I have 14 packages left to ship out. However, I have come down with what the doctor thinks is probably chicken pox. 

So I'm going to wait until I'm no longer contagious; I'm sure you'd prefer to NOT get a side of viral infection with your copy of the book (and I'm sure the post office people would also like that).

Should be 7-10 days, according to the doc at the urgent care facility where I spent the last 3 hours for something he could have told me online, but oh well; that's American Health Care for you.

-Mike

We are 75% shipped out*. It would have been at closer to 80%, but last night my bank decided to flag one of the label purchases as fraud. Even though I replied to the automated email claiming that the purchase was legit, the transaction continued to be declined, so I'll have to wait until the bank opens on Monday to get that cleared up.
(Also, the post office is closed now anyways, so I couldn't drop anything off until Monday anyways).

* A note on buttons (domestic) and shirts (everyone):
Neither buttons nor shirts qualify for Media Mail. So it turns out that while I might be able to squeeze one button into a media mail, those who purchased multiple buttons dramatically increase the chance that the postal employees will notice. As a result, I'm going to have to send buttons separately for domestic orders and just eat the shipping cost myself if you ordered more than 1. International doesn't use media mail, so the button thing is irrelevant to non-domestic shipping.
As for the shirts: I'll have to send them to everyone individually once I actually HAVE them. This shirt order has been a freaking stone around my neck in terms of fulfilment. Again; I'll send them individually and eat the shipping cost since I already said I wouldn't charge again. 

I've been getting notices that some packages have arrived at destinations, so that's some good news.

I'll let you know once all the book-waves have been shipped, and then again when the shirts are going to happen.

-Mike

Hello all,

A small handful of books are already on their way. Most of the rest are waiting for the post office to open up again on Monday. They will be going out in waves over the course of the day or maybe two days, depending on how busy the office is. For those curious, Media Mail is not available online via Click-N-Ship because, according to the man I talked on at the post office, "Media Mail is a special category and we need to have a more hands-on approach." Ie: they need to make sure I'm only sending media and not, I dunno, cheese. I asked if things like bookmarks and the art cards can be considered 'incidental first class add-ons' and he said yes, so that should take care of most packages.

The only exception is those orders with T-shirts, which are unfortunately delayed as the shirt company quietly cancelled the order because I didn't set up an entire storefont using them, despite them offering individual samples. So I've had to re-order them from a different vendor. Luckily that only affects a very small number of people, a couple of which are close enough that I'm just hand-delivering their packages anyway.

Regarding tracking: As near as I can tell, when I ship via media mail they do give me a tracking number but they do not associate that tracking number online with a name or address. I'm going to try to get more clarity about this on Monday when the office opens; maybe there's something they can do. 

Hope you all have a great weekend, and hopefully you'll get an email with a tracking number soon.

-Mike

Hello,

I just got word back from Backerkit, so here is what we know, and here is what I'm going to do moving forward.

This is not an attempt to justify myself or excuse anything. Simply letting you all know where some of these numbers came from, and the mistakes that were made.

Domestic
To figure out the shipping fee schedule for domestic (US) orders, I used a YouTube video Backerkit posted a few years ago as a baseline. In the video, they said that I should take the base cost to ship the item(s) at one pound, add the cost of the cost of materials (boxes, padding, labels, etc), and then 'add a little more for your time and effort.' I added 6.61 (less than one hour at minimum wage) just to round it to an even number. Then the video said $5 for each additional pound. That seemed like a lot to me, so I reduced it to $3. Still, that made the 1 pound cost $12, 2 pounds $15, etc. (As a side note, Media Mail charges you by rounding up to the next pound, so the Special Editions, which weigh 2lb 2oz not including the box/padding/etc, are in the 3 pound category.)

Obviously, even at $3 per pound, that scaled much faster than the actual increase in Media Mail cost, which goes up around 70 cents or so per pound (it's not consistent).

My mistake for just blindly following a guide instead of engaging brain and thinking.


International
(Welcome to international shipping in the World that Trump Made)
There are a huge number of variables in international shipping, but I'll pick on one person who replied with his own numbers as an example. A ship to the UK, which cost $52 (plus VAT, but we'll get to that later).

USPS's Priority Mail International (US Post Office) would have cost $76.90 and had an estimated shipping time of 6-10 days.
USPS's Priority Mail Express International would have cost $97.20, and estimated 3-5 days.
UPS (United Parcel Service, the guys in brown) Worldwide Expedited would have cost $218.58 and arrived in 3-5 days.

I got the price down to 67% of the lowest possible price, with the UPS shipping time. Personally, I thought it was quite a deal.

And UK is one of the cheapest places to ship to other than Canada. Y'all in Australia or New Zealand? I'm so sorry.

VAT/GST/Sales Tax
I asked my Backerkit contact about this, since a lot of you seem to think it shouldn't be charged. He replied, "Collecting taxes on crowdfunding campaigns is not new, but backers who are new to crowdfunding may not be aware of this."

From my own research, it seems like a lot of countries (UK, EU, Canada) implemented a mandatory VAT/GST charge starting January 1, 2026. If you can find somewhere official that contradicts this, let me know! But this was my going to various country's VAT/GST sites and looking around. There are exceptions to the highest rate, but these books don't fall into any 'necessity'-level brackets.

There is a button in Backerkit to 'refund shipping fees.' Before I pressed that button, I asked BK if it was possible to do partial refunds to bring some of these prices back down to reality. Turns out, that button allows that functionality; it's not an all-or-nothing situation. (I was dreading having to refund everything and then charge you all AGAIN at a lower rate; I imagine your patience would have been ENTIRELY exhausted at that point, if it isn't already.)

I will be going through each individual order, computing the correct price, and refunding you the difference. As I have to do this manually, it might take a day or two, but most of you will be getting some money back.

Just so there are no more surprises, however, allow me to state the costs that will stay:
Base Price based on weight and location.
Cost of materials (boxes, padding, labels, applicable taxes)
I'll reduce the 'handling' fee to $5 for domestic and $7 for international (since the customs stuff is more time consuming).

A Note On Involvement
I'd like everyone to be aware that this debacle has been entirely on me (and a little on Backerkit for such really bad documentation). Jenn hasn't had anything to do with the fulfilment process; she just wrote and formatted the book. The rest has been me figuring out how to do this whole 'publishing' thing and, apparently, sucking at it.

Mea culpa.

-Mike

I'm investigating what happened and what can be done.