The Ink Drop is out for delivery!

Well, the inks are in the mail and on their way! Five little beauties all packed and ready to be inked up in your favorite pens. Have you thought what colors there might be in this month's 'Back to School' theme? There has been some talk about it over on the Fountain Pen Network, at least!

We were shooting to get them all out on the 1st, but we were hung up for an extra two days waiting for a brand new ink to come in. It came yesterday afternoon, and we feverishly worked to get everything decanted and packaged up. It'll be worth the wait! We're going to shoot to get future month's Ink Drops out on the 1st of the month, but sometimes things come up. There will be holidays, Sundays, etc. In this case, it had a lot to do with the fact this is the first month putting it together and there was a LOT of prep work to be done!

Everything is going out via USPS first-class, so it'll take a few days to get around the US (and likely a few more days yet for our international members!). There is a US holiday on Monday (Labor Day) that'll slow things down a day. Also, hurricane Earl is currently scraping the East Coast (a few hours south of where we are), and though it's not expected to have major landfall, it's still causing some evacuations and post office delays.

There are 76 inaugural members into the Ink Drop club, a few more than we'd even optimistically expected! Here are all of the little 'dropplets', just waiting to go out!

I am just antsy with excitement for everyone to get their inks and start playing with them! I know you'll all be eagerly waiting for your little white packages to arrive ;) We're going to publicly publish the inks selected for September on the 7th, so ignore that post if you haven't gotten your inks yet and still want to be surprised! I'm going to be doing reviews and special dedications to the inks I've selected for each month after the 7th as well ;)

If you haven't joined, it's not too late! Anyone who joins by September 14th will still get September's samples. This month's theme is "Back to School"! Click here to sign up and join the ink party!

Time to chill out, sort of....

It's no secret I've been going full-bore for a while now, burning the candle at both ends and in the middle! I've actually gotten a few emails from some fans and customers concerned I'm going to burn myself out ;) I have been keeping a hard pace though, and I am going to chill out, in some respects. I've been regularly working 18-19 hour days, every day for about the last 2 months or so, maybe taking off a few hours here and there, but not really. It's been tough (but only so tough when you get to do what I do!).

Now that we have Noodler's, I feel like we have a pretty good selection of inks (280ish colors) and don't need to so aggressively pursue new brands for a little bit. We're really pacing ourselves with expanding paper, too. We're adding a product here, some rulings there, but nothing too crazy. My poor wife needs a break from all the web work! We're going to chill out a little bit as far as the rapid expansion goes (though if you know me at all, I just can't help myself!), and really focus on streamlining our current operation so I can have more time for the more 'fun' parts of my job! We're still getting some new stuff like the new Diamine colors and Pelikan Edeltstein, as well as others. I'm going to be working over this next week to do up samples and swabs of all the new ink colors, which in and of itself is a ton of time! :O

I'm going to shift my focus a bit to really learning the products inside and out. My time has been limited lately and I haven't been able to just spend some good quality time learning how everything is in use. I plan to focus on doing some ink reviews, perhaps get into podcasting (audio and video, if it's feasible), and just look to get more experience with everything, especially the inks. The Ink Drop is going to be a great way to have a communal conversation about inks, and I'm really looking forward to that!

So that's what you can be expecting from me moving forward. We're working to streamline everything we do now so I can maintain the good product knowledge and great customer service we've built GouletPens.com on. I promise, I won't burn myself out!

Write Time at 9: August 31, 2010

Join me live every Tuesday night at 9pm EST for Write Time at 9! I talk pens, paper, ink, and random other things (writing related usually, but not always!).

This week I made good on my promise to cut the broadcast short! I needed to because we're slammed here getting a HUGE order of Clairefontaine and Rhodia in stock, as well as sorting out and listing for sale all of the new Noodler's and Platinum inks! Oh yes, and there is that little thing we call the Ink Drop that we're doing! We currently have 71 Ink Drop members, even more than I'd planned for at this point! It's crazy exciting. Back to my point though, we're busy!

