Woah! We're Halfway There! Heading into Quarter 3
over 1 year ago – Fri, Jun 30, 2023 at 11:23:46 AM

Happy almost-July everyone! We can’t believe we are already halfway through the year, but we are so excited for this upcoming quarter. Secret Project #3 was a favorite of many Dragonsteel employees and it's special to Brandon. We think you’ll really enjoy it!

Tonight (July 1 at 12 AM MDT) we will distribute all digital files for Secret Project #3. You will receive an email with a link to your download page to obtain your rewards. If you are unable to find that email (or don’t want to wait for it to come through as the emails are sent in batches), you can also access your rewards directly by logging in to your BackerKit backer account or request a one-time use login link to be emailed to you.

BackerKit has informed us that digital rewards will now be ordered by the most recent release. This means you should not have to scroll through the page to find Secret Project #3—simply look for the files that have “Secret Project #3” in the title and are in your preferred format.

We finished shipping the June Sel box earlier this week! Unfortunately, we are still waiting on one more partial truck of Secret Project #2 to be able to ship the last 10,000 books and it did not arrive this week as expected. Due to the upcoming holiday, we will not receive these books until late next week at the earliest. To those impacted by this delay, we appreciate your patience.

We have already begun packing Secret Project #3 and will ship the first batch today! Given the sheer volume of books, this will still take us a full month, but we’re elated that we can begin shipping these out immediately. Watch your email for a shipping notification from [email protected], and keep an eye on our progress bars here.

Please be aware that these files will be released on a Saturday and we are observing U.S. Independence Day on July 4. We are not a 24/7, year-round support team, so we may not be able to respond to your support tickets as promptly as we’d like. However, we have done what we can to help solve problems proactively. Where possible, we ask that you self-serve and read through our FAQs to see what we have already posted that might help resolve any issues you experience. If that does not work, please be patient and we’ll respond as soon as we can.

Additionally, as their fulfillment periods have long since passed, we will no longer be servicing issues with the Tress, Hoid, or Cytoverse boxes. For all remaining shipments, per our customer service policy, we ask that you contact us about any missing or damaged items within two weeks of your reward being delivered—or one month since your last tracking update if your package is lost. Beyond that window of time, we cannot guarantee we will be able to help.

Regarding the May Mistborn Box, we will stop servicing these tickets after July 7. With this in mind, we ask that you send any final service requests regarding the Mistborn box immediately.

That’s all for now! Get cozy on the couch, grab your favorite comfort food (perhaps a nice bowl of ramen), and enjoy a wonderful book!

Shipping Continues + Warehouse Pics
over 1 year ago – Wed, Jun 21, 2023 at 02:49:16 PM

June is going well! We hired 16 new temps to help us pack and ship reward boxes, and they are doing an amazing job. We have gone from averaging 8-9 pallets packed per day to 16-17 pallets packed per day!

Secret Project #2 continues to ship out as our top priority. After the truckload scheduled to arrive tomorrow, we will need one more to complete campaign fulfillment. We are hoping this truck will arrive next week so we can finish by the end of the month.

June's Sel box ships intermittently but we are making good progress. We need one more small shipment of a single box item, but hope to get all boxes out by the end of next week.

Secret Project #3 packing begins today! We will start shipping this book box the first week of July. Just ten days until the digital files release to your backer accounts!

Introducing Roshar, Our New Warehouse

We are finally settling into our new warehouse, dubbed "Roshar." We are still putting the finishing touches on our decor, so no art on the walls yet, but we have been approved to share a few photos.

 First, we have our new cubicle area! This area—which might feel a little like a Highprince's warcamp—holds 15 desks for our Merchandise, Events, and Support teams and two small meeting areas. Not pictured: In another camp... er, on the other side of the office area, we have an additional 6 desks for our Creative Development team.  

For company-wide meetings or hosting volunteers, we have this larger room filled with rolling tables and chairs. The shelves along the walls will eventually hold books and games for employee game nights. When needed, we can push the tables out of the way and fill this room with folding chairs. This area feels like Urithiru when compared with the previous spaces we used before our journey here. We've even managed to host over 100 people in this expansive space, something we could never do in our old warehouse! 

Our break room, complete with two refrigerators, two microwaves, a sink, dishwasher, and several tables, is separated from the hallway by plants and various books and swag from Brandon's works. While we have not yet caught Kaladin, Veil, and Adolin sitting around one of these tables, we find the comfort of this room is especially nice after the move, as our old, smaller break room used to double as our only meeting room. At the end of this hall you can see the Creative Development team's quick collaboration and meeting table, and the closest door on the left of goes into our Radiant Council room (i.e., our conference room).

