🚨 Urgent Decision Needed: Foil the Covers or Avoid the new Tariffs?

What do you want us to do? Details inside plus book updates and a glimpse behind the scenes at the magical mayhem we're involved in this week!

Aug 11, 2025

Hey, it’s Ran, Sarn’s son, and I’ve got more questions than answers this week. So let’s get to it!

Thank you for voting in the poll last week:

Six Books. One Kickstarter. And a Paperback Dilemma… 📚

Melinda Kucsera

Aug 4

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The results were split down the middle so we'll have to figure out how to incorporate both the individual paperbacks and the fancier special edition paperback omnibuses along with the ebooks and hardcover books.

No pressure 😅 at least not right now since we have another portal-sized problem, and we need your help to navigate it. 🌀

The Problem:

The U.S. government announced another around of tariffs, and books are no longer exempt. Starting on August 29, the US Post Office might impose unpredictable fees on shipments from the UK (where our favorite printer is).

What we know about the fees so far:

The US Post Office will assess fees using the following options:

Option 1: A 10% tax on the book’s value.
Option 2: A flat $80–$200 fee per package*

*We put each Kickstarter backer’s pledge in as its own order, so per package in this instance means for all the books in the box.

Occasionally, the printer might send the books in more than one shipment. That happened once on a past Kickstarter. If that happened again, you would get hit with a tariff on each package. It’s not ideal, but there’s a small chance it could happen so I wanted to flag that.

The Worst Part:

No one knows which option the US Post Office will use and they can switch options at any time. This means you might have to pay extra at your doorstep to get your Kickstarter books since the tariffs are charged to the recipient not the sender. 😱

Why This Matters

The UK printer does foiled covers for both paperbacks and hardcover books and head/tail bands (those fabric bits that make hardcover books spine stronger). They’re also the only ones will do all that for small orders.

But shipping from the UK now carries a gamble: Will your book cost you $80-200 extra because of tariffs?

***This extra money will NOT go to us. It’ll go to the US government.

Is there a way to avoid these extra fees?

Plan B: Use A Printer in the US

PROS:
- ✅ No tariffs! Books ship domestically so no surprise fees.
- ✅ Books printed in the US can still have color illustrations and the printed edges because we’re using a method called forced edges where the edges are part of the pages, so there’s no extra process needed to add them after the book is printed. That means any printer can handle them.
CONS:
- ❌ No foil on covers
- ❌ No head/tail bands (so hardcover books lose that added strength for the spine).
- ❌ We must split the special edition hardcover omnibuses into 2-book sets like we planned to do for the special edition paperbacks because spines can’t handle 900+ pages without head/tail bands.

Help Us Decide What To Do:

We’re at a crossroads. Should we go with:

✨ Option 1: Stick with the UK printer.
- Risk the tariffs adding unpredictable fees that you’ll have to pay the US Post Office to get your books
- The Reward? Foiled covers for both the paperback and hardcover special edition books, head/tail bands for the hardcover omnibus and 3-book hardcover omnibuses.
🛡️ Option 2: Switch to a US printer.
- The Reward? Zero tariffs
- We lose the foiled covers and the hardcover omnibuses become 2-book sets instead of 3-book sets, but the interior illustrations and edges remain as planned. We’ll need to get another cover to make that work, but that’s okay. The dragon is ready to pose for more pictures.

(I can’t wait for you to meet the dragon who runs things behind the scenes in the prequels. That’s the Curse Breaker in NY series if you’re keeping score. She’s so much fun and so helpful! I hope you love her as much as we do.)

Cast Your Vote:

Thank you for taking the poll! As a reward, here’s some news that’s not about tariffs.

Don’t forget to follow the campaign so you get notified when it launches.

Book News!

I know what you’re wondering:

“Ran, did you get that side quest yet?”

No! I’m sorry to report that the fate of my side quest still hangs in the balance since Melinda didn’t finish Rogue Characters yet. So I’ll have to report back to you about that next week.

So now you’re wondering:

“What did Melinda do all week if she didn’t finish Rogue Characters?”

That’s a great question, and I’m bursting to talk about that!

I can't blame my scribe for not writing as much as she wanted to last week because the new owners were in town. So she had to commute to the office for a bunch of days, and it's stressful pretending that she's not losing her job and that everything is normal when it most certainly isn’t.

That tires her out so she stares at the screen trying to write but she doesn’t capture many words on those days. She also got some bad news this week about the fate of a friend at her company. We can't talk about it. But Melinda will need to say goodbye to that person months before her end date, and that makes her sad since they worked together for a long time. It'll leave a big hole in her team too.

Melinda didn't write as much as she wanted to this past week, but she reread Dragon Spells (book 1 of the Curse Breaker’s Companions series) to figure out where she needs to end Rogue Characters so the two books flow into each other.

She also reread Rogue Spells (book 2 in the Curse Breaker’s Companion series) to figure out where she left everyone at the end of the sequel to Dragon Spells, so she can resume work on Storm Spells (book 3 in the Curse Breaker’s Companion series).

Melinda stopped working on Storm Spells in early 2022 when she couldn't figure out why we had to go back to 2018. I told her there's a reason, and we'll figure it out in the book. But that wasn't enough for her to continue writing.

She needed the actual reason. But I can't tell her what she hasn't written yet. That’s not how the whole fictional character thing works.

I just know we had to go back there. But I didn't create the time traveling portal. That was our nemesis, Dysteria. Melinda should totally ask her why Dysteria sent us from 2021 to 2018. Why does Dysteria need us 3 years in the past? What is she doing?

Of course Melinda knows where I am at the end of Rogue Spells and where I am at the beginning of Storm Spells since I followed her back to 2018. Papa followed me since he's well trained.

But she doesn't remember where she left everyone else. That worries me since my uncle didn't come with us, and I don't know why he didn't. Where are you, Uncle Miren? Are you okay? 🥺

I don't know where my aunt is either, but that doesn't worry me as much because she's an angel. So she's probably fine. I don't think anything can harm an angel. In the prequel series, which you could read right now on Patreon and Substack, Papa's guardian angel (Misriah) takes on an army of shadow monsters. I cheer her on from the sidelines because I don't do shadow monsters.

So that’s my current status. I’m watching Misriah hack and slash through an army of shadow monsters. You’ll have to read Rogue Characters to find out why. That chapter is posted already. ;)

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Behind-the-scenes updates just like this

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That’s it for this week. I think we had enough drama. I hope you read some great books this week!

—Ran, son of Sarn

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