All hardcovers for US delivery addresses have been ordered
almost 3 years ago – Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 07:48:02 AM

All hardcovers for delivery to US addresses have been ordered at Amazon.

I'm curious to see if this huge spike in demand in orders for a particular book does anything to Amazon's recommendation algorithm - will Escape the City be a best seller for a day or two?

Hardcovers are expected to be delivered around 21 - 23 June.

Next up (likely this weekend) I will inject orders for non-US deliveries.

In a week or two I will jump into the highest tiers - ordering books that will be rebound in leather, ordering books for the Lucifer's Hammer edition, etc.

Thanks for your patience, and your involvement in this long project!

Travis

All US orders for trade paperbacks have been placed
almost 3 years ago – Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 08:21:10 PM

All orders for trade paperbacks for US addresses have been placed at Amazon.

Delivery is projected for later this month (as you can see below).

There is no tracking information for these orders, but there are order IDs...which are not super useful to recipients, as these are MY orders, and thus Amazon won't give you information on them.

Next up, I will place orders for hardcover books for US addresses.  After that, I'll move on to foreign orders. 

Onward!

Travis

Shipping in Progress!
almost 3 years ago – Thu, Jun 10, 2021 at 06:55:14 PM

My script is driving the browser, placing order after order after order of author copies at Amazon.com !

So far around 50 orders for trade paperbacks shipped to US customers have been injected, out of about 850 total such orders.

Once this script run is done, I'll move on, over coming days, to tweaking the script to send out hardcovers (I have to use a different interface for that, as Amazon doesn't have the concept of "author copies" for hardcovers just yet), and then I'll move on to sending out both trades and hardcovers to non-US customers.

It's been a long slog, and once again, I thank you for your patience.

Travis

Shipping has started!
almost 3 years ago – Sun, Jun 06, 2021 at 07:16:09 PM

I've received proof copies of Escape the City in both trade and hardcover, and also of the Aristillus novels in hardcover, and they all look good.

This morning I sat down at my desk and fired up my tool that contacts Amazon and places orders.  The good news is that we got two orders shipped!  The bad news is that Amazon has a lot of security checks in place, and after the first two orders were placed, wanted me to re-verify my credit card number (quite reasonable).  In the process of fixing my script to do this additional step (plus other security steps that Amazon sometimes - but not always - adds), I kept getting 2FA phone calls to verify that it was really me ... and after 10 or 12 of these, I "used up" all of my Amazon confirmations for the day.

...so those 2 orders are all that are getting placed today, unfortunately.

I'll restart the ordering process tomorrow.

I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens then too, with just 10 or 20 orders getting out before hiccups intrude.  But, having been through this sort of hassle before, I know that barriers fall, and keep falling, and in short order all the kinks will be straightened out and we'll be firing for effect, with thousands of orders for books being sent to Amazon's print-on-demand machines.

And, as a reward for putting up with this nonsense, a picture of the smallest of this year's lambs, "smol".

 Thank you for your patience as I work hard to get these books in your hands.

TJIC

Locking addresses; shipping to start soon
almost 3 years ago – Wed, May 12, 2021 at 12:38:22 PM

Life on the homestead

I spent the weekend fighting invasive species (Japanese knotweed and bittersweet vine), and topping up raised beds with compost / loam mix.

I've mentioned it on twitter, but perhaps not here: one of our first year ewes (a small girl) somehow got knocked up last fall (often it doesn't happen until their second year), and delivered the tiniest lamb I've ever seen.  Without exaggerating, this fella was kitten sized when he was born...and now he's the size of a small cat.

We named him "smol" (lower case 's'), of course.

Here's smol in front of some normal sized lambs.

Shipping update

I have just clicked the button in Backerkit to lock addresses.  This means that you have 48 hours.

I hope to begin placing orders at the printer (a little firm named "Amazon.com") in 49 hours, and having the packages shipped directly from there.

Trade paperbacks and hardcovers will go out in this batch.  Limited edition hardcovers, Lucifer's Hammer edition hardcovers, and Future Farmer of Aristillus leather-bound books will go out over the coming weeks (or months, in the case of the FFA).

Other matters, other books

Life is pretty hectic right now - I'm wrapping up a contract gig, starting a new job next Monday (the first job job I've had this century), trying to ship books, doing ~16 hrs of farm chores per weekend, and also single-handedly fighting town hall (using nothing but (a) the state level equivalent of the FOIA act, (b) near-crippling autism, I've exposed a huge amount of corruption in the town's building department, planning board, and zoning board, and I'm launching multiple lawsuits, petition drives, and more).

To quote from an old article at Reason.com:

Once the "Barn Saga" (the root cause of all of this nonsense) is over in a year or two or three, I'll write a book about it.

My wife and I have also discussed the interest level in "Escape the City", and we've been talking about writing a few small companion books under the EtC brand.  Titles might include things like "Escape the City: Bacon", "Escape the City: Herbs and Herbal Teas", and "Escape the City: Toolchest".  ...but there are always more project ideas than time, so we'll see!  If you like the idea of short companion titles, leave a comment below.

Stay well, enjoy the beautiful spring weather, get your gardens in (if you've already escaped the city), or start daydreaming about next year's garden (if you haven't).

Travis