Hi listeners.

I’m continuing to work through fulfillment and have now finished checking all of the books! Some didn’t survive the transit to me unscathed, but I am very happy to say the printer’s customer service team was quick to respond and are organising a reprint for me as we speak. I don’t anticipate this causing significant delays, not the least of which because I still have plenty of books here to wrap up.

 

This week, I also finished uploading all of the shipping and customs details into the Australia Post portal, ready for final checks and processing. Some backers will see that they’ve been charged for shipping as part of the very first batch! This was a great way for me to work out how many days it would take from me putting the charge through, to receiving the funding so I could pay Australia Post. Which seems to only be a few, even across different banks.

 

Having also received some tips about how to do more aggressive checks of parcel integrity, I’ve decided to swap from honeycomb paper to bubble wrap to ensure books stay as centred in their rigid mailers as possible. I had wanted to use the honeycomb wrapping to make the packages more recyclable for backers whilst providing padding for the books, but I feel the bubble wrap does hold them in place better and doesn’t have any real impact on the overall weight.

 

My plan for this weekend is to continue prepping this first batch of parcels, including paying for and printing the shipping labels. Although admittedly I was a little over excited to be at the stage of shipping the first books out, and made this batch a bit bigger than I had initially planned to. So if you have seen the shipping charge come through, please bear with me as I get the books all bundled up and ready to take to the post office!

 

For tonight’s song recommendation I’d like to leave you with a wonderful cover of Hounds of Love by Eivør.

 

Dorian.

*Soundwave graphic created by @kjpargeter. Profile art by Natalie Chenard.