Regarding the Theater Hopper – Year Three pre-sale, I’ve gotten some feedback that the store is not working and people cannot complete their orders.
I guess if you live in the States, it asks for your zip code, but can’t figure out the shipping rates and won’t let you complete the order. However, at the same time, I have received ordered from people outside of the U.S. with no problem.
I’m attempting to troubleshoot the issue. I just need to know if I’m on the right track.
Has anyone else who has attempted to pre-order the book experienced this problem? Please let me know in the comments below.
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If you visited the site yesterday, you would have seen the blog entry where I was discussing problems I was having with the store and pre-order for Theater Hopper – Year Three. I was getting international orders, but orders within the United States were not being completed. There was some kind of error when the shopping cart tried to calculate shipping and the order could not be submitted.
I could go into all the boneheaded things I did that contributed to this problem, but it’s boring and it’s technical and you don’t want to hear it.
What’s important is that the problem is fixed. And, to celebrate (as well as make up for any potentially lost business), I am offering a 15% discount on everything in the store!
All you have to do is input the coupon code “dummy” into the Promotions and Discounts field at checkout and the discount will be applied.
The coupon will be effective from now until Friday, February 6 – one week. So if you want to take advantage of my stupidity, now is the time!
Thanks again for your support!
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Did you guys see the new page peel ad I have in the upper right hand corner of the site? What do you think?
Right now I’m going to use it to promote the Theater Hopper – Year Three pre-order. But in the future I might use it as a sponsorship location for other advertisers.
I really like it, but I’m curious to know how it’s working for you? Is it slowing down the site at all or making things display unusually in your browser? Let me know!
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Just a friendly reminder to pre-order Theater Hopper – Year Three.
Check out this 10-page preview of Year Three for a taste of what to expect from over 200 pages of Theater Hopper goodness!
Don’t forget that there is a 15% discount on EVERYTHING in the store from now until Friday. Just use the coupon code “dummy” at checkout to save big!
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Jan 29, 2009 | PRE-ORDER PROBLEMS? |
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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!
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Okay, this was the post that you were meant to read this morning, but the one I couldn’t get to until I put Henry down for his afternoon nap.
Regarding Transformers, that can wait. I’m going to be talking about it all week, so there’s no need to dive neck-deep into it now.
Although, I must confess today’s strip is autobiographical. I’m less interested in seeing the movie than I am in finding out how they wrote Shia LaBeouf’s hand injury into the storyline. I anticipate that it will be richly satisfying.
Anyway… onto business.
As you know, a few weeks ago I lost my job. This came at a bad time for a lot of reasons, but one among the myriad of reasons is that I was about to send my registration for Artist Alley at Wizard World Chicago, August 6 – 9. Losing my job halted that action in it’s tracks.
Although Theater Hopper is its own entity and has its own money, I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to attend a convention when I might have to dip into that money once my severance is gone.
I won’t bore you with the mental tug-of-war I put myself in the middle of. But, eventually, when I talked to Cami about it, she didn’t see where there was a problem and told me to go for it. Bless her for being as supportive as she is.
So, long story short, I’m going. I’m sharing a table with Zach Miller from Joe and Monkey, hanging out with the guys from Digital Pimp Online and hopefully selling some new merchandise.
Ah, but there’s the rub. I don’t exactly HAVE any new merchandise.
People who pre-ordered Theater Hopper: Year Three know this. I’ve been sitting on a finished draft of that book for months, but I haven’t had the money to have it printed up. Pre-orders stalled and I’m still trying to raise funds.
I thought I would bolster that effort by designing a new shirt – Spoiler Alert! – in hopes that the revenue from the sale of those shirts would help bridge the gap on the funds I need to print the book.
That didn’t happen, either.
I’m not pointing fingers at anyone but myself. In all honesty, I haven’t been talking about Year Three or the new shirt. So, beyond the intifada announcement, why would I expect there to be any orders? I haven’t been talking about it, so people haven’t been ordering. It’s really that simple.
Well, here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to kick my plan back into gear and I’m trying to push the Spoiler Alert! tees hard before I go to Wizard World Chicago. I’m confident that this design will be a big seller in Chicago and I want to get this shirt to the printer before I leave for the convention.
