Skies of Fire: Collected, San Diego Comic-Con, KS Post-Mortem
over 3 years ago
– Sat, Jul 09, 2022 at 04:51:12 PM
Hey Everyone,
Save for some hanging orders here and there, you all should have your copy of Skies of Fire #8 by now. Some of are still dealing with hangups with fulfillment, especially those in Australia and Asia. Please, if you have an issue, reach out to us and we'll get to it.
With that said, I'd like to offer our heartfelt for the way fulfillment has gone this time around and on Glow: Book 1. It's been a year full of learning for us, and unfortunately some of that learning came at the expense of our standards when it came to shipping and customer support. The project took way longer to fulfill than we're happy with... that also coincided with us managing more projects than ever for the first time, trying to figure out how to grow what we do, and in the midst of all that we've had some growing pains.
That being said, we have a major announcement today...
Skies of Fire: Collected Edition
It's official! We're heading back to Kickstarter on Tuesday July 19th, 2022.
In many ways this is the culmination of all the work we've been putting into making comics since 2014, when we first began the series. Hard to believe that eight years have gone by, and yet here we are, a little older, maybe none the wiser :)
We're so incredibly proud and humbled to bring you the complete Skies of Fire. What a journey it's been.
San Diego Comic-Con 2022
To celebrate the launch of the Skies of Fire: Collected Edition, we're going back to San Diego Comic-Con! Woohoo!
It's been almost three years since I exhibited at a show, but I'm excited to be back! We're in our old stomping grounds of Small Press Q-3.
It's been almost three years since I exhibited at a show, but I'm excited to be back! We're in our old stomping grounds of Small Press Q-3.
Please come by and say hello! We miss you all dearly.
Kickstarter Post-Mortem
With the big announcements out of the way, I want to take a step back and talk a little bit about the challenges and lessons learned from the first six months of 2022. This is a long read, but in all honesty it's been a while since we've done anything like this, and I think it's important in the spirit of transparency and, well, mental health.
This year has been, without a doubt, one of the most challenging years of my life, and the difficulties faced from this campaign and Glow: Book 1 contributed no small part to that.
3PL
The big theme this year for us was Third Party Logistics (3PL). After years of shipping thousands of packages ourselves, we just simply weren't up for it anymore. It took too much time, energy, and the amount of packages we were sending out per year got to a point where we needed some help.
We didn't handle this very well. In terms of vendors, we thought going with a warehouse fulfillment that was familiar with crowdfunding and our categories - geek products - would be the way to go, but it turned out that we were a bit too small to be a good fit. One thing that we've learned and relearned this year that when looking for vendors and partners, it's always good to match one another, in terms of size, ambition, and demeanor.
With Quartermaster, I think we just were a little bit too small for them to really matter. Nothing against them, but we found our fulfillment constantly pushed back which was a really tough pill to swallow. On their end, it was a challenging year as well with a lot of the same market forces at play leading to delays everywhere, but unfortunately that often left us as the low man on the totem pole as the queue from their warehouse fulfillment grew with other larger projects.
Another aspect we should've thought more about was geographic location. QML is located in Florida and I'm located in Los Angeles. That's around 2,568 miles or 4,132 km between the two locations. The distance added another layer of complexity to things like ocean freight, and a lot of small customer support issues could've been solved had we been in driving distance. Lesson learned - for our next campaign we're going with a local fulfillment center, which incidentally has quoted us cheaper rates and we have a prior working relationship with (Bear with Me Toys - the manufacturers of the Tanvir Plushie!)
Europe / Brexit
We've known Brexit to be coming for a number of years, but 2022 is where the rubber really met the pavement with regards to tariffs and shipping. Specifically, July of 2021 saw items of less than EUR 22 imported into the EU to no longer be exempt from VAT.
In addition to increased prices, that meant increased handling and holding of the shipments, and an extra payment barrier for you, our backers, to go through if their shipment was held up by the post office / customs. As many of you know, that resulted in a very, very expensive situation for everyone involved.
We've since been looking into IOSS and providing Customs Friendly shipments to our fans / backers in the EU, and that has proven to be difficult as well. The startup fee to obtain IOSS status is somewhere in the $7,000 region, which, given our volume at the current moment, remains prohibitively expensive.
The silver lining here is that we are not the only ones to have faced this issue from the UK to EU, and Bezos, our 3PL Partner in England, has also been working to resolve this issue. As of writing they are implementing some form of customs friendly shipping sometime in August, meaning that orders will hopefully not be held by customs and all postal fees will be baked in.
For our UK backers, Bezos has been a great company to work with. Fast, responsive, with good shipping rates. We're excited to continue working with them and we think that their addition of IOSS clearance will make things better - not great, as yknow, Brexit - for our EU fans.
Bandwidth
For the past couple of years we've been juggling both Skies of Fire and Glow with some consistency. We also have a comic we've been working on behind the scenes for a long time, Sansha and Blanco. In 2021 we forayed into publishing with The Wildsea RPG and followed up with CBR+PNK: Augmented this year.
It's been extremely challenging growing from two projects to five. Although our role as a publisher is very different from that of a creator, there's still be a lot to juggle in terms of project management, communication, manufacturing, fulfillment, etc. This has at times proven difficult from a bandwidth standpoint, especially when you factor in creative work. I've done less creative writing I have this year than maybe in the past five years, and that's been very hard for me personally. I love writing, it feed my soul, and I know at the end of the day it's my fault - don't have anyone else to blame - for not prioritizing writing as much as I should, but finding the balance between growing the business of Mythopoeia and the worlds of Skies of Fire and Glow is something I'm still trying to figure out.
Communication
Throughout these challenges, I've been reminded about the beauty of fans and the generosity and spirit you've come to embody through this thing called crowdfunding. I know things have changed since 2014, but one of the principles I've learned and constantly need to relearn in all of this is that communication is key.
Back when things were looking especially dire, those closest to me urged me to reach out to Kickstarter and communicate what was going on behind the scenes. Somehow, that still was very difficult to me - I have a announce things when there's good news mentality, but I know that can lead to large gaps of silence (like the last few months with Skies of Fire). When I did write that post, the response from all of you moved me.
So many times this year I've felt so... inadequate. Some of it has been out of my control but some of it comes down to my own shortcomings and mistakes. I know how much I have to learn when it comes to handling all of this, but still I need to remind myself that the most important part of my job is communication - to you, our fans, to our artists, Vince, vendors, and everyone else that helps us make these wonderful worlds.
I know there have been times this year where I've been lacking, and I know I need to and will do better. Thank you for being patient with us as we go through all of this. I don't take it for granted one bit, especially not when my butt's being kicked to the curb by *gestures wildly* this.
Thank you for being empathetic to the challenges we've faced.
Thank you, for being critical and helping us get better.
Thank you, for sticking with us and fostering our growth.
- Ray
