OVERWHELMED

            Wow, just wow.  Who could have known that POLYFACE DESIGNS would create such a stir?  Well, as Ray Stevens would say, "It did."  First, thank you all for such a rousing reception.  In my wildest dreams I was hoping we'd sell 1,000 by Christmas to help defray initial printing costs and bring us close to even before year's end.  How could we have known that the entire first printing of 5,000 would sell in less than a week?

             As soon as we saw the situation, we initiated our reprint option but they're backed up and can't get it done until Dec. 18, which means after what happened previously, we felt like the safest thing to do was not promise it until Jan. 4.  Hopefully that's enough wiggle room to work even around the holidays.  Right now we have orders for about 2,500 that we can't fill until the reprint and orders are still rolling in every day.  Who could have known?

             The book is heavy; almost 5 pounds.  If you don't want to read it, you can use it for weight lifting.  Here at Polyface, we're not primarily in the book shipping business, so we were not prepared for this onslaught of orders.  We had three marketing threads:  Polyface gift shop, Amy Fewell's Homesteaders of America, and Justin and Rebecca Rhodes' Abundant Permaculture.  Today I'm letting you look behind the curtain to explain what happened and beg forbearance.

             It's one thing to ship up to 100 items per week, which is our normal flow.  Suddenly we were trying to ship 1,000 items in a day.  Here is what happened.  First, the soft-sided mailer packages didn't work; we didn't know that until we'd already shipped the first thousand and we started getting complaints about damaged books and shredded packaging.  We don't know if the postal service is rough handling or if the book is just too heavy for a soft-sided package or a combination of both, but we realized we had to get different packaging.

             To order several pallets of the right sized shipping boxes and get them in here took a few days.  Meanwhile, orders are piling up.  And then the emails start:  "where's my book?"  "Are you scammers?"  So in addition to trying to fill a tsunami of orders, we're dealing with mounting customer service issues from damaged books and delayed shipping.  And Amy's folks thought Justin's were getting the books, and Justin's thought Amy's were getting them.  Amy says she thinks we melted the internet.  Good gracious.

             In my initial conversations with Justin and Amy, they asked if I'd be willing to autograph the books, to add a little specialness and stimulate sales.  Sure, no problem.  Signing even a thousand books is not a killer.  I can sign about 200 an hour at top speed.  In the last two days I've signed 2,000.  I committed to signing all of them that sold through Dec. 31, before they go on Amazon.  We might delay that launch a bit to let us clear out all these direct orders and clean things up with Amy and Justin.

             The book is heavy so international shipping is expensive.  Our initial costs looked like $50 would cover it, so we had Justin and Amy collect an additional $50 for all international shipping.  Well then things started coming in from Bulgaria and Uzbekistan and suddenly we saw a few $70 shipping charges.  They couldn't go back and ask those folks for more, so we decided to eat the difference and honor our commitment.  It's not a killer amount, but just another twist in the saga.

             Here's the funniest thing.  We use a postal shipping platform called Pirate Ship; the addresses go into a little box and it spits out a shipping label. Suddenly we started maxing out credit cards, which is how we pay Pirate Ship.  Yesterday Mastercard shut down my card due to "unusual activity."  Well duh, yeah, it's pretty unusual.  So I had to remember my social security number and get that re-opened. 

             We just don't plan or inventory for these kinds of things.  Guess what happened next?  We ran out of sharpies!  I was running sharpies out of ink; we don't keep dozens on hand, so a quick dash to Staples to replenish sharpies so I can keep signing.  Like I said, who'd have thunk?  When we switched from mailers to boxes, we had to put them together with packing tape.  Is our stash big enough?  So far, so good, because we do use a lot of packing tape regularly.  Whew!

             So today we're heading to the post office with about 8 pallets of books packed in heavy duty cardboard boxes that will catch up all orders that came in through Oct. 21.  We're trying to treat everyone fairly and spread around the joy but also the misery.  Got to run.  Daniel has another pallet of books out there for me to sign.  Wow, just wow.

             And thank you.  My team reports that initial responses from those who have received the book are over the moon.  Maybe this baby will have a long tail.  And thank you Justin and Amy for partnering with us and bringing such vitality and enthusiasm to this endeavor.  Now God help us to make people happy and get through without ulcers.  ha!

             Have you gotten your copy yet?