business

In four weeks BYU is hosting the annual Life The Universe and Everything Science Fiction and Fantasy symposium. This year I get to a panelist for two discussions. They wanted to put me down for three, but the third one was scheduled for the middle of dinner time on a school night and I had to give that one a miss.

So at 6pm on Friday February 15 I’ll be helping discuss Publishing Fiction on the Internet. Then at 7 pm I’ll be helping discuss Publishing with a Small Press. (Apparently the panel schedulers have decided that I’m a publishing expert. I’ll do my best to pretend they’re right.) I don’t have a specific location for these events other than “somewhere in the Wilkinson Center.” I do know however that it costs nothing to attend and LTUE is boasting both Orson Scott Card and Gail Carson Levine as guests this year. So it’ll be worthwhile to make the trip even if you don’t want to hear me ramble about publishing.

http://www.ltue.org/home.html

I have been using Quickbooks for more than 10 years to track our small business accounting. I’ve never minded upgrading. I’ve been completely happy with the company and the program. But sometime in the past year one of the automatic updates removed my ability to print W-2 forms without subscribing to their payroll service. Last year I could print them. This year I can’t. The payroll service costs over $200 per year. This is reasonable for a company with many employees. It is ridiculously high for our little business with only one employee. Now I am suddenly aware that those automatic updates can break my accounting systems. I can’t figure out how to turn them off. And there is no way to back track and undo the update that removed this vital capability.

So I guess tomorrow will begin with an unpleasant phone call to Quickbooks to complain.

Edit 1/20/08: In the end I just subscribed to the payroll service. I could have messed with doing W-2 forms by hand, but it would have cost me hours. I saved 3 hours on the W-2 forms alone. I’ll also save an hour or two each quarter working with the quarterly reports. I’ll also save 30 minutes each month on paychecks. Add it all up thats 15 hours per year I’ll save. Since my time is worth at least $15 per hour, the payroll service is worth the expense. I’ve also realized the reasons why they require subscriptions. If they included the forms in the software, then people would be using those exact forms for the next 10 years even though tax forms change from year to year.

I’d forgotten that the beginning of the new year brings with it a heap of accounting chores. I do the book keeping for our family and two small businesses. Today I tackled the 1099 forms for Blank Label Comics. Tomorrow I’ll do w-2 forms for Tayler Corporation. I’ll also have to file the quarterly 941 form, two sales tax forms, a state withholding form, a federal worker’s comp form, and a state worker’s comp form. The short description of all of that has probably made some eyes glaze over or triggered a pre-tax season mini-panic. I see it all the time when someone comes to me and asks about accounting or health insurance for a small business. I start talking and before I’m done they’ve got piles of new information, only half of which they’ll remember, and a firm belief that it is all very complicated and scary.

It isn’t. Honest.

Have you ever tried to describe to someone, who has never done it before, exactly how to ride a bike? You get bogged down in detailed descriptions of how to pick a bike that is the correct size. How to pick which kind of bike is best for their needs. How to lift one leg over to get on the seat. How to push against the ground to get the bike moving. How to push down on one pedal and let the other foot get pushed up. How to make hundreds of tiny weight shifts to keep the bike in balance. How to rotate the handle bars with your hands to steer the bike. How to squeeze the brakes to make the bike stop Oh and it all works better if you go faster, really.

Like bike riding, small business account sounds complicated and scary when described, but if you just get started it all begins to make sense and in no time you’re on a roll.

The work of Schlock shipping does not end with our two large shipping days. There is a lull right after, but then the errors and damaged books begin to make themselves known. I’ve been very pleased with this shipping experience so far. I’ve gotten many messages from happy customers whose books arrived with no trouble. It has even been a pleasure to deal with the customers who’ve had problems. They’ve all been very courteous and it pleases me to be able to solve the problem in a way that makes them happy. Thus far only three books have come back to us, two with incomplete addresses and one lacking a customs form. They’ve gone back out. The remaining problems are all one of three things, An incorrect sketch (only two of these), only one book sent when there should have been two (around 5 of these), or postal service mangled books (about 10 so far).

Once the kids are off at school, I plow through my email. I exchange messages to identify books that need to be redrawn and re-sent. I process any new orders that have come in (3-6 new orders per day right now, It’ll slow down in January.) Then I print out all the postage and package up the books. At less busy times of year I’ll just let my mail carrier pick them up at the house, but right now I’m driving things to the post office. This gets the packages out a little faster and it is no extra trouble for me because I need to be checking our PO box daily anyway. All of this takes an hour or two depending on the number of orders. Experience tells me that it takes about 6 weeks after a big shipment for all the problems to surface.

