Business thoughts
The future rushes toward me. I have less than two weeks until April is gone. Since “end of April” is our goal for finishing the Schlock book layout, I have much work left to do. Howard and I also had a discussion today where we tried to decide when we’ll open pre-ordering for Hold on to Your Horses. I won’t have books in hand until mid-July. I don’t want people to have to wait too long. However, I’m honestly not sure how well the book will sell. Sometimes I feel like we’ll be lucky to hit 700 books (our break-even point) other times I wonder if 2000 books will be enough. Unfortunately the “you must decide how many books you are ordering” point comes mid-May. After that the numbers are set. So we’re considering opening orders before that point, to get a good count. But then people will have to wait three months before they can have the book they paid for. I don’t like making people wait so long. I’m pondering incentives like autographed bookplates.
Further complicating things, we’ll be opening pre-orders for The Teraport Wars before mid-July. This means that I’ll be running two pre-order sorts simultaneously. Apparently we are incapable of making the process simpler rather than more complex. Fortunately the system I run can handle this kind of thing without trouble. I’ll just have to buy more file boxes. Also between now and July will probably be further runs of merchandise. We’ve got to keep bailing so that we can plug those debt holes and make this boat really seaworthy.
Today none of this oppresses me. Summer is a good time for me to be busy with shipping because I don’t have to run the kid’s school schedules. I’m looking forward to getting to finish off old projects and begin new ones. Hopefully in May I’ll get to start layout on “the Schlock book formerly known as Out from Under New Management which has yet to be renamed.“