Shipping Oct. 9
Hey Team Squad,
I have a bunch of updates.
We’re making solid progress in Canada, the UK, and Ireland, with about 200 books out in each of those countries. In total got out around 700 from Nashville, that includes a bunch of re-ships.
The Ireland re-ships through UPS went really well. We watched about 300 orders make it into the country. That said, I still don’t fully trust UPS. Dealing with them has been a constant headache. I’ve seen every genre of tracking data, from comedy to horror to pure suspense.
We’ve closed out 36 countries, including all of Central America, Mexico, Argentina, and many more. (Honestly, I have no idea how some of them were even able to watch the show.)
Something new: closing countries in the store
Starting now, every time we close out a country, the book will no longer be available to order there. It’s been on sale for over three years, and the main reason for this change is simple: I want the number of remaining orders to keep getting smaller. So if your country isn’t on the closed list yet, order now before it closes.
I want to wrap this project up. That’s my sole driving force. All the countries listed below are now closed for NOVELS on the site:
Mexico, Argentina, Indonesia, Israel, Colombia, Chile, Kenya, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Georgia, Jordan, Kuwait, Guatemala, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Paraguay, Moldova, Bahrain, Côte d’Ivoire, Namibia, Maldives, Barbados, Bermuda, Trinidad & Tobago, Liechtenstein, Gibraltar, Aruba, Tajikistan, Brunei, Réunion, Faroe Islands, Falkland Islands
Coming next week
Another 34 countries will start closing next week, including China, Finland, Iceland, Japan, South Africa, Romania, and more.
Once that’s done, only 23 countries will remain. That includes the big five: Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany, and France. The show was REALLY popular in those countries, so there are simply many more orders to get through.
We’re attacking it from every angle possible.
This has been by far the most difficult project I’ve ever taken on, and I’ve learned a ton. My in-laws have come up to help, and my dad has been packing books. It’s all hands on deck.
We’ve now shipped over 48,000 books, which is over 26 million printed pages. More than 10,000 of those went out from Nashville alone. If I hadn’t worked out the loophole deal with the Macmillan team, we’d probably be somewhere around 15,000. Warner set this up for me to fail. They did not want it to succeed.
I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t share the bad along with the good.
Shopify has put a hold on my sales again. Yes, again.
When I launched the pre-order back in 2023, they held my funds for an entire year because they didn’t allow pre-orders at the time. (They do now. That’s also why I don’t use PayPal Business anymore, since they don’t support pre-orders either. They canceled my account.)
Now Shopify has placed another percentage hold on sales for another 120 days because they say I’m not shipping fast enough. It just means were in Act 3 of a great story, the dark night of the soul part and that the end is close....
Macmillan has also hit their busy season, so Final Space isn’t at the top of their priority list right now. Big authors are releasing books left and right, so as we plan which books to send out through Macmillan, things have slowed down a bit, for understandable reasons. (Raises fist like angry old man) Curse those successful authors with actual publishing deals.
This is still VERY much a priority for me, I’m still fighting, every single day. It feels like fighting a massive monster in the dark. Every swipe takes a chunk out of it making him smaller and smaller. On the other side is the light of the tunnel.
The crazy part is that after the third Warner merger, I don’t think anyone involved in the original Final Space deal is even there anymore. So maybe it’s time to get a little creative and say screw the deal I'm going to do what I need to do to finish this.
Thank you. Those of you who have sent me words of encouragement throughout all this, I’m telling you it means so much.
I’ll say it until the end of time: thank you for your patience.
On October weekend of 17th and 18th, I’ll be in France for a pretty cool festival.