We have much, much more room for pallets and product in the Chasms of our new warehouse! We could store just 100 pallets in our old warehouse—this one holds 1800! Fortunately, almost all of our employees have returned safely after being assigned chasm duty to go locate a pallet in these depths.

Q3 Coming Soon

July, along with the release of Secret Project #3, is right around the corner. We will post an update on June 30 with reminders about accessing your digital rewards and information about hardcover shipments. We're excited to have you with us as we continue our journey through this Year of Sanderson!

Forging Ahead
over 1 year ago – Mon, Jun 05, 2023 at 09:41:50 AM

June is here, and although it feels to us like the quarter just began, we are fast approaching quarter 3 and forging ahead with packing three boxes at the same time! See below for details.

The June 1 truckload we talked about in Update #35 was shipped a week early, so our team has kept busy with book fulfillment the past week! The next truckload should arrive at our warehouse June 8 or 9, and once or twice weekly thereafter until they have all been sent to us.

Additionally, the first batch of our final remaining product for the June (Sel—Elantris and Emperor's Soul—themed) swag box has arrived. We will use this week off from books to begin working on the Sel box for applicable backers.

Note: Products for the Sel box were sent in multiple shipments with some still in transit. This means the June box fulfillment will be spread out through the month and will be shipped concurrently with the Secret Project #2 book boxes. At this time, we believe that we will complete shipping for both these boxes by the end of June.

We are happy to announce we have received all the items for this box! We will be working to pack as many of the books as we can during June so that we can begin fulfillment the first week of July. Fulfillment will still take the full month, but we are excited to begin shipping first thing in the quarter for Secret Project #3!

We'll be back with a status update on these three boxes in about two weeks.

Secret Project #2 Truck Schedule
over 1 year ago – Tue, May 23, 2023 at 08:03:22 AM

We received another truck on Saturday! This was not a full truck, but we will continue packing and shipping these 9,000 books until we run out.

We also received a tentative schedule from our print rep for the remaining truckloads. As ever, we cannot promise we will have them until the books are in our warehouse, but we expect the next truck to arrive June 1, and then to receive deliveries about once, sometimes twice, a week throughout June. Again, we'll see if this schedule holds true!

We will post again in about two weeks (around Monday, June 4) with any truck updates and information on the June swag box. Have a great week everyone!

New Space, New Books, New Updates, Oh My!
over 1 year ago – Mon, May 15, 2023 at 08:46:05 AM

Mistborn box fulfillment is complete! Thank you all for sharing your excitement and unboxing videos! Extras of these boxes will be available at DragonsteelBooks.com sometime in June.

In the midst of the Mistborn box fulfillment, we also finished moving out of our old warehouse and into one ten times as large! We are still getting settled in, but we'll post pictures and more details of our new space in a future update.

The June Sel (Elantris and Emperor's Soul) themed swag box is still awaiting some of the rewards to arrive at our warehouse before we can start assembly, but all products are currently in transit. We don't anticipate delays on this box, but it is possible they will ship the second half of June rather than the first half of the month, depending on when box items arrive and where we are at with Secret Project #2 fulfillment.

Great news! The first truckload of Secret Project #2 arrived last Saturday! Our fulfillment team will begin assembly today and shipping this week.

However, we have been unable to get estimates from the bindery on when the second truckload may arrive. Although we hope to avoid it, additional delays on future trucks are possible. 

We recognize how difficult it is to wait for your book when other backers are already receiving and posting photos of their books. We wish we could ship all books out to everyone all at once! But the more books we ship now, the less time it will take to complete fulfillment when remaining truckloads arrive. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Regarding shipping order: The most common request for shipping order is to fulfill these by backer number. There are difficulties with doing this. For example, international shipments have to go out in large enough batches for FedEx to come by and pick them up. Additionally, backer numbers are not imported into the shipping software, so we cannot print out labels in that order.

So, this is what we have decided to do: We will export backer addresses into our shipping software in batches of 10,000 to 20,000. Each batch will be the lowest unfulfilled backer numbers. Domestic shipments will then be sent in the order your backer survey was completed, as the completed survey date comes through as the order date. International shipments from each batch will be done together based on the best timing for FedEx pickup.

If this process works well for Secret Project #2, we will use it for Secret Project #3 and #4. Watch our progress page as we work our way through fulfillment! We will post an update again on May 30th (or earlier if we receive a second truckload) with more information on Secret Project #2 fulfillment and expectations for the June box.