We hope you are doing well! First, thank you so much for your continued support of the Drops of Moonlight Zine Charity Project. Although the project has gone on for much longer than planned due to multiple hiccups that we have faced, we are still committed to have the physical and digital bundles distributed to those who have pre-ordered them. Once the hiccups listed below are resolved, we will be reaching out to those (contributors and supporters) who pre-ordered a bundle to collect shipping and handling, and ship everything out! With that, included below is a summary list of previous updates re: the current Murphy's Law poo that is holding the project up:
We're still missing 2/5th of the shipment of the printed volume. Production had been in delay because of the paper crisis and they arrived in increments slowly batch by batch. We bought from a small family-run vendor and they glue the covers by hand. We've been getting them in smaller batches, and two batches have yet to arrive. They don't ever update us re:status, but they have been consistent.
Our sticker order was lost in the mail. We're fighting with FedEx on whose fault this is. We have had to pay double customs to have it re-enter its country of origin and make the trip again, which is ongoing, and are trying to get reimbursed by FedEx, which is a lengthy process.
The coloring books arrived late and with faulty covers, and after much discussion with the company, it appears that the fault was entirely our own. One of our mods is paying for 400 new covers out of their own pocket and will fix them by hand.
Our local washi vendor pulled out and went bankrupt and radio silent. This was a huge problem both for budget and for getting a new one. We have one finally lined up, production has begun.
Booth has refunded part of our orders because it took too long, meaning our funds have further shrunk. We're in talks with Booth to save the rest. It's in Japanese so only one mod could handle it, and this is not the easiest.
The domain for our website was paid for two years and that was the time and funding allotted in the budget. These two years are up. We didn't notice that for the longest while, and then when we did, things like Booth happened, and we decided against renewing the domain so late in the game. We plan to ship the orders with Shopify and the portion of Booth orders that have not yet been refunded.
A few mods we won't name are on extended hiatus for critical life events that we won't call out for privacy, and because this project has gone on for much longer than anyone on the team has anticipated or consented to/planned for. This means the rest of the work is falling on fewer shoulders. Tasks and responsibilities have subsequently changed amongst the mod team since 2020; for instance, we don't have a mod in charge of communications right now and haven't had one in a while, which you do clearly notice.
We make all decisions together as a team, which makes us democratic and also slow. We react to things only together but it means we wait out mod meetings across four time zones for nodding off on all decisions.
Everything else is ready, layouted, translated, linked to, hosted online, printed, lined up, and arrived. Once everything else lines up/arrives, we will be reaching out to those who pre-ordered a physical bundle to collect shipping and handling, and then ship them out.
We realize that the timing of everything has not been ideal. We did not realize we bit off more than we could chew when we took this project on… and none of us Mods plan to take on anything like this ever again as all of us are doing this on our own time. We thank you for your continued support and wish you all a safe holiday season!
We have some amazing news… after a lot of problems with our vendors and the paper (as you've been aware of), we’ve finally placed the orders for all of our merchandise (including pins and the physical zine). The time for the printing process will vary between items, but once we receive all of the merchandise, we will begin reaching out to contributors and supporters via email to pay for the shipping and the handling so that we can ship the bundles out to you. At this time, we do not have an estimate for the shipping and handling as prices can fluctuate and are individual to shipping destination. Please be sure to lookout for the shipment communication in the future. Thank you.
Our shop is open until May 30th! If you want to snag up a bundle, please be quick!
And if you want to support us in unlocking more stretch goals, please reblog and signal boost this post so we can reach as many Moonies as possible! Every sale counts!
Drops of Moonlight is a limited edition, multi-volume, non-profit charity zine featuring fanart, fanfiction, essays, cosplay, fan manga and more by 350+ contributors from 40 countries. Visit our shop to find out more!
We have some amazing news! We’ve nailed down another vendor and are in the process of ordering samples. While we wait for those samples to arrive, we will continue to work on the zine layout! We hope to open the contributor shop soon; once we confirm the quality of the samples, we should be able to start moving forward again. Thank you so much for your support and patience with us while we navigate these speedbumps!
Hello and thank you for following the Drops of Moonlight Zine charity project!
We wanted to share some quick updates about the status of the project, since we’ve been facing delays due to the European paper crisis caused by the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Unfortunately, about a month ago a vendor unexpectedly pulled out of the project due to the paper shortage, leaving us in a bit of a scramble. We are currently in talks with several potential vendors to replace the vendor we lost, and hope we will be able to finalize a new vendor soon!
In more exciting news, we recently began production for a few of the stretch goals which we will be ordering in bulk. We look forward to receiving these and hope to share some photos of the final products once they come in!!
Otherwise, we are unfortunately still in a bit of a holding pattern until we are able to finalize our replacement vendor and move forward with the rest of production. We will share another update when we have more information!
Thank you again for your patience and support as we navigate these unexpected production bumps. We are so excited to share our progress and look forward to bringing the Zine bundles to life soon!!
🌸 Good news for everyone! We're extending the public shop for two more weeks. 🌸
The Drops of Moonlight Zine Public shop will remain open until May 30th! Our contributors have made beautiful designs for the remaining stretch goals and we want to give them all a chance to still get unlocked. Snag up pre-orders on your bundle today on our Shopify!
🌸Pre-order your bundle here!🌸
(Contributors: your shop will open at a later date, please do not order from the public shop.)
🌸 We unlocked stretch goal #3!🌸
All Eternal Bundles (our “full” bundle) and Star Seed Bundles (our bundle includes all merchandise as well as digital ebook versions of all zine volumes) will now come with two rolls of washi tape with designs by Annorelka and @storyofthedoor.
Snag your bundle now and help us unlock even more of these wonderful stretch goals! The shop is open until May 15th!
All of the Drops of Moonlight Charity Zine, including the stretch goals, are limited edition and thus available ONLY NOW. The bundles will never be re-printed, and never go on offer again, physical or digital.
Visit our shop to find out more
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🌸第3のストレッチゴールをクリアしました!🌸
すべての「エターナル:フルバンドル」と「スターシード:グッズバンドル」のご注文には、素晴らしい参加者のお二人がデザインされたマスキングテープが自動的に付いてきます!!(*^_^*)
🌸We have reached the second tier of our stretch goal rewards!!🌸
Hello and thank you to all our awesome contributors!! We recently heard from one of you that they hadn’t been receiving the emails we were sending from our project email, ([email protected]).
As we are in the final stages of formatting and laying out the zine, and preparing to open the contributor shop soon, it’s very important that we be able to get in touch with you all in case we need additional information about your submission or to let you know when the contributor shop opens.
PLEASE check your email spam folder, confirm that ([email protected]) is on your safe senders list, and send us an email if you no longer use the email address that you initially signed up with and we should contact you at a different address. Thank you.
Hi, is there a way to buy the tote bag even when we don't reach the stretch goal?
Hi! Thank you for the question!
Unfortunately, no there is no other way to buy the Tote bag if the stretch goal is not reached. The Tote bag is a zine exclusive partnership with a fantastic supplier and it is not offered outside of this stretch goal achievement.
The Tote bag is the next stretch goal we have to achieve! Hopefully, we can reach all the corners of the fandom and get a chance to unlock the Tote bags!