It's been a while since I ran a pre-sale, so I thought it would be a plan to have a handy how-to guide so we can all make the most of it. Before we get into all that, let's have another look at the art on offer and why I'm doing a month long event.
This summer I finished the original drawing - intending it to be one of a series. I'm working on a new book all about the monsters, telling their stories and revealing what they get up to when we've all gone to bed. Or are sat in the studio with a pencil wondering where everyone went. I was also trying out some new art papers and as the drawing got to the really fiddly detail stage I realised that the marks I was making weren't coming out quite how I anticipated. It wasn't bad, just different. I debated scrapping it but I really liked how the paper held the deepest blacks of the shadows and also most of you had already fallen in love with it and I was going to be in bother if you found out. But what to do? I didn't want to continue the series on that paper because I know it won't work for some of the images I have lined up. Just putting the one drawing up for sale seemed a bit lonely somehow.
I then though 'aha, I'll do a Kickstarter and make a bunch of merch with it', but then a lot went on behind the scenes and there was no way I'd be able to create and run a big campaign at this point. That then left a gap in the spookiest month of the year, so I decided to run a smaller pre sale option here just for my followers and friends (and maybe some of their friends, if you've been dragged here by somebody else, hello!). The basic idea is that you can order the original, prints, t-shirts and some other nice things as a real exclusive this month. Then I'll wrap it up by sending everyone a happy hallowe'en message with some fun digital stuff I've created, tot up the orders and do the print run. That's the what and the why sorted, so let's get to the how.
Doing a pre sale has a few benefits all round - I only need to order as many things as I've actually sold and can order them all in one go which saves time and money. I then pass that on to you with great prices and some extras that those savings pay for. It also means we can experiment a bit. I'm going to add products as the month goes along, I know people want t-shirts already but you can also make requests - fancy a new tote bag perhaps? Because those things will be getting added as the month goes on, I've made it so that shipping is covered in the overall costs and I've set up a special coupon code in each listing so you can check out and not be charged postage. That means that if you order a print now and decide you want a t-shirt later, you can come back as many times as you like and order more things without racking up extra costs. I bundle all your stuff together at the end and send it out together. To make sure you get your shipping knocked off, I've circled the bit at checkout you need to click on to enter the code, it then opens up a box for you to type the code in.
I think that covers all the essentials - if anyone has any questions or comments, as always shout up - I love to hear from you. Stephen Makes a Friend prints have their own special page in Stephen's Corner, I thought it was appropriate to host our pop-up shop in the clubhouse :)