Wowie.

Well, it’s done. March 1rst was the deadline for orders to end, and on-line wise, they are done. I just removed the link.

I’d be remiss to say that sales weren’t strong at first. I was expecting to sell honestly, via pre-orders, about five or six. I’ve sold about forty-five of them.

Let me repeat that. We sold about forty-five pre-orders. Yeah, I’m kind of shocked too. Rule number 1 of fight club is to not really publish anything until you have a huge fan base, and I know my fanbase, while extremely loyal, is not big. You also figure that honestly, in the times that we all face, the market for this Pre-Orders, maybe 1 out of 20 fans will buy something and it will probably be the normal issue. So again, this was something that I wasn’t expecting to be a huge thing.

BUT…

I was initially going to MegaCon in Orlando this March. I was going to have something to take with me. I was excited. Every time I’ve ever gone there, the last two times especially, I’ve sold out of any ashcans, etc I’ve taken with. So I was planning to unveil Issue #1 of EGN there at MegaCon. It was merely a formality I’d offer this as a Pre-Order for online fans. Again, I was expecting the comic books to be something more for conventions, something they can buy, hold, read, and what have you. Word of mouth from the book at conventions, at least for the ashcans has been invaluable. Doing the EGN comic book was simple math: it’s inexpensive for them and me to buy/have made. Brad Guigar would politely shame me for doing something like that as it’s against common business sense, and he’s right, but I’m crazy.

Even more crazy, the Pre-Order was offered during my holiday break I take every year. People come more sporadically to the site until my return. It wasn’t the most genius plan. I again only had four or five pre-orders. Man if this was ancient japan, I would have just shamed my family with this nonsense. I felt like a real shmo, that I underappreciated the cut of my own jib.

Until the second week of Feburary, that is.

Not only did I see like three or four orders, I sent out a preview/press version, (i.e. the poor man’s press version) to Gary over at fleen. The dude has been all class to my little webcomic here, so, I thought I’d a) butter him up a bit and b)pander to him some more to see if he could help me whore the book.

The dude came through in spades.

Or at least, it feels that way. That week I had a small uptick (which in my case means HUGE) to around twenty peeps pre-ordering. I’m not sure if it was him, or just the normal readers beginning to play catch up. Still, a few more were trickling in, some of these being the ones who submitted and had their ‘letters’ that were published in the book at the end of the issue.

Queue today. I completely forgot about the link until I got an e-mail from the fellow helping me produce the book, showing that I got 5 more orders this morning and reminded me about the link. So it’s down. But wow. Color me shocked.

So to Gary who helped out, to all you fans who helped out by either spreading the word, or who just bought the damned thing, my god, I thank you. You guys are awesome.

And because I’m still a whore: for everyone who missed the Pre-Order, but wants the book, you can directly order it now from Indy Planet. Granted it’s a wee bit more expensive, but hey, it’s EGN. Right? Right?

I sort of wish the Team America song was fit to you fans. “EGN fans, ***k yeah!”

–Jason