They say everyone should work in retail at least once in their life to appreciate what a tough job it can be. Well, the same goes for e-commerce fulfillment. You’ll never look at a package you ordered online the same way again.
We thought shipping the first 1,200 copies of Tacos that had been pre-ordered via Kickstarter and our website would be an easy afternoon’s work stuffing envelopes and listening to a few podcasts. The books are small and light so it shouldn’t take too long, right?
Turns out that 1,200 'small and light' books adds up to 400kg. Between putting our bookmark in every book, stuffing the envelopes, slapping on an address label and a stamp, sealing each envelope closed, stacking them into post bags and lugging them out to the car and then into the post office, we felt every one of those kilos by the end of the weekend. It was great!
We are now on a first-name basis with the lovely Jen and Elaine at our small rural post office. Jen has gone above and beyond to get these books shipped, starting with staying late one Saturday to print 1,200 stamps for us. 'You're flying it!' she says every day we come in with yet more post bags stuffed with books – which is most days, seeing as how Tacos is such a hit.
Copies of Tacos have been shipped all around the world from this little post office, from Alaska to Australia and loads more in between: Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Mexico, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, the US and every county and corner of Ireland.
But the very best part has been seeing Tacos arriving in your homes and how excited everyone is about the book, from the design and illustrations to the stories and recipes. Many people have already started cooking from it and sharing photos of their drunken beef barbacoa, pork pibil or potato and chorizo tacos.
This is just the first of many more books in the Blasta Books series. Our little country has lots of big voices to share.
You can read the rest of the newsletter here.