Community

It's 11/11 and that means that Project Tasman is officially out in the world for the public to purchase.

While I know that most people who pledged to the campaign already got the book, some folks just tipped (or you may want more copies), so I'll give a quick pitch. If you want to purchase Project Tasman directly from me, you can do so via my Ko-Fi for signed paperbacks and hardcovers. For direct ebooks, you can either use my Ko-Fi or my PayHip store. Additionally, you can also get the book through common retailers I’ve worked with in the past, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Itch.io, and Kobo.

Also, for the first time ever, one of my books will also be available on launch day at a handful of stores. If you’re near one of the following stores, please consider patronizing their shop and picking up Project Tasman.

Finally, I want to take a moment to thank all of you. This book does not get published when it did without you all. You may have noticed that this is titled as the final community update and that's because every order where the person has completed the survey has been shipped. Not only that, every order but 1 has been delivered per tracking information (and that one has made it through customs in its destination country!). I'll still be fulfilling orders for the handful of uncompleted surveys when those are filled out. That said, this will be the last of the mass updates. I want to thank you all for being patient with me, for believing in me, and for wanting this book to become a real thing. It's finally here. And I couldn't be more grateful.

Hello everyone! It's almost the end of October. As such, it's time for me to give another update as to where I am with fulfillment. As of this moment, there are currently 29 orders that I am in the process of fulfilling. Of those 29, 8 are currently sitting on my cat tower waiting for me to take them to the post office in the morning, so some folks should be getting tracking information tomorrow. I'm working through making the remaining bonus Opus bookmarks for the other orders as quickly as I can. On a good day, I can make enough bookmarks for 3-4 orders, but most days it's only 1-2 (though I am getting faster at it!).

Right now, this puts me on track for getting the remaining orders out sometime around the end of the first week of November. Slightly behind what I planned, but not drastically so. That said, my jury duty summons is for this week. While I don't have to go tomorrow, the rest of the week is still up in the air on a day-to-day basis. As such, it's possible this plan could shift as a result. That said, I feel like I've managed to keep a small semblance of sanity as I've been doing this, even if my hand is angry at me most days. Curse my insistence of hand-writing sheet music instead of printing it off and laminating it.

That all said, after I'm dong with fulfillment, I hope to have a few retrospective posts about this project up on my Ko-Fi page. If nothing else, I want to be sure to share my experience with this crowdfunding adventure -- the good and the bad -- with folks considering doing it for the first time themselves in the future. Stay tuned for that.

Happy Friday everyone.

So it's October 9th. We're a little over a month since the campaign ended, but still just a little bit over a month until the main book release happens. What to do? What. To. Do.

Anyway. If you ordered an ebook of Project Tasman, it'll be coming to your email soon. Yes. A month and a weekend before the release date. Enjoy the book. Consider reviewing it on Goodreads, StoryGraph, Indie Story Geek, or wherever else your heart desires. It's my, admittedly small, way to thank everyone who supported me.

I'm working on packing orders over the next couple of weeks in order to ship as much as I can out before the end of the month. I've already sent out a handful of orders as tests to make sure BackerKit's fulfillment worked as I expected (it didn't initially, but we're good now). Physical orders will continue to trickle out over the next month as I make more Opus bookmarks -- because let's be honest, that's the part that takes me forever. 

Happy not actually release day but you get the book anyway day! Spread the word of Project Tasman over the course of the next month. Thank you all.

Hi everyone! October has started so it's update time.

As of yesterday, all orders where surveys have been filled out are locked. Those that have paid for physical items that need shipped will have shipping costs come out automatically when cards are charged (this should be tomorrow sometime if I'm doing my mental math correctly). My current hope is that I will have most, if not all orders shipped out by the end of October. This does look more likely than it did last update because all physical things I was waiting on arriving have since arrived.