With your help, I can raise the money I need to get the shirts printed up, take to Chicago and produce the profit I need to put Year Three back on track for publication.
To help us with our goal, I’ve created this handy bar graph:
As you can see, I need a minimum of 50 shirt orders before July 31 to make this work. If I can sell more than that, great. If the sale of merchandise extends beyond the Spoiler Alert! shirt and into the Spoiler 1 and 2 shirts, the Theater Hopper: Year One or Year Two books… that’d be great as well! Every little bit helps! What’s important is that we inch that bar to the left as far as we can before July 31.
I’ve been gun shy about this kind of promotion since Theater Hopper: Year Two came out in the fall of 2007. Well, I can’t afford to sit on my hands any longer. I’ve set a goal for myself and I need your help! So let’s see what we can do about racking up some pre-orders!!!
As always, I appreciate your support, patience and enthusiasm. Thanks again and I will talk to you soon!
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I’m putting together my fund raising page for Theater Hopper: Year Three over at Kickstarter and I’m having a problem.
As you may or may not be familiar, Kickstarter allows you to incentivize your backers with rewards they can earn depending on the amount the pledge to your cause. For an example, check out Gordon’s Kickstarter page for his Multiplex book.
My problem is, several people have already pre-ordered strong>Theater Hopper: Year Three and I don’t want to leave them out in the cold when it comes to rewards.
All of the rewards that fall under the $15 pre-order amount will be delivered to everyone who pre-ordered a copy so far. That includes their name on a special Thank You page in the book as well as a PDF copy of the book.
However, past the $15 mark, I was planning on offering incentives such as a custom sketches in the book, a special, limited-edition 1″ button set with a 3D theme, a new t-shirt design with 3D glasses on them and going so far as to offer up to 5 custom avatar illustrations for the backer’s personal use.
What do I do for those people who have already pre-ordered a copy of Year Three, but who also want to take advantage of the larger rewards?
Basically, I am very concerned about alienating anyone. ESPECIALLY the people who pledged their support early on and have been patiently waiting for the book to be produced.
The best idea I can come up with at the moment is to deal with these requests on a case-by-case basis. Meaning, if someone wants the higher level awards, then they can pay me the difference and I will send it to them. Maybe I offer them a 25% off discount of the difference as a small thank you for their patience.
Please tell me what you think in the comments below!
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I started talking about this earlier in the week (and have been talking about it privately with friends and family for almost a month), but I wanted to let everyone know that I have officially launched my Kickstarter fund raising project for Theater Hopper: Year Three.
I was introduced to Kickstarter by my friend Gordon a few weeks ago. Looking at it, I recognized it immediately as being perfect for helping me raise money for Theater Hopper: Year Three. But I just kind of… stared at it. Like, for the longest time. I couldn’t figure out exactly how to make it work for me.
After witnessing Gordon’s success with the site, I was motivated to take action, raise the funds I needed to make Year Three a reality and make good on all of the previous pre-orders that people have been waiting to see fulfilled.
For those of you unfamiliar with Kickstarter, the idea is simple. Basically, you put a project on their site, say “I need ‘X’ amount of money to complete this project” and then people pledge money to your cause at a level they feel is appropriate.
Let me stress that you can donate ANY amount you want. If you want to donate a dollar, great. If you want to donate $7, super. However, there are certain tiers at which the amount of your pledge will yeild specific rewards.
You can see the rewards I’m offering on the Year Three Kickstarter page and I think there are several attractive offers that you might want to take advantage of. But, again, the amount you donate is completely up to you.
Regarding those of you who have already pre-ordered, you will automatically receive all of the rewards up to the $15 pledge level as well have your name printed in a special “thank you” section of the book. If you want to obtain any of the higher-level rewards, contact me directly at theaterhopper@hotmail.com. I am offering the higher-level rewards for 25% off the difference of your existing pre-order. We can work out the details over e-mail and you can submit your pledge to the Kickstarter site as part of the overall fund raising effort.
I am asking for $3,500 by December 31. It’s very important that we make that goal in that time period or else I do not see ANY of the money that has been pledged. The Kickstarter system will not charge you as a supporter until the goal amount and deadline have been reached. If the deadline comes and we don’t make goal, you won’t be charged one red cent.
