Blógünder Schlock

By Sandra Tayler

It is past 8 am mountain time and we’ve topped over the 1000 sketched books mark. I need to do some math to figure out exactly how many we’ve got spoken for, but the number will be right around 1000 books. You Schlockers really know how to hit a target.

Regular editions of The Teraport Wars are still available. All books mailed directly from us are signed. And don’t forget all that other cool stuff in our store. The popular warning-sign magnets mousemats, Tagon logo pins, Rule 37 shirts, and Rule 1 shirts. If there are impressionable children in your life, grab a copy of Hold On To Your Horses, the children’s book by Sandra Tayler and illustrated by Angela Call.

Just a reminder: Sketch Edition pre-orders close Friday at 8:00am Mountain (10:00am Eastern, GMT 3:00pm.) It looks like we’ll hit the 1,000 mark pretty close to then, but even if we haven’t you won’t have much time afterwards.

[Link removed because ordering is now closed]
UPDATE: with just 24 hours (and ten minutes) to go we show 804 sketch editions sold and spoken for. Remember — anything we sell beyond 1000 before Friday at 8:00am (my time) is fine. I’ll up the count. But after Friday at 8:00am the count is fixed…

Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars is now available for pre-order. This book fits between The Tub of Happiness and Under New Management, and with it you can now own the first 1000 strips in a complete print collection.

The book is $25.00, plus shipping and handling. If you want a numbered customer choice sketch edition it’s $35.00+s&h, but those are only available until 8:00am on Friday (GMT-7).

This 228-page volume is in full color on glossy paper, and contains all the strips and footnotes from November 12th of 2001 through March 8th of 2003. It also features some new footnotes, commentary, guest art, eleven pages of all-new bonus story, and an introduction by Brandon Sanderson.

Customers pre-ordering the book will be treated to a page full of desktop wallpapers featuring the full, wrap-around cover art at multiple resolutions and aspect ratios.

Sketch editions will only be available through Friday morning at 8:00am Mountain time, or until we’ve sold 1,000 of them… whichever comes SECOND. Over 150 have already been spoken for by Comic-Con and WorldCon attendees, so don’t delay! (UPDATE! We up to 450, and it’s still Tuesday. If you want one, order it now!) If past experience is any indicator, we’ll probably end up selling around 1100 of these by Friday morning, and then they’re gone. (In the unlikely event that we don’t hit 1,000 by Friday, we’ll keep the item available until we do.)

We expect to take delivery of 5,000 books around September 25th, at which point I’ll start signing and sketching. We plan to start shipping books out on October 9th, which gives me two full weeks to finish up those sketches (resting my hand a bit more than I have in the past.)

In the exceedingly unlikely event that you folks buy more than 5,000 books during the pre-order period, there will be a slight shipping delay as we throw more money at our printer and demand a second run. Know, however, that this is just the sort of problem I’d love to have.

And now, the FAQ:

Q: Can I buy other stuff from the store, and have you ship it all at once?

A: Absolutely. We have the popular warning-sign magnets back in stock, as well as mousemats, Tagon logo pins, Rule 37 shirts, and Rule 1 shirts. If there are impressionable children in your life, grab a copy of Hold On To Your Horses, the children’s book by Sandra Tayler and illustrated by Angela Call.

Q: Where do you ship?

A: Everywhere.

Q: What does the desktop background look like?

A: This.

Q: What if my order gets damaged, or I’m just not happy with it?

A: We’ll make it right at no additional expense to you. Ask anybody who has shopped with us before — if your book is damaged, or you’re otherwise displeased with your purchase, we’ll fix it. Usually it means sending out a replacement. We’ve upgraded our shipping materials so that there are fewer damaged packages, but it still happens.

Q: I don’t like credit cards or Paypal. Can I pay with a cheque?
A: It’s slower, but yes. The instructions for that are on the store.

Q: I’ve got a question that is not on this list. Why can’t you read my mind?

A: I actually can read your mind. I ran out of steam typing the list in. Email schlockmercenary@gmail.com with your question and we’ll answer it for you.

