sylphy
CREATOR
about 2 months ago
Project Update: Frequently Asked Questions and Shipping Statuses
Hello and many apologies to our patient backers during what's been a very slow update time. We're incredibly sorry that it's been since the beginning of September before another update has been available to provide to you all. Part of the reason for this is that there was not a lot of movement with the status of the shipments of the books and add-ons. We wanted you to know that we've heard your concerns on the status of your copies of Indiginerds and received the feedback presented to us. From this we've compiled a short list of frequently asked questions to clarify what's going on and hopefully give you a little peace of mind. First and foremost the books are still shipping and absolutely will be reaching you as soon as possible once space has become available for our fulfillers to take in the stock of Indiginerds that is going to all of you.
It’s been a year since the crowdfund ended, but I don’t have my books. What gives?
It’s been a year since the crowdfund ended, but I don’t have my books. What gives?
- The short answer is that completing fulfillment for several major crowdfunds as a small indie publisher (Iron Circus Comics) comes with a certain number of limitations we didn’t anticipate. We currently work with one small fulfillment team (White Squirrel), and temporarily partnered with an extra warehouse (Flying Cloud) in order to help fulfillment move a little faster, but ICC is not their only customer, and Indiginerds is not the only title of ours that they distribute. White Squirrel has a limited amount of space to house all of those titles, and only have access to limited USPS trucks with limited space to accept orders per day. You can imagine how these limitations can stack up and lead to long wait times compared to big retailers like Amazon, who have their own fleet of delivery trucks in several states and multiple massive warehouses to store all their products! But we’re scrappy and determined to get all these books delivered to your doors as quickly as we can!
- As White Squirrel doesn’t always have room to store 100% of the Backer books, those pallets stay at a big warehouse called Ingram until they have room for more. They ship everything to our warehouses and other Retailers. Every time we contact Ingram to give the ok to send more books to our warehouses, it can take 2-4+ weeks before those books actually get shipped to us, causing another level of delay that’s entirely outside of our control.
Why weren’t the Backer books fulfilled before they were made available at Retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.), and why are the books cheaper than what I pledged for?
- When we agreed to let major Retailers sell Indiginerds, part of that agreement was that we had to decide on a release date for the books a full year in advance, and once that was set in stone, it couldn’t be changed. Another part of the agreements were that Retailers retain the right to set their own prices and run their own discounts and sales, so the books being listed for cheaper than the Backer prices was entirely out of our hands. We intended to be finished with fulfillment before the books dropped into stores, but unfortunately we didn’t anticipate all the delays we would run into. We have begun adjusting and improving our plans for delivering future book and merch items in order to avoid this kind of thing happening again.
Are you prioritizing fulfillment of Retailer orders ahead of Backer orders?
- Not at all! The Backers are our #1 priority! Everything begins with the printer/manufacturer, which ships books to a big warehouse called Ingram. Ingram ships pallets of books to White Squirrel as well as major Retailers. Our full focus is on Backer fulfillment, we just don’t have access to the same resources as major Retailers, because Iron Circus Comics and its warehouses are all very small indie businesses with limitations. That’s just the indie life for ya!
I heard something about a pause on shipping the books. What happened?
- Indiginerds is sharing warehouse space with several other Iron Circus Comics titles and books that need to be fulfilled for other crowdfunds. We were presented with a very tough choice - put all our other books for people who have been waiting for longer than a year on pause to ship out Indiginerds, or allow Indiginerds to wait a little longer in order to finish out fulfillment for the Backers who have been waiting even longer for their titles. Ultimately, we decided on the latter, in the interest of fairness for those who have backed our older crowdfunds that have also been suffering from this bottlenecking issue on the back end. We’re truly sorry for the inconvenience to our valued Backers! However, the fulfillment for the other titles is nearly done, and shipping is set to resume for Indiginerds very soon! We do not anticipate any further delays due to the needs of other ICC titles and sincerely want to thank you for your patience during this unexpected and extended bottlenecking and delay time.
I moved and need to change my address! Is it too late?
- So long as you haven’t received a tracking number yet, it’s not too late! Email us at [email protected] and we’ll get your address updated both in our system and with the fulfillment team handling your order. If you have received tracking information, be sure to call USPS at 1-800-275-8777 and make sure they have your new address in their mail forwarding system. If all else fails, and you receive notice that your delivery failed and was sent back to its origins, email us and we’ll sort out a re-shipment of your order.
My books arrived damaged! Will you replace them?
- Yes, of course! Email us at [email protected] with photo evidence of the damage, and we’ll have our fulfillment team at White Squirrel send a replacement.
I don’t want to wait any longer! What can I do?
- Email us at [email protected] and we can go over your options!
Have a safe and happy Halloween and Diwali to all those that are celebrating! 🎃🕯
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