It turns out to make pre-ordering a thing with a Createspace-self-published book requires hoops. As it stands, when setting up the book information you can select a publication date, but you can’t select a publication date in the future. When I saw that, the first thing that came to mind is that someone has a planned publication date, they can enter in their date, and once it’s approved pre-ordering can begin. Nothing of the sort! That’s just there if the book was published in the past, I guess? I dunno. And of course once a book’s proof is approved, once the author says “yes, everything looks fine, the book is in place and set up right”, that’s equivalent to saying “sell the book NOW”.
So, to summarize, no pre-orders. Also, I can’t actually order non-proof copies of the book before approving it, so pre-ordering it by pledging on my Patreon won’t really get it any faster either. So that’s kind of a dead end there, no pre-ordering for the physical book, and for the ebook only pre-ordering through my Patreon.
Speaking of Patreon, I’ve done some changes. (Actually as of my typing this I have made no changes, but I’m partly using this to organize my thoughts while I change it). One of these days I should change that intro video to just be my voice with some images, no one wants to stare at me for a few minutes.
I’ve done a bit of editing on the about page, but it’s nothing too major. I might have changed one word on the milestones. What I’m really changing are the rewards. The $12 reward was originally for a signed book, but that has been changed to an unsigned one. There’s a new reward of $15 for a signed book. Why?
A signed book nearly doubles the cost to me, because first I have to ship it to me, sign it, then ship it out, so I pay for shipping twice. Cost analysis: as a creator, ordering a copy of Slubes only costs me $4.61, with $3.59 for shipping. Thus, if I ship it directly to someone this way, it costs $8.20. This is slightly lowered when I order them to my place because I’ll get 10 or so at once; since shipping doesn’t go up the same amount per book, it’ll result in something resembling $6 per book. Then I sign it, and from what the USPS website says the cost of shipping the book to someone becomes $6.45, so that comes to about $12 or so. The cost of signing the book is about $4 (not counting the ink used, and I kind of have a box of 50 pens I got for free due to Amazon free shipping shenaginags so whatever).
For the record, and I don’t think I mentioned this yet and probably should have, the new edition of Slubes will have a price of $12. I don’t give a fig for this $#.99 nonsense. Psychological pricing, pfft. Also while looking up the name of that I came across the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Hats off to the UK. Not that I’m wearing a hat. In my case it might be hair off. Not for another month or so. Where was I? Oh, right.
$12 for Slubes normally, minus whatever percentage off Amazon might do at any given moment, plus shipping unless you have some membership with something or spend another $23 or so. $12 pledge on Patreon for a copy with no shipping cost, and $15 pledge for a signed copy with no shipping cost. Ebooks, meanwhile, are $1 regardless of Patreon or directly on Smashwords. And I don’t think I can sign ebooks…
That’s about it for this informationativel update. More fun stuff later!
Duth Olec's Cuckoo Cosmos 