.
The Kickstarter campaign over at Steve Jackson Games is doing very well indeed, and we're thrilled about it. That's the long-awaited Girl Genius Role-Playing Sourcebook Powered by GURPS, and they tell us we're doing almost as well as the Discworld book, which means a lot to us. Discworld is a bit holy around here. Anyway, there are 6 days to go on that one. Please check it out!
As for opening up the Sparks and Monsters BackerKit store to the rest of the World, which I've had a couple of inquiries about, I'll do that soonish, but I want to be a little farther along with the shipping for backers before I add more to the pile.
Thanks, everyone! I'll be back with more info when there's more info!
--Kaja
Halloween Wallpapers and Steve Jackson's Girl Genius RPG sourcebook Kickstarter
over 2 years ago
– Sat, Oct 23, 2021 at 03:08:00 PM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