One thing that I feared for this mailing has not materialized. I’ve yet to have someone who ordered via Media Mail email me in a panic because they wanted their books for Christmas. This makes me glad because once things are in the mail system I have no control over how fast they go. It is odd that some books arrive in Australia before other books arrive in Connecticut, but it is true.

The reward for a job well done is another job. I allowed myself one jellyfish day and now I am back at work. After all, this is the holiday shipping season and I have packages to mail. Thus far only one package has returned to me. It was an APO package that needed a customs form which I’d neglected to attach. It has already gone back out. For the next week I’ll be a regular visitor at the post office making sure that any returned packages go back out quickly. I’ll also be shipping new orders daily.

I’ll get to take a bit of a break right around the holiday. There will be fewer shipping chores. Maybe I’ll do some sewing. Perhaps I’ll get some writing done. But the break can not last too long. By January 1 I need to be back in gear laying out the next Schlock book. We have to get the files to the printer by January 31 if we want to make our intended April release date. And the book has to release in April because both March and May have multiple conventions. I suppose we could do it in June, but I’d really rather not have to make the money stretch that far.

In addition, Howard is making noises about wanting merchandise other than Schlock Mercenary books. We may be headed back to doing t-shirts. This means I’ll be making my shipping system even more complicated. Whee.

But for today I just need to dig my way out from under this pile of laundry and accounting work that accumulated while I was busy with books.

Sandra Boynton has a counting book. It counts up from “1 is good for a quiet walk” all they way to “10 makes a celebration loud LOUD LOUD!” The book does not end at 10. The next page is mostly white space with a little cat sitting in the middle of the strewn confetti from the prior page’s celebration. With the cat are the words “and 1 is wonderful after the crowd.” I feel like that cat right now. She too enjoyed the party while it occurred, but is now glad to have the silence that comes after.

I came home to a house cleaner than when I left and children fast asleep. I paid the babysitter extra for this miracle. There is calm and silence for what feels like the first time in weeks. Now I can look out at the snow and not have to go out in it. Even more than the crowd of people, I am finally done with my crowded thoughts. I don’t have to juggle or shift or plan for tomorrow. I no longer have a box full of stress sitting in my office. I can finally sit and sort through all the thoughts that have been shoved to the back of my brain because I was too busy for them. The back of my brain has become quite crowded. It will be nice to disperse that crowd too.

I am so tired. I should sleep. But if I sleep, then I will wake up to kids who need food. There will be Things To Do again. I’m reluctant to let go this moment of silence and calm even for sleep.

I did not post on Wednesday. This is because I was in a heavy avoidance mode. I’d done all the book shipping preparation that was possible, but I was still tense and nervous that things would not go well. I had to give my brain things to do other than fret. So I read and surfed the internet and generally avoided everyone and everything that could remind me about all the worries in the back of my brain. A head stuffed full of repressed worries does not make for a good night’s sleep. I spent the entire night packing books in my dreams.

Thursday was the first day of shipping. The file boxes full of invoices and postage were finally put to use. Those file boxes loom large in my brain the more stuffed they get. By the time I am done sorting invoices and printing labels, I’ve put in about 50 hours of focused effort. Then I start printing postage. The boxes I carried to the Keep yesterday contained 60 hours of my effort and over ten thousand dollars worth of postage. It is very cathartic and tension reducing for me to look at those same boxes now that they are empty. The invoices and postage are now packages. Most of those packages I will never see or hear from again.

The first shipping day always begins slowly. I start with the single book packages first to let the helpers get a feel for how the process works. It does not take long before the volunteers are rearranging their packing stations and optimizing everything for efficiency and accuracy. I love to see that. At first I work right alongside everyone else. There is usually a pile of “special handling” packages that require too much explanation. It is one thing to explain a process that will work for a whole pile of invoices. It is something else to explain that this package gets an extra book because the person sent a separate payment, but asked that the books get shipped together. All the packages in “special handling” have stories attached and it is much easier for me to do them because I already know the stories.

By noon the special handling pile was gone. This was good because we began accumulating volunteers. That’s when I step back and stop doing any of the packing. Instead I started walking around and supervising. I checked all the processes, but everyone was working well and working smart. There was only one time I had to ask someone to change the way they were packing, not because it had caused a problem, but because it could potentially cause a problem. Everyone was very thorough. They kept finding problems and bringing them to me. I collected labels with no matching invoices, addressed packages with no zip codes, a big pile of packages with no postage because I’d miscounted how much to print, and a second pile of packages needing postage because I’d mis-estimated how many books would fit into a flat rate mailer.

