Going Postal, Episode 2

I got lots of emails in response to my desperate vent of shipping annoyances.

A few people suggested I mail my posters in square or triangle-shaped tubes instead of the round kind, but unfortunately that would only eliminate one of the twelve insane dollars Canada Post charges to ship posters within Canada. I also got a lot of comments from other Canadians who have their own shipping operations... all of whom essentially reiterated that a) yes, Canada Post is expensive, and b) no, there is no way around it.

So, what's the solution? As a few of you guessed, there is only one sane course of action... my friend Jeff over at Topatoco will now be mailing my posters. Believe it or not, I will actually be saving money by hiring an American to ship everything for me. That's pretty sad, but it's the kind of sad that makes less work for me, so I'm certainly not going to complain!

So, long story short... posters (finally) go on sale on Monday! Are you excited? I am excited.

Sam Logan

Going postal

This poster-mailing business is starting to make me go a bit loony.

Figure this one out! I can mail a poster to the United States for only a bit more than what it costs to mail my shirts. I can mail a poster to nearly anywhere else on the planet for only a buck or two more than that. But if I want to mail a poster to Ontario -- a province in my own country -- it costs more than twelve dollars!

Apparently, unlike American or International shipping, Canada Post does not have a "small packet" classification for in-Canada shipping. That means that anything that's not a letter has to be sent at full-parcel rates, which are very expensive. (And then they add an extra dollar if the parcel is a tube, because tubes are round and round things can roll off the converyor belts and require extra handling. I am not making this up!)

I'm not really sure what to do here. I don't feel right about boning my fellow Canadians with high shipping charges. But if I charge Canadian buyers the same price I'd charge Americans, I'll actually end up losing money on the sale.

Are there any Canadians in the audience who have had to deal with this kind of problem before? If you have any advice for me, drop me an email!

Sam Logan

The big squeeze

Once upon a time, I would pass up a lot of neat comic ideas because they were just too big to cram into a standard-sized four-panel strip. But then at some point I remembered that this is the internet, not a newspaper. I don't have to cram my ideas into four panels. I can make my comics as long as they need to be, and all it costs is time, ink, bandwidth, and sleep deprivation!

The golden rule of serialization is that every individual installment has to be independently satisfying. And sometimes I have to make my comics longer to achieve that. But it has to be done. Otherwise, you wind up with Mary Worth. (Apologies to anyone who likes Mary Worth.)

In other news, it looks like it will be a couple more days before the posters can go on sale. I'm still in the process of acquiring the supplies I need to package and mail the suckers!

Sam Logan