Hurog Store

Introduction

It all started with a simple request. After we posted the cover art to Iron Kissed, we got a letter from one of the forum members, Winderwolf. He wanted to know when we going to make a "Mercy's Garage" shirt available. Until that time, we'd never considered making stuff. How hard can it be to make a shirt? We finally came up with some shirts. Then we had a request for hoodies, and embroidered jackets, and baseball caps, and coffe mugs . . .

It costs money to produce things, particularly in small quantities. If a shirt comes in the standard six sizes, and you store ten of each size, you need sixty shirts. If each one costs $10 to make, suddenly you've got $600 tied up in inventory. There is also a certain amount of time and effort involved in tracking orders, shipping, inventory etc. We needed to decide how we were going to handle this, who was going to do the work, and how much we were going to charge for things. We looked at other authors, many of whom are selling products from their site. Many choose an automated service like CafePress, others have actually managed to start stand-alone companies selling kitsch. There are lots of solutions to this particular problem, but most of them left a sour taste in my mouth.

Some years ago I became an enthusiastic fan of a singer whose career was just taking flight. She sang beautifully, and had an amazing stage presence. I was enthralled. And then she discovered marketing. Of course I owned all her CD's, but did I really need the shirts, socks, goofy hat and club pin to be a fan? Apparently the answer was "yes". Not only was the singer hawking these goods at every chance, but her fans became rabid -- you weren't a real fan unless you wallowed in kitsch. I ended up feeling cheap and used -- I was nothing but an ambulatory wallet to her.

We don't want to do that to Patty's readers. After some deliberation, here's what we've decided. We'll make a few items: shirts, hoodies, whatever strikes our fancy. We'll bear all the costs of getting them made, then sell them to her readers. No middlemen, nobody pushing the goods, (no economy of scale. . .). Then we're selling them VERY close to our cost. Generally, our prices are set at our cost plus one dollar. We hire our teenage children to help fill orders, paying them one dollar for each item they ship. If everything works out perfectly, we break even. Overall, the store manages to lose a little every month. As I once said on the forums, Patty's entire product line is her writing. That's where we make our money. The store has things we'd like to share with her readers, not goods we're trying to cadge you into buying.

Ordering Information