We will open worldwide pre-orders for Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars on Tuesday, September 2nd at 8:00am Mountain Time.

The book is $25.00, plus shipping and handling. If you want a numbered, customer-choice sketch edition, it’s $35.00+s&h.

Sketch editions will be available until at least Friday morning at 8:00am, so you have three full days to order one of those. If we haven’t hit 1,000 by then, we’ll keep sketch editions available until we do.

If you crazy people order more than 1,000 between Tuesday morning and Friday morning, well… Sandra will have to let me draw in all of them because that is much less complicated than refunding money would be. Let’s show her who’s boss.

We ship just about anywhere in the world, including APO addresses. We’ve shipped product to all seven continents and to at least 40 countries. It should go without saying that we’ve shipped to all 50 United States, but I just counted to make sure. Yup. We’ve only shipped to eight out of ten Canadian provinces, though, so those of you hailing from Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland & Labrador need to get with the program. I’m not sure how the system tracks U.S. or Canadian Territories, but I suspect those of you in the Mariana Islands and Nunavut also remain unrepresented.

We plan to ship these books in six weeks, beginning on October 9th.

If you pre-ordered your book at Comic-Con, and I told you that you had an “advance copy,” your book will go into the mail on Saturday. I’m sorry it’s not in the mail yet! I still need to create the uber-cool Customer Choice Sketch Edition stamp, and until I know the exact number of books I’ll be sketching, I can’t. But I’ll have a number come Friday.

Heads up, everybody. Sandra and I will be opening pre-orders for Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars next week — probably on Tuesday or Wednesday.

If you want to be a little more sure you don’t miss the announcement you can subscribe to Blógünder Schlock via email. Does this put you on my blog’s mailing list? Well, yeah. And that might get noisy, even though comments won’t be included in that feed. Good news, though: at the rate I usually blog, in the next ten days there will only be maybe half a dozen posts, one of which will be the one you’re waiting for.

I’m not sure what limit Sandra is going to impose on me for sketch editions this time around. Last time I did 1,234, and I kind of hurt myself. A lot. Advil is now off the menu. Anyway, between Comic-Con and WorldCon we’ve already sold or otherwise accounted for close to 200, which means there should be at least 800 available for you to purchase (I won’t let Sandra pick a number lower than 1,000.) We’ll leave that option up in the store until all the sketch editions she’ll allow me to draw have been spoken for.

Schlock Mercenary has finally embraced the promise of its premise and stepped into the twenty-first century. There is a Schlock RSS feed, which includes the strip, footnotes, and navigation buttons, and which can be consumed just about any way you want to consume it. As an avid LiveJournal reader let me point you at this link here where you can “friend” Schlock Mercenary and use LiveJournal’s comment system to discuss the strip.

The feed comes just in time, too. On August 28th Schlock Mercenary will be celebrating strip number 3000 after 3,000 consecutive days of no missed updates, no fillers, and no guest strips. That’s just two weeks from now.

I needed SOMETHING to brandish jubilantly, and an RSS feed will do. Although now that I do the math, I may have advance copies of Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars to brandish as well. Throw in a few party hats and I’ll be all set.

And now, the FAQ:

Q: What about ad revenue? There are no ads in the feed!
A: There is a “buy Schlock stuff” button under the comic. That ad pays really, really well.

Q: No, seriously. Aren’t you going to lose ad revenue from this?
A: I’ll let you know. I don’t think so, though.

Q: What isn’t included in the feed?
A: Well… it’s got the strip, it’s got footnotes, it’s got five buttons and two links to get you to appropriate places on the site… I’d say it has everything, but I know I’ve forgotten something.

