I won't do it this way again. Here's the full story.
Original: 4/19/2008
Dear byThom Customer:
First the news. I received the printed reference manuals and started shipping the Complete D300 Guide on Wednesday (April 16th). Unfortunately, there were so many orders that the gating element for shipping turned out to be label creation. Why? For several reasons: labels are generated only after doing an address validation, generating a delivery or customs confirmation number, and interacting with the postal service servers to generate the postage (there are at least two and I think three remote servers involved in this). As it turns out, a single person can stuff and ready a shipment faster than the remote server lookups were getting done, thus hiring more people to get packages ready doesn't actually get them out faster. All of those data processes must be done, and none of them live on my server, so I'm dependent upon the speed at the other end, which turns out to be the limiting factor in speed of creating labels and shipping products. As it is, I turned off the email notification system, as it slowed the process even more. Thus, you will not get an email notification of the shipment being made. Based upon the rough final count I just did, I'm pretty sure all orders on record went out. To put this in perspective, in four days I've shipped more than I did in the past four months. I'd appreciate it if you didn't immediately email me asking about the status of your order. Give it a week; if you haven't gotten your ordre by then, let me know and I'll look it up.
The other issue is that the USPS required--due to the number of units being shipped at a time--that the packages be presented in ZIP Code order (and Country order). While that isn't an issue for the database, it is an issue for a first-come, first-served order delivery. Given that it looked like it will take four 8-hour days for the server to generate all the labels, I had a decision to make: ship the first day's results the minute they were ready or wait four days to ship everything. I decided to ship each day, even though that means that someone that ordered in ZIP Code 00001 two weeks after someone who ordered in ZIP Code 99999 would receive their order first (given the postal service delivery times, the 00001 customer would have received it first even if I had held all shipments; with the way I did it they just get it a couple of days sooner than they otherwise would have).
The short version for those of you who actually ordered the product:
all orders on record as of noon April 15th will have been shipped by Monday, April 21st.
If you're one of the few that ordered after noon on the 15th and before I turned off the order process, it's highly likely that your order will go out next Wednesday, on the 23rd. If I'm counting correctly, there is enough inventory to enable that.
But there's more to this story than just shipping the orders that came in. I was a bit worried about the demand for this book due to the number of emails I had gotten about it prior to announcing it, as well as the clear popularity of the camera in the market. Thus, I made a decision to pre-announce the book so as to get a better understanding of how many orders there might be. That didn't work. I based my final print orders on what I saw (plus what I thought was a healthy margin) after the first 10 days of pre-orders. What happened is that orders actually increased by a large margin after that point. Enough so as to effectively take away most of what I thought was going to be a healthy margin of extra product. Thus, all those people who sent emails to me saying that they would order on the first day it is available (and those were still coming in as of this morning) would not be able to get a book if they follow through and ordered it today. Therefore, I've turned off the order system until the next shipment of inventory arrives. The delay in getting more printed books and CDs is about two weeks. When I receive that inventory, I'll post a note on the front on the site, and open up the order process again. I'm pretty sure I'll have enough for everyone that wants one when the next batch arrives.
The short version for those of you who waited to order:
I've shut down the ordering system for the D300 Guide until the next batch of books arrive (estimate: 5/10). At that time I hope to have enough inventory to last for awhile.
I should point out that I originally said to allow four-to-six weeks for delivery. That estimate proved to be 100% accurate. I was hesitant to specify an exact date because I was using a new vendor with whom I have no track record. They delivered exactly as they said they would (as did my CD vendor, for the umpteenth time).
Unfortunately, many people appear not to have read the page from which they ordered. The number of "where's my Guide" and "have you shipped yet" emails I've gotten is stunning. I felt a bit like the parent driving the family to the mountains with the kids in the back seat repeating over and over "are we there yet?" The problem is that I end up having to answer these emails (and I'll admit I've gotten a bit terse lately--my apologies if that offended any of you). Every email like that I end up answering just delays the other projects I'm working on. This is one of the joys and pains of trying to keep the business small and for me to stay directly connected to my customers. As most of you know, I answer all emails I receive, though usually with short, concise answers. This direct connection with my customers and core market is one of the things that helps me understand what questions need answering on my Web site and in my published works. Unfortunately, I think I'm going to have to make a change. "Are you going to..." and "Is it ready yet..." messages now clog my email box. I've already reverted to a form response for the "Are you going to..." emails. Publishing information on the front page about my plans hasn't seemed to slow the tide of such messages, thus I saw no real choice but to revert to form responses to such questions.
One of the things some of you are probably asking is this: why no downloadable version? I actually have quite a few components to my answer to that question, most of which I don't talk publicly about. But the primary reason is one I do talk about and which actually benefits you: physical products have residual value. When I started this business (a long story in and of itself) I wanted my eBooks to be treated just like a book. I still do, and so should you. When you purchase a download, due to a number of reasons you'll end up agreeing to a end user license agreement (EULA). If you read that agreement carefully, what you'll find is this: you're essentially renting the product. When I ship you a physical product, the principle of First Sale comes into play: you own the physical product you purchased. The difference between EULA and First Sale means that when you decide to upgrade to a different camera, for example, you can include my product with it (as long as you keep no copies). As many have discovered, that has real value. With downloads, you couldn't legally supply my Guide to a new user, and thus the product would have no residual value at that point.
While I'm aware of the demand for instant gratification, as you can tell from the printed component I included with the D300 Guide (and you can expect more of that in the future), I'm moving the opposite direction. I'd prefer to give you real, permanent value for your money in the products I sell. If you want instant gratification, a lot of that's available on my Web site, and with the site redesign I've been working on you're going to find a lot more of it (thanks to all of you who've chosen to support the site via the Amazon and B&H links on the front page; that support is allowing me to plan and eventually deploy a bigger and better site with many of the things you've been asking for).
Nikon's about to announce two new products that will likely have strong impacts on demand for my products, plus I have three other products that are nearing completion that will likely have similar impacts. This brings byThom to a decision point. I've done the fast growing small company thing (successfully) many times in my life; I'm not sure I really want to do that again. The primary reason I've been avoiding it with byThom is that managing employees and processes would take away from my creative time and my one-to-one contact with you. I don't want that, and I don't think you want that, either. Still, this incident has me pondering the alternatives. This has been a big year for Nikon. It's been a big year for me. Please bear with both of us if there are a few growing pains in the process.
Again, my thanks for your continued support. And my apologies if you didn't get your D300 Guide as fast as you'd hoped. One of my former bosses wrote about me: "[Thom] brought a combination of strategic vision and tactical effectiveness that had us doing the right thing and doing the thing right." I'm still trying to live up to that. I didn't quite manage to do it this time around (darned tactics ;~). But I won't stop trying.
-Thom
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