Editing The Pen Addict 69/transcript (section)

== Field Notes Production ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' There you go. There you go. So next we had Eric from Twitter. He asked, how do you determine how many field notes packs to print per new release? Is it a guess? Do you have a formula? How are, because y'all, obviously, as business has grown, you've steadily ramped up. And, you know, how do you, how do you manage that number to where it's, it's the right number for you guys? Have you figured, have you figured that out? Is it a, is it a mad scientist formula? Are you just kind of winging it?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's, that's another thing.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I mean, that's probably one of the big things we kind of bicker about in the office before it comes out is figuring out the quantity. I mean, yeah, obviously we've gotten bigger and bigger. We know, you know, we know how many subscribers we have each time and we know, you know, usually we can kind of get an idea, you know, what the retail sales are going to be, you know, to shops that sell it. And, you know, sometimes if we have a really good feeling, we think it's just going to be a real popular edition, we'll up it a little bit. Or, you know, but we, you know, we like to keep it where we're not going to have, you know, stock for too long. You know, we like to sell out one before the next one comes out just to kind of keep things easier on our end as far as stocking and inventory and everything. You know, and, you know, obviously we like to make it, you know, if it, you know, it's limited. So we want to have, you know, a little bit of a little bit of an element of you got to move and get one before they're gone. Yeah, that's exactly right. So, yeah, it's, you know, it's usually just a, you know, pretty well educated guess. Just experience. Yeah. Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' You know, based on subscribers and retail sales and stuff like that. Yeah. You talked earlier, like when you were talking about printing the Night Sky edition that you, you know, you worked with a bunch of printers and you couldn't get the, like the glow in the dark aspect, right? So, you know, you switched to the holographic stamp. Do you do, do you do, I guess, a lot of testing? Like if you have an idea and you take it to the printer and get it done. Right. Are you going through different tests? You know, are you carrying it or are you using it to try to figure out is this going to work or do you know pretty immediately? I guess I'm, I guess I'm asking, is there any kind of process to like, you know, what if you printed out the holographic stamp and then two weeks later, you know, they're worn off or whatever. Do you do any kind of testing on that?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Sometimes. What we generally do is do an ink test on the paper where they can, it's called a drawdown where they just take the various inks. And sometimes, you know, we're not really sure exactly what color is going to work best. So we'll get a couple, you know, where they just kind of smear ink across the page, you know, like, you know, which simulates the actual printing process. So you can see the, you know, the color of the ink and there's transparency and the paper comes through. So you really know exactly what color you didn't get when you go on press. So we, you know, for most colors, yeah, especially if it's, you know, like a metallic or on a dark paper or something, we'll do that for sure. Just to make sure that's going to work okay. As far as paper, I usually, you know, usually, you know, the paper is going to be okay. There's a few, like this current one that's coming out next. I've had one in my, you know, I've had just the cover paper folded in half in my back pocket for like a month now just to see how it's letting hold up and it's been doing okay. Okay, cool. You know, but just, yeah, different, you know, different printing techniques and finishes and varnishes. We're, you know, there's been several times where we're like, oh, I'm not sure, you know, I sure hope this works and just, you know, flying by the seat of our pants hoping it works out okay. And usually it does. With the, you know, with the colors, we know it's a limited edition. And even if, you know, worse comes to worse and something doesn't work out great, you know, then it's at least just for that edition. And, you know, I think, you know, like as you've seen, we've kind of things that work better and we felt more comfortable with going into bigger production, like red blooded, you know, we knew, you know, once we were comfortable with that process and comfortable with the printer, we knew we could kind of mass produce those a little more. You know, we've gone into doing things like that. But yeah, I mean, you know, we kind of consider to some degree that the colors editions are kind of our testing ground to try stuff out, you know, and then some of the more successful stuff we can use for the regular editions later.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I love that y'all did the, ended up doing the red blooded edition. The letter, for some reason, just for me personally, the letterpress editions have always been my favorites. I don't know why. I guess that aesthetic just appeals to me personally. But yeah, I'm a big fan of it. But yeah, like Grass Dane, Grass Dane Green is my number one favorite of all time. I love, love that edition. You know, too bad there's not, not more of those around. I'd love to, I could use that one in for the rest of my life and die happy. I would be good. But I love the letterpress style. So I was glad. So now I use the red blooded as, you know, my, my stock edition, you know, as if I'm just using, you know, the basic notebooks instead of the craft. So I like that a lot. Um, this was an interesting question and it must not have came up at the time it happened. But, um, Mikey from Twitter, he said, did Brian have any issues with packet of sunshine with shipping seeds across borders?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah, we, um, I'm trying to remember if we actually thought of that beforehand. I think not. I think it was kind of a matter of, we got all the seeds and we were starting to pack things and we were ready to go. And then it sort of occurred to us, oh crap, we can't ship seeds across borders. And so we kind of sat down and talked about it. And if I remember correctly, the decision was like, no one's ever going to notice these in a million years. Let's just throw them in there. Because I think we, I mean, we did, right? I don't know if you guys know for sure. It's been kind of a while now, but I'm pretty sure we just went ahead and shipped them.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. I didn't hear anything at the time and I never considered that until he just mentioned that. I was like, oh, that's a great question because.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' Yeah. It was something that we didn't think of early enough, but then it sort of occurred to us before anything happened. And then I think we just kind of went ahead and shipped them and nothing happened. No one said anything. So we might've started some pandemic or something.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It might be more of an issue now with, you know, 45,000 additions instead of whatever that one was. Yeah. That was a pretty small addition. 7,000 or 10,000. Yeah. It probably wasn't as noticeable. But yeah, that's crazy.

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I'm looking at that. That was only 4,000 three packs. Yeah. So that wasn't that many.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So you got away with it. So now Tana, who Tana Mitchell from the Facebook group, you've probably talked to her several times as well. She's everyone calls her the she's pretty much the field notes ninja. She has pretty much everything. She collects like no one's business. She had a great question and you probably saw it on there. She says, Brad, will you inquire if Brian and Jim hate purple as much as Aaron does?

'''Bryan Bedell:''' I don't hate purple. What was we were just talking about teal and I hate teal. If it was up to me, we'd never do teal. But who knows? We beat Aaron down until we got purple. So maybe they'll beat me down until they get teal. But yeah, I don't. Yeah. I mean, the purple ones were cool. I don't have a problem with that. We've had like even Aaron's wife. Aaron mentioned the other day his wife was saying, you know, why can't you do some that are just downright girly? And I'm all for that. But I don't know. It's going to take some convincing Jim, I think, and Aaron to do the all pink. Well, we did the pink. We did the pink ones for I should probably not talk about private ones we did. But we did do some private pink ones. And well, the purple ones were private, too. Those weren't.