At first the supervising left me ample time to sit down or snack on a bagel. But then more volunteers arrived and we finished all the big lists. I found myself with twice as many workers and they were all finishing lists faster because the lists were shorter. For the last three hours of the shipping I did not have a spare minute to think. There was always someone in need of a new list, or with a question, or lacking supplies. Then suddenly my boxes were empty. People came asking for the next assignment and I had none left to give. This was good, because I had reached frazzlement. I could hardly think coherently anymore. Fortunately the pizza arrived about then. I’d hardly eaten all day and I was famished.

I went home relieved, but not completely relaxed. I had that pile of problem packages to sort out. They threatened to disturb a second night’s sleep, but I squelched them with pie and a good book. Three hours of work this morning and I’d found solutions for all of the problem packages. Three helpers came back to the keep today. I’m really glad that they did come despite my frazzled assurances the night before that there wasn’t much left to do. I would not have been able to get those problem packages done and ready before the man with the mail truck showed up. He arrived just as we had finished and were all wondering what else there was to do. So we loaded the mail truck and it was all done.

There will be shipping tasks next week. Some new orders have come in. Some of those packages will find their way back to me. Then I’ll have to sort them out. Some postal worker will find a way to mangle books and we’ll need to send out replacements. I’ll still have work to do. But there is so much less. I don’t quite feel done yet. The book release party is tomorrow, I still have to run that. But I’m hoping that next week and the week after will bring more time for family and holiday and doing-nothing-in-particular.

I do not believe it. We had more packages to ship, more books to ship, everyone had to pay attention to which sketch went into which package, and it was still all finished today. It does not seem possible. I lay it all at the feet of the amazing volunteers who all pitched in so cheerfully. I would hand peopled complicated lists with multiple items and they would just go make it work. Every time I turned around someone was done and asking for more work or a new person had shown up to help. Not only that, but the people just accumulated. I think that only one person had to leave for another commitment. Everyone else just showed up and stayed until the job was done. At the end we had about 17 people working all at once. We took over the whole store.

We had the same very nice mail person who picked up for us the last two times we did shipping. I was glad to see him again. He came twice. He’ll come a third time tomorrow to pick up the last load of tubs. Tomorrow I’ll be back at Dragon’s Keep for a couple hours to take care off odds and ends. There are some clean up chores to do and extra shipping supplies to haul home. But suddenly I have space in my day tomorrow. Saturday is the party.

If you spend a long period of time working with large numbers, then smaller ones seem insignificant. This is an occupational hazard for me. I run a business where I’m routinely writing checks over a thousand dollars. (The books cost over$13,000 to print and postage is going to cost about that much to ship them.) This means that when I do the family budget and purchasing, I frequently find myself thinking “well it’s only $20.” But I still need to track those $20 purchases. In fact I need to track $1 purchases because money adds up. It adds up very quickly when you aren’t paying attention.

Howard has now signed and sketched over 1070 books. This means there are “only” 200 books left to do. I remember when we released Under New Management and the thought of sketching 300 books was daunting. Beyond that Howard needs to sign an additional 600 Tub of Happiness, over 200 Blackness Between, and just under 200 Under New Management. That’s tomorrow’s task. Then on Thursday we begin the shipping. There will be over 1600 packages and 2200 individual books.

I remember when sending out 50 Christmas cards sounded like a lot.

I’m not certain what it is about having a fire in the fireplace, but it make me mellow and contemplative. This is a very nice change after the high-stress business of the past week. Howard is more mellow and relaxed too. He’s taking a break from all the drawing today. This is really good. It means he’ll be ready for the home stretch on Monday.

Howard and I sat on a couch facing the cracking fire. “It’s really a miracle you know.” Howard said. It was a somewhat cryptic remark, but I knew exactly what he meant. It is a miracle that this life that we love manages to allow us to pay the bills. It is a miracle that despite our major reduction of income, our life has been happier and more full of wonderful things than it was before. It continues to amaze me that we can give Howard’s cartoons away for free on the internet and people still show up to buy books. It amazes me the wonderful kind words people send us that encourage us and make us believe that what we do is worth doing. Our life these days is like a house of cards that we carefully build one piece at a time. Sometimes I’m afraid to breathe for fear it will all come crashing down. Each moment the house stays standing feels like a miracle. But then when I look closer, I realize that many of the cards are glued together. Neither Howard nor I put the glue there, someone else came along after we were done. The glue is provided by the fans who come and love the house so much that they write emails, or forum posts, or tell their friends, or buy books, or simply laugh. Without those fans providing all that glue, this house would have fallen down long ago. And so I guess our life is not so much a miracle as a gift. It is gift given to us every day by the people who love Schlock Mercenary. I am awed and honored to receive the gift.