Q: Why did this take so long? What were you waiting for?
A: I thought that RSS had to be built in to my updater engine. This thought was shared by both of the two engineers I challenged with the project. This made it look daunting, to say the very, very least, and progress was glacial. The updater is scary. Fortunately a bright guy named Mark Shieh came along and volunteered. He pointed out that the whole thing could be built independently. Then he went and DID it. When I dared to say that it was great, he could stop, and I’d wait for updater engine changes before getting my “perfect world” feed, he rolled up his e-sleeves, dug back in, and made my “perfect world” feed. It didn’t take long. It took about three days. But we waited about three YEARS before properly starting the project.

Q: Is Blogunder Schlock included in the feed?
A: No. The blog has its own feed at http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/feed/, including a comments feed at http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/comments/feed/

Q: When will we see attorney drones again?
A: Right now, if you go re-read the archives in the correct places.

Q: When will Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars be available for pre-order?
A: At the end of this month. I’m waiting until I have advance copies in my hands.

Q: You’re just making up questions now, aren’t you?
A: I’m trying to anticipate you people. It’s harder than it looks.

I will be opening limited pre-orders for Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars at Comic-Con International next week. Here’s the scoop:

You show up at booth 1330 (Blank Label Comics, look for the color orange) at Comic-Con, and you can pre-order a numbered, customer-choice sketch-edition of Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars, shipped to any US Address, for $35 (that’s cover price plus sketch edition price — we’re eating the shipping and the sales tax.)

But it gets sweeter if you hurry. While the mass-mailing of books won’t begin until late September or early October, we’ll be getting ten advance copies of the book in just a few weeks. One of those is for me. One of those is going to be “sketch edition #1,” and will be auctioned on eBay. The remaining eight go to the first eight people to pre-order sketch editions from me at Comic-Con.

Another thing… if you pre-order from me at Comic-Con, I’ll let you pick your number. Want #002? 007? 42? 314? 666? Pre-order at Comic-Con, and I’ll put your claimed number on your order form.

Pre-orders for the rest of the world will open up the week after WorldCon, about August 15th. I’m planning to do “around 1000″ sketch editions, but if people pre-order that many at Comic-Con (I really doubt that will happen) I’ll up the number to accommodate web customers.

Sorry for the dearth of posts. I’ve got loads to do in order to get ready for Comic-Con next week, and blogging hasn’t risen to the top of that list.

I got digital proofs back for Schlock Mercenary: The Teraport Wars and they look great. I won’t have that book with me at Comic-Con, but if you’re at the show, you can try to be the first to pre-order it.

Details will follow in another post…

I don’t understand how John Scalzi manages to post so many interesting things in a single week. You’d think the guy just lives to write, but I happen to know that he has a wonderful family to spend time with as well.

Anyway, I’m back from InConjunction, and I owe you a convention report. I also STILL owe you a report from LepreCon. Perhaps both of those will get done before ComicCon in two weeks.

By the way, I’ll be at ComicCon in two weeks. I’ll also be at the World Science Fiction Convention in Denver in four weeks. Mark your calendars!

In unrelated news, the first batch of magnets arrived (enough to fill maybe a quarter of the orders), so we’ll start shipping those out today and tomorrow.

In just six hours I leave the cozy cocoon of my home here in suburbotropolitan Orem, Utah and head for Indianapolis. I’ll have only spotty connectivity (no laptop these days, and I’m more productive without one).

If you live within driving distance of Indianapolis, you owe it to yourself, to me, and to science-fiction fandom to head over to InConJunction. After all, you’re reading the blog underneath a science-fiction comic strip on the internet — you’re already nerdy enough to get passing marks at a sci-fi convention. But because it’s Schlock Mercenary you’re reading, you’re also hip enough stand out. Yeah, you’re not a demographic… you’re a demolitiongraphic.

I have no idea what “demolitiongraphic” means. It does sound cool, though.

Anyway, come to InConJunction. I’ll have books, warning signs, mousemats, Tagon Pins, T-shirts, and of course I’ll be banging out free sketches, ’cause that’s how I roll. I’ll also have the penultimate draft of The Teraport Wars cover art, and a couple of copies of Sandra’s book Hold On To Your Horses for you to handle and drool over.

Here is the full list of programming. And now, I need to finish packing…