Trying to Catch my Breath

Well, today was one for the books, so to speak. Ever since the administrator of the Leica Rumors web site (leicarumors.com) posted an announcement about my book, things have been hectic around my house at night. Especially today. I now have a stack of 12 books ready to ship tomorrow morning -- 8 going overseas, to Spain, Brazil, the Philippines, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and 4 going to US destinations. A few have sold on eBay, but most of them today sold on the White Knight Press web site. I think the international shipping works out to be a bit cheaper on that site than through Amazon, which could explain the flurry of international orders on the web site. By the way, for those who followed the tale of my first buyer who then mysteriously canceled (or seemed to cancel) the order, he (or she) re-ordered through Amazon yesterday, and the book shipped out today. So I guess it was just some sort of mixup between two users of the same e-mail account.

The one somewhat negative aspect of today's activity is that the Brother HL-4070CDW has already given the toner end-of-life message again, even though I replaced all the color toners about a week ago. So I'm starting to realize that it could be more costly to produce this book by laser printer than I originally thought. The toner cartridges are labeled as producing about 4,000 pages or more, but that obviously is an average that applies if you're using minimal color and not at the highest quality. In my case, I'm setting the printer driver for the highest quality, at 2,400 dpi (dots per inch) and "vivid" color. I guess those settings are devouring toner at an accelelerated rate. I may have to ratchet back those settings somewhat in the future, because a complete set of color toners runs in the $300.00 range. Anyway, right now I can't print, because the printer has decided its toners are dead. I will have to go out and look for more toner tomorrow.

Overall, today was hectic but enjoyable. I also received feedback from a purchaser of the book for the first time. I was nervous opening his e-mail; I was afraid he was going to tell me the book had a defect, or he just didn't like it. But he said he enjoyed it and found it useful; a great relief and a good feeling. Soon there may be more feedback, because quite a few more books have shipped by now.

Also today, I shipped two books off to Amazon for them to sell on their own, rather than through me or other third-party sellers. It will be interesting to see how that works out.