Snowed In; Building Up Inventory

The predictions of a major snowstorm were not exaggerated. The central Virginia area is buried in a large dumping of snow. Right now it's snowing again, and we may get several more inches before it's done. I don't like the feeling of not being able to get out to the post office to ship books, but that's the situation. Usually on a Saturday I would make at least one trip to the post office to drop off the books that I prepared with printed postage from the usps.com web site, and to take the international shipments to the counter for processing. But the orders I have as of now will have to wait until at least Monday, when I hope to be able to be back on track with mailing packages. I posted a notice on the whiteknightpress.com web site to alert purchasers to the delay. Actually, though, I still probably will be able to ship the books within the required time frame for Amazon Marketplace, of one to two business days.

We have both printers printing now, one churning out color copies of the book and the other printing the black-and-white version that sells for a lower price. There have been several orders for the black-and-white version, and it appears that buyers do like having that choice, though the color version is still more popular by at least a ten-to-one margin.

Last night Lightning Source sent a message saying they have shipped the proof copy of the book, which is scheduled to arrive here on Monday, December 21 (weather permitting). It will be very interesting to see how that version of the book compares to our own printing. Hopefully we can then switch to using the LSI version, and reduce the labor-intensive activities of printing and shipping the books.