Got the gift edition of Sleeping Beauties off ebay for $98.
Once in awhile some will pop up under retail price. It's such a beautiful edition. Really love that artwork.
Got the gift edition of Sleeping Beauties off ebay for $98.
Once in awhile some will pop up under retail price. It's such a beautiful edition. Really love that artwork.
It was hell's season, and the air smelled of burning children
...well, it's nice to have that taken care of.
Eastasia has always taught college students to feel pride or shame according to their race.
Is $210 a good deal for the gift edition of Doctor Sleep?
It was hell's season, and the air smelled of burning children
Brian/Dan - Is it still possible to buy an If It Bleeds slipcase? I can't find it on the CD website at all.
"A real limited edition, far from being an expensive autograph stapled to a novel, is a treasure. And like all treasures do, it transforms the responsible owner into a caretaker, and being a caretaker of something as fragile and easily destroyed as ideas and images is not a bad thing but a good one...and so is the re-evaluation of what books are and what they do that necessarily follows." - Stephen King
Institute slip shipping would be nice. Book came out almost a year ago.
seeking: anything DT related #246
ANYTHING DT Related #246
Dead Zone First Edition F/F or NF/NF
I think Brian just removed it from the site yesterday. Feel free to email me we can do a manual order.
Our slipcase maker is currently operating with only 15% to 20% of their workforce active for each shift, but that case has been in production with them for a while now and we expect to have them this summer. They had promised a July delivery date, but I'm waiting to hear back if that's still happening. I'll post an update when I know more.
Brian
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
On March 3, I replied to your question with this information:
"I know the slipcase maker has all of the materials and the stamping dies now, but I'm waiting on their estimated ship date. I'll be checking in this week, though."
https://www.thedarktower.org/palaver...=1#post1186742
On March 20, their state's governor ordered all non-essential businesses to close. It turns out that slipcase makers are considered non-essential for some reason.
They reopened for business on June 1 with extreme social distancing and health measures in place, and they've been working on this case since then.
They had promised a July delivery date, but I'm waiting to hear back if that's still happening. I'll post an update when I know more.
Brian
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
12 to 14 weeks after the release of the book is when they were supposed to be done. Book was released September 10th.
That puts initial release date at Mid December at the latest.
13 weeks after they were supposed to be done the order was given.
seeking: anything DT related #246
ANYTHING DT Related #246
Dead Zone First Edition F/F or NF/NF
Yep, sometimes the slipcases do take longer than the expected 12 to 14 weeks. If the case maker has too many projects at the same time, or the materials take a while to arrive, etc.
If you’re tired of waiting, you can email Mindy at order@cemeterydance.com to cancel your order. You’re under no obligation to keep the order, and these will pop up on the secondary market, I would think.
Brian
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
Solution driven ideas would be great.
The slipcases not being done on time had nothing to do with Covid. So if the vendor that CD has chosen cannot complete a project in the close to 7 months before covid hit what can be done to prevent that in the future?
Regarding a refund: CD's default customer service solution when called out on something seems to be a refund. A horrible idea since the consumer and business both miss out, the customer is angry, and nothing is solved.
We have all dealt with, or worked for, companies that only use a refund as a last resort but instead do things to make sure the customer is happy and spreads the word about their positive experience. What are a few things CD could do?
seeking: anything DT related #246
ANYTHING DT Related #246
Dead Zone First Edition F/F or NF/NF
Thanks for the feedback! I’m going to keep this short because we’re visiting family today.
If we don’t offer refunds, then people say we’ve taken their money and won’t give it back. Hence why we offer refunds.
We are always happy to talk to new slipcase makers who can handle these jobs. If you know of any, please send them our way. We have more work than our current vendor can handle, that’s for sure!
Brian
PS I think we will have to agree to disagree about companies that make it really hard to get a refund. If someone wants their money back, they shouldn’t have to jump through hoops. That is not a positive experience.
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!
ANYTHING DT Related #246
Dead Zone First Edition F/F or NF/NF
I believe that Brian and all of the folks he supervises, as well as the vendors he has projects with are doing the best they can. That includes pre-Covid-19, and certainly now during this crisis.
BJF doesn't own CD, and thus has to work within the constraints presented to him. Any of us can ask for and receive a refund, but perhaps Brian, Dan, Mindy, and others need their job.
