Posts Tagged ‘pre-order’
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Typically this is the time and place where I welcome you back from the weekend and talk about today comic.
Today, that is unnecessary. Today I only want to talk about one thing – THIS!…
That is the full cover to "Theater Hopper: Year One" – my very first book. Either click on the image or click here. In either case, you will be taken to the page where you can place your pre-order!
Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in full swing!
This has been a long time coming for me. I’ve been wanting to do a book since probably 2003, but I didn’t know how to do it. Eventually, I asked around about the process, figured out what vendors to go to, made a schedule for myself and stuck to it. Lo and behold, the book is ready for you to buy.
This last week where I’ve been building it up has been sheer torture for me. I’m really excited for you guys to see what I’ve put together and I just wanted to get it out there! But at the same time, I think it was a good idea to tease it a little bit so you knew what was coming down the line. Hopefully, you’re as excited about it as I am!
Don’t forget about the street team! Be sure to tell as many of your friends as possible about the book and get them to place an order. Keep your eyes on the prize! If you get 5 people to order a book along with you, I’ll send you a $20 gift certificate to Fandango.com! The first 25 readers to complete the task will also win a Theater Hopper t-shirt.
As always, be sure to check out the street team page for talking points and the four-page preview. I’m going to start tossing in banner ads this week for you guys to help spread around for me.
I think there would be nothing greater than if we could really get this pre-order period off on the right foot. And if we could gather all of the orders we need and raise the nessecary funds for the printer by this week, I would be thrilled!
So if you’re thinking at all about buying this book – this wonderful, 200 page, full-color book with exclusive commentary from yours truly… commentary you won’t find anywhere else! – do the right thing and place your order this week. Don’t wait. Do it now. The faster you order, the faster we can get your book to you!
As always, if you have any questions, please contact me at theaterhopper@hotmail.com.
I appreciate everyone’s support. This is a very exciting day! Thank you for helping to make it happen!
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Hey, guys. Tom here, back from vacation and back with some important news.
On Sunday the pre-order for our first book "Theater Hopper: Year One" will come to a close. If you’ve been visiting the front page and monitoring the tally, you can see that we’re currently 211 orders shy of our goal. Remember that the money from the pre-sale went toward the production of the larger print run.
I’m not optimistic that 211 orders will come flooding into my inbox before Sunday, but I’ve come too far to let this die on the vine and I still really want to see this book happen.
So what does this mean? It means that despite the lack of orders, the book is still going forward. However, I have to cut the number of books I had planned on ordering, which raises the cost per book and cuts into my profit margin. That’s unfortunate because the profits from this book is what I planned to bankroll the second book, shortening the pre-order period.
What doubly sucks is that even with the lower print run, I still have to pay considerable expenses out of my own pocket to make up the difference. My hope is that once the books are completed and I have them in hand, another wave of orders will come in and I’ll make some of that money back. But there are no assurances in life, as I thought getting a few hundred pre-orders was pretty reasonable.
But things don’t have to be that bad. If you’re thinking that you want a copy of the book, PLEASE DON’T WAIT. PRE-ORDER TODAY. You’ll be helping me more than you know.
For those of you who have already places your orders – THANK YOU. I appreciate your generosity and support. If you can help to spread the word about the pre-order deadline or convince your friends to pre-order a copy, that would be great.
I’m still trying to decide if I bit off more than I could chew or if I planned poorly. Looking back, I don’t think there’s much more I could have done in terms of promotion or advertising to get the word out. So now, it’s all in your hands. I’ve shown my cards. You know that the book is going forward whether you pre-order or if you don’t. But hopefully you recognize the financial stakes for me personally and pre-order a copy of the book before Sunday to help lessen the burden.
If you can’t afford to pre-order right now. I totally understand and I don’t mean to guilt you. This call to action is for those of you who want to buy a book but are waiting for them to be published. My goal is to motivate you NOT to wait.
