Author: Michael Lucas

[This article contains RYOMS gift spoilers for print-level sponsors and Patronizers. I think everyone has their packages, but just in case, you’ve been warned.]

[This post went to Patronizers at the beginning of October, and the public at the beginning of November. Not a Patronizer? You could be, for the low price of $12 a year all thee way up to the high price of “however much money you want to dispose of.”]

It’s Halloween Month, and there was much rejoicing.

I perform one experiment with every project I do. Sometimes, like with RYOMS, I do two. I’ll discuss the boring experiment at the end of this post, but let’s start with the one that bit me.

For the Run Your Own Mail Server Kickstarter, my experiment was “drop shipping.” A reader buys the book from me, I order it from the printer and have it shipped directly to the reader. Seems fine, right? I discussed the problems with the EU’s IOSS last month, but this month has uncovered new wrinkles.

Dropship books might take weeks to deliver. If I’m lucky.

They might or might not get tracking numbers, depending on the recipient’s country, but the form email the printer sends includes the text “Here is your tracking number.” If they won’t give a tracking number, that space is blank. People are understandably confused. I can say “give me a tracking number for all shipments,” but printers charge a great deal for that. Some destinations are only $20 in shipping, but some are over a hundred dollars! There’s no way to tell before you order. It’d be cheaper to give up on dropshipping altogether.

I’ve said many times that I believe in incremental progress, not virality. Expecting that your project will go viral is a great way to fail. While I don’t believe in virality, virality believes in me. Suddenly I was performing my little dropship experiment on hundreds of people. A smarter author would have limited the number of dropships to a manageable level, but “smarter author” goes in the same heap as “jumbo shrimp” and “Trump’s intelligence.” I suspect the dropships were part of why this campaign went viral, though.

So now I’m managing expectations for hundreds of people, and I’m not entirely sure when the books will arrive or where the are. Because no tracking numbers.

The next time I do an experiment with something that runs a risk of going viral, I’ll be labeling that option “experimental” and add text like, “I have learned how this is done and understand the mechanical process, but have no personal experience with it in the real world. I have no idea what the problems will be, but I will work through them and communicate.”

New words proceed slowly, thanks to me shipping about five hundred signed books this month and various family emergencies. While I can have my job as long as I do the work, I also have the most flexible schedule. This means that if a parent winds up in the hospital, I’m elected to deal with it. Lucky me!

But initial feedback on RYOMS is mostly positive. Except for the dropshippers, and they’re complaining about delivery rather than the book itself. Publishing is hard, y’all.

So then there’s my second experiment. It affects sponsors. I talked about my Reader Acquisition Funnel over a year ago, but as a quick reminder: that’s the process I use to lure readers into a closer tie with my work. It has nine layers, just like Dante’s Inferno.

1. Read my free or discounted samples (articles in magazines, free first in series, sample pages in bookstore, library check-out)
2. Buy my books through retail channels
3. Social media follow
4. Sign up for my mailing list
5. Buy books directly from me
6. Kickstarter
7. Sponsor
8. Regular monthly contributor (you folks!)
9. You do all my chores so I can write more

My goal is to lure people down into the deepest layers so it’s harder for them to escape to cut out middleman fees. But if I’m offering backer-exclusive special editions on Kickstarter, I need to offer something something to entice those people to descend into sponsorship. The special editions are exclusive to prepublication backers, but what do the sponsors get?

For RYOMS, the sponsors got this.

It’s the RYOMS Challenge Coin! It’s weighty. The rat is solidly three-dimensional, looming out of the coin. Plus, I firmly believe that SIGYIKES would be a valuable addition to Unix.

Which is perhaps the daftest thing I’ve ever done–other than the Manly McManface edition of Ed Mastery, of course.

And the Networknomicon.

Okay, yeah, fine, there’s the systemd satirical erotica.

And the blockchain dystopian erotica.

Look, we could be here all day. Let’s move on.

The minimum cost-effective press run is 100 coins. The only way to get this is to be a print sponsor or print-level Patronizer. I do have a few extra coins that I’ll use to solve fulfillment problems. Any survivors will be auctioned off for charity. The coins seem to amuse people, so if I ever have another book with 100 print sponsors I’ll probably do it again. I must offer something unique to lure people deeper down the funnel, after all!

I must once again thank y’all for hanging out in Malbolge with me. I’m not saying that my career is a fraud–no, wait, I say that all the freaking time. At least I’m honest about it. I’m sure that’ll count for something when I reach the Afterlife. Not that I believe in an Afterlife, but if it’s a real thing I’ll be able to shout “Yay, I was proven wrong!” which is infinitely better than not having the chance to lament being correct as the neural network I call me dissolves into the Void. It’s Pascal’s Wager in reverse.

On the 15th of this month I’ll be launching the Dear Abyss Kickstarter and sponsorships for Networking for Systems Administrators, 2nd Edition. Because a sane release schedule is something that happens to neurotypical neural networks.

And with that, I better go make some words.

[this post went to Patronizers at the beginning of September, and to the public at the beginning of October.]

