tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Apr 14 18:56:51 1996
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KLI Merchant Page 'n' Klingon Way
- From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <[email protected]>
- Subject: KLI Merchant Page 'n' Klingon Way
- Date: Sun, 14 Apr 1996 18:56:51 -0700
Last week I believe I posted a note to the list that I'd received the KLI's
backordered shipment of the new book THE KLINGON WAY. It came the day after my
advance copy came, and I have to confess to a mistake that I made. You see, I
opened the box and fished around in there through a couple inches of those
styrofoam peanuts, trying to find something to tell me what was in the box (like
an invoice or an actual book). As luck would have it, I found the invoice. I
pulled it out and read it and nodded without surprise -- as expected, 50 copies
of THE KLINGON WAY. And then I set the box aside because there were plenty of
other things that needed doing first, though I did send email to Mark Shoulson
asking him to put the information about THE KLINGON WAY on the KLI's Merchant
Page on the web.
But as I discovered this weekend, that's not what was in the box. Having at
last worked through the other, higher priority tasks, I opened the box to
discover 50 copies of STAR TREK: KLINGON, "the novelization of the hit CD-ROM"
(and don't ask me how it's already a hit when it isn't on the shelves yet, I'm
just quoting). This book (ISBN: 0-671-00257-0) also contain some behind the
scenes material about the making of the CD-ROM, including some quotes from
Dragon Systems linguist (and our very own) Mark Mandel!
Retail price of this paperback is $5.99, and if there is an interest in it we
can easily make it available on the Merchant Page (though I'll bump the price a
penny to make it an even $6.00). I'm a bit ambivalent about it though because I
don't want to encourage credit card orders for that small a purchase. As many
of you know, we pay a percentage of the purchase to the company that provides
merchant status to us, allowing us to accept your credit cards. That percentage
flucuates as a function of the average purchase during a span of time; think of
it as a handling fee. The lower the average purchase, the greater the
percentage of the handling fee. One of the cut-off points is $15, and since
most of what we offer costs that much or more we have so far qualified for a
charge of about five percent. We're new at this, and we're hoping we can make
this whole charge card thing work (and without adding in a lot of shipping and
handling charges). But if the average order drops below $15 then the percentage
soars up to about eight percent. Which is where my reluctance to carry $6
paperbacks comes in.
As I said though, we're still new at this, and we're learning as we go.
Certainly in the few weeks that we've had the Merchant Page up and running it
appears to have been quite successful, both in allowing foreign members to more
easily acquire memberships without the hassles of currency conversion, and with
allowing people to more easily purchase backissues of HolQeD, copies of jatmey,
and of course Hamlet. My sincere thanks to Mark Shoulson and Jay Grizzard for
pushing me toward merchant status and making the Merchant Page happen.
As for THE KLINGON WAY, I've already notified S&S about the shipping error, and
I expect to receive a new, *correct*, shipment during the coming week. Till
then, I'm going to cower behind a replacement proverb, an oldie but a goodie,
HIVqa' veqlargh.
Lawrence
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:: Dr Lawrence M Schoen, Director :: The KLI is a nonprofit ::
:: The Klingon Language Institute :: tax exempt corporation ::
:: POB 634, Flourtown, PA 19031 USA :: DaH HuchlIj'e' ghonob ::
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:: [email protected] :: http://www.kli.org :: 215/836-4955 ::
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