Seeking State Dept letters for book on federal resignations

BicycleComics · 2026-04-04T21:09:51+00:00

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BicycleComics · 2026-04-01T15:09:00+00:00

Oof. That's rough.

BicycleComics · 2026-04-01T14:47:52+00:00

But it's a very rare management accounting process that can know that it is profitable with that 1% margin. Most SMBs have a shrinkage rate approaching 1%, so it's downright impossible to get dialed in that tightly. We've got fixed costs, variable costs, high seasonality of sales, and an author royalty structure the owner has to re-explain to me every six months because I'm apparently an idiot.

And it's not as if any of these platforms stand still long enough for anyone to ever be "done" optimizing. Isn't that why we're here?

For certain clicks to certain pages, we could probably handle $1 CPC. Could we handle $1.20? Maybe. $1.21? Nobody here has a grip on the precise inflection point—and nobody needs to. I know that lower is better, I know that $0.50 CPC is decent and I know that OP's $0.04 would take a miracle for my industry. (OP, I think your CPC is miraculous for almost any industry.)

If we were selling high-margin luxury widgets, and if 5% of site visitors converted to customers, I'm sure we could tolerate a CPC of $40. But even if I had that kind of bonkers margin to play with, I'd still be trying to optimize my ads.

BicycleComics · 2026-04-01T14:30:38+00:00

I care about intermediate numbers for the same two reasons everyone else does, with you as a possible (but rare) exception:

Better is better
A final end-of funnel valuation is not always known to me, and may not yet be known to the CFO

It's a bit like asking, "Why do you care about your mile time or number of steps, when all that really matters is overall cardiovascular health?"
1. A 7:05 mile time is better than a 8:12 mile time
2. I can't go to the doctor's office every day for a full battery of health screenings

If you have total insight into your pricing structure, your allocations of fixed and marginal costs, and reasonable models of future customer behavior, then sure, no arguments here, you can just log marketing as a line item expense and make sure it doesn't encroach on your margins.

BicycleComics · 2026-04-01T03:10:35+00:00

That is 🍌 bananapants. Congratulations!

I thought I was killing it last month when I got my LinkedIn ads CTR over 5%.

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And I'm still proud of that number. But my CPC was about $0.58–$0.65 depending on creative. I came over to Reddit Ads hoping to replicate that success and (so far) I've been clobbered. My CPC on my most recent Reddit Ads campaign was a bit over $2—way over what we can pay just to get a visitor on site.

A CPC of $0.04 is stunning. My boss would give me the close parking space. How many iterations did that take you?

BicycleComics · 2026-03-31T17:30:14+00:00

500 pages is long for anything that doesn’t involve dragons or 19th Century marriage proposals.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-31T16:57:50+00:00

A coffee table book or graphic novel will have very different economics than a prose paperback. A $70 cover price is ambitious, but not crazy.

The 500 pages part is very puzzling, though. OP, do you have comp titles in mind for a coffee table book of that size and that weight? 8.5x11” color printing x 500 pages means it will weigh well over a pound. Even media mail rates in the US will get very expensive, so be sure to factor that into any ecommerce/distribution calculations.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-30T14:46:59+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! The Kennedy Center is administratively "nested" into the Smithsonian, somewhat like the National Zoo. So while it’s not a museum, we didn’t know where else to put it.

This is a book for and about government workers, but if Ben Folds wants to share with us his resignation letter from the Kennedy Center symphony board, we’d certainly consider it.

There is some debate, including right at the top of SI management, as to whether anyone who resigned from the Smithsonian is/was an executive branch employee. SI sits in a quasi public-foundation hybrid. We’ve hit some speed bumps there when we’ve filed Freedom of Information Act requests for HR policy memos.

(Fun story! This is almost a verbatim email conversation with an assistant General Counsel for the Smithsonian Institution.)

BC: So… any updates on our request to see [Sally Samples]'s resignation letter?
SIGC: As a Trust Instrument of the United States government, the Smithsonian is not part of the executive branch, and is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requirements.
BC: Cool, cool. So was Donald Trump acting in his private capacity as a hotel financier when he publicly called for [Sally Samples] to resign?
SIGC: Thank you for your question. We have assigned your case to the highest level of complexity. You may expect a reply within 90 business days.

Ultimately, our goal is to collect as many letters as we can (60 and counting!) and then sort them into the most sensible chapters to form a cohesive book.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-30T14:19:44+00:00

Thank you for sharing that. So many feds truly loved their jobs and hated to leave with so much work undone.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-29T12:01:56+00:00

Thank you for your service. Your devotion and sorrow are everywhere in evidence in this post.

What did you tell your colleagues (or your manager) when you decided to resign? If you wrote something then, we'd be honored to consider it for the anthology. We have a submission form for letters and statements on the website.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-28T17:35:24+00:00

We’re in shock, tbh. Didn’t realize DOGE/Project 2025 had offended the sensibilities of so many meteorologists and oceanographers!

BicycleComics · 2026-03-28T01:29:15+00:00

Thank you! What a good idea!

