Check your email
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 11:27:25 PM
If nothing relevant turns up, check your spam filter. You know the drill, right?
I just authorized of the PDF rewards and add-ons, so Backerkit should have emailed you by now with the download links. The PDF of Chance Meetings needed a few tweaks before it was ready for its close-up, otherwise I would have pushed it out earlier this week.
By now, some of you who are owed print rewards and add-ons have received them, and most of you should have received emails with tracking information. About 30% of orders that involve physical items have yet to ship, but they will go out the door and into the mail stream no later than Tuesday morning. We're almost done!
One small note in the name of trying to cover all the bases: If there are any discrepancies between what you receive and what you ordered, please let me know. PDF distribution is automated, and as long as the email is flowing freely there should be no problems. But there may be some issues with the first print reward/add-on orders to go out: I discovered a little too late that there were some gaps in the Excel file that I exported from Backerkit. After that, I went back and fixed as much as I could before the package went into the mail and from then on, I double-checked every order with print add-ons against Backerkit's online information. But at least one of you will receive two separate shipments and everyone else should double-check my work.
Just a sec... [Huff, Wheeze]
almost 3 years ago
– Fri, Jul 09, 2021 at 02:33:11 AM
The print copies arrived from the printer today!
Accordingly, mailing addresses on record with Backerkit have been locked. At this point, if you need to change anything, message me directly through Kickstarter and please make it quick. I need to catch my breath a bit after hauling 500 lbs of books inside Ramen Sandwich Press HQ — the UPS driver had a nice, sturdy cart, but no such luxury for me — but I should be able to start packing orders this evening. Which in turn means that shipping should start tomorrow morning; Friday morning at the very latest.
Most orders will use USPS Media Mail, but we may use FedEx Ground for the largest orders. [EDIT: Most orders will ship in corrugated book mailers, but a few of you who ordered add-ons will get re-used shipping boxes from Amazon or some such. Sorry if you find this off-putting, but re-purposing shipping material when possible is an old habit, and it helps keep our costs down.]
The PDF should be ready for distribution no later than early next week.
Thanks again for your support, and I'll post again to let you know how things are progressing!
All aboard!
almost 3 years ago
– Thu, Jul 01, 2021 at 06:11:18 PM
Our printer is shipping today!
Our orders always ship out of Fresno, so I anticipate that the books will arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday.
As it dawns on me that Ramen Sandwich Press HQ will shortly take delivery on a quarter-ton of books, and that our regular UPS guy may curse the day I was born at that point, I should remind you all that I will also lock up everyone's shipping addresses soon. If you need to make a change to what's on file with Backerkit at the moment, please do so no later than Monday. I'll be back to tease with photos when the books arrive!
Proofreaders' gremlins and other beasts
almost 3 years ago
– Mon, Jun 28, 2021 at 07:23:36 AM
My goodness, has it really been a month since I posted an update? You people are so patient. Thank you for that; it does make my life easier.
The good news is that we finally sent Chance Meetings to the printer on Friday, and I expect to have the reward copies in hand and ready to ship shortly after the holiday. This will put us a few weeks behind schedule, but after over a month of bug-hunting I'm just relieved that we're this close to getting your rewards shipped.
The bad news is... well, there isn't any bad news that hasn't already been processed and internalized. It's all in the past now — the recent past, but the past nonetheless. It took five weeks to be reasonably confident that we'd purged the typos and formatting errors, when I was hoping it would take one week. We will have to do some post-mortem analysis as to why this was so, but at times it felt like we had some chaotic evil opposite of shoemakers' elves: Let's call them proofreaders' gremlins, that messed with the manuscript while we slept and introduced errors and undid corrections.
Truth be told, I think the lesson learned here is that I find it much easier to proofread long documents from a hardcopy instead of staring into a screen and scrolling. I think we turned a corner when I got a preliminary print copy; not only did I discover a substantial number of errors that I had missed, but I found proofing to be much more time-efficient (and effective) when I could work from a hard copy.
For those of you who are interested in our forthcoming book on random encounters for Pathfinder, I have been working on it while waiting for layout and in between proofreading Chance Meetings and following the hockey playoffs. I have almost finished making my initial notes. I intend to follow the structure of Chance Meetings for the most part, and I will probably re-use some text. But it will almost certainly be longer and a lot of fun to write — there is some genuinely insane stuff in the Pathfinder Bestiaries, especially in 2 and 3.
Creeping to the finish
almost 3 years ago
– Sun, May 30, 2021 at 08:12:40 PM
I hope this Memorial Day Weekend finds all of you well! Here in California, pandemic-related gloom is lifting but slowly; restrictions on public gatherings remain in place such that our local gaming con is doing the "virtual con" thing again, and Polycon, which always takes place in mid-June, still hasn't announced whether it is on or off for this year. I had hoped to make the rounds this summer representing for Ramen Sandwich Press, but it appears that this will have to wait.
OTOH, perhaps it's just as well. My original plan to have Book of Chance Meetings ready in time to sell at Gamex this weekend didn't exactly work out, since — obviously, since we've reached Memorial Day Weekend and you guys haven't even gotten your rewards yet.
However, the good news is that we ordered a test copy from our printer on Thursday, so we're getting close. We hope to have it at the end of the coming week, and assuming everything looks good we'll go ahead and order the print run. We finished making the final corrections much later than hoped, but we finished. Unfortunately, that part of the process dragged on like a hacking cough that wouldn't go away, or a Whack-a-Mole game with no time limit — choose any simile that conveys persistent irritation and insert it here.
A side note: Some of you may recall that last year, I freaked out a bit when the billboard down the block from Ramen Sandwich Press HQ featured an ad for a reptile hobbyist trade show. Well, it's now being rented by a pest control company, so instead of a huge lizard, I am now confronted by an enormous rodent glaring at me when I walk to the market — a giant rat encounter!