Pretty sure August was eating locoweed.

The “Run Your Own Mail Server” Kickstarter owned most of my hide this last month. Not all of it. A patch on the back of my neck remains freehold. I managed to make a few words on what I’m calling #projectIDGAF, but mostly it’s been investing in production stuff. Which means spreadsheets.

My main printer, IngramSpark has facilities in the US, UK, Australia, and Italy. When I launched the RYOMS Kickstarter, I intended to dropship copies through them. Turns out, it’s not quite that easy. Part of the problem was scale. Based on previous Kickstarters, I thought I might need to dropship to thirty, perhaps fifty people. I got over seven hundred. The IngramSpark ordering interface is tortuous. I am not capable of correctly entering seven hundred orders in that interface. I began looking for a virtual assistant. Found one.

Then I discovered a way out.

Turns out that IngramSpark has a secret industrial-scale ordering system that accepts orders via spreadsheet. Gaining access to it requires you have a friend who already has access, who is willing to vouch for you. Fortunately, I have such a friend. You also need to be submitting several hundred orders. I barely qualified. (Random people on the Internet, please don’t contact me asking me to vouch for you. I don’t endorse random Internet people.) It’s an Excel spreadsheet, complete with macros, that must be filled out in a very specific manner. You know, like every application written in-house by non-programmers. Once you grow accustomed to its quirks, though, it’s infinitely better than entering orders by hand.

I’m keeping the virtual assistant info, though. With luck, I’ll need them later.

When it came to ordering books for backers in the EU, the plan fell apart. The EU has VAT. I have never worried about VAT. I don’t have to worry about VAT until I hit ten thousand euros of EU business per year. Even with RYOMS, I didn’t hit that. When I ship from the US, recipients pay VAT as part of the delivery. It varies by country, but the general pattern seems to be “recipient is contacted, recipient goes to a web site to pay, carrier delivers package.” My sponsors and Patronizers are pretty familiar with how that works.

When I cross ten thousand euros a year, I have to register for the Internet One Stop Shop VAT. This is expensive, but if I’m doing over ten thousand euros a year it would start to be worth it. That’s very much a First World Author problem, though.

If I print books inside the EU, the books would be mailed to recipients without those fees. The problem is getting people to print books in the EU. IngramSpark’s interface to their Italian plant is in the UK, and is legally treated as a UK entity. (I don’t pretend to understand the details, but presumably they have the contracts and lawyers to make it legit.) Brexit fubar’d everything for me there. There are other printers in the EU, however. Some of them would print a few hundred books for me! Except every one of them wants my IOSS paperwork beforehand. It doesn’t matter that I don’t need IOSS. Printers run quite conservative businesses, and take zero risks. It doesn’t matter that even with the lightning strike of RYOMS I don’t meet IOSS limits.

So I’m shipping most backers globally from IngramSpark. Based on the advice of assorted experienced folks, I’m using BookVault to fulfill EU orders. The books will be shipped from the UK, which is greener than shipping from the US.

I started fulfilling dropship orders in Australia, mostly because I needed a smaller group to test Ingram’s spreadsheet ordering but also because Australia is traditionally last in everything. The Australian copies have started to arrive. The rest of the world should follow shortly.

Then there’s books for me to sign. I have four crates of paperbacks in my living room to sign, pack, and ship. Hoping the hardcovers arrive soon, as well as the backer-exclusive special editions. I have something special for print level sponsors and Patronizers this time. Silly, but special. I’m hoping I can tell you about that next month, but the recipients need to receive them first.

Once those go out, I can launch the Dear Abyss Kickstarter. Quite a few people are telling me that the RYOMS Kickstarter is my new normal. As much as I’d love to trade up to that problem, I have no reason to believe that’s so. And seriously, Dear Abyss is not going to push me over the IOSS limit. If the new edition of Networking for Systems Administrators was to also experience explosive crowdfunding I’d look more seriously at IOSS, but not before. I don’t act based on lightning strikes until I start consistently attracting lightning.

Am I ignoring the success of RYOMS in my planning? Nope. There’s clearly a market for crowdfunding tech books. I’m hoping it will raise $20k, but will leave headroom for more. Hope for the best and plan for WTF, that’s the business.

After all these big projects, I need to write a palate cleanser. Something daft, and quick, and fun. I’m starting something I won’t talk about in public, yet, but if you’re curious you could follow #projectIDGAF on the fediverse. Why that hashtag? I have no idea if this thing will work, or even if it can work, but I’m going to have fun with it and that’s all that matters. I’d like to knock a full draft off by the end of September, but we all know that’s not going to happen. After a few years of these heavy projects like RYOMS, SNMP, TLS, and so on, my spirit needs a quick hit of weirdness.

In unrelated news, I sold five short stories to various anthologies at the beginning of the month. They include a new Aidan Redding tale, a Rats’ Man’s Lackey tale, and some one-offs. Look for those to escape in 2025. I’ll also have a new Rats’ Man’s Lackey tale in the next issue of Pulphouse.

Anyway. Off to sign a bunch of paperbacks, and maybe even get them mailed!