Hello Readers,
It hasn’t quite been a year since our first post went live on this site and oh my, how things have changed! Artificial Intelligence, or some form of it, is taking the world by storm. There are fights over copyright. Your favorite publishers are getting inundated with AI-generated scripts. Guess it’s a good thing someone created AI-detection software for scanning these things to determine if it was AI-generated. Of course that’ll never work.
And the mighty tech companies keep cutting services from their portfolios. (Looking at you Amazon killing off Kindle Periodicals.) Or, they’re self-destructing (Twitter, or is it X?) taking with it a crucial form of networking and self-promotion.
We’re also pretty tired of getting notified that our subscription to Some Amazing Service will be increasing prices. Again. Not even a year after the last price increase.
It’s not all bad news, though.
Have you seen that IngramSpark has improved it’s offerings and changed its fee structure. Gone are the days of book setup fees*! And you will no longer pay revision fees**! They’ve restructured shipping fees as well. On the actual printing side, they’ve begun offering new paper options and an ultra-premium color option. We’re a bit skeptical that it’s bright and vibrant considering how the previous “premium” option looked. Even if it’s only 5% more premium, it’s still fantastic to have the option.
* Oh, but there’s still a small global distribution fee.
** Only in the first 60 days of book release.
Overall, we’ll say, good job to IngramSpark for making the service better. Even if you did decide that our amazingly inspirational book I Pooped and It Was Amazing was not to your liking.
In storefront related news, we received a marketing notice from Etsy about changes to their fee structure. If we understand it correctly, it’s essentially a 4% discount to the Etsy transaction fee if someone buys from us after using our special link to get to the store. It’s a pretty big deal, if you ask us. In fact, this one change is the main thing that led to our blog post today.
A changing fee structure changes the calculation of what makes the most sense for our storefront. Or, more specifically, the promise of a reduced fee in Etsy makes it easier to move away from maintaining the WooCommerce storefront. We just don’t have the time to maintain both.
So, here’s what you can expect to see happen over the coming weeks or months
- We’ll be pulling the storefront off our website and replacing it with links to our Etsy shop.
- We’ll continue posting the occasional blog, so you know we’re alive and well.
- And, of course, we’ll continue doing in-person events so you can get our books in person if online shopping isn’t your thing.
In the next few weeks, our website might be a little broken at times but know that one thing is definitely not changing: we’re still here writing fun books and drawing silly pictures!
Did we mention that our newest children book Ina Changes the Sky is coming soon? Well, follow us here or on Facebook to be the first to know when we finally have copies in hand!