Has anyone here published their own deck?

Printing your own deck is just part of the whole picture, you then have to box and bar code etc. Selling to stores is hard unless you have a distributor, but even then, it is hard to get anything self published into a distributor and even then, they have been known to go out of business, or simply not pay publishers and they want at least 55%. I had my deck published, but I only receive $1.00 per deck, the ones I self published, I made more, but did not have the distribution. However with the downturn in the economy, I don't even have any distribution anymore.

there are no guarantees if you find a publisher that they will distribute your deck. The whole tarot deck thing is quite the crap shoot and the publishing business is dog eat dog. My first deck had flaws in it over which I had no control. At least if you do it yourself you have your own quality control. If you can get into a big publisher to take you on, then you might not have the same problems I did with a smaller publisher. The main reason I went the publisher route was for the distribution.

I have made more $ from my prints than my decks, but the deck is what draws people to purchase the prints. I am working on a journal/workbook for my deck, and I will be self publishing them for sure to keep quality control and have a better return on my product.
Cheers Hexi

Hi Hexi, your experiences are very interesting. may I ask about your experiences with printers? the problem I am finding is the size of the initial run for a custom sized card. Best so far has been 1000 decks and honestly this is more of an upfront investment than my friend and I were looking at. We simply wanted to test a few decks with friends etc. Though there are plenty of printers who are offering the standard 2.25 x 3.5 sizes with runs as small as nine decks.

my first self published deck was done with a laser printer at a local print shop. It costs money for the set up, and then it is print on demand from there on. This makes for a little more expensive deck, but I had no problem with charging $50.00 for a major arcana deck with booklet. I put labels on brown paper wrapped jewelry boxes from a local supplier and wrapped the deck in silk. There are very few copies out there and they now sell for $150.00. If you want to self publish, I would recommend this route, as you keep control and only print what you sell, or only how many you want to put out at one time. They can be done in series with authentication etc.

You won't get any distributors taking you on this way, but there are ways such as Tarot Garden, Ebay etsy etc.

I did have problems with my first printer, he didn't like the "subject matter" so I left them, and found the problem was quite "rampant" in printers in my area. Then I went the publisher route because I didn't want to box and wrap and mail.

For my other art work I finally found a wonderful printer who is great to work with, and he has done my prints, post cards, gift cards, and magnets. It is a great way to maintain quality control.

End game, the print on demand decks cost more, so you have to make images that make it worth it for people to purchase your deck at your price.

cheers
Hexi

Well, Gamecrafter came out a year ago, it looks like a couple tarot deck creators used them (according to their page here -- http://www.thegamecrafter.com/shop/tarot ). You can go to their main esitmate page and figure out how much it would cost per deck to print.
http://www.thegamecrafter.com/publish/cost-estimator

Doing a deck of 80 cards (cover card and I think a back card as well) costs $9.12 per deck.

There was a discussion about this company a while back, someone said their borders were cut too close to one side so the image seemed off center, but if you have borderless cards that wouldn't be as much of a problem.

Thank you, its proving more difficult than I had first imagined. The artist and friend I am working with lives in the US and I live in the UK so this has made things a little more difficult due to the distance. We’ve worked together before, I run a small media company and have produced all of her art books and am involved in the print readying of her art, though this is a personal project and if it shows any commercial prospect then great but its not the driving force behind producing the deck.

However, its our none standard size which is proving the greatest hurdle. There are plenty of companies producing playing card sizes but few will to go with custom. Though, I have located companies here and in the US who are willing to do so but pricing is prohibitive. Fortunately, there are options if you are willing to look outside of North America and Europe.

After spending a day chatting with the owner of a local Pagan store, who allowed me to look through various card sets I realised most were printed in China. Now I’ve made some preliminary enquiries on pricing, and even taking into account import duties etc I have discovered a staggeringly difference in pricing. But, that said, this is again launching into a full-on commercial venture, import licences etc. and I’m just not sure we want to go this far this soon.

As for distribution; if we do go ahead, its less of an issue. We have established commercial websites and we will probably sell via Amazon to begin with.

I am excited but I and beginning to realise the scale of this endeavour, it’s a lot more involved than producing books and prints…

beware of China

you have to pay upfront, have no control over quality, and no recourse if it isn't what you want. just a little warning. Good luck. I am being interviewed Jan 2 http://www.tarotguild.com/group/tarottodayradio talking about tarot deck creation. Cheers Hexi