Until then, your continued support of the site is very much appreciated and I thank each and every one of you who make Theater Hopper a stop in their browser every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I consider myself exceptionally lucky that I’ve been able to make it this far on what is otherwise a hobby.
It’s good to be back. I’ve missed you guys.
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Regarding the Theater Hopper – Year Three pre-sale, I’ve gotten some feedback that the store is not working and people cannot complete their orders.
I guess if you live in the States, it asks for your zip code, but can’t figure out the shipping rates and won’t let you complete the order. However, at the same time, I have received ordered from people outside of the U.S. with no problem.
I’m attempting to troubleshoot the issue. I just need to know if I’m on the right track.
Has anyone else who has attempted to pre-order the book experienced this problem? Please let me know in the comments below.
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If you visited the site yesterday, you would have seen the blog entry where I was discussing problems I was having with the store and pre-order for Theater Hopper – Year Three. I was getting international orders, but orders within the United States were not being completed. There was some kind of error when the shopping cart tried to calculate shipping and the order could not be submitted.
I could go into all the boneheaded things I did that contributed to this problem, but it’s boring and it’s technical and you don’t want to hear it.
What’s important is that the problem is fixed. And, to celebrate (as well as make up for any potentially lost business), I am offering a 15% discount on everything in the store!
All you have to do is input the coupon code “dummy” into the Promotions and Discounts field at checkout and the discount will be applied.
The coupon will be effective from now until Friday, February 6 – one week. So if you want to take advantage of my stupidity, now is the time!
Thanks again for your support!
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Just a friendly reminder to pre-order Theater Hopper – Year Three.
Check out this 10-page preview of Year Three for a taste of what to expect from over 200 pages of Theater Hopper goodness!
Don’t forget that there is a 15% discount on EVERYTHING in the store from now until Friday. Just use the coupon code “dummy” at checkout to save big!
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I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind everyone that today is the last day that you can get 15% off your purchases in the store.
As part of a coding screw up that prevented people from completing their orders, I offered a 15% discount for one week. To take advantage of it, simply type “dummy” into the promotions and coupon field at checkout. (I am the dummy in question).
I would especially like to encourage to pre-order Theater Hopper – Year Three. It was my hope to take copies of the book to the Emerald City Comic Con in April. But, unfortunately, the estimate I recently got back from the printer was much higher than the previous editions of the book I have published. I suppose, like everyone else, their costs have gone up. But it was still a bit of a shock.
We’re received some orders that put us closer to our goal, but if there is not an increase in orders soon, I might have to push the project back and wait for advertising revenue to back fill the cost. Worst case scenario, I might have to shelf the project completely and refund the pre-orders I’ve already received.
We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks. If it gets bad, I might promote a little “$X to Goal” sliding bar to help people visualize things and spur orders. But after today, I won’t be offering any more discounts. So if you want to catch a break, today is your last chance to do so.
Thanks again to all of you who have already placed your orders. It will be a great thrill for me personally to put Theater Hopper – Year Three in your hands. I think it’s the best of my books so far and a lot of work went into making the commentary in the book extra special.
I appreciate your support!
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Hey, guys. Don’t forget that I’m taking pre-orders for my new shirt Spoiler Alert! now until Wednesday, April 22. If you’re thinking about ordering one, please place your order now as it will help me to determine how many of each size to request from the printer!
Thanks!
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Just wanted to remind everyone that today is the last day to pre-order our new shirt Spoiler Alert! After today, I’ll be sending the order to the printer. Pre-ordering now helps me to determine how large the order should be and what sizes will be most popular. So if you’re thinking about picking this up, now would be the best time!
Incidentally, I’m trying to add as many bundling options as I can for those of you who want to take advantage of a deal by ordering more than one item. There’s some pretty significant savings going on, so you might want to check out the bundled offers before placing your order!
Thanks!
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Okay, this was the post that you were meant to read this morning, but the one I couldn’t get to until I put Henry down for his afternoon nap.
