Ultimate Faeries: Fey Monsters & Campaigns for DnD 5E & PF

Getting set up with Spiral Galaxy for future international fulfillment! And final day for A Tale of Two Seas!
7 months ago – Thu, May 23, 2024 at 12:55:13 PM

Hi all,

On the plus side, MOST of our backers now have their books! On the minus side... well, yeah, it's been a mess. Shipping strategies that worked fine for a decade have fallen apart AND skyrocketed in price in the last two years (with Amazon inventing new ways to screw things up, like inexplicably restickering incorrect barcodes on some of our books, then sending people the wrong book and then making us jump through a hundred hoops to try dealing with their error--SIX people so far had that happen), but this current situation has definitely been the last straw. 

To that end, we had a great online meeting with the fine folks at Spiral Galaxy in the UK and are getting set up with their system for international fulfillment. It should be cheaper, more reliable, faster, and much better able to deal with problems when they do occur. We are looking forward to working with competent people who actually want to solve problems instead of create them! 

We also appreciate the patience of folks who have had to go through this with us. For folks with inexplicably returned packages or incorrect shipments, I'll working to get your correct books to you ASAP. If you've got missing or incorrect items, or if you get a message from an importer or shipping company that there's some missing paperwork, let me know ASAP at [email protected] and I'll get you any documentation I can to fix the situation. Those things are often time-sensitive, so by all means get in touch quickly. Generally speaking, if you have a problem, I need photos of the damaged/wrong item, the packing slip inside the package, and the mailing label on the outside of the package (as well as photos of damage, if any). Send those as attachments to the email above. 

I've got a small pile of packages returned to me directly, and I'll be reaching out to individual backers soon to see if there were address problems or some other issue that resulted in their books coming back. 

Last but not least, it's the FINAL DAY of our latest project, A Tale of Two Seas, with just 5 hours left to set sail on A Tale of Two Seas! 250+ killer creatures from the Caribbean and Mediterranean for 5E, Pathfinder 1E or 2E, plus adventures, campaign settings, & more! We hope you'll check it out! 

More books still shipping out!
7 months ago – Thu, May 09, 2024 at 07:19:09 PM

Since our last update, we've had packages go out to:

• Australia: Childers, Craigie, Crestwood, Dickson, Doncaster East, Grovedale, Kambalda East, Lara, Southbank, Success
• Austria: Wien
• Belgium: Appels, La Bruyere
• Denmark: Aarhus, Billund, Padborg
• Finland: Turku
• Germany: Dietzenbach, Essen, Frankenthal-Pfalz, Lutjensee, Mainz, Munchen, Schriesheim, Trier
• Greece: Volos
• Ireland: Dublin
• Netherlands: Assen, Guelle, Krimpen aan den Ijssel, Lelystad, Ridderkerk, Spijkenisse, The Hague, Volendam
• Spain: Cadiz, Ourense
• Sweden: Gothenburg, Uppsala
• UK: Gloucester, Kingston Seymour

It looks like we have 37 packages still stuck in "Planning status" at Amazon, but we certainly are seeing progress vs. where we were before and we've got more packages going out every day! For those of you still waiting, remain patient and hopefully your number will come up soon! As a quick reminder, if you get any kind of notice from your shipping company about a problem, let us know immediately so that we can get you whatever documentation or information they need that is causing a problem. Also, if there is a problem with your order, please take photos of your products, the package they came in, the mailing label, and the back of the products showing the barcode/sticker, as we'll need those to process our claims with the shipper.

Last but not least, we've passed the halfway mark on our A Tale of Two Seas Kickstarter for 5E, PF1, and PF2, and if you haven't done so already we encourage you to check it out! 

Amazon books finally starting to move out! And A Tale of Two Seas!
8 months ago – Mon, Apr 29, 2024 at 04:06:16 PM

Hi all,

It's been grindingly slow getting things going, but things are at last seeming to break our way and books are on the move. In the last few days, we've had orders ship out for Aarhus (Denmark), Paris, Grenoble, & Chatenay Malbry (France), Arona (Spain), Dartford, Elgin, Ely, & Westcliff-on-Sea (UK), Waikato (NZ), and Mackay (AUS)! Fingers crossed that they all arrive safely. Let us know right away if you are contacted by a shipping company needing a specific kind of invoice or other documentation and we'll get it to you ASAP! Here's hoping the rest of our stuck orders get moving on their way to you! 