That said, there are a couple of unexpected factors that are slowing things down -- either now or potentially will later in the month. The first is that I'm still working through creating the sheet music bookmarks for early bird orderers. This process is taking longer than I expected to the tune of nearly double the time I estimated. One of my friends suggested I print out the sheet music and turn that into bookmarks rather than hand-notating them all, but that's not what I promised you all. So the hand-notation soldiers on. It will still necessitate batch shipping, but orders without those bookmarks may well go out first just for my sanity. Second, I unexpectedly received notice today that I am summoned for jury duty later this month. While this shouldn't impact the actual making time on my end, it does impact the fact that I can typically go to the post office on my lunch most days. While I won't know for certain until the actual dates come up, it comes at a horrible time for shipping everything at end of month. I know that's not my fault, but I do still feel bad, not to mention a bit more stressed.

If you have any friends interested in getting Project Tasman, preorders are now live. While it would be really cool to get the neat little orange banner on Amazon, as I've never had one before, admittedly the ways that'll make me the most money would be people preordering from my Ko-Fi (physical copies) or Itch (digital copies). I don't expect a ton of preorders to happen because I suspect most folks who want the book supported here. That said, spreading the word is always appreciated.

Hi everyone! With surveys for backers closing next week, I wanted to post a few updates I have as to where I am in the process of getting everything ready to ship, be that physically or virtually. As of right now, all stickers, bookmarks, art prints, canvas prints, and paperbacks are to me. I've been spending some time most nights putting stickers together in little baggies for those getting those, as well as making sure I have enough of everything to send out. Well, that and hand making the early bird Opus bookmarks. That admittedly is taking some time still. I will likely ship out in batches as a result of that because that specific part of the process is time consuming.

As of right now (roughly 415pm on September 25th), the only things not ready to ship are the aforementioned sheet music bookmarks, as well as the hardcover versions of the book. When I last checked with Ingram Spark, those are still in the process of printing. This is causing me a pair of frustrations. The first is obviously that it's the last thing I'm waiting on to arrive and I just want things to get here already. But also because Ingram Spark prevents you from making edits to your file if you have an order currently printing. This is relevant because I found a couple of minor typos in the paperback copies I've already received. While they're nothing major (an extra space, a word being pockets instead of pocket, etc), they do still annoy me because they were somehow missed between myself, editor, proofreader, and beta readers. Which is okay in that we're all human and that we make mistakes, but I am still fixing them. The digital versions of the book backers will receive as rewards will have these corrected. The paperbacks and hardbacks, however, will not due to this file lock.

If you feel very strongly about having a paperback or hardcover copy with zero errors forever and ever amen, please let me know. I am likely going to need to order even more books at some point anyway, so I'll make note of it and add you to that shipment set. It just might be a bit of a delay on shipping because of the aforementioned items if you prefer that.

My hope is to have everything I can shipped out before November 1st. To do that though, there are still a handful of surveys (roughly 15% of all backers) that need to be completed. If you are still pending filling out your survey, please do that ASAP. Planned survey lock date is September 30th.

Thank you all for your support. Apologies for the lengthy post this time, but thank you for reading.

Surveys are out to all backers! Please fill them out.

That's the bulk of the update really. But it seems silly just to write a two sentence update, so let's lightning round a few quick items.

- All things related to rewards are either ordered or have arrived at my house already. Barring people adding on egregious amounts of stuff in the surveys, I should have more than enough to fulfill all orders just from what's ordered. But hey, if I'm proven wrong and people add-on a bunch of stuff, I'll order things again.

- For those of you who are local, I did set local pickup as an option (choose Local Pickup as your country and fill out the rest of the survey using the instructions on the page) if you want to pick up your order at my events in either Bowling Green, Ohio (October 10th) or Hudson, Ohio (October 24th). More specifics for these are on the survey.

- Brielle's backstory short story is edited, formatted, and ready to send out with the rest of the rewards. There will be no delay on this reward (yay!).

- Over the new two weeks while people are filling out surveys, I'll be focusing on making minor edits to the Project Tasman .epub file (as I noticed some minor formatting wonkyness the other day) and hand notating sheet music bookmarks for the early bird pledges. So. Much. Hand. Notating.

That's all. Tell me a joke in the comments if you want.