Regarding Transformers, that can wait. I’m going to be talking about it all week, so there’s no need to dive neck-deep into it now.
Although, I must confess today’s strip is autobiographical. I’m less interested in seeing the movie than I am in finding out how they wrote Shia LaBeouf’s hand injury into the storyline. I anticipate that it will be richly satisfying.
Anyway… onto business.
As you know, a few weeks ago I lost my job. This came at a bad time for a lot of reasons, but one among the myriad of reasons is that I was about to send my registration for Artist Alley at Wizard World Chicago, August 6 – 9. Losing my job halted that action in it’s tracks.
Although Theater Hopper is its own entity and has its own money, I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to attend a convention when I might have to dip into that money once my severance is gone.
I won’t bore you with the mental tug-of-war I put myself in the middle of. But, eventually, when I talked to Cami about it, she didn’t see where there was a problem and told me to go for it. Bless her for being as supportive as she is.
So, long story short, I’m going. I’m sharing a table with Zach Miller from Joe and Monkey, hanging out with the guys from Digital Pimp Online and hopefully selling some new merchandise.
Ah, but there’s the rub. I don’t exactly HAVE any new merchandise.
People who pre-ordered Theater Hopper: Year Three know this. I’ve been sitting on a finished draft of that book for months, but I haven’t had the money to have it printed up. Pre-orders stalled and I’m still trying to raise funds.
I thought I would bolster that effort by designing a new shirt – Spoiler Alert! – in hopes that the revenue from the sale of those shirts would help bridge the gap on the funds I need to print the book.
That didn’t happen, either.
I’m not pointing fingers at anyone but myself. In all honesty, I haven’t been talking about Year Three or the new shirt. So, beyond the intifada announcement, why would I expect there to be any orders? I haven’t been talking about it, so people haven’t been ordering. It’s really that simple.
Well, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to kick my plan back into gear and I’m trying to push the Spoiler Alert! tees hard before I go to Wizard World Chicago. I’m confident that this design will be a big seller in Chicago and I want to get this shirt to the printer before I leave for the convention.
With your help, I can raise the money I need to get the shirts printed up, take to Chicago and produce the profit I need to put Year Three back on track for publication.
To help us with our goal, I’ve created this handy bar graph:
As you can see, I need a minimum of 50 shirt orders before July 31 to make this work. If I can sell more than that, great. If the sale of merchandise extends beyond the Spoiler Alert! shirt and into the Spoiler 1 and 2 shirts, the Theater Hopper: Year One or Year Two books… that’d be great as well! Every little bit helps! What’s important is that we inch that bar to the left as far as we can before July 31.
I’ve been gun shy about this kind of promotion since Theater Hopper: Year Two came out in the fall of 2007. Well, I can’t afford to sit on my hands any longer. I’ve set a goal for myself and I need your help! So let’s see what we can do about racking up some pre-orders!!!
As always, I appreciate your support, patience and enthusiasm. Thanks again and I will talk to you soon!
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Last Monday I posted to the site my goal of selling some merchandise to help me raise the money I need to send the Spoiler Alert t-shirt design to the printer. Consequentially, I would complete the pre-orders and take the rest of the inventory to Wizard World Chicago on August 6 and take the profits made from the convention to help bankroll the production of Theater Hopper: Year Three.
I created a little graphic that went into the blog posts but realized pretty quickly that a visual aid such as this was easy to ignore. So I made a little cosmetic change to the header of the site in hopes of strongly reinforcing my goal and the progress made so far.
Please help me meet my goal of selling 50 shirts by July 31. It doesn’t have to be the Spoiler Alert shirt. It can be any of the shirts. They all cost the same and the money goes to the same goal.
Thousands of you come to the site every day. I only need a fraction of you to help make this possible. If you’ve been thinking at all about buying a book or a shirt, now is the time to do it.
I appreciate your support.
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