Has anyone here published their own deck?

Has anyone here published their own deck? By that I mean just paid a printer to print it, and then either marketed it themselves, or hired someone to market it, without giving up the any of their rights to their deck?

Downsides?

Upsides?

I assume the positive side to signing a contract with someone is that they pay you for your work (taking a risk if it doesn't sell) but you basically give up some of your rights because they effectively own the deck afterwards.

Holly

Lost Girl - I've split your post out from the thread Publishers and Prints because I think it deserves it's own thread.

I think you'll find that many here have published their own decks.

Hi!

I've found myself in a very fortunate situation, as the publisher who is interested in my deck is allowing me to keep full copyright on my images, and has no problem with me looking to re-publish in the future, either self-publishing or with another publisher.

I think that is probably pretty rare though...I certainly feel very blessed! I wish you the very best of luck with your own deck!

I know it's off topic, but as a child of the 80's, I have to ROFL at your name Sidhe-Ra. I even owned toys from She-Ra, though I liked my ponies better.

I am in the process of self publishing two decks at the moment...

the limited edition Midnight Masquerade...which I am printing on my PC and then hand assembling into cards...

and the Minute deck, which I take to the printers in batches (which is how I can afford it!)

And yes, there are some wonderful reasons to do it this way.

I am broke, so printing them...more or less... by hand, as needed, works out great for me.
I can put anything I want into the deck...alternate cards, extra cards, and no one complains!
I can make them the size and shape I want, without borders if I want, and I can retain all the rights to the images...which is cool because then I can make them into magnets and note cards, and cafepress stuff if I want to!


Now for MYdownsides...The Minute deck is printed on something called 80 lb cover stick...thicker than card stock...but apparently found only in one place on the planet! They have enough (they say) for my limited run...
but after that...there is no more anywhere that I can find!

Making cards by hand is a lot of work. It causes more anxiety for me than I ever thought. While I am not a perfectionist..I do want there to be consistancy, and that's hard for me...

Of course, you will probably get them done all at once by a reputable printer, in which case you won't have the same problem as I do!
I can only afford batches of ten with the Minute deck, so there are lots of trips to another state for me!

The selling [part...well, I can't comment on that yet! I have been selling my decks steadily through this site...I haven't even gone public with them yet, except for a website.
Almost every single sale has been through here...and there's a waiting list!

So if you do a deck that is popular, the marketing may not really be an issue!

Hmmm...there does seem to be more upsides to this than I thought...

That said...if a big publisher approached me tomorrow to print the cards mass market I would jump at that in a heartbeat!
I would make consessions, and let then alter my cards...I would not, however give up all my rights to the images!
It would be a lot easier if someone else did all the hard deck production work....and could produce enough decks that anyone anywhere could have one. I do have these dreams of seeing my work in a Borders!

We're in a somewhat different position so I thought I'd quickly throw in our experiences in the hope they will add something. We decided when we were working on Tarot of Prague that we were interested in starting a small press publishing house. So, via that entity (which makes it sound a bit grand perhaps!) we are now bringing out not only our own decks, but ones by other artists and writers. We also plan to do more books and have two in the pipeline - one of which is by Rachel Pollack. In some ways we are perhaps a little like Lo Scarabeo in their early days - when I think most of their decks were designed by their founder. Of course, there are differences too - we also run a small studio and increasingly develop products other than books and cards so perhaps our focus is a bit unusual.

So - first I should say that we use a professional printing company (well, two nowadays, one for the cards and one for the books). We do very small runs compared to one of the much larger tarot publishing companies, but still large enough to class our decks as kind of "mass market" (not very mass - but they do get into chain stores sometimes etc).

One big advantage is definitely control over your own work - YOU decide the exact form in which it goes out, YOU decide when it goes out of print (a decision that we are currently struggling with, as the first edition kit of Tarot of Prague is technically now OOP - though there are some at the distributors). Some control over when something goes out of print is potentially very important to some artists - I've heard several people say they were disappointed when they found their "baby" was only in print for a couple of years. It's something that first-timers may not consider. Another advantage that people don't always talk about is that you tend to be able to put your own work out faster than a large publisher could (I mean, once the design is already done). Look at decks published by the big houses and you'll see that sometimes it takes years from acceptance to publication. We wanted things to go a bit faster than that. Or at least we wanted, again, to at least have some control over timing.

Rights over your own images? For sure that's important, although most good publishing houses will be very fair about this in any case (well, I say that, but of course as ever, the advice is 'read the contract'!) Also, publishers may in theory bring in licensing deals that you wouldn't have got otherwise, and sometimes that's important.

The disadvantages are that you get drawn into a lot of work that isn't visual design. You have to find out a lot about production rather quickly. To give one example - we had to design (ourselves) a "standard" box for our kits. Fortunately Alex studied packaging design as part of one of his degree courses - but without that it could have been a nightmare - it's certainly not something I'm much good at (all the card folds, all the worrying about strength of the box sides - aaarrrghh!) We also had to find out a lot more than we knew previously about wholesalers and distributors, about shipping and customs, about trade shows and catalogues. It was all very daunting to begin with - but exhilarating at times too.

That's it in outline. There's lots more to say, but I won't go on and on as it may not be relevant to that many people. But I'm happy to answer more questions if this is of interest.

re baba-pragu

very interesting! I always seek to know more about publishing since I'm steadily headed that way with my deck. thanks!

One more plus--you'll know where every one of your decks gets shipped to, because you're the one doing all the mailing. It gets pretty exciting sending one off to South Africa, Uruguay, Israel, etc. Plus you end up getting a lot of direct feedback from people. If a publisher was doing it for you then you'd be out of the loop on both those counts.

I was just wondering actually how many copy's of a deck you make when you self publish. I guess it varies widely but I'm just curious since I have no clue of numbers involved here.. 10? 50? 100? 500? 1000?
It would seem to me that 50 is about the limit when it comes to hand crafting decks.

I am handcrafting 100 (but than everyone knows I am a little insane!)

I expect it to take a few years...

Now, when I looked into having them printed professionally (and that printing would include the cards cut, corners rounded, and some sort of coating...)
no one would touch anything less than 1000 pieces.

Which is understandable if course...
But a lot of money needed upfront!

I guess the numbering is arbitrary...like any limited edition of anything...art-wise.
You decide how many you want to create, based on interest.