My head was pounding when I went to bed last night, and is still pounding as I write this, seven hours later. I had one of those nights where I couldn’t get comfortable and woke up about once an hour,
so I finally decided to just give in and get out of bed about an hour ago.
I still have the headache that I kept waking me up all night, but I did get to watch a beautiful sunrise while my coffee brewed.
Why do I have a throbbing headache that kept me up all night? Oh, this is just fantastic . . .
I took a box of books to the post office yesterday, so about 100 of you guys who placed orders in the first couple of days can start checking your mailboxes on Friday. I understand that many readers who bought The Happiest Days of Our Lives are starting to get their books, and it looks like it’s taking about a week for them to arrive. If you’ve gotten your book and had a chance to read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts, either in a comment, an e-mail, or via review at Monolith Press.
Speaking of the book, I wanted to clarify something about the signed, numbered, limited edition hardback: it hasn’t arrived from the printer, yet, so we can’t start taking orders. I can’t even do pre-orders, because I don’t know how much it will weigh to calculate what we need to charge for shipping. Also, I’ve encountered two significant problems with the otherwise-perfect PayPal ordering system:
1) When I print multiple orders, it’s not passing the item number through with the address and buyer information. Until we can figure out why it’s doing this, we can’t take different orders for different products. We’re working on it, but the FAQs at PayPal are pretty goddamn useless. If you’ve had any experience with this problem and solving it, would you let me know what you did?
2) PayPal won’t let me automatically process Canadian orders along with US orders. That’s annoying, but it gets even worse: if I use the otherwise-awesome "print shipping label" option, which handles postage and addressing and all that good stuff, it forces me to buy an international priority mail envelope for 9 dollars. Since I’m only charging 5 dollars for shipping, I’d lose money doing it that way, and I can’t justify charging Canadian customers more than half the cover price to pay for shipping. It wasn’t like this when we did Dancing Barefoot, so I asked at my local post office, and the woman told me I can ship books to Canada for around 3 dollars, but to do that, we’ll have to process orders the old way, and I still have to fill out customs forms. By hand. For each fucking one. I can’t even begin to tell you how much this sucks, and how much work it’s going to be to handle Canadian orders, now. Thank you very much, stupid intrusive government regulations that waste my time and cost me money. I don’t know why the rules have changed so much since we did Barefoot, because we could just identify the books as "bound, printed matter" back then and avoid the customs hassle. This is the opposite of awesome, and I’d love any advice on dealing with this from indie sellers who have dealt with it already.
So what do these things mean for customers? Until I can figure out WTF is wrong with PayPal, I can’t take hardback orders. This isn’t an issue right now, because they aren’t even here from the damn printer, but it’s going to be a potentially disastrous issue for me and my business if we can’t solve it within a week or so.
I’m currently working on a backup plan to deal with this stuff, but I’m sure there has to be a way to make this work using the tools I already have. If you have a small business and handle payments and order processing the way I’m trying to, would you please get in touch and let me know how you did it?
Finally, I updated the FAQ at Monolith Press over the weekend, and forgot to mention it until just now.
Teenage son plus his friends bribed with free pizza and soda should be all the labor you need to crank out the Canadian orders.
I had a friend whose father ran a small business and he occasionally recruited us for an afternoon of light labor on exactly those terms.
I hear you, Wil. I have a small gift business that I use PayPal for, and recently realized that with the postage changes, my percentage-based shipping just won’t hack it any more. Apparently, after much irritation on the users’ part, they’ve implemented a weight-based option, but they only provide 5 weight categories and you have to assign 1 zone per state. WTF???? Some states have 4+ zones in them, even within your own state, and the difference in cost is enormous. It’s basically worthless. Meanwhile eBay can calculate it just fine, so I’m not sure what the point of their partnership is.
Their answer was, buy a shopping cart. Well, hello, I am a SMALL business. That’s a big expense to me. Fuckers.
Good luck to you–I will say that if they can help you, the customer service does answer fairly fast.
But they probably can’t.
If you could set up a PO box or something I’d be glad to send a check. I know that it could be a hassle for you, but i HATE paypal and will NEVER use that crap again!
Keep up the good work, i love your books, and enjoyed your Star Trek legacy video last night
Thanks
dave
Sorry you have a headache, but I agree with Chris, hire the kids and their friends, they work for food. Family business’s rule!
Wil, drop me a line. I do this kind of thing for Green Ronin all the time and I might have some pointers but I’d want to ask a couple of questions.
Nicole
Would it be cost effective to open a second PayPal account for just the hardback books? When they are sold out, you could then change it over for the audio book version, signed copies of other books, or whatever when needed.
My friends and I have who set up accounts with PayPal for myriad things have ALWAYS had issue with them because you can’t do this, or you have to do something else to get that. I also work for a non-profit and even something as “simple” as bulk mailing has turned into a mighty fuck fest. For much of my younger years, I was put to work with soda and pizza stuffing envelopes and the like. Sometimes I believe it’s why my mother had 8 kids. Little assembly line of her own, you know. Got to agree with Chris on this one. Don’t bust a blood vessel.
Good luck with the sales and shipping … and guess what? you’re on BoingBoing this morning!
You might find http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HowToShipAnything.html helpful.
Wil,
Thanks for updating the Monolith FAQ to address a few questions I asked.
And hang in there. I think we all realize that your frustration stems from wanting to have your book orders go smoothly and everyone be happy.
