To the Shipping Station

For the month of July I’m taking over Bill Rickman’s job, and fulfilling all the orders that come to us through Belt’s online store, responding to emails from vendors (independent bookstores, gift shops, academic programs) with larger orders, and sending out media requests for advanced copies of our fall books. We average about 500 orders to the store alone per month, so it’s a pretty big job, even if we continue to do it at, um, an artisanal scale.

Bill’s been doing this job as long as our press has been alive: in the early days, he did it from his apartment, bringing boxes of books home, labelling the envelopes by hand in his living room, and driving packages to the post office. At first, we stored our inventory in my garage and basement. As we grew, we got a bit more professional: we stored boxes in a small office/warehouse. We bought a label printer. As our titles become too many for Bill to handle from his apartment, he started working in our office/warehouse. We got friendly wi…