Pre-Order Behind-the-Scenes
It’s pre-order launch day! 🎉
I’m so excited to finally have the book in your hands in just a few short weeks. Before you read any further in this post, make sure you head over to the brand-new Story Sage Games webstore to pre-order your copy of the book (psst - if you use the code AMPLISTART, you’ll get 10% off).
All ordered and ready to go? Perfect, let’s get into it.
Since I promised that this blog would go into both the glamorous and not-so-glamorous parts of the process, I want to dedicate today’s post to getting ecommerce up and running. Hopefully, this can serve as a resource to other folks who are considering doing this and make everyone else go, “huh, that’s interesting!”
The Shopify Store
When I first started building everything out, I started with Squarespace since I already used them to build and host the main SSG website. Unfortunately, I found pretty quickly that they didn’t have quite enough support for all of the features I wanted for the store (pre-orders, digital downloads in the way I wanted to do it, etc.). Fortunately, I was able to get set up on Shopify pretty easily and integrate it within the website infrastructure (this isn’t sponsored at all - it’s just been really easy to use!).
Shopify is great because it’s so modular with lots of different apps, which means you can do almost anything. The downside is that on top of the monthly cost of the Shopify store, you end up having to pay for a handful of app fees. Either way, though, it’s hard to beat how easy Shopify makes things. And if you’re curious, these are all the different apps I ended up integrating:
Pirate Ship - for buying and printing postage
Timesact - for pre-orders
Shopify Planet - for carbon offsets for shipping
Shopify Tax - for US sales tax tracking
Filemonk - for digital download delivery
Judge.me - for customer reviews
EAS EU Compliance - for VAT on EU digital orders
Facebook & Instagram - for Meta ads, shopping, and pixels
Mailchimp - to integrate the shop with our newsletter and vice versa
Most of these don’t cost too much extra and are based on a per transaction cost. Filemonk has a monthly cost, but Pirate Ship, Shopify Planet, and EAS are all built into the price of an order. Anything else is free or paid through a separate subscription (like Mailchimp).
Shipping & Fulfillment
Shipping and fulfillment are the obvious next steps after the online store. I bought two different box sizes through ULine and a Brother QL1100 label printer. I was also able to get some very cool custom bubble mailers through StickerMule for orders that only contain pins (pro tip: StickerMule has some really good flash deals, so get on their mailing list and keep an eye out for those if you need things like stickers, mailers, tape, etc.).
The real stress test for shipping will be in the days before the release date (December 18 if you missed that) as we get everything packed up and sent out. The rest of the books are slated to arrive in the US this week, so hopefully I’ll get my hands on them soon!
Thank Yous
Throughout this process, I’ve been able to lean on so many of of my friends who are just some of the smartest, most wonderful people. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said to myself “wow, I’m so grateful that I have such smart friends.” In particular, I need to thank the following people:
Theodore Frank
Allison Wagner
Abdurrafey Khan
Ell Emadian
Julie-Anne Muñoz
From web help to marketing advice, photography, and business advice, these folks (and so many others along the way) have been massively helpful. I’m so grateful.
Everything is set up to go live in the morning and I’m nervous and excited. This project has been such a big part of my life since the original game started 4 years ago and since the book took shape as a distinct thing I wanted to do 2 years ago. It’s surreal and exciting to think that it’ll be in your hands next month.
I can’t wait to hear what you think.
Austin
