Our new "Kickstarter Backers' Contact Form" and information pages

I've made a lovely new information page with up-do-date status reports for all of our past Kickstarter campaigns.

I've also made a lovely new "Contact Us" form for our backers to use, once they've looked at the status reports and realized that the thing they thought we never sent to them probably just got lost in the mail. (We were not always able to send tracking numbers in the past.)

Our friend Carol Monahan (from Cheapass Games) is seeing to it that our old pledge managers are shut down. Carol's helping us get our ducks in a row so that we can get our next book out, so that her company can get the Girl Genius : The Works card game out. We are all in each other's pockets around here. Someday I'll draw up a chart. ANYWAY:

 She's making sure that there's a proper note on the landing page of each old pledge manager, telling people that, although the pledge manager is closed (like the ancient tomb it is) it's not too late to contact us for customer service. Because it's not. We still have little hoards of most rewards squirreled away, just in case.

The thing is, all those old Kickstarter campaigns are getting harder and harder to keep track of. A message on an old campaign page is easily missed, (although we do try to look things over regularly, it seems to happen more than we'd like.) So we're trying to consolidate things, to make things easier for our backers, and to make things easier for ourselves. Hence, the new information page. I hope it helps!

First Post: I'm starting this blog to talk about the business of publishing and crowdfunding the Girl Genius comics

Welcome! I am Kaja Foglio. With my husband Phil, I am co-owner of Studio Foglio, LLC, and co-creator of the gaslamp fantasy series Girl Genius. 

At the time of this writing, Studio Foglio has put out three Girl Genius novels, and sixteen volumes of the Girl Genius graphic novel. Both series are ongoing. The novels are published by outside publishers, so all we have to do there is get them written...but the comics are self-published. That means that a lot of work has to be done that no-one ever sees. I'm starting this blog partially because people have expressed interest in the workings of a small comic book company, but mostly because I need a central place to lay out information about our crowdfunding campaigns, both past and present.

Our company has done five Kickstarter campaigns to date. I have been in charge of running the last two of them. I've made a lot of mistakes, but overall it works very well for us and I'm getting better at it every time. Right now, the rewards for our latest Kickstarter campaign are shipping, and a good thing, too, since the need for the next campaign is pressing. So you're joining me right at the fulfillment end of one campaign, just in time to follow me through the next one. It might be pretty boring unless you're one of our Kickstarter backers, or looking to run your own company yourself, but here it is.

I won't be able to write up long, well-thought out essays on everything. It will mostly be little updates. There's always some emergency nipping at my heels, and that doesn't give me a lot of time to spend blogging. For instance: right now, I need to wrap this up so that I can go letter the page of the comic that will go up tonight at www.girlgeniusonline.com, where we post new pages Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I also have a few other things to take care of before I sleep. For instance:

With this campaign, (for The Incorruptible Library: volume 16 of the graphic novel series) we have signed up with BackerKit to handle our campaign surveys. It has proven to be a very useful system indeed, and one of the wonderful things it can do is allow us to allow people who missed the campaign one last chance to get in on the exclusives. This is especially good since our last campaign was such an emergency "do it now" affair that several people did indeed miss it. So, now that most of our campaign backers have filled out the survey, I'm off to open the BackerKit store to our readership. I'm hoping that allow a few of our sad readers to jump on the campaign, and also that it will noodge the last few actual backers into filling out their surveys.

Before I can open the gates, I must:
1) Check in with Chris, who keeps an eye on our email, to make sure that any backers who are waiting for problems to be sorted out are taken care of (before I add more to the pile.)
2) Check to make sure that there are enough posters left that I can offer the "Envelope of Madness" without having to go back and print more.
3) Make sure the shipping for new backers is calculated properly. Calculating shipping is horrific. I try to make sure we're not overcharging anyone, but I run the numbers and it still looks wrong. So I run them again. Then I take packages to the post office and have them do it. Then I go lie down with a cold cloth on my head. It costs ridiculous amounts to send the simplest things to Australia, for instance. It seems like I ought to just take the stuff there myself and save money...and then I'd be in Australia...so bonus! I'll definitely write more about shipping at some later date. It's a major concern.
4) Make graphics for the web site to let people know about the BackerKit store.
5) Post the graphics and add proper links.
6) Steel myself to wade into social media to tell people about it. Those who have followed our Studio over the years will know that I am not good at social media. I don't have time to answer all the questions, and then I feel bad about it and people get mad at me. So I mostly stay away. Still, it's a great way to let people know what we're working on. Hence, this new blog.
7) Do the laundry. Seriously, things are getting piled up. At least I can watch movies while I fold clothes.

So that's it for now, I'm off to get to work. Thank you for reading!