Pre-order day
You would think that the day we open pre-orders for a new book would be a celebratory day. After all, this is finally the day when we get paid for all the work that Howard did creating the Schlock strips and the layout work on the book. It turns out that the day AFTER the first Pre-order day is usually the celebratory one. By the second day, the print run is paid for and we’re feeling relaxed. pre-order day is stressful. We keep clicking to see how many orders have come in. Then we do impromptu analysis of how that stacks up to this-time-last-pre-order, which is an imprecise science at best. I spend much of my day fielding customer emails. Most of the emails are problems I can solve quickly and easily. Unfortunately some of the emails must be answered with “I’m sorry shipping costs so much, there’s nothing I can do about international shipping costs.” Then I spend an hour poking around in the store and rethinking my shipping decisions to make sure that there really is nothing I can do. Sometimes I have to update product pages to make wording more clear. Other times I have to help sort out payment problems. I don’t mind helping customers, but it is depressing if they have a problem that I really can’t solve. (This time it is just the cost of shipping, but last time our store was really hostile to one customer for no apparent reason.)
Tomorrow I get to start printing invoices and do a preliminary sort to send out any packages that don’t contain The Teraport Wars. I also get to do the accounting for the money that has come in. Later, after more of the orders have arrived, I’ll do counts to figure out the quantities of shipping supplies I’ll need to buy.
But more important, I need to make sure that those business tasks only occupy me completely during the mornings when the kids are all at school. I need to be available for them in the afternoon. Today I was distracted all day. My plan for family outings needs to be in addition to regular daily attention rather than in place of it.