Saturday, September 16, 2023

Ughhhh I forgot I had this

That's all, really. I last posted here three years ago and things have been wild ever since. I got that Kickstarter campaign fulfilled, and now I'm fulfilling another one. 

Do people even still use blogs?

I'm in the process of setting up a SquareSpace shopping cart to sell original art, something we haven't been able to do in years. It's interesting, and I'm almost ready to go live, but I'm hung up on the "setting up shipping" part of it. That always seems to be what gets me. I've been hammering at it all afternoon, and now it's time to go back to the book mines and keep packing shipments. 

Let's see if I get here again before another three years goes by!

Oh, also there's now a Girl Genius video game. Yay! You can play it on Steam and GOG.com, and later this Winter you'll be able to get it on the Nintendo Switch.

Off to work for me!

--Kaja

Sunday, March 29, 2020

The Epic bundles have been sent out, but I'm still shipping things!

Here's Phil, helping me pull down all the books that we needed to pack for the "All the Epic" Kickstarter shipments. They all went out last week, and now I'm working on the much less unwieldy individual shipments. I'm doing all the shipping from our basement this time, so I'm able to keep working while staying home. On the other hand, I can't have the small army I had planned on calling in to help, so that's interesting. I do have some help from afar, though. Our customer service is being handled by Chris Sorensen, who's been helping us with that for a few years, now. He's most likely who you'll talk to if you contact us with questions or problems!

Also, here are the beer labels, actually stuck to bottles as intended. I've been packing a lot of these. (The labels only. Beer not included.) Our BackerKit store closes for preorders on the 31, so if you want to order anything, now is the time. Beer labels will probably be available in our online store later, but the Kickstarter Exclusive pins and patches won't!

Oh, and that's just the preorder store closing. If you are one of our backers, you can still complete your survey! PLEASE complete your survey! (Some folks still haven't.) If you lost the email with your personalized link, you can recover it here: https://queens-and-pirates.backerkit.com/

I'm off to get back to work! Thanks, everybody! 

--Kaja


Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Queens and Pirates Kickstarter Books are Shipping

At long last, the Envelopes of Madness are packed, and I’m shipping books. If you have moved in the last year, please go onto BackerKit and let us know. Completed surveys are now locked, so you’ll need to have us change the address for you. We want to send it to the right address! It’s going to take me a while to get all these out, so unless you’re one of the ones that I’ve started with, you’ve got time!

You can access your BackerKit survey here: https://queens-and-pirates.backerkit.com/


I’ll be shipping metal things once they’re here, that’ll be after the books go out. I’ll let you know. I’m packing the boxes myself.

Thank you for your patience, everyone. Stay safe!

--Kaja

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

BackerKit Surveys for the Queens and Pirates Kickstarter campaign are Going Live!


Hey everybody! This is a message for our Backers from the Queens and Pirates Kickstarter campaign, which I'm trying to post everywhere so that it has its best chance of being seen...

We are beginning to send out the BackerKit surveys, so please watch for the email in your inbox or spam folder.

We are starting with the "smoke test" which sends out 5% of the emails to test the system. After that, they'll all go out. So, you should have your survey in your email box today or tomorrow.


When you get it, you'll see that it has a "deadline" near the top. Don't worry about that, you can still fill out the form just fine after that date. The deadline field was required, so we picked a "we hope to start shipping around this time." day.


ABOUT THE PDFS:

The PDF links for the Queens and Wizards book went out in emails from DriveThruComics back in September. If you didn't get it, (check your Spam folders!) we are happy to resend. Don't trust comments to be seen, though, please contact us through the Queens and Pirates campaign page (click on "Created by Studio Foglio" in the upper right to find the blue "contact me" button) to be sure we see your message.


Cinderella PDF links will be announced later, when I've got the files ready.


Thank you, everyone!

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Don't Worry, it's Not a Medical Emergency

I’m arranging to sell Douglas Shuler’s original art for the Uthden Troll Magic the Gathering card. I love this painting. It’s my favorite card in the game. I love Scandinavian troll folktales, and the art of John Bauer and Theodor Kittelsen. I’m also very fond of orcs and goblins and all those other cranky, toothy guys from the stories, so of course I fell in love with the angry little Uthden Troll when I opened up my first pack of Magic cards back in the day. I’ve been thrilled to own the original artwork for so long.

I’ve had the painting since made a trade with Doug Shuler back when the game was new. I got the troll in exchange for the Cuombajj Witches artwork that I did for the Arabian Nights expansion. He’s hung on my wall for years, in a dark hallway that I like to think was a comfortable place for both trolls and original art.

Okay, the painting is one of my treasures, so why am I selling it?

Two reasons. First, I’m a little alarmed at how valuable he has become. Original Magic art has started selling for crazy amounts of money. According to various internet sources, my own painting of Shahrazad, from the Arabian Nights expansion, sold for $72,000 last year. I think I probably originally sold it for around $500, and was delighted to get it. Amazing. Having something like that lying around my house makes me jumpy. (I've already relocated Mr. Troll for safe keeping, because, yikes.)

