Agamemnon Press
CREATOR
4 days ago
Project Update: HELLCRAWL PDFs Are Now Available
Greetings Condemned Souls!
This morning I am pleased to announce to all of you that the HELLCRAWL PDF is now available.
What an amazing process this project has been. 3 years ago, when I set HELLCRAWL aside, I truly never thought I would ever be able to say "You can now download the PDF and send your players to Hell!" Now, thanks to Necrotic Gnome's encouragement, today is the day!
I believe that this is our best book yet. Tim's art is amazing and I love the way he hit every speedball I threw at him out of the park. I've learned so much through this process and it has been a dream come true. I loved going back to the work I had done in the past and tweaking it, improving it. I hope you enjoy the months of work that went into this.
Fulfillment
If you follow the ENNIES Emporium you'll know that I've had a hard time with fulfillment. I'm going to share this information with you because I believe some of you may want to run your own crowdfunding projects in the future. I'm lucky that I've had other people in this industry act as mentors for me. Maybe you can learn from my struggles. Fulfillment is the most arduous and difficult part of these projects. In the past I've been able to sit in a room by myself and stuff boxes and envelopes. HELLCRAWL is the largest project we've had so far so I looked into finding a fulfillment partner.
Studio 2
Originally, my plan was to work with Studio 2, who is currently our distributor for Agamemnon Press books. I like Jim and his team a lot. They charged $2 a box to pick and pack which is pretty reasonable. The problem was that a lot of boxes needed to be shipped to Studio 2. To ship a carton of books from Arizona to Tennessee costs $40 a box, so that expense racks up quickly.
But then I found a fulfillment partner here in Arizona!
Gamer's Guild
I was really excited to work with Gamer's Guild. They're here in the valley, I could just drive my stuff to their warehouse and they'd handle it. We had a positive phone call in July, then we had an in person meeting at GenCon (which is funny to me, we could have held the meeting in Arizona). Then a month and a half after GenCon I finally got the fulfillment quote from them. $14 a box!
This is an absolutely deranged number and I have no clue where they came up with it. They have not responded to my messages since last week about this. This $14 a box does not include shipping by the way, it's just $14 a box on top of shipping. This would add up to about $13,000 which is wild stuff.
Where Does That Leave Us?
In a way, this is an opportunity rather than a set back. I've decided, rather than pushing off responsibility for fulfillment onto another company to improve my methods and get better at it. BackerKit has a lot of great tools you just have to learn how to use them. The team at BackerKit has been amazing.
Finally, rather than pay another company I have hired Agamemnon Press's first employee Julie! Julie will help Kayla and I pack boxes and ensure speed and accuracy.
Timeline
Now that you have the PDF I want you to read through it, run it, and enjoy it. Before we send it off to the printer I want you to help us stomp out any typos and provide feedback. Please use this form to provide feedback.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeThWQ8O002sJKe1dmnZSSRAC7masB_kUp7lHk0R3UYEd_BLw/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=106632331522083187267
We will send this to the printer toward the end of October because I want to have time to go through this one more time piece by piece before we send it off. If all things go according to plan (HAHA!) I expect fulfillment to begin after Christmas. Thank you again for your support. It truly means the world to Tim and me.
This morning I am pleased to announce to all of you that the HELLCRAWL PDF is now available.
What an amazing process this project has been. 3 years ago, when I set HELLCRAWL aside, I truly never thought I would ever be able to say "You can now download the PDF and send your players to Hell!" Now, thanks to Necrotic Gnome's encouragement, today is the day!
I believe that this is our best book yet. Tim's art is amazing and I love the way he hit every speedball I threw at him out of the park. I've learned so much through this process and it has been a dream come true. I loved going back to the work I had done in the past and tweaking it, improving it. I hope you enjoy the months of work that went into this.
Fulfillment
If you follow the ENNIES Emporium you'll know that I've had a hard time with fulfillment. I'm going to share this information with you because I believe some of you may want to run your own crowdfunding projects in the future. I'm lucky that I've had other people in this industry act as mentors for me. Maybe you can learn from my struggles. Fulfillment is the most arduous and difficult part of these projects. In the past I've been able to sit in a room by myself and stuff boxes and envelopes. HELLCRAWL is the largest project we've had so far so I looked into finding a fulfillment partner.
Studio 2
Originally, my plan was to work with Studio 2, who is currently our distributor for Agamemnon Press books. I like Jim and his team a lot. They charged $2 a box to pick and pack which is pretty reasonable. The problem was that a lot of boxes needed to be shipped to Studio 2. To ship a carton of books from Arizona to Tennessee costs $40 a box, so that expense racks up quickly.
But then I found a fulfillment partner here in Arizona!
Gamer's Guild
I was really excited to work with Gamer's Guild. They're here in the valley, I could just drive my stuff to their warehouse and they'd handle it. We had a positive phone call in July, then we had an in person meeting at GenCon (which is funny to me, we could have held the meeting in Arizona). Then a month and a half after GenCon I finally got the fulfillment quote from them. $14 a box!
This is an absolutely deranged number and I have no clue where they came up with it. They have not responded to my messages since last week about this. This $14 a box does not include shipping by the way, it's just $14 a box on top of shipping. This would add up to about $13,000 which is wild stuff.
Where Does That Leave Us?
In a way, this is an opportunity rather than a set back. I've decided, rather than pushing off responsibility for fulfillment onto another company to improve my methods and get better at it. BackerKit has a lot of great tools you just have to learn how to use them. The team at BackerKit has been amazing.
Finally, rather than pay another company I have hired Agamemnon Press's first employee Julie! Julie will help Kayla and I pack boxes and ensure speed and accuracy.
Timeline
Now that you have the PDF I want you to read through it, run it, and enjoy it. Before we send it off to the printer I want you to help us stomp out any typos and provide feedback. Please use this form to provide feedback.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeThWQ8O002sJKe1dmnZSSRAC7masB_kUp7lHk0R3UYEd_BLw/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=106632331522083187267
We will send this to the printer toward the end of October because I want to have time to go through this one more time piece by piece before we send it off. If all things go according to plan (HAHA!) I expect fulfillment to begin after Christmas. Thank you again for your support. It truly means the world to Tim and me.
Comments
6