Lab Notebook Entry: Day Thirty-Four
6 months ago
– Mon, Mar 25, 2024 at 02:49:45 AM
Hi Research Assistants,
Three small updates (well, two quite big ones and one smaller one) for today.
Firstly, we had our proof back from the printers over the weekend. It looks all good to go, so this morning I put in an order for 2,100 zines from them. I'm yet to pay the deposit but it looks like we'll have a big ol' throne of boxes of zines in the next few weeks. I'm very excited / terrified.
Secondly, I sent out all backer surveys this morning, since it didn't look like we had any problems over the weekend with our smoke test. If you get your survey in an email, then please fill it out promptly, and let me know if you have any questions!
Thirdly, I'm also opening the pre-order page on BackerKit, which means anybody can order a copy of Outliers directly from us. Ordering through BackerKit is actually the most efficient way to get funds into the project, so if you're interested in helping us out, please consider sharing the link with somebody else you think might be interested in the project.
Thanks again! I'll be in touch a few more times in the next five weeks until I close surveys on April 28th.
Take care, and watch out for filing cabinets,
Marx //
Lab Notebook Entry: Day Thirty-One
6 months ago
– Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 03:04:41 PM
Hi Research Assistants,
I forgot to include a timeline with the last post, so here's a rough outline of what's happening in the next few weeks:
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Monday 25th March: after this weekend of Smoke Testing, barring any major issues, I'll send the rest of the surveys out. Monday is also the day we order our zines, and I expect a two week delivery window on those.
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Sunday 28th April: After five weeks, I'll close the BackerKit surveys, with a 48hr notice to get your final addresses in. We might be able to squeeze you in after that, but please try and get your surveys in by then.
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Tuesday 30th April: BackerKit locks your address and charges your card. I have to wait two weeks for funds to clear through Stripe to make sure all cards are charged correctly and aren't errored.
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Tuesday 14th May: Shipping starts. I'm handling the UK and RoW packages, and our partners are handling the US and EU packages.
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Friday 31st May: All things going to plan, you should get your packages by the end of May. If it's not turned up by then, contact me!
I'll send out digital rewards sometime between the close of the BackerKit surveys and the start of shipping - I don't need to wait for cards to clear for that.
Thanks for your patience! And much love to you all.
Marx //
Lab Notebook Entry: Day Thirty
6 months ago
– Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 01:36:16 PM
Good Evening Research Assistants,
We finally received the funds this week, which means I've been paying staffers (and myself), ordering stickers, getting print proofs, and generally organising the funds so that we're in a healthy position to continue. Which we are.
I'm about to send out the Smoke Test for Backerkit. That means that 5% of you will receive a test survey. Me and James have tested the setup fairly rigorously, but doing a smoke test means that we can iron out any creases that might be there. If you get your Backerkit Smoke Test, please fill it in normally, and let me know if you have any issues.
In general, here's where we're at with pledges:
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Everybody who's got a physical pledge will get £1 off shipping. Unfortunately, Royal Mail are increasing their prices next week, so some of the shipping prices have increased. It should still be offset by the £1, so I'm still honouring the price I said it would be, but it means you won't really see the saving.
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If you're in the Global South, or if you backed as a Principal Investigator, you get free shipping. This is due to the overwhelming success of the campaign, and to say thanks for your support.
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If you're in the EU, you have to pay VAT on checkout. Just for physical purchases. It means that we can do our shipping delivery duty paid, which should ultimately reduce the risk of a big fee for you.
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You can add-on extras in Backerkit, like stickers, more physical or softcover copies, community copies, or tips for us. Backerkit calculates the extra shipping and VAT needed for these add-ons.
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There's a question about how you'd like to get digital rewards. Please read it carefully so that we know where to send your PDFs. If we don't get an answer we can work out, we'll send it by direct email.
Backerkit comes with a support team who can help in most cases; if they can't, they'll forward it to me.
I'll message you all again when the Smoke Test is done, which is when the general surveys will go out (and indeed when the Pre-Order shop will open).
Thanks as always,
Marx //
Lab Notebook Entry: Day Sixteen
7 months ago
– Fri, Mar 01, 2024 at 08:16:15 AM
Hello Assistants,
An absolutely massive THANK YOU to all of you who pledged and spread the word. Thanks to you, we achieved an incredible £12,071, about £2k of which was in the final day. This is absolutely phenomenal - more absurd than anything Outliers could throw at me - and it's down to your generosity and enthusiasm. So, once again, a massive thank you. You made this happen.
Now it's the hard-ish part. Next steps for us are:
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Check the project finances. I need to confirm what shipping credits we're getting to you! All softcover backers are definitely getting £1 off, and all Global South backers will get free shipping full stop. I may also be able to offer additional discounts to people who bought community copies, but I need to check this. Unfortunately I can't until I get a full list of countries from which people backed - which I can't do until we ...
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Wait for our Kickstarter payout. This is about fourteen or fifteen days. If you get a message about your card not working, fixing it quickly helps with this process. Whilst this is happening, I can ...
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Get our pledge manager / pre-order store worked out. We'll be using Backerkit, and I'll send out the links and surveys as soon as possible. The sooner they get filled in, the sooner you'll get your zines. I think there's a minimum amount of time you have to have the surveys open for, during which time I can ...