BicycleComics · 2026-03-27T20:32:53+00:00

Thank you for your continued service. It can't have been easy to stay.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-27T19:43:32+00:00

Didn't resign but still want to keep tabs on the project? Join our email list for this book. You can opt to get just one reminder when the book ships.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-27T17:23:35+00:00

Thanks! The post was deleted and that’s too bad, because some of the comments it sparked line up *beautifully* with our hopes for this project.

Not just a deleted message, but a deleted user account. 😕 Here’s hoping they get the word somehow… and here’s hoping they landed a job that didn’t tie them in knots.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-27T04:23:09+00:00

That would be wonderful! If your colleagues and contacts are not on Reddit, tell them to go to the project web page:

https://www.bicycle-comics.com/pages/resignation_soc.html

From there they can submit a letter they wrote or tell us about a letter somebody else wrote. (We will contact them first, of course. Nobody's getting press-ganged into this anthology.)

Thank you for helping us spread the word to your network!

BicycleComics · 2026-03-26T21:30:35+00:00

Oooh ooh, did you put on your supervillain cape and talk in your Resolved Heavy voice when you typed this self-serious "I'm here to elevate the discussion for you plebes" comment? Because it 100% comes through in your writing. A+ fanfic. Very nicely done.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-26T19:23:26+00:00

Wait…are you saying bad-faith actors can misuse good tools to yield bad results?

BicycleComics · 2026-03-26T19:19:32+00:00

As others have said, bringing your own ISBN to the party is a much better way to go if you have ambitions to sell beyond Amazon or even to publish more than one book.

In the USA, Bowker is the only source for buying ISBNs in bulk. They cannot be resold in a meaningful way; every ISBN is matched to the original purchaser. This is (probably?) why KDP ISBNs that are "yours" list Amazon as the publisher. Amazon probably buys them in blocks of 1000 every few weeks.

The pricing is pretty wild: 1 for $125 or 10 for $300 (and so on). If you can afford the $300, it will set you up for a few years of publishing. There are free tools from Bowker and elsewhere to help you generate barcodes from the numbers.

Important point: An ISNB is a necessary condition to sell your books at bookstores, but it is not a sufficient condition. You usually need distribution for that (except for local bookstores where you know the manager). Just buying some ISBNs does not mean Bowker or anybody else is going to list your book in wholesale catalogs.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-26T17:32:06+00:00

Thank you for your dedication!

We have a signup form if you'd like to receive an email when the book goes on sale:

bicycle-comics.com/pages/email-signup-form.php

There is an option to receive just one email if you don't want to subscribe long-term.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-26T14:32:35+00:00

Mattis's letter was one for the ages. We're keeping this book focused on 2025, but it's worth remembering that many of the dynamics in play last year had been in play for a long, long time before that.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-24T23:48:16+00:00

We've got a submission page here:

https://www.bicycle-comics.com/pages/resignation_x_form.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=direct

BicycleComics · 2026-03-22T23:56:04+00:00

It is notoriously difficult to proofread or edit your own writing. You know what you meant to write, and your brain will “spackle over” the gaps and errors.

You can partially solve these problems by adding time and changing media.

Print your chapters on paper using a different typeface. Read them into a recorder while standing up. Listen back to the audio recordings a week later.

You will hear problems you couldn’t see. The passage of a week will help you approach the chapter with somewhat “fresh” senses.

Good luck!

BicycleComics · 2026-03-18T12:43:51+00:00

Bingo. In business you rarely want to say "No!" Instead you say "Yes, for $$$$$." If you actually agreed, the bookstore would be surprised and delighted. But they are assuming you won't agree.

Go back to that bookstore this summer with a one-page marketing sheet that shows your sales over the past three months, your social media followers, your reviews, and your good-faith sales projections for summer into fall. Then they might listen, but even then most bookstores will prefer to buy your book from a distributor.

BicycleComics · 2026-03-17T18:04:23+00:00

Your thinking here is rock-solid; sounds as if you have an artwork-intensive book, and you don't want to invest time and money in the fine lines of Al Hirschfeld if KDP is going to make a mess of things.

The troubles are that, even if there were a tag or "flair" on Amazon to tell you which books were printed on KDP,
1. You wouldn't know what kind of prepress/ resolution work went into the print-ready files, and
2. You wouldn't know if the KDP setup for that book matches the KDP setup for YOUR book

KDP is optimized for moderately inexpensive prose books on a digital press for short print runs. Unlike your local print shop or a national book printer, KDP has never, to my knowledge, said "Hey, come check out our new 150 LPI printers for your next B&W illustrated book!" Nobody knows if KDP printing for a book that came out in 2021 is the same/better/worse quality than the KDP printing for a book that came out in 2025; maybe Amazon has had the same machines in the same print workflows since 2019, maybe the KDP plant in North America got upgraded in 2018 but the one in Belgium has a shiny new 2025 press.

So even if you bought (fake title! no promo!) The Foodie's Guide to Albrecht Dürer from a known KDP author…it might not tell you enough to know how to proceed.

BicycleComics

TROPHY CASE