Namaste, Lost Girl... Holly 
Lost girl said:
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
Namaste Holly
I took the self-publisher route with my A'HA Oracle deck. It took quite some time, from the initial drawings and scanning etc , guidebook completion, to the final printing (in HK) and my very first real decks arriving. My beautiful daughter is computer savvy, so she helped me a lot scanning my original drawings and sizing them, and also formatting the guidebook and the box cover to templates suitable for the printer's needs.
The time taken for all of the above depends entirely on how people create their decks etc, and how capable they are of doing all the ancilliary work themselves. Mine images came in leaps and bounds and then there was pause for reflection for a while
. The printing process itself actually took a year, partly due to the fact that my queries went by email, but the actual sampling was shipped to/fro from HK to Australia... time-consuming.
What I'd suggest, if you go with a printer that is not local, is to go into a local printing establishment and check out their samples of card thickness, gloss/matt finish, laminated vs press-varnish finish etc. The same applies to book binding style, box finish and etc. All of these are details which take time to decide upon if you wait for samples to be shipped (Doh... that was me!!!
)
The ups and downs... I know of an artist who created some cards for a well-known deck author. The amount she was paid for her work was pitiful, and her artwork was not honoured, ie she draws intuitively, being 'given' symbols, in the same way that I do. Her 'employer' waited until the artwork was complete, and then demanded that some cards be changed due to nudity issues, but such conditions were not mentioned to her in the first instance
.
For me, the "up" would be that going through a publisher offers access to distributors, and hence, guaranteed outlets. That has been my largest hurdle... as the creator of only one product, and a product which is professional enough to have been offered for sale through 30 outlets here in Australia, distributors won't accept my product, even though they have declared it to be of a beautiful and professional finish, with amazing artwork etc, because it is not worth their time dealing with an account for just one product type every month...
So... getting your product out into the world is up to you, if you self publish, but your deck will stay true to your vision. That's where sites like AT come into the picture. And what a wonderful site it is, too.
I'm in the process of resizing some images so that I can fill in the Suggest your deck form for Solandia, with a view to getting A'HA Oracle seen. A couple of people from this site have ordered decks in the last week or so, since someone mentioned it (I hadn't known of this site before the order arrived!), so hopefully they will enjoy it enough to comment.
Very best wishes with your endeavour, Holly. It's a big project, but one that can fill you with boundless joy!
