Editing The Pen Addict 279/transcript (section)

== Special Edition ==


'''Jim Coudal:''' So maybe we might let the cat out of the bag today about something.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I feel like if anything's ever going to leak it should be because me and Brad burst into a warehouse somewhere and pulled something off of a shelf.

'''Jim Coudal:''' Especially now that it's the last episode of the pen. Yeah. That's right. That's right. It feels like this would be a nice tribute to the show. Sorry, honey. Well, Brian and Aaron have been up to something that has to do with the 10th anniversary. And I'm going to let Brian talk about it. But I will just say anybody who's got an active subscription that's going to receive the winter shipment, which by the way will change your life, will get a special 10th anniversary edition. And then after that, after they're shipped, if there's some left, we hope there will be, we'll offer them for sale on this site as well.

'''Myke Hurley:''' We hope there won't be.

'''Jim Coudal:''' Yeah, we hope there won't be. We hope they're going to take a subscription. So sign up now. Brian was saying sign up now. So what the edition is, it's actually a pretty complex, considering this thing's only 10 years old or a little bit older for the first iterations, it's been a pretty complicated detective story. But I'm going to let Brian tell it.

'''Brian Bedell:''' All right. I'm a forensic designer. If that was a job title, that would be my favorite thing to do in the world. If anyone out there needs a forensic designer, give me a call. But yeah, Aaron is very good about keeping track of his files because he's got the mentality and he's even said this, that someday the Smithsonian is going to want all his archives and he's going to have to have it all organized. He's incredibly organized. Super, yeah. And super modest. And he, but so he had all of these files going all the way back and we were fairly organized here and we had what we needed and we wanted to go back and do a reprint of sort of in the same way that the commemorative reprint was the first two limited editions. We wanted to do some of the first editions pre our collaboration, like some of the weird ones Aaron did. So we're doing three different books going. It's a three pack based on our very early Aaron's very primitive first stabs at a field notes going into some of the ones we worked on together. So, right. So that's our anniversary edition. And they are, that's not the winter edition, by the way.

'''Jim Coudal:''' That's not the winter, but they will be shipped. If you have a subscription and you're going to get winter, you will get this in your winter shipment. And I don't think we should let any more of the cat out of the bag. So that's a nice surprise. But I will just say about Aaron being organized is not only does he have the files. He has the files exactly organized where they're supposed to be, but he maintains the modified on date for the file. So that he can say that this file was last modified on July 26, 2006, because then he knows. He's careful. If he has to work with the file, he makes a copy of the file. Wow. It's crazy, right? So he wants to keep all modifications intact.

'''Brian Bedell:''' And even, even with that though, this was a crazy, it was super fun going back and looking at how many weird little things that we had done and he had done along the way that some of them never saw the light of day. Some of them, we don't understand where they came from or why we made them. Like there's things we've done so many now. There are some weird ones we've almost forgotten about or can't even place in the timeline. Exactly.

'''Jim Coudal:''' It's going to be, it's going to be fun. It's a fun, it's going to be a fun.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It sounds amazing, right? It really sounds amazing.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So people, everybody who is currently subscribed will subscribe before winter ships.

'''Jim Coudal:''' As long as Dime Novel was not your last, if Dime Novel was your last shipment, you won't get it. If you're getting winter. If you're getting winter, you'll get it. Yep. So if you sign up for a Dime Novel subscription now, you're in. If you renew starting with winter, you're in. If you started with Campfire, you're in. As long as you're going to get a winter shipment, subscription shipment, you will get it. I'm going to check my subscription. While supplies last. While supplies last. And theoretically, if there are, we printed a fair amount of them or we're printing a fair amount of them and there may be some available to buy as three packs, but it's not going to be like a big number. Sure. So the best thing is to subscribe.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh yeah.

'''Jim Coudal:''' Always.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Always. That really helps us out.

'''Jim Coudal:''' Like Jim said. Yeah. You know, that is like our own little Kickstarter. It just rolls and rolls is that people are putting faith in us and saying, we like the products you're making. We want to see the products you're making in the future. We'll pay now to help you make them. And it gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of economics. It's, you know, we don't have to borrow money from the bank to do an addition. And we also know that there's X number of subscribers out there so we can do a larger run, which makes the cost per piece come down, which lets us to be more ambitious to do things like Dime Novel or Ambition.

