December’s Dastardly Sausage

This post goes to Patronizers in December and becomes public in January. Not a Patronizer? You could be! $12 a year gets you my latest updates, occasional free tidbits, and the completely pointless MWL Footnote Fortune File, freshly updated for the new edition of Networking for System Administrators.

A month of paperwork here.

The N4SA2e Kickstarter is “fulfilled,” meaning “Lucas has done everything that he can do” and not “everyone has received their books.” The printer (Ingram) has acknowledged all the drop shipment orders, but they’re backed up for the solstice. I am told that Ingram is running extra shifts to catch up, but physical products take time no matter what you do. This is the second time a campaign went large, and I’ve reached a couple of conclusions.

I am the wrong person to be doing this work.

Chasing a handful of people for their phone number and shipping address? No big deal.

Chasing a few hundred people for same? Big deal.

Some folks handle that just fine, but my brain is wired in such a way that I find it painful. I could just say “eh, they gave me money but didn’t give me an address, not my problem,” but that way leads to unhappy supporters. I want folks coming back for the next book. The photo in this Bluesky post is my goal–folks coming back, book after book, and buying them directly from me. The only way that happens if I make it work transparently. Catching Covid halfway through this fulfillment didn’t help. I need support.

The good news is, my “contact all sponsors and get their correct current shipping address” script worked. I had one misaddressed package. Seems the sponsor runs their own mail server and hadn’t got my email. I can deliver messages to the Email Empire reliably, but one dude on his own? Not so much. Still, I’m calling it a success. That wasn’t so bad.

Dropships are simple, in theory. I prepare a spreadsheet with the hundreds of orders on it. Each spreadsheet has an ISBN, title, address, phone number, shipping method, and so on. I send the spreadsheet to Ingram. They acknowledge it, print the books, and ship. Not a huge job, but tedious and annoying.

I know many detail-oriented people. I could easily hire one for short-term spreadsheet wrangling.

The annoying thing would be training them. Training means explanations. Explanations are best served by documentation. I’ve put off documenting Tilted Windmill Press business processes, in part because the whole time I’m committing them to writing I would have to suppress my fully natural desire to shriek THIS BUSINESS IS RIDICULOUS and while that’s certainly true I’ll eventually run out of air and black out.

But needs must when the devil drives. Capitalism is a pretty senior devil.

The material changes slowly, but too quickly for a book. The sensible way to document my processes in a way accessible to external employees would be… ugh… I don’t want to say it… a (gag) wiki. (I guess I’m now looking for recommendations for simple wiki servers that run well on BSD?)

The logical next question, though? If I’m going to document my processes, and they’re going to be on a web site, should I make the documents public?

Businesswise, I am a unicorn. Very few people make a living writing. Of those, most write for an organization like a publisher or a business. I write books independently and fling them into the public, at scale. A handful of other folks manage it. Huge names? Yes, Brandon Sanderson’s last Kickstarter had 185,341 backers and grossed $41,754,153, so that dude has an entire staff complete with HR department and a full-time spreadsheet wrangler and a single manager to insulate him from all of that. The minuscule gang at my size have all built our own systems for dealing with a hostile industry. Dealing with the vagaries of IngramSpark dropship spreadsheet? There’s maybe a few dozen authors in the world that have to do that for themselves.

But when you first meet the system it feels overwhelming. The newly initiated would welcome documentation.

Ditto for folks who have never used USPS to mail a thousand books from their living room. How do you prepare that spreadsheet? How do you manage the packages? What’s a manifest? It’s a straightforward job, easy to outsource–once you provide instructions.

But if I make this public I would attract comments. “How do I sort columns in LibreOffice?” “Apple Music doesn’t let me export spreadsheets.” “No way a woke doofus like you could have that many readers.” And, of course, the all-purpose “You are wrong.” Yes, I can open each page with a disclaimer and remove all contact information, but people are weirdly persistent in finding a mailbox to complain at.

But when an Ingram spreadsheet first assaulted my eyeballs, I would have cherished an experienced person’s scribbled notes.

But, but, but. Lots of back sides, no front sides.

I’ll be setting up a wiki for internal use, but we’ll have to see if I make it public or not.

The real time and energy savings of hiring someone won’t hit until the second time I hire that same person to help ship books, because the first time I’ll spend more resources documenting and training than I would doing the work myself. Writing this out, I should perhaps hire someone before I have a large campaign. It’s probably better to train them on a Dear Abyss or a Laserblasted than on a viral tech book.

Anyway, what else is going on?

I’m in a new Storybundle that supports World Central Kitchen! That’s cool. My book, Beastly Virtues, will never be in stores. I created this collection just for this Storybundle. I have enough short stories that I can create themed collections on just about anything–well, okay, maybe not for “hope.” Or “joy,” sure, but almost anything! This bundle is all about Wee Beasties, and is a great deal. Digital Reader patronizers, you’ll get a copy of my book but you should definitely check out the bundle.

With N4SA2e out the door, I should have the decks clear to start really cranking on the new OpenZFS book. It’s open for sponsorships, by the way, so do tell your friends. I don’t know if I’ll do a challenge coin for this book, though. Business thrives on predictability, and I don’t know if coins will be available by the time I finish the book or what the tariffs on them will be. I budget about $7-$8 for a coin, which makes print sponsorships slightly less profitable than Kickstarter backers who buy the special edition without the coin. If that becomes $20 a coin, there won’t be a coin. If inflation keeps climbing, there won’t be a coin. I really, REALLY want to not raise the price of sponsorships. I last seriously considered a sponsorship price increase in 2022.

The real answer is that the value of the dollar will continue to degrade until I am forced to raise prices. Then it will degrade further. Because that’s what the dollar does.

N4SA2e was my most sponsored book however, though, and if I can continue to attract numbers of sponsors I can hold off that price increase.

Anyway: docs. N4SA2e. Wee Beasties. OpenZFS. I think that’s it?

Thank you for your support. My Patronizer income might not be huge like some folks, but it’s predictable reliable and steady and that makes a world of difference when it comes to keeping the lights on.