Friday, November 6, 2009

The Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow Fog

I thought a colorful title would be appropriate in view of the toner-related activities of the last day or so. As I mentioned yesterday, the cyan toner suddenly ran out, followed by the magenta. Yesterday evening I went to the local Office Depot and got replacements and got back to printing copies of the book this morning. Then, without warning (or at least any warning that I am attuned to), the yellow toner ran out. Back to Office Depot. I also ordered three more replacements from Amazon, with Saturday shipping, to arrive tomorrow. And, after talking it over, Clenise and I decided to get another printer. Actually, this model, the Brother HL-4070CDW, costs about the same as a complete set of replacement toners. So, I suppose one approach would be to buy a new printer every time the toner runs out, but we would eventually run out of room in the house to store all the empty printers. Seriously, though, we decided that it would be good to have a backup printer in case one fails, and when both are running, we can double our capacity to print books. Of course, this seems like a good idea now, when the book is just out and the orders are rolling in at what seems to us like a fast rate. When the orders slow down eventually, having two printers may not seem so necessary. Anyway, the other printer should get here tomorrow also.

We finally got enough books printed to catch up with all of the orders, and the process is becoming somewhat smoother. Today I have taken 19 books to the local post office. A clear majority of them went overseas. The country list now includes the U.K., Spain, Brazil, Japan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Canada, and Switzerland. The book's sales rank on Amazon as of right now is 3,605 in Books. I'm not quite sure what that means, but it is considerably better than the sales rank of my other book, Dauntless Marine, which is now ranked at 2,346,198.

I need to evaluate whether to try more promotional efforts, and which ones to try. For now, though, I'm glad to catch my breath after filling the orders over the last few days.

No comments:

Post a Comment