'''Brian Bedell:''' And I think people don't realize how small we are and we get a lot of emails. Why don't you do all the papers and all the versions and everything? And we just, we are still a very small company and we don't have those resources.

'''Jim Coudal:''' What are you doing? The Star Wars edition? Yeah. Or something. Yeah. Why don't you do? Yeah.

'''Brian Bedell:''' You should do a Cubs edition. It's like, yeah. Okay. That would be profitable.

'''Jim Coudal:''' Yeah. No, it might be, but it wouldn't be field notes. It comes back to the essential question. Is it field notes?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Do you get brands that want to work with you in that way? Like I know that you do the, do you do your, the special limit? Yeah. I don't know what you called it, but like when you work with someone like XOXO or.

'''Jim Coudal:''' I'll sort of explain, there's sort of, I'll explain that. There's sort of two categories. There's a couple of categories. There's a lot of companies do simple customized field notes in which they put their logo on the back of a craft notebook and they hand them out to their employees or they use them at a show or whatever. Then there's what we call customs and collabs. And the basic policy for a custom colorway, like say that you guys wanted to do an orange run is that you have to do, first of all, you have to do a lot of them. Um, and secondly, you have to agree not to sell them. So you, you can give them away at conferences. You can make them a gift with purchase. You can give them to your employees. You can give them however you want, but you can't sell them. But then there's another step up, which involves an even bigger collaboration in which once in a while we will make a deal with another brand to say, let's make an addition together that fits with you and fits with us. And then you buy them from us at wholesale and you can sell them. Like Starbucks. Like Starbucks or LL Bean. Gotcha. Or something. And that's on a buy. Something I would like to say that I can't say right now. And, but, um, Ingersoll watches, for example. So there's been, uh, Nixon watches, for example. We're very careful about the products that Carhartt was like a perfect fit, for example. Yeah. Um, that we make those with and we have very strict guidelines for what you can do to a field notes to make the custom. Um, so yes, but no, people do come to us sometimes and say, oh, why don't you license our intellectual property? And we're not interested in that. I mean, maybe the day will come of the right perfect thing. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That might be the field notesy thing.

'''Jim Coudal:''' I don't know. But in this case, we haven't seen anything that really was interesting.

'''Brian Bedell:''' And we get a lot of, a lot of people that just want to print their own notebooks and want us to do it and it doesn't make sense for us to do that. We turned on. Yeah.

'''Jim Coudal:''' I mean, you can get, you can order a set of notebooks if you order a thousand of them, which is, it seems like a lot, but it's not that much when you're talking about going on press. Yeah. So, um, and lots of people, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of companies have done that, um, over the course of the last seven years.

'''Brian Bedell:''' Yeah. There's anyone who thinks they're completest does not have. There is no one. Yeah. Yeah. That's where it's also getting wild.

'''Jim Coudal:''' Yeah. That's where that dream is wild. It's, um, it's to our advantage. Like LL Bean is a very field notesy company if you think about it. And so we did one for them that was in camo, which is really nice camouflage. And we did one that was, uh, the same as their iconic boot. Yep. So the bottom of it's brown and the top of it is a light brown and top of it's dark brown. And it's got embossed stitching on it and they sell very well. And it's nice for us because it's a nice job to do. It's nice for them because they make money on it. But for us, it also allows us to reach an audience that might not be familiar with field notes. Cause now they might go to the website, right? Because they like those notebooks. Exactly. Right.

'''Brian Bedell:''' I mean, it's, yeah, we'll do it. If it's always got to be just a good deal for both of us, you know, we both got something out of the deal.

'''Jim Coudal:''' And brand wise, it's got to be a good fit. Yeah. Like we've turned down a lot of stuff that we're like, yeah, that doesn't really, you know, that doesn't feel like the right kind of thing. Or people like, yeah, okay, we'll do it just like your field notes, but we want the picture of the CEO on the cover. We're like, no, no, I don't think so. Yeah. Or whatever. Yeah.

'''Brian Bedell:''' Unless your CEO has like a really good beard, maybe. Your CEO is a farmer or something.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Guys, thank you so much for giving us your space and your time and giving us something to talk about every few weeks. We appreciate that.

'''Jim Coudal:''' We can do it anytime you want. It's been nothing but easy. We thought you guys were going to grill us the whole time. Is it over already?

'''Brian Bedell:''' I've got lots of shipping information to tell you guys about.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Well, I mean, if you want one more question, I have one more question. We can go ahead. I have one more question. I wasn't sure. Okay.