As one of those pesky Canadians who ordered, I apologize for causing you to get such a bad headache… <3
But you should also know, as a Canadian, I am used to paying a higher shipping cost to receive items from the States. I ordered from 2 other US companies in the past two weeks through Paypal – there were multiple choices for shipping, and it was based on country/zip or postal code. Besides, it’s always expensive for the first item in an order – for one item from one of those companies, it cost $12 for shipping a $10 dollar item, but only $1 more per $10 item, so it was $15.00 shipping for $40 worth of product.
Anyway, the bottom line is, when you order internationally, you should expect to pay more for shipping than someone within the country of origin, especially since there may be more than one postal service involved (who each want their cut!). I was surprised (and delighted) the shipping charge to Canada was the same as within the US, so feel free to charge me the additional $4 – it is well worth it!!
Here’s hoping the headache is gone with the caffeine infusion! xo
How do I actually place an order for the hardback? There is nothing I can find at Monolith to allow me to do so.
Oh, wait. “Can’t start taking orders”. Got it; reading comprehension is low today.
Hey Wil,
I’m also another one of those pesky Canadian orders. Sorry about the headaches you’ve been having over this whole situation.
As kristin mentioned, I would definitely be willing to pay a bit more if need be for shipping costs. That’s not a problem. I know you may say you would feel bad about doing so, and that’s perfectly fine. I would be too, but me as a fan of your writen words, I have to say I’ll pay whatever it takes to allow myself to relive my own Happiest Days of My Life.
So take care, and hopefully you can get this situation taken care of soon.
Steve “Snowball” Saylor
Hmmmm…my only thought beyond the pizza idea would be to find someone you trust up in Canada to drop ship the books for you. Send up a bulk package (10-20 books at a time) and then let them know the address to send each to, along with the proper postage on that end. That saves several customs forms at least.
I do like the separate Paypal account for the s/n hardcover, and any other special items that may come along.
Good luck!
I would do the extra 4 bucks as well, although I understand your ethical frustration.
However, as Chaz has offered before, just send us a bulk of books and we can ship them out domestically. It might end up costing less too!
Hey Wil:
I’m one of the Canadians yet to order your book – but seeing that you have to fill out forms – I may just hold off until you find a better/easier way to get your book here. So I’ll give your hand a break and “hurry up and wait” for you to figure that out.
I appreciate the fact that you’re trying your best. I know I’ll buy your book eventually but I don’t want you filling out customs forms in order to get it across the border.
Monks are good at waiting.
Um…a shot in the dark here…Is the reason that only auto-magic option available that you have it set to surface mail, wheras perhaps international mail defaults to air-mail, or vice-versa?
What I’m saying is, maybe some default setting which makes sense for domestic mail is set in a way that makes international shipping not work right?
I understand your love for PayPal and being able to keep it all in one system, but I gotta say Endicia is a beautiful thing. I take payments through PayPal, but use Endicia for all my shipping– it’s a much better solution.
When shipping Internationally, you paste in the foreign address and it automatically switches over to a label with an integrated customs form. I find the address validation feature very helpful as well.
Set it up at endicia.com to buy your postage through PayPal and it would still be a pretty seamless and simple operation.
Wil – maybe you need your neck adjusted and/or massaged. Get a better pillow, see a physical therapist, try yoga stretches. The sleep/headache connection is likely your neck is out of line. For a quick fix, lay supine on the floor with a rolled up towel under your neck enough to have a good curve/stretch of the tendons. Stay there for about 15 minutes, and watch out for playful dogs.
Seems like most of us Canuck’s are of the same opinion. If it costs an extra couple bucks, that’s cool. It’s not like your some multinatinal corp. We like your stuff and IMO we’re showing that by supporting your work. Just let us know what needs to be done.
BTW, I ordered like a week ago, where’s the stuff man? I’m being reduced to reading msnbc. Please man, don;t make me have to read news.yahoo.com!
Wil, say the word, and I’ll send you the extra $4.00 for shipping to Canada – it’s as easy as logging on to Paypal and entering your email address… That way, no extra paperwork or headaches for you!!
kristinaleadatyahoodotca
“Hmmmm…my only thought beyond the pizza idea would be to find someone you trust up in Canada to drop ship the books for you. Send up a bulk package (10-20 books at a time) and then let them know the address to send each to, along with the proper postage on that end. That saves several customs forms at least.”
If it helps, I would be willing to do this. Feel free to drop me a line if you’re thinking about going that route.
Thanks for the update about when the limited edition will be available, I’ve been wondering for a while.
Also, I’m super excited because I just heard from The Comic Bug and they’ll be shipping a signed copy of the Star Trek Manga to me 🙂
Have you considered or looked into Google Checkout? It might be slightly more usable. PayPal became retarded when eBay bought them, and that’s sad. It’s a thought!
Well I’m hoping your Twitter comment about being a step closer really does help. Also it makes us international customers realises how much more hassle and probably impossible it would be to include us on the orders.
@Decibel: I just wanted to post the very same link! 🙂
I have an eBay business and PayPal is a pain in the ass to send things internationally, that isn’t priority mail that is.
We sell tons of comics and trading cards and have to fill out the customs form EVERY time we sell something internationally.
It sucks, but until PayPal get’s their heads out of their asses I haven’t found a better way to do it.
Ah yea…just ordered a book for Canadian shipping and now I’ve read this. I feel so bad for causing a headache for you 🙁
Feel free to charge the extra $ for shipping to Canada. We’re used to it up here 😉
I abandoned using paypal for shipping in favour of Endicia, which has a great Mac version. It can be used to print out the customs forms.
The USPS rate changes this spring wiped out ALL the cheap book mailing options to other nations. Best you can do is M-Bag a pile to someone you trust and let them mail on in-country from there.