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UPDATES ON DISCBOUND + PAPERBACKS + GPSR + BARROWS
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THE ROOK & THE RAVEN
WHERE WE ARE AND WHAT TO EXPECT
We pride ourselves on being as transparent as possible, so apologies in advance because this update's a long one.
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First, a quick recap on the year so far (TW: pet death)
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Back in December, we escaped a very toxic landlord situation. We packed up our home, our kids, our cats, and our business, put pretty much everything we owned in storage and moved into an AirBnb that we were able to get into on short notice until we could find a new place to live. The upheaval and shock of the sudden move was too much, and we lost our two eldest cats: one just before we left and the other just after we arrived.
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With every other penny we had left spent on getting our stuff into storage and us to the AirBnb, and with our sole source of income packed away and out of reach, we had to choose to pick up our cats' ashes instead of picking out presents at Christmas.
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We reached out to our community with a Go Fund Me link to help us come up with enough money to pay the deposits on a new place to live, and so many of you came through for us. But unfortunately, many more took the opportunity to use our explanation of our situation to file chargebacks with their banks and disputes with PayPal. Some did so over orders that we weren't able to get shipped out before we had to pack and leave on such short notice, but some chose to do so over orders that they had already received from us.
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Chargebacks and Disputes are so much more harmful than refunds. Not only is the full amount of the order yanked out of our bank account without warning, but an additional €16 penalty is taken as well, and it's rare for a chargeback to be overturned, even when we provide proof of delivery.
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To give you just one example of what this looks like, one customer had ordered a page pack for €19 with a free shipping coupon. The day after their order was delivered, they filed a chargeback with their bank. We had €35 taken out of our account. That's after we already made the item and paid to ship it. Instead of earning about €4 for our labor on that order, we instead lost €50.
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Anyway, the chargebacks and fees all but wiped out the donations from the community, and that more or less catches us up to...
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So, that brings us to today.
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With the donations erased, we have become trapped in economic limbo. The AirBnb is too small to fit any of our belongings, much less the equipment and supplies for our business, and although we've found a number of suitable apartments, we can't afford the steep up-front payments and deposits needed get keys in hand.
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All of the machines, tools, supplies, and materials for our discbound notebook business (along with a few hundred orders that we weren't able to get shipped out in time) are all still locked away in storage where we can't access them. Even if we had somewhere to put them, at this point we don't have the money to transport them from the storage unit to where we are now.
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Even worse, we have about a hundred completed orders that are still sitting in relay depots around the world, because we don't have the money necessary to pay for the postage to get them the last leg from the depot to our customers' doors.
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However, it's not ALL doom and gloom. In fact, we currently have two sources of income that are paying the rent on this AirBnb and are helping our kids stay fed:
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The first is our EU GPSR compliance service (at corvocattivo.it). So far, through this service, we've been able to help dozens of small businesses and individual artisans afford to become compliant with the European Union's new General Product Safety Regulations (GPSR).
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The second source comes from our A5 Paperback Notebooks. We don't earn much per-book, but at least we're able to have these ethically printed and shipped by another small business while our machines are in storage, so it's one of the few things we are still able to sell (and every little bit helps).
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In addition to continuing to help and support other small businesses to the best of our ability, and working our next A5 Paperback Notebook (the long-awaited Almanac), we have been far from idle.
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In order to try to break through this deadlock, we've been pouring every moment we can spare into the new project that we're launching on Kickstarter THIS WEEK: our text-based Hopecore MMO, Beyond the Barrows.
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(The video linked below gives a small taste of what we have in store.)
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Beyond the Barrows draws heavily on skills from our pre-notebook careers in software engineering and creative writing, and seeks to combat the rampant hyper-individualism by creating a safe space and renewed sense of community that even transcends language barriers.
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Importantly, Beyond the Barrows a digital product that won't be affected by tariffs, trade wars, supply shortages, or shipping delays. The servers reside in Europe (where user data is protected by the EU's stringent data privacy laws) and we have designed the game in such a way that it will protect player-written content and chat messages from bots and AI scrapers.
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While the Kickstarter goal is the bare minimum we need to raise in order to complete this game, our hope is that we will be able to raise enough from this Kickstarter to be able to pay for the servers with enough left over to pay ourselves a livable wage for the remainder of the game's development.
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If we can pay ourselves enough from this project to meet our base survival needs (food, rent, etc.), then we can put the proceeds from our Paperback sales and GPSR services towards things like postage for the orders trapped at the depots, and afterwards start saving up for the down payment on an apartment and transport for our machines, supplies, and the rest of our belongings (like our kids' clothes and shoes).
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So, that's our situation.
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Despite the setbacks and difficulties, we continue to persevere, and we're doing everything within our power to make good on the few outstanding orders we still have, and using every tool at our disposal to get there.
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We hope to see you over on Kickstarter for the launch of Beyond the Barrows, and even if you're not able to or don't want to back the project yourself, we hope you'll help us spread the word.
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In the meantime, thank you for continuing to support our nerdy little shop.
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Best wishes and cordiali saluti,
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Amber & Déja -- The Rook & The Raven
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Thank you for supporting our nerdy little shop <3
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