The MFA Thesis Novel Pre-Order is Done!!!

MFA Thesis Novel launches TOMORROW (!!!) and I spent most of last week shipping out copies from the Special Pre-Order period.  I was no stranger to bulk mailings from the Art Swap days, but this was my first time tackling a mailing this big.

After the pre-order period I crunched some numbers and realized that with all the pre-orders, copies I’d need for future events, and probable future webstore purchases, it made sense to order 250 books and get an extra 10% bulk discount on top of the regular discount.

The books arrived at the end of March (quicker than expected!), and I stacked them up in preparation for later sorting and shipping.  (Each of these boxes has 22 books inside!)

People who pre-ordered also got a bookmark and sticker, which arrived from Vistaprint earlier this month.  I designed the You Don’t Pay Me To Care sticker myself, while Vine Leaves publisher and designer Jessica Bell was kind enough to design the bookmark after I mentioned the idea (though I was on the hook for printing costs myself!).

I also ordered a bulk package of bubble mailers after comparing prices online, more copies of Eikaiwa Bums, more printer ink for printing Erochikan zines, and some clear tape for attaching labels.

Luckily I have an extra table in my workspace now, so it was easy to set aside a dedicated space for signing, packing, and assembling zines.  This made it WAY easier to have my computer open on my regular desk and leave the second space free for managing novels and zines.

My goal was to ship out the orders over four separate days the week before the 4/19 release, starting with the people who live farthest away.  Day 1 went well, but Day 2 I ran into a snag and could only get a few orders packed, putting more pressure on Days 3 and 4.  Fortunately, though, by the end of Day 4 I had everything packed, shipped, and ready to go.

All told, I sent books out to twenty-two states and three countries (Japan, the U.K., and the Philippines).

Two major mistakes I made during the process that I definitely won’t make again:

The first was taking all of the envelopes to the post office to be weighed and shipped.  I’d done this many times with smaller mailings, but taking a big box of books to my local small-town post office with only one clerk on duty was…a bad idea, since it took so long for the clerk to process them.  While it was hardly busy overall, on two of the days other customers queued up behind me and I decided to let them go ahead since I felt silly for bringing in such a large order.

I guess for some reason I thought printing your own labels was more difficult than it really was, whereas you can just enter everything on the official USPS Click-N-Ship -website, then pay and print.  I was also worried because I don’t have a postage scale, but I shouldn’t have let this deter me: there’s a ton of postage scales you can buy online in the 20 dollar range, and even if I didn’t want to buy my own scale I could have brought one package to the post office, weighed it, then copied the weight on to all the other orders.

The second mistake was smaller, but still caused me trouble: because a lot of people ordered the Everything-in-the-Webstore Bundle, I needed to print a ton more Erochikan zines, whereas I was used to printing them at home in smaller batches.  I should have just used a print shop rather than printing them all myself, which probably would have saved me money, and definitely would have avoided a lot of hassle.

Annnnnnnd that’s it! It’s crazy to think that as of this week MFA Thesis Novel will be for-serious out in the world where people can buy it from major websites and read it.  This whole thing’s been so surreal, and while the actual release day is pretty momentous, the official book launch at Main Street BookEnds in Warner New Hampshire this Saturday is set to be the real kick-off—if you’re in the area, I hope to see you there!