In order to insure that the goal amount is met, I will be promoting this fund raising drive quite heavily. I just want to tell you up front that I will be talking about it often in case that kind of thing annoys you. I will do my best to keep blogs about movies and blogs about fund raising apart, but I plan on posting reminder messages quite frequently.
As you can see above, I’ve already removed the advertising next to the comic to make room for the Kickstarter widget that will show you how much money has been raised and how much time is left in the campaign. I’m giving up ad revenue to do this because – at this point – no amount of money from advertising is going to make up for what I need to deliver this book.
At any rate, this is the new status quo regarding Theater Hopper: Year Three. I appreciate your support. Thank you.
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Jan 30, 2009 | I SCREW UP, YOU SAVE! |
Earlier this week I was freaking out because I was worried that my Kickstarter fund raising campaign for Theater Hopper: Year Three wasn’t going to gather enough pledges before the campaign period ran out.
I’m feeling a little more comfortable today after a flurry of activity the last two days. So I wanted to take this moment to thank everyone who has pledged so far!
As of this writing, $533 has been pledged. The goal is $3,500, so that means we have $2,967 to go before the project deadline of December 31. That’s 55 days. In other words, the campaign needs to record pledge amounts averaging almost $55 a day to make goal.
I think that’s totally possible. $55 a day is like 4 of you pledging $15 for the book – which comes signed and numbered by yours truly. Or having a couple of you pledge $30 a day to get a copy of the book signed and numbered, along with a custom illustration AND your name printed in the book’s “thank you” page. Totally do-able!
There’s a lot that I still need to do to help make the campaign a success. Most notably, post a video of myself explaining the project to the uninitiated. I read on Kickstarters blog that projects with videos get 90% more funding. I’ve just had problems finding time to record myself talking about it. I also want the video to be of high quality. So I have ambitions for shooting locations, lighting and editing.
I might be overthinking it a little bit.
In the meantime, if you’d like to help spread the word, go to the Theater Hopper: Year Three Kickstarter page and access some of the social media tools directly below the project graphic. There are links for Email, Facebook, Delicious, MySpace, Twitter and digg – All of which you can use to let people know about the campaign!
Thanks again to everyone who has pledged so far and show enthusiasm for this project. It’s keeping me going!
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Wow, you guys. I gotta say that I am overwhelmed by the support you showed the Theater Hopper: Year Three fund raising project over the weekend. When I posted about it on Friday, the campaign had gathered $533 worth in pledges. This morning, we’re up to $868.04. That’s a difference of $335.04 pledged in just a few days and that is GREAT!
I’m kind of chuckling about the .04 that was pledged. That’s pretty cool and it just goes to show that you can pledge ANY amount that you’re comfortable with.
I have to admit that I’m kind of surprised that no one has taken advantage of the $1.00 pledge reward. Your name and a link to your site from Theater Hopper? Seems like pretty low hanging fruit to me. Of course, I’m pleased that more of you are pledging large amounts. So keep up the good work on that front!
If you’ve never purchased a Theater Hopper book before, this campaign is a good opportunity to take advantage of the rewards system and to get your hands on all three books at one time.
Pledging $45 or more opens the door to acquiring Theater Hopper: Year Three as well as TWO FREE BOOKS. Don’t forget the additional rewards, like getting your copy of Year Three signed and numbered with an original sketch. Lots of great stuff to take advantage of.
I still haven’t gotten around to filming my video yet, which is kind of bad. It’s just hard to do at the end of the day when you’re bone tired and trying to put a 2 year-old to bed. I’m also kind of self-conscious about recording myself if Cami is anywhere within earshot. Which is weird, because I bather in typical loudmouth fashion whenever I record The Triple Feature. She says she can hear me in the basement from our bedroom on the second floor.
I guess I’m more comfortable with that because it’s more stream-of-consciousness and I’m free to tumble over my words. I guess I feel like I need to rehearse this Kickstarter video, or something. I gotta get over myself.
In the meantime, if you could help spread the word using the social media links under the project graphic on the Kickstarter page, that would help a lot!
Thanks again for everyone’s support. Let’s keep those pledges coming!
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