Books are still orderable and pre-orderable at store.schlockmercenary.com. You may have seen the non-subtle ads now running in the Schlock archives (along with equally non-subtle ads for Schlock shirts from Warehouse 23). Since we are fast approaching that time of year, I decided to post this handy reference to let you know when you need to buy stuff in order to have it arrive in time for that most commercialized of holy days, Christmas. International/Intercontinental Shipments November 29th is the latest you can ship with Global Priority Mail and have it arrive on time. U.S. and Canada December 11th is the latest you can ship USPS First Class, or Global Priority to Canada, or anything to APO/FPO addresses. December 16th is the latest you can use USPS Priority Mail. December 17th is the latest for 2-day shipping December 19th is the latest for Next Day shipping, but to be on the safe side you'd probably better not wait until then. If you're pre-ordering The Blackness Between, your order will go out in plenty of time for Christmas arrival, unless you're shipping it "Media Mail." I'm not knocking Media Mail -- I just know that when there's a glut of Media Mail at any USPS distribution center, it goes out AFTER everything else has been taken care of. This means that while you'll PROBABLY be okay, I wouldn't put it past the USPS to delay things. Think of Media Mail as the Postal Service telling you "it goes with the First Class stuff, unless we get really busy." Now, if you're scheduling delivery of Christmas presents from the Schlock Bookstore, there's something else you need to know. We're taking a week off for Thanksgiving, and that week of vacation falls immediately after the shipment of pre-orders. Unless you want wait until the last week in November, you ought to pre-order Schlocky-Booky Christmas presents sometime before November 8th. Often retailers will run ads in which they make all sorts of absurd, sensationalistic claims about how important it is for you to BUY NOW. Well... as much as I'd love for you to do exactly that (BUY NOW!), mostly I just want you to know that it's only important if you're counting on delivery in time for the Christmas holiday, and even then it's not a show-stopper. Hopefully I've been neither absurd nor sensationalistic.
