Drop post mortem and cover reveal

Greetings crew!

Wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone that come by for the drop! We had a slight issue for the first few minutes with the link not hyperlinking but cleared that up quickly. That said, there appeared to be issues with Shopify misdirecting the link for a few people to the membership sign up page. We are looking into it with Shopify to make sure that doesn't happen again. We don't know the reason yet and understand how frustrating that can be. 

Our entire goal for this drop was to make sure it went as smoothly as possible. We spent 3 days setting up and testing everything multiple times. We were able to alleviate the discount code issue from the last drop and talked to Shopify about making the checkout process faster with load times. Additionally, we monitored the drop the entire time to ensure people weren't ordering over the posted maximum number of books. We found a dealer with a 10 book GitD order so their order was cancelled and the stock returned to the store immediately. We are also working to build an app for the store that will limit the number of copies that can be purchased per order. We want to ensure anyone that wants a book can have a reasonable expectation to get one. As always, supplies are limited and demand usually outstretches the number of books available. We love a sell out drop but want to keep our supply as close to demand as possible. 

We also heard from some of you having browser issues with the store loading. This appears to be a browser/internet issue and not an issue with the store itself. We always recommend that for any drop for any site that you make sure your cache is cleared and you have strong internet signal. Also using a good browser like Safari or Chrome. These will help alleviate issues with access. We pay for the highest tiered plan at Shopify so my site is built to take heavy traffic without slowing down or crashing.  Just as with every drop, this is all a learning exorcise for all of us. We prep and plan as thoroughly as possible but know unforeseen issues are always going to pop up including issues that are out of our control. We learn, we grow, and we implement new processes and procedures to keep them from happening again. No drop is ever going to be perfect but we want to come as close as possible. There is a great post on the Absolute Batman Buy/Sell/Trade/Share(Official) Facebook group by Ron Vander Maten with steps to set up your browser to maximize your ability to purchase not just from my drops but any drop on other sites. I highly recommend giving it a read and implementing what he suggests. We will always do our best to address and fix any issues within our control but for issues outside our control, we try to point you in the right direction to address it.

And since it got leaked already, I thought I'd take this time to show you the 3rd variant for Absolute Batman #21! We're calling this book the 'Flipside variant'. The book shows Two-face as a polar negative image and will feature a spot foil overlay in silver of 4 Gotham poker chips on a cardstock cover. If you've seem spot foil covers before, you know how pretty this is going to look in your hands. 

This will be a special variant only available online to people that purchased either or both of the first two #21 variants. But even if you didn't purchase one of the first two variant, as a Brigade member you will have access as well!

THE SALE WILL BE LIVE AT 12:00PM NOON EST ON JUNE 4TH VIA A LINK YOU WILL RECEIVE BY EMAIL AND POSTED ON THIS BLOG SHORTLY BEFORE THE DROP! 500 copies will be made available online at that time. 

Then on JUNE 7TH at 1:00PM EST Scott Snyder and I will host a one hour WHATNOT live event where we will release any additional 300 copies while we sketch, sign, answer your questions, do giveaways and talk all things Absolute Batman!

Bookmark link for WHATNOT live event!

Thank you again for all your continued support! We will continue to do everything we can to earn your patronage and make each drop better than the last. 

-Mark