My babysitting gig is coming to an end. A relative of NotMyBaby’s mother has moved into town and expressed an interest in watching NMB. The relative will probably do the childcare for free which will be a big relief for their budget and completely undercuts my prices. I’m actually glad for this development. I’ve been wanting to throw myself into household and yard projects, but have been prevented by NMB’s needs. The extra income was nice, but doing book keeping for Chalain is going to provide about the same amount of money with less impediment to my desired projects.
The biggest of these projects is the forthcoming Schlock book. We’ve decided to self publish the book and handle all the inventory and shipping ourselves. This is a huge undertaking. I’m excited for the challenge and extra glad that I don’t have to figure out how to do it while watching an increasingly active toddler. The book will be off to the printer in just about a week. 30 days later we’ll have preview copies. 30 days after that we’ll have thousands of books to store, package, and ship.
In the next 30 days I need to:
discuss bulk mailing options with a USPS customer service person
Figure out what format I want the pre-order mailing lists to be in
Figure out how to quickly create mailing labels from mailing lists
Calculate shipping to various locations in the world so we can set up pre-ordering
In the next 60 days I need to:
price and order mailers
Make space in the storage room for thousands of books
create a workspace where I can regularly be packing books for shipping
set up financial software for inventory tracking
All of that is in addition to the impending spring yard work projects. (I always long for warm weather so I can be outside, but I forget how much more work my yard is during warm weather.)
I’m very excited to finally be so close to having books. The time is right. All the pieces are falling into place. And the sample pages I’ve seen look wonderful.
You make it sound like you have 67 days.
You don’t. You have 7 days until it goes to the printer for a test, 7 more until the test comes back, and then 35 from when we say “looks great” to the time that a hojillion books arrive on our doorstep.
49 days. Or less, if I can get my act together.
–Howard
You make it sound like you have 67 days.
You don’t. You have 7 days until it goes to the printer for a test, 7 more until the test comes back, and then 35 from when we say “looks great” to the time that a hojillion books arrive on our doorstep.
49 days. Or less, if I can get my act together.
–Howard
Looks like I’ll have to get my new mailing address to preorder…
Great to see everything finally coming together after all the hard work. Keep it up!
Looks like I’ll have to get my new mailing address to preorder…
Great to see everything finally coming together after all the hard work. Keep it up!
If I recall correctly from my parents’ experiences with converting mailing lists into labels, MS Word’s label printing features are excellent. I don’t know if you have a copy of Office, or if OpenOffice is capable of the same features, but I recall Word’s ability to import an Excel spreadsheet full of mailing list information, parse it into addresses, and spit it into a label-sized table (with a provided label format), given the type of label sheet you’re using. A fantastic bit of functionality, though I’m afraid I can’t remember exactly how it works.
Also, I remember Kevin Pease’s attempts to ship his own self-published book. Apparently you can get free mailers from the USPS for use with their Priority Mail service, but they’ll only give you so many at a time. I think he ended up hitting every branch within a reasonable distance to collect the necessary envelopes.
Good luck! I look forward to preordering.
If I recall correctly from my parents’ experiences with converting mailing lists into labels, MS Word’s label printing features are excellent. I don’t know if you have a copy of Office, or if OpenOffice is capable of the same features, but I recall Word’s ability to import an Excel spreadsheet full of mailing list information, parse it into addresses, and spit it into a label-sized table (with a provided label format), given the type of label sheet you’re using. A fantastic bit of functionality, though I’m afraid I can’t remember exactly how it works.
Also, I remember Kevin Pease’s attempts to ship his own self-published book. Apparently you can get free mailers from the USPS for use with their Priority Mail service, but they’ll only give you so many at a time. I think he ended up hitting every branch within a reasonable distance to collect the necessary envelopes.
Good luck! I look forward to preordering.
Definitely talk to the USPS, they’ll give you up to 500 of their mailing labels at a time for free. They’ve got a mailing label program, but it requires importing a csv file into it but it also free! Plus various other shipping supplies also free. Opps, you do have to mail the books via the USPS and I am prejudiced my niece and her spouse both work for them.
Definitely talk to the USPS, they’ll give you up to 500 of their mailing labels at a time for free. They’ve got a mailing label program, but it requires importing a csv file into it but it also free! Plus various other shipping supplies also free. Opps, you do have to mail the books via the USPS and I am prejudiced my niece and her spouse both work for them.
