You know you’ve really “made it” in web comics when your merchandise starts showing up on fictional characters like in today’s Aikida. You’ll notice that the lead character is wearing the ever-classy “Pimp Tom” t-shirt. And believe me, there isn’t any more valuable real estate in web comics.

If “Pimp Tom” is good enough for Aikida, isn’t it good enough for you?

I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind everyone that today is the last day that you can get 15% off your purchases in the store.

As part of a coding screw up that prevented people from completing their orders, I offered a 15% discount for one week. To take advantage of it, simply type “dummy” into the promotions and coupon field at checkout. (I am the dummy in question).

I would especially like to encourage to pre-order Theater Hopper – Year Three. It was my hope to take copies of the book to the Emerald City Comic Con in April. But, unfortunately, the estimate I recently got back from the printer was much higher than the previous editions of the book I have published. I suppose, like everyone else, their costs have gone up. But it was still a bit of a shock.

We’re received some orders that put us closer to our goal, but if there is not an increase in orders soon, I might have to push the project back and wait for advertising revenue to back fill the cost. Worst case scenario, I might have to shelf the project completely and refund the pre-orders I’ve already received.

We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks. If it gets bad, I might promote a little “$X to Goal” sliding bar to help people visualize things and spur orders. But after today, I won’t be offering any more discounts. So if you want to catch a break, today is your last chance to do so.

Thanks again to all of you who have already placed your orders. It will be a great thrill for me personally to put Theater Hopper – Year Three in your hands. I think it’s the best of my books so far and a lot of work went into making the commentary in the book extra special.

I appreciate your support!

Hey, guys. Don’t forget that I’m taking pre-orders for my new shirt Spoiler Alert! now until Wednesday, April 22. If you’re thinking about ordering one, please place your order now as it will help me to determine how many of each size to request from the printer!

Thanks!

Just wanted to remind everyone that today is the last day to pre-order our new shirt Spoiler Alert! After today, I’ll be sending the order to the printer. Pre-ordering now helps me to determine how large the order should be and what sizes will be most popular. So if you’re thinking about picking this up, now would be the best time!

Incidentally, I’m trying to add as many bundling options as I can for those of you who want to take advantage of a deal by ordering more than one item. There’s some pretty significant savings going on, so you might want to check out the bundled offers before placing your order!

Thanks!

It was brought to my attention that there was an error on the Store > Bundle page. People trying to order the One Book, One Shirt bundle were being charged for One Book and TWO Shirts! Not cool on my part. My sincere apologies.

I wanted to let everyone know that the error has been fixed and you can now place an order for One Book and One Shirt at a discounted price of $25.00. That’s $5.00 off!

Thanks!

I’ve gone a little blog crazy today. Sorry about that. But I wanted to tell you about a new/old feature I’ve added back to the site. I say “old,” because this is something we had before we brought the site into Wordpress earlier in the year. I’ve been shopping around for just the right plugin and I think I’ve found it.

What am I talking about? Why, comic ranking of course!

Now you can let us know how you feel about any comic in the archive by ranking it on a handy scale of 1 to 10. Some of my web comic buddies told me “Tom, you’re nuts! You should never let your readers pass judgment on you in this way!”

But I say “Hooey!” We did it once before and it worked out great! Were there a few comics that I liked that were poorly ranked? Sure! But it didn’t diminish the reasons *I* found them funny. And besides, why shouldn’t you have a say?

The previous ranking application bore unexpected fruit. It helped me to pick which comics to put into our Top 25 Sampler Booklet which is something I use to introduce people to Theater Hopper at conventions every year!

By the way, did you know you can now purchase a copy of the booklet? I put it up in the store a few weeks ago and it’s only $3.00! It’s a great way to introduce new readers to the comic and it includes a brief paragraph with commentary for each strip – just to frame it in context a little.

Who knows… Now that we have the ranking system back, I might have to do a second edition of the booklet!

If you’ve got nothing better going on, take a little time to comb through the archives and pick out your favorite strips. Rank them to get the ball rolling. The search bar is returning more robust results every day. Just type in a few search terms to find your favorite strips!

Enjoy!

Hey, guys. Real quick – I wanted to make you guys aware of a new promotion I’m running.

If you are the proud owner of ANY piece of Theater Hopper merchandise – and that can be shirts, books, posters, whatever (past and present) – take a picture of yourself and send it to me at theaterhopper@hotmail.com. If you do, I will give you a coupon code good for 25% off your next purchase in the Theater Hopper store.

I want to take the pictures and build a gallery of satisfied customers on the Theater Hopper Facebook page. I believe that if people see others enjoying their purchases, it might encourage them to shop in our store as well. Also, the 25% discount is a nice way to say “thank you” to the people who have supported the site over the years.

Incidentally, you can post your pictures directly to our Facebook page and save me a step. But either way is fine.

Thanks again for your support!