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Order an absolutely unholy amount of zines. With 150% "inventorying" zines, I've just informed our printers that we'll be ordering 2,000 zines from them, something which has floored me. I don't know where they're all going to go, but I'll find a way! With this massive chunk of spending out of the way, I'll be able to ...
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Order a big box of stickers. I'm going to switch to a new printshop for these, because the unit prices at the other one didn't drop off enough at scale, especially for the sticker sheets. That leaves me free for ...
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All The Fulfilment! A box of 400+ zines is going to Third Kingdom Games in the States, who will be handling all the USA logistics for me. All the EU fulfilment will be going to a partner in the UK (I'm acting through a third party, so I actually don't know their name right now?!). All UK and Rest of World orders will be handled by yours truly. Once that's done, I'll be making sure to ...
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Get the zine into stores. Since we have all those inventory zines, I'll be getting them into stores around the UK, USA, Canada, and Europe. If you know of a retailer in your country who might be interested, get in touch!
Throughout that process, money will be coming out of the project accounts, which are sat with me. I'll be paying our creators ASAP, and letting you know how they're spending their creator fund budgets too. There's probably a little bit of money going to be left over - I'll tell you how we spend that when I know what it's going to be, but hopefully there'll be some for the CoOp War Chest so we can do this kind of thing again.
This has been an amazing experience. Thank you all so much. TTRPGs are better thanks to you.
All the best,
Marx //
Zine Month Shout-outs!
Our final Zine Month Shout-out goes to romantic duet TTRPG Not Yet, which looks right up my street, and is hopefully right up your street too. Whilst I've not worked with Taylor Navarro before, Poorna M. was/is a contributing author on the Far Horizons Guide to Death, so you should support her work if you like what we do as a CoOp. She's one of the good ones!
Need a game for Date Night? Do you enjoy romancing your friends? Perhaps you want to test the waters with a potential future partner...? If the answer to any of these is yes, Not Yet is the game for you! Inspired by the "just missed them" and "right person, wrong time" tropes from How I Met Your Mother [TV] and the tense romantic plot generation of Star Crossed [TTRPG], as well as a real life love story; tell a tale of two people battling destiny to meet and fall in love over the span of months, years, or even an entire lifetime by trying to match each others’ numbers on your dice rolls.
Not Yet is live on Kickstarter now, as of Thursday, February 29th. Please please please back it before you miss the opportunity!
Lab Notebook Entry: Day Fourteen
7 months ago
– Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 01:31:23 AM
Hello Assistants,
I had to wait ninety minutes after waking up this morning to check the Kickstarter page but I was not disappointed.
Stretch Goals
Welcome to the 100+ new backers we've had since I lasted posted an update. It's a bit surreal to be saying this, but we've smashed through our fifth stretch goal, so all of our community copy buyers will get a lil' "thank you" in the pledge manager in the form of a £1 shipping credit.
So we're on to the final stretch goal here: if we make it to £10,000, everybody who has bought a softcover edition will get a £1 shipping credit, not just the CC-purchasers. And I'll give the staffers that last 20% bonus that takes them to 200% pay. All thanks to your generosity and support.
Pledge Manager
In terms of the pledge manager: it's being set-up, but it won't be available immediately when the campaign ends because I needed to check some things with the EU fulfilment house. EU fulfilment is happening and it is DDP. I'm checking to see whether we can apply country-specific, item specific rates, or whether they have a different tax arrangement.
US fulfilment will be happening via my very good friends at Third Kingdom Games. We've spoken about how to handle this and I'm very confident in their ability to ship, ooh, 400 copies of Outliers.
All other shipping is being handled by Marx of High Water (me and sometimes my partner). I have done rather a lot of this before, and the scale is somewhat lower this time given I'm outsourcing the complicated or large ones.
Barring any Royal Mail price hikes between now and shipment date, prices should remain the same as quoted in our KS page. If RM prices do increase, I'll try to absorb the cost if project budget allows, otherwise the increase may be passed onto you, particularly for those expensive World Zone 1 and World Zone 2 orders (it probably won't affect EU and US orders).
The Zine Itself
Apparently I need to order nearly 1600 zines, so we're at the limit of what our original printer can do efficiently. As such I've been getting quotes from a different printer who might use offset printing at the scale we're talking about. They can do what we want, with a nice thick pair of frosted acetate covers. They sent me some samples yesterday of some terrifically boring corporate documents, and they look very good, so I'll probably be commissioning them to do this.
The downside is that they can't do the 160gsm text paper. They have a 170gsm option, but that is likely to push us into the next shipping bracket, especially with the heavier covers, so I'm going to talk it over with the project team but we'll probably opt for the 120gsm paper, which still feels lovely by the way, especially uncoated. But I'll let you know.
ZineQuest Shout-outs
ZQ / ZM 2024 is almost over, but some projects are late starters. Here's one for you. Nessundove is a good person who I've come across more than once, and for most of you Momatoes needs no introduction.
A journaling RPG about pathos, arcana, and the infinite loneliness of power – plus an oracle deck for inspiration, by momatoes.
In this game, you use dice and pen to write the unique history of your character's quest for arcane mastery. You will navigate strange encounters and confront complex opportunities for learning spells—or cultivating tenuous bonds.
Now powered by the Oracle, a 78-card deck filled with prompts and illustration to bring life to your writing.
This project is massively popular, but check it out - I think you'll be impressed.
