As always, things took more time than estimated! We had to wait a few extra days to finish up the calculations due to some missing information and just finished locking in the shipping quotes.
But it is done! The pledgemanager is live now; please scan your email box for the respective message! You can add your addresses, finish your orders, and then, in two weeks' time, we’ll finally be able to start sending everything out from the warehouse.
That means we will have the pledgemanager open until September 30! If you can’t enter your information by then, we will delay shipping your goods!
Apart from dealing with shipping, we are still prepping for our big campaign that starts …oh goodness …in a week! Dioscorian adventures! Conspiracy! Gods! Despots! Sign up now to get a free adventure(The Metaphagus) or even reserve your pledge to claim a unique pin and a charming stickerset.
And that’s it, folks. Don’t forget to check your emails! Pay a visit to our socials and Discord channel for extended banter, playtesting and deep discussions!
I just wanted to assure you that the final PDF is coming this week, even though I promised it this weekend passed.
I'm currently holed up in bed with Covid (remember that?) and it's knocked the stuffing out of me. I am on the up now and I'll be finishing everything tomorrow and Wednesday.
I'm here with great news, fulfillment has begun on The ENNIES Emporium project.
I first, want to take a moment and apologize for why this has taken so long. I'm going to give you the real back story. If you know me, you know that I don't believe in corporate-speak platitudes. This is also a real learning experience for me and perhaps it will be for you as well as many of us are small creators. If you're every interested in running your own crowdfunding project feel free to reach out to me anytime. I am always here to share advice because other great designers and entrepreneurs have shared their advice with me.
At the end of the day, this is my second job. I'm a teacher full time which means my fulfillment times usually coincide with my Summer and Winter breaks. This also means fulfillment is such a struggle for me and a limiting factor. When I'm planning these projects I'm always working backwards from "when should I plan on mailing these out and can I do it during Spring Break?"
Then I had an idea! What if someone else did fulfillment for me! This would be great. Odds are I could find someone who would do it faster, more accurately, and it would be reasonable. At least I hoped it would be.
My original plan was to work with Studio 2, who I've partnered with for distribution. They are a good company ran by good people. They gave me their rates which I felt was fair, but had drawbacks to it.
Everything had to be shipped to their warehouse in Tennessee. Each carton of books costs $40 to ship and each carton holds 10 copies of Empire of Bones and 18 copies of Painted Wastelands. As you can imagine, this quickly adds up.
Studio 2 only charges $2 per box to pick and pack. That's a pretty reasonable number.
Studio 2 charges a lot more for international shipping than I would if I did it myself. This led to a lot of hurt backers who were slapped with shipping sticker shock. I don't blame them. This led me to finding a new partnership for EU backers.
So I ended up looking for some alternatives. Then I found an opportunity with Gamer's Guild. Gamer's Guild is local here in Arizona. "What an amazing opportunity!" I thought to myself. I could load up my car with everything they'd need and drop it off at their warehouse. It would be great. We could even develop a partnership with them!
We had a video meeting in July. We had a physical meeting at GenCon with the whole team. Everyone was happy. It took a month and a half from that meeting until I received the fulfillment terms. This is part of the reason why this has taken so long.
Gamer's Guild is charging me $14 a box to pick and pack. This is on top of the shipping costs which are the same as Studio 2. This is absolutely absurd. Now it's my turn for sticker shock.
It would cost $1,400 to pack the 100 backers of the ENNIES Emporium. Not to mention the cost of HELLCRAWL with its 900+ backers which would cost $11,000!
This is absolutely deranged and leaves me back at square one where I do fulfillment myself. In a way, this has pushed me as a business owner to grow. It is completely untenable for me to sit in my painting room packing boxes alone for days. Thus, Agamemnon Press has hired its first employee.
We are hiring our friend Julie to pack boxes and she's going to do an amazing job. I believe that having Kayla, myself, and Julie working together we will knock fulfillment out of the park. So welcome Julie to the team!
Finally, from HELLCRAWL + Painted Wastelands 5.5e forward, our European Union + Norway backers will have their projects fulfilled in Europe by MudKnight.media. These guys are great and we are working together to get Agamemnon Press products into game stores in Europe. Thus, it is pretty straight forward for me to have them handle fulfillment of crowdfunding projects.
Hope you're having a nice end of winter (yes, it is winter here in the southern hemisphere). I wanted to touch base with y'all, since after illustration work and design and a proper rest, I've finished draft work on what will be the Bonds & Baggage supplement (the Backpack Add On)! The final document is clocking in at 72 pages, so after edits and proofing I'll be sending it to the printer :))) I'm very happy to share the news with y'all. Here are some shots from the interiors, and the cover:
At the same time, I've already set up the pledge manager for the project, and sent it for approval, so we should have all of it ready in a couple of days time to proceed with surveys. I should receive a shipping fees chart in the next couple days too, to make sure we have that input correctly.
So, yay! We are pushing through! Thank you so much for your patience. I know this took longer than expected, but I really didn't envision this to become a fully fledged adventure, with all new illustration work, pregens, etc. - I think it has been worth the wait and the work, and hope you enjoy it <3
In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
The clothing prints were dropped off at Flying Cloud Fulfillment on Friday last week and hopefully they can begin sending out physical rewards this week. They've had quite a bit on their plate this season. I'll send a final update when all shipments have left the warehouse. If you're an international backer and your package does not arrive in 3-4 weeks after the last update, please contact me and we'll look into what happened and and figure the best way to get you your reward.
"Stage Fright" Collab-Scenario
The digital scenario is almost done! Sarah is currently working on an amazing map and we're doing final touches on the layout. Backers who supported both ARKYVR and Darkened Hill & Dale campaigns will get this digital package delivered to them through BackerKit as soon as it's complete.
New Game Launch
Thank you so much for your continued support! I have a new game, A Most Brilliant Spark, launching in November on BackerKit. If you want a card-driven, psychedelic, dreamscape ttrpg for one of your deceased Player Characters - you can subscribe to it now. Early subscribers will receive a free digital copy of Remember Frankie when backing any tier of the campaign.
A lightning update regarding your upcoming orders! Some of you might have received the smoketest for the campaign already, but we are still fine-tuning thanks to the hot mess known as tariffs.
We have now finally received the final-final verdict on how to ship to the US (hint: it's complicated) and are now finally able to prepare the pledge manager for you. Our producer mastermind, Tea, is now sitting on the final version of the shipping tables; we will double and triple check everything once that is done, and then we should be good to go. We sincerely hope that this will happen next week. Finally ... (unless there are more complications)
In the meantime, feel free to sign up for more adventures such as our Haven's Heir campaign! What could possibly go wrong ...
And that’s all, folks. You are welcome to check out our socials and Discord server for extended banter, playtesting and deep discussions!
I wanted to complete the survey and it says I'm getting an art print as bonus item. I can't even not take it. It's there and automatically triggered shipping address and stuff, since it's a physical item.
Listen, I pledged DIGITAL ONLY, because I want NO PHYSICAL PRODUCTS and NO SHIPPING COST. This is the fourth project within the last two weeks that this is happening with in the backerkit pledge manager. I'm really getting fed up on this.
Please fix this ASAP!