Book Rate
You can also ship it all book rate because it is bound material. Supposedly it gets there a bit slower but I have yet to find that to be the case.
Book Rate
You can also ship it all book rate because it is bound material. Supposedly it gets there a bit slower but I have yet to find that to be the case.
Creating labels
MS Word has a feature called mail merge. It takes addresses from an existing database or spreadsheet and puts them into a form you can print ie letters, envelopes, labels. Use the help feature in word and it should walk you right through it. I don’t have personal experience with it or I’d be more help.
Creating labels
MS Word has a feature called mail merge. It takes addresses from an existing database or spreadsheet and puts them into a form you can print ie letters, envelopes, labels. Use the help feature in word and it should walk you right through it. I don’t have personal experience with it or I’d be more help.
I SOOOO can NOT wait! Let’s see….oldest turns 18…would be a GREAT b-day pressie for her. Brother’s b-day is 2 days later, he’d love the book. Oh..and I’m thinking carrying some copies in the coffee house out here. *GRINS* Have to spread the Schlock through Tacoma ya know!
OHOH! Can’t forget! I need one for me! LOL
I SOOOO can NOT wait! Let’s see….oldest turns 18…would be a GREAT b-day pressie for her. Brother’s b-day is 2 days later, he’d love the book. Oh..and I’m thinking carrying some copies in the coffee house out here. *GRINS* Have to spread the Schlock through Tacoma ya know!
OHOH! Can’t forget! I need one for me! LOL
If you guys need to build a database (for mailing, tracking, whatever), either locally, or on the web, let me know. It is what I do (among other stuff).
If you guys need to build a database (for mailing, tracking, whatever), either locally, or on the web, let me know. It is what I do (among other stuff).
I don’t know if this would be useful to you folks, but since you might still be living in the area of one of the schools y’all’re alumni from…I just discovered that some universities allow alumni to ship through the university mailing centers – at whatever mailing rates the university has negotiated, including bulk and book rates. Obviously, you pay for the postage. But the discounts can be quite notable.
I apologize for not knowing off the top of my head where you folks went to school or if you’re currently anywhere *near* that area. But this could potentially save you a bunch of money, so I thought I’d mention it.
I don’t know if this would be useful to you folks, but since you might still be living in the area of one of the schools y’all’re alumni from…I just discovered that some universities allow alumni to ship through the university mailing centers – at whatever mailing rates the university has negotiated, including bulk and book rates. Obviously, you pay for the postage. But the discounts can be quite notable.
I apologize for not knowing off the top of my head where you folks went to school or if you’re currently anywhere *near* that area. But this could potentially save you a bunch of money, so I thought I’d mention it.
Hooray for books!
Hooray for secondary income coming along just as other secondary income goes away, and being more convenient (who can beat that?)!
I would say hooray for yardwork, but.. ewww. I love my potted plants, and I always say that I’m going to get serious and do some major flowerbeds… but then the Texas-sized skeeters get me and I go back inside. Might not be able to do that this year, the 3-year-old is an outside junkie. But still!
Hooray for books!
Hooray for secondary income coming along just as other secondary income goes away, and being more convenient (who can beat that?)!
I would say hooray for yardwork, but.. ewww. I love my potted plants, and I always say that I’m going to get serious and do some major flowerbeds… but then the Texas-sized skeeters get me and I go back inside. Might not be able to do that this year, the 3-year-old is an outside junkie. But still!
Books! Yay!
Books! Yay!
Timing
Warning:
The previous comment is not designed to reduce Sandra’s Stress Level. It is, however, designed to increase Howard’s iterations of, “But, But, But I just meant to be precise!!!”
Thank you for your understanding.
The Management
Timing
Warning:
The previous comment is not designed to reduce Sandra’s Stress Level. It is, however, designed to increase Howard’s iterations of, “But, But, But I just meant to be precise!!!”
Thank you for your understanding.
The Management
Re: Timing
I thought of posting a humorously grumpy reply when Howard posted this comment, but life got busy and other things were more important. Besides I’d rather know my calculations were off as soon as possible.
Also he made dinner that night which relieved much of the imediate stress.
Re: Timing
I thought of posting a humorously grumpy reply when Howard posted this comment, but life got busy and other things were more important. Besides I’d rather know my calculations were off as soon as possible.
Also he made dinner that night which relieved much of the imediate stress.