People should hang in there, and still provide constructive feedback (positive or negative).
Okay, back home on the computer, which makes responding a lot easier! You guys know I wander off into "inside baseball" territory easily, so for those who don't care about the nuts and bolts of this stuff, this is a good time to read another thread.
As I mentioned above, I'm always looking for possible case vendors. They're harder to find than you'd expect because of the size of our orders. Small shops cannot make this many cases. Some of the larger companies that can handle this size order are accustomed to dealing with other industries like expensive wines and jewelry, and they charge accordingly. The materials don't cost them more than the materials cost our current vendor, but there's a huge mark up on the labor, so our retail prices would need to go WAY up.
Real world example: one company I've spoken with is accustomed jobs like making 100 special boxes for the NFL for a Super Bowl special VIP package, and charging $800 per unit, which is nothing to the NFL... But his quote was $85 per unit for the aftermarket SK slipcases, with the exact same specs as our current vendor... And I'm not sure we'd sell many of those!
Here are the most recent options I presented to Richard, re: slipcase production.
1A) There is a small press that gets most of their cases made in China. Production takes approximately 12 weeks. Transit time varies as they cannot afford a full cargo container all on their own, so their cases are shipped through a service that essentially puts other company's shipments together to fill a container. But they WOULD be done faster than many projects with our current case maker. Production costs are approximately the same as we pay now, so the retail price would stay the same... but this press recommended we increase our order by 20% because that's the percentage of units they have to toss for quality control reasons.
1B) We aren't opposed to using vendors outside the USA, but we've mostly kept our spending inside the country whenever possible because we like supporting US jobs. That said, we DID try a Chinese company for traycases maybe 10 years ago. (Actually, a local business person who had contacts in China's manufacturing plants came to us with the idea.) The time frame was longer than expected, the cases didn't quite fit right, and they SMELLED AWFUL due to the chemicals in the glue. This experience soured us on the idea of trying China again, but we know that one experience with one company is hardly representative of all of the manufacturing plants in a country!
2A) There is another case maker we do use, but the retail cost for these SK aftermarket slipcases -- if our order was for the same number of units -- would need to go up to $34 because of his increased production costs. If our order goes down due to fewer sales, the price would have to go up to compensate. We pegged the ideal retail price at $40 based on surveys we did the other year -- to make up for the lost sales and increased costs.
2B) Our current aftermarket SK slipcase order is larger than the print runs for MOST of our books. If most of those customers said they'd happily pay $34 or $35 to get the cases faster, this is DEFINITELY an option. But we'd hate to lose 500 (or whatever) orders and then have to double the retail price. AND anger so many customers by raising the price, losing their business, etc.
2C) There's definitely a line of thought that if we could pump these out in 6 weeks, maybe we'd sell a lot more. That sounds good on paper, but we've sold A LOT of Stephen King related books, cases, etc, over the years, and we have a REALLY good feel for the marketplace, so we're pretty sure we've reached MOST of the people who will pay money for an add-on slipcase for their book. Any changes cannot be based on the idea that there's some huge untapped customer base that would jump on board if these came out faster. There probably isn't.
3) We could send the work to our one man shop. He would take approximately 5 months to do the entire job, but as you noted above, that would be faster than some of the cases have taken. It would also mean he would have to stop work on our traycases. He has produced traycases for more than 75 overdue projects over the last 30 months, which is why we're finally within 10 or so projects of being caught up on the Lettered Editions. (Which are WAY overdue, totally our fault, and we'll apologize again here for good measure. Those cases are WAY too late, and everyone who has stuck it out is absolutely awesome for doing so.)
4) We could stop producing the aftermarket slipcases, which would help solve some other case related delays for other projects. It would mean NOT selling a product to 2000 customers who have come to really support that line of products, though, and we'd have to figure out if some of the other projects getting done a little faster would justify angering those customers -- and losing the revenue, which would need made up somewhere else (higher prices?).
I probably have more thoughts, but I'm late getting the kids to bed, so I'll sign off with this for now. Thanks!
Brian
Founder and publisher of Lividian Publications. My other website is BrianJamesFreeman.com. Please always feel free to email me or send me a PM if you have any questions about either!