So we got on with the broadcast, showed some of the new products we have in, and did a giveaway of a bottle of black Platinum ink to the one who could guess the closest to the number of total products (SKU's) listed on GouletPens.com. Matt was the closest guessing 999, not back since we have 1005! We'll have more though as soon as we get the new Diamine colors, Pelikan Edelsteins, a couple of new PR colors, and we do ALLLLL the ink samples for the 140ish new ink colors we have in!

The video is just over 30 minutes long.

Link to Ustream to view the video.

Lookie what we have! Noodlers!

Luxury Brands (the Noodler's distributor) was backordered on a few colors b/c Nathan is busy with his new Noodler's fountain pens, but we took some of everything that was available to us. We don't have any of the foreign Noodler's colors (yet), but we have about 90+ colors on hand, that ought to be enough to get you going ;) You can get everything we have on hand on GouletPens.com.

Here's everything laid out before we put it away.

Rebekah snapped some cool pics for us (bing bang bong!). There are several 'series' of inks. Here are a few 'Eternal' inks:

The Baystate inks:

Dragon (highlighter) inks (that come with highlighters):

Eel (lubricated) inks:

Highlighters (different inks than the Dragons):

Noodler's (regular) ink:

V-mail (reproduction WWII-era) inks:

Warden's Ink (Registrar's inks):

There are 3 different sizes of bottles depending on the series, 1oz, 3oz, and 4.5oz (w/eye droppers). Some inks are offered in both 3oz and 4.5oz bottles. Here are the 3 sizes compared to each other:

They come FUUUUUUUUULL of ink, to the brim! So be aware of that. Also, some of the intense colors and properties of certain inks may not be favorable for certain types of pens. Noodler's inks can be a little confusing, so you'll definitely want to know what you're getting into before you just go sucking these inks into your pens. They have some awesome colors though! an extensive selection of them are available in full bottles and (soon to be) samples at GouletPens.com.

Tell me what you want in an ink review

I am getting ready to start really cranking out some ink reviews. I've been back and forth about how to actually do them, though. The way my mind works, I tend to want to go waaaay overboard, to the point where I build it into such a project that it becomes too overwhelming and I never end up having the time to do it! So it needs to be simple.

I know that when you see an ink review, the first thing you do is go around and try to find reviews that a bunch of other bloggers have done on the same ink. What I want to know is:

1) What is it that's missing from other ink reviews that you'd like to see?
2) What is it that you really like in other ink reviews that you'd like to see in mine?

Telling me what you want to see is only going to help all of us! Here's the basic layout I was thinking of doing for my reviews:

• Writing on my favorite, most consistent paper, Clairefontaine Triomphe, just a sampling really, something like an A5 sheet's worth
• Keep it simple, write the pen, ink, and paper name, maybe my favorite quotes or Bible verses or something like that
• Have 4 main sections to the review:
• 'Good'- write what's good about the ink, performance, the bottle, price, etc, in very practical and 'non scientific' terms
• 'Bad'- write what's bad about it, same fashion as the 'good'
• 'The Deal'- give my bottom line summary of the ink, with suggestions about it's best use
• Rating- I give one of 3 ratings:
• Dump- the ink sucks, and you should dump it out of your pen immediately
• Drawer- the ink is good, but doesn't have a practical everyday use. You'll want to keep it on hand to pull out from time to time, but not keep it inked up all the time
• Devour- You'll want to load the ink into a garden hose because you'll love it so much
• Pictures- there will obviously be good pictures, as well as a good scan of my writing. Pics of the bottle, pen I used, and the paper, etc.
• Swabs- I'll use the same swabs I have on my swab shop to give comparison colors as well as complementary colors.

That's what I'm basically thinking for the layout for reviews. Eventually, I'd like to do reviews of the 280+ (and growing!) inks I carry, so having them be relatively simple will be key for me. If you've been following me at all lately, you know my time is quite limited. I have the general feeling it would be more beneficial to post 2-4 brief ink reviews a week than 1 crazy comprehensive review a month (or longer!). What do you think?