No page this week. I’m pretty gutted to do this to you two months in a row but on the other hand, doing the comic as a stay-at-home mom is rough enough. Doing it while trying to send out the Kickstarter rewards and finish my promised illustration for rockstar backer Eric Menge of Snow By Night was impossible. And while I guess I could probably have squeaked one in if I’d worked all day today … my anniversary was this week, and I’d like to breathe for a second and celebrate that along with finally seeing the last of these Kickstarter packages out the door.

It’s a huge relief to have them out of here. Shipping was even harder than I thought; apart from a fairly big push on the 14th when some friends lent a hand stuffing envelopes it’s just been me and my husband trickling them out the door, largely after the kiddo had gone to sleep for the night. Mad props to my husband, incidentally: would have been impossible without him taking on so much of the work.

And of course this means the book is officially available in the wild! I hope to be moving purchasing of it to a new NTO store shortly, but for now you can grab them in the Bigcartel shop or, if you just want the softcover instead of the big fancy limited hardcover, on Amazon. I’d rather you opted for the former, though, as A) who knows when you’ll get them given the conservativism of their order bot and the book’s consequent Out-of-Stock-Forever status, and B) I’m pretty unhappy about how much Amazon has chosen to discount the cover price, undercutting my own, more profitable sales, which it turns out I really need.

I never set out to make money on the Kickstarter campaign — just print the books and then, God willing, sell them and make some money that way — but I didn’t expect to be so far in the red as I ultimately am presently, either! I’ll need to sell quite a few books just to break even; this was a painful instruction in unforeseen expense. For all my homework and careful budgeting I never saw that $800 from the CBP’s random CET exam coming, and, worse, an error on my part when I mocked up my packaging, coupled with a rate hike in international postage between when I ran the campaign and actually, finally shipped the books cost me an additional $1200. Ouch!

I joked during shipping that I’d need to run a second Kickstarter to pay for the first one. People said maybe I should, and given that a few super generous backers have already independently donated more after the reveal of the $800 bill via Kickstarter updates I’ve started to consider it. I’m not sure what I’d actually be Kickstarting, though? A print version of the Genevieve filler exclusive to backers? A handful of folks said they wanted one. I don’t know; it seems sort of gauche, really, to ask for more after such phenomenal support.

Meanwhile, if you did grab a book via Kickstarter or preorder, are happy with it and want to help me out further at no further expense you can review the book at Amazon (again, boo to their discount but what can you do); I’d be super grateful. (If you like you can also review the little 24 Hour Comics Day digest, too!)

… and now I’m taking a nap.

Regards,

The Management