THE BOOOOOKS!

I got my copy of "Raven's Children: Dogs of War" in the mail today (the proof copy from Lulu.com). It looks GOOD! You really can't tell it's not an offset printing job. In fact, to some extent it looks *better* than the first book because I naturally had gone with just about the cheapest possible paper for that one, and the thicker, whiter paper that's used in laser printers (such as this was printed on) looks really sharp and professional! Overall it's a nice-looking product and I'm proud to sell it.

Tonight I will calculate exactly how many copies I'll need (plus a few extra to sell) and order them. The proof book took just about a week to get to me, so the others will probably be more like 2-3 weeks due to the larger volume, but I should have all the pre-orders in the mail before Christmas.

*does happy dance*

Update

I have now ordered the books. *happy dance again*

Oddly enough, to get the books to Alaska in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time, the shipping price climbs so quickly on large orders that it's actually cheaper to order the books in smaller quantities and forgo the bulk discount to keep from getting killed on postage. FedEx is over $400 to ship an order of 100 books! AHAHAHAHAHA... I don't think so. So I'll probably end up keeping just enough on hand to cover a few orders, and then getting them in batches of 30 or 50 when (if?) I need more.

Nice thing about Lulu.com is that customers can order books directly through them, as well as from me. I haven't enabled this option on the RC trade yet. Once I get the pre-orders out, I'll make it available on the Lulu website and then you can buy the book directly from Lulu. The amount I make off of sales is still about the same. Lulu takes a smallish cut of all sales from their website, but when I have the books shipped to me and then fill orders, I have to pay shipping, so it comes out pretty similar either way from my perspective.