Second, and more immediate, I need the money. I’m actually writing this all up because I have had a lot of very kind people checking on me to ask if everything is ok. I’m really touched. When you work in your own Studio and seldom leave your lair, it’s nice to be reminded that people care. So I want to fill everyone in on what’s going on:

Our latest Kickstarter campaign funded earlier this year, and we had planned to have the latest volume of the Girl Genius Collection printed in time to ship in September. That left us with nothing really new for the Summer conventions, which cut our profits at those shows to about half what they usually are. That perhaps shouldn’t have been a huge surprise, but…well…it kind of was. I am aware that I need to improve my grasp of business finance. I’m working on that pretty hard now, actually.

In addition to the bad sales at the Summer shows, the book is now coming out much later than we expected. There are a lot of production reasons for this that I won’t go into. The new collection is looking great, and now it’s on the way, so hooray.

So now, we’re dragging along into what are always the lean months of the year, but it’s worse than it’s ever been because we timed things badly and our cash flow is completely, as we say in the very serious World of Cartoon Finance, borked.

I want to stress that I am well aware of our privilege here. We are not in any real danger, we are merely temporarily embarrassed for money. There are people out there who truly have money problems, and have no way of getting out from under them. Compared to those folks, we have nothing to complain about. We’ll get back on our feet, and hopefully plan things better in the future. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have to do something about it, though. I have people that rely on me to pay them regularly, and I have to make sure that I keep my medical insurance, or this will become a medical emergency. (A lot of you know that I have Crohn’s disease, which has sent me to the hospital a couple of times. No big deal, I have it a lot easier than most, but I’d better keep that insurance.) I also need to make sure that, when the boxes of Girl Genius Volume 18 show up, I can pay for the postage to ship them all out to our Kickstarter backers.

Studio Foglio is a tiny company. It’s me and Phil. Cheyenne does the color work freelance, and Chris helps us with the email part time. My Mom and kids help out once in a while when we have envelopes to stuff. For a tiny, often-overwhelmed company like ours, Kickstarter has made a lot of things easier. It allows us to get a general idea of how many books to print, and lets us pay for the print run out of profits from the book itself, rather than scraping up the capital in other ways beforehand. It is also fantastic for getting the word out.

Nevertheless, taking preorders through Kickstarter carries a lot of responsibility. I’ve backed several campaigns where the rewards never shipped, often because the people behind them ran out of money and/or just wandered off. I just shrug when it happens to me, it’s part of the Kickstarter experience, I guess, but I also promise myself to NEVER be that guy. I can’t be that guy. Even if I was okay with taking people’s money and not delivering, which I am absolutely not, (Lawful Good, thanks, ) I can’t afford to do something like that. After all, I’ll have another book coming next year. And the year after that. What I’m saying is, sometimes it takes me a while, but I must get the Kickstarter rewards out. It’s a sacred obligation.

So. I’ve borrowed a bunch of money to keep us going. I’m trying not to spend much, and I’m selling off some Magic the Gathering art. I’m also getting back to eBay sales, digging through our own original art, and looking at places to post things like art prints. I’ve also found a bunch of old, silly T-shirt designs that we never posted anywhere. I’m also trying to find some things to post over on our Patreon page to thank all our Patreon backers, who’ve really made a difference to us through all of this.

In conclusion, we’re on rough seas, but don’t worry about us, we’re keeping the ship above water. It’s going to be a lot of work, but we’ll get through it like we always do, and we’ll probably even be better for it. We’ll have new things for sale when we can, and this Summer, maybe even a second new book. Oh, also, the new Girl Genius novel is coming out this Spring! Watch the main page at www.girlgeniusonline.com for all our announcements, and thank you all so very much for your concern and support! I’ll let you all know how the auction goes.

--Kaja

*One thing this is doing is forcing me to actually write blog posts and cope with social media, something I’m really bad about. So that’s good, I guess?

*Also, speaking of original art and Kickstarters, there are still a few of you that I will be contacting about the original art from the name-insert pages. I need to double-check your addresses. Thanks!

Tuesday, February 5, 2019

We're going to Capricon in Chicago, February 14-17


Capricon is this month! This year, Phil is Artist Guest of Honor.
Also at the con will be: Seanan McGuire (Writer GoH), Doug Rice (Fan GoH), and Carrie Dahlby (Music GoH). I’ll be tagging along with Phil to watch the fun and do a reading from the upcoming Girl Genius novel. We’ll also be doing a new Girl Genius radio play, so if you’re up for an impromptu reading in front of a forgiving (we hope) audience, and want a part, talk to Phil at the con!

The convention is held in Chicago, at the Westin Chicago North Shore hotel, and runs February 14-17.


Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Ok, remember that Kickstarter campaign I was on about earlier?

Here's the proper information about the state of the campaign:


Our latest Kickstarter campaign: Girl Genius: Kings andWizards has now funded, and we’ve posted a few stretch goals! The Envelope of Madness is now active: and a variety of extras are added as the campaign rolls on. So far, we have a very nice poster, a cute wasp eater sticker, the bookmark, TPU student ID card, art card featuring Agatha and Colette, and, of course, the autographed bookplate. We have also now reached the deluxe medal stretch goal!

The campaign ends on the 19th, and we plan to ship the books straight from the printer for everyone who fills out their BackerKit survey in time. Just like last time, we will have the post-campaign BackerKit store open for a couple of weeks, but keep in mind that, this time, backers of the Kickstarter are getting a special “backers-only” price on the campaign exclusives–like the medal and campaign patch. We hope you’ll visit, if only for the free-to-all-visitors downloadable wallpaper posted near the bottom of the page.

Can I put a link in a caption? Let's find out!