Posted on 05/29/2009 6:35:47 PM PDT by Travis McGee
A full pallet of my books is 896 books, or 56 cartons of 16 books each. This makes a cube the size of a regular wood pallet. Currently I have about 6,000 books in the warehouse. The printing company is close to the fulfillment warehouse, so shipping between them is negligible. (The printing company uses their own truck.) The warehouse/fulfillment company ships UPS or FedEx ground, whichever is cheaper to a given zip code, and gets a better price than I would get shipping from home.
I had one full pallet of FEAT shipped to me in FL, it cost about $350. This was because I had 700 pre-orders for signed copies. But if I had them all shipped here, my entire 2 car garage would be totally full, and I would end up paying twice for shipping every carton. (Trucked on pallets to me, then UPS/FedExed out to customers.)
Only about 10% of my business are these signed copies. A new book is an unusual situation, those 700 preorders are only related to the new book release. 50% of my books go in case quantities from the warehouse in Michigan to Amazon, mostly in TN, which is much closer than FL to TN. The other 40% go to a number of other wholesalers in case quantities.
So I have to balance the unit cost per printing (either 2,000 or 3,000 books at a time, normally), the warehouse cost, and shipping costs. I find the best balance at those printing sizes, warehoused and shipped all from Michigan, near the printer. I could save a little by buying 4 or 5,000 books at a time, but then my warehouse costs would eat up that saving.
I am so sick of battling the dimwits ready to trade freedom for security from terrorists. When was the last time that a bomb went off in the US? Think that it stopped because of TSA idiots going through little girls underwear? Or the security patrols standing around on the subway looking for "suspicious" behavior, whatever that means. Or maybe some FAA bureaucrats who don't tell the Air Force about a high jacked plane because they are arguing about who if anyone has the job of telling the Air Force?
Or rather is it that some young men and women wearing uniforms went paddling through the mud in Afghanistan getting shot at to pay a visit back home to some miscreants who needed to be sent to Allah?
I believe that in sacrificing freedoms we have further weighed our economy down with useless costs, fees activities and barriers to productive activity to the point that our "security apparatus" is the biggest threat to American strength that exists. I watch it go on every day, and want to choke the daylights out of idiots who claim to love the economic freedom offered in America, and then defend this nonsense. And by "security apparatus" I don't mean men and women in uniform trained and equipped to fight. I mean the bureaucrats who sit in dark little holes protecting what they believe to be secrets from folks who don't exist and would not want their dirty useless secrets if they could have them.
Our economy went in the toilet because there is too little productive economic activity for the burdens put on it and the borrowing door from China and Europe slammed shut on our toes. And we predict a recovery next quarter. The patient died a quarter century ago and we have been living off of out patrimony ever since. Like profligate trust fund babies who just ran through daddies' loot, we are stunned that we might have to knock off the nonsense and get back to work.
Well, me I am too important to work. I am staring over the fence at my neighbors bedroom antics to make sure that she isn't secretly concocting bombs or writing dirty ditties that encode a secret message to some terrorist to blow me up, national security asset that I am. Not that any of that nonsense actually goes on, but it could, and I am here to protect you from it.
Sorry for the rant. Something really got my goat this week and it has US Naval Academy written all over it. I guess they gave up teaching those guys honor and dignity a long time ago. Just another thing gone and unmourned.
Congratulations, indeed!
Thank you for the ping, potlatch!
Travis, love your books.
BTTT, Great Review!!
I think we’re well on our way to morphing into the USSA. I don’t know if it can be stopped. Most “citizens” seem to want to be taken care of by their Uncle Sam, and would not know how to look up liberty in a dictionary.
The graduation, or something else?
No. The sniveling lack of honor, dignity and complete spinelessness of a couple of its graduates.
Great book, Travis. Just finished it Thursday night. Now I can do something else in the weekends and evenings. Hey when is the next one coming out?
Thanks. It will be a while for the next one, at least a year or two. And it will be all new, with entirely new characters.
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