Update on Stuck Amazon Orders and A Tale of Two Seas moves back a week!
8 months ago – Fri, Apr 12, 2024 at 04:51:17 PM

Hi all,

We wanted to provide an update on the Amazon shipping misadventures we've been having. I'll start out by saying that I've used Amazon on almost all of our previous 27 Kickstarters and have never run into this level of problems and delays. We continue to look at other fulfillment options for future projects, but for right now we wanted to update you on the status of the situation.

Where we started: We began making FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) orders on February 7, and it was around a month later that we started getting questions from backers about where there books were. We ran around in circles with Amazon Publisher Support for a week or more before finally getting an acknowledgment of the specific problem (that the "street date" for several of the books had been errantly set for 12/31/24, so those books were not shipping because they were waiting for that date and so were stuck in the "planning" phase and never got shipped). That was reset to the proper date, and we were assured they'd escalate the process and get those books unstuck.

What has happened since: Progress, but slow progress. Thus far in the past month, Amazon has actually shipped 70 orders, about 2-3 per day on average. Some of those orders are partially shipped, so one or more books have been sent but the remainder have not. Why Amazon is not sending them all together I have no idea. That seems like it would be simpler and cheaper, but this time around there have been a lot of split shipments, leading to reasonable questions about why a customer has gotten one book and not another. In at least one case, Amazon not only split a 2-book order but sent both books on different dates using different carriers (one via UPS, one via DHL), each of which requested separate formal customs invoices from the customer. 

If your shipper asks for an invoice, contact me right away: I can create an invoice for anyone who needs one, but at least one person has tried using a printout of their Backerkit order, which is quite thorough and you'd think would suffice, but they said it did not. Let me know and I'll prepare an invoice for you and send it as soon as possible. 

What remains to be done: As of now, there are still 102 orders pending at Amazon (including orders that have been partially fulfilled but not completed). I've escalated again with their Publisher Services and an preparing a formal grievance with them over how this has been handled. 

In the meantime, you can search this Google sheet by city to see which orders have shipped. Kickstarter terms of service do not allow inclusion of any personally identifying information, but if you know where you live, you probably can figure out whether your order has shipped. I'll update it as packages continue to head out from Amazon. 

Thanks for your patience with this process! We hope things get unstuck soon and everyone gets their books to enjoy! 

Last but not least, we also are pushing back the start of our A Tale of Two Seas Kickstarter by a week to April 23! It's tax time in the USA and we've just been buried in paperwork which has slowed down some things, on top of our layout artist going on a family trip. We've just sent over the final Word doc for Mediterranean Monsters for Pathfinder Second Edition and will be assembling the Pathfinder RPG version as soon as our tax filing is complete! We hope you'll sign on to check out this new project and we hope you love it! 

International orders starting to ship from Amazon at last!
9 months ago – Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 11:59:28 AM

Hi all,

We've been wrangling with Amazon over some technical glitches with "release date" and while it's not 100% fixed just yet, I have started getting emails today that FBA (Fulfilled By Amazon) orders I've created for customs outside the US/Canada have finally started to ship! Backers Italiano, Bell, Knight, Steel, and Vasili, your orders are on the way, and hopefully more of the dozens of "stuck" orders there will be following soon! 

Our Arcforge plastic minis have not arrived yet, but once they do we'll be able to get another batch of held orders on the way that have been waiting for that restock shipment. We dropped off another batch of boxes on Saturday at the post office as we keep grinding through the unusual combos, but we are definitely approaching the finish line! 

Speaking of finish lines, we'll also send out a final shout about our Arcforge Universe Campaign Settingfor Pathfinder RPG, as that Kickstarter project has just 3 days left! It all ends Thursday with over 600 pages across two big hardcovers, the Arcorge Players' Compendium and Arcforge Universe Cyclopedia, with tons of technological classes, archetypes, feats, spells, options, and more, plus nearly 100 monsters and templates and guides for planetary and cosmic adventure (plus awesome add-ons like the Aethera Campaign Setting and Aethera Field Guide). If you're a PF1 fan, we hope you'll check it out!