BSRMatt

You want to buy it. I have it on good authority that the records sound (and look) fantastic. They are about halfway gone. All orders will be shipped by mid next week. I've been getting about 30-40 of them out per night.

S'pose I felt the need to chime in on this discussion since it does, in large part, involve me. In the spirit of transparency I will elaborate a little on my costs. My per unit cost for Lost Songs is somewhere around $8. It will be more once I see final shipping costs from Pirates Press - likely very close to an additional $1 each. Per my agreement with John @ Deep Elm - licensing fees were 20% of gross profit (not sure how that was split up between the band and DE). So now I'm sitting at about $11.25 per unit, my cost. I am required to sell 50 copies to the band @ $10 each but you know what, fuck that, I offered to give the band their 50 copies free of charge (plus #'s 1-5 to the band members) because damn if they aren't one of the greatest bands to ever grace this green Earth. So add another $500 or so to my actual costs. Once you do the math you can see that I'm not exactly quitting my day job here. I'm not going to entertain the complaints about $5 domestic and $18 international shipping because, hey, that's what it costs to properly ship a record these days. I refuse to send an international record out on a boat for 2-3 weeks to save a few bucks on shipping. It's counter-intuitive. I don't re-use mailers, they are all new and there are no less than 6 sheets of bubble wrap in that mailer (or 2 cardboard dividers) protecting the record. I can't tell you how many times I've purchased a record, paid $4-5 and that shit is rattling around in the mailer, taking a complete beating. To reiterate what someone said earlier, I also wish this were a Graveface release because it's well-documented, Ryan is fronting the best damn label on the planet right now. However, I really didn't think there was any interest in the album and assumed it was never getting pressed so I took the risk. Yes, I view it as a risk because there's no guarantee these are going to sell out anytime soon because I do not have distribution nor do I wish to get involved with distributors who simply don't pay their bills. I'm sorry that a good many of you feel the asking price is expensive. I have a lot of time and effort into this release and when those 200+ pre-orders need to go out it's going to be me sitting in my office packing up each and every one of them, very carefully. I think the price is fair considering that I'd like to be able to keep the doors open to continue releasing music I love. Or at least be able to give myself a fighting chance, ya know?