to publish or self publish

LOL, Astra, don't let this all put you off from doing your own deck! I fully intend to get mine out. I even looked at 'how cheap can I go' and came up with $2.10 a deck if it's strictly black & white photocopy where I don't care if the ink isn't waterproof and I have to do all the card cutting myself.

I'm doing a ferret based deck (realistic and cartoony, but no clothing on the animals except for one Egyptian style card). I figured hey, maybe 30 decks tops...then posted a notice & URL to a few of the cards over on some of the yahoo ferret boards....I got requests for 75 decks in less than 2 weeks from just three boards....ok, upped the ante to maybe 100 decks. Got more feedback, now I'm thinking 300 would be a better print run with 'first edition' on it. With the original first 30 decks I was thinking I could do up drawstring bags for them...but not for 100 or 300 decks. I run in science fiction/SCA groups so there's a cross market right there for it too. I do think 300 would be a good amount, if I can afford it. Even if I have to store them here for 4 or 5 years till they're all sold (or longer).

It's a black & white deck so I've not got any color separations to work with which reduces cost quite a bit. And I've bopped around to 9 different printers and found out most of the basics I think I need to. I was even looking at marbled paper (fake looking marble threads on light gray card stock, not the paint marbling), speckled card stock, and textured stuff in various tinted shades. I wasn't sure if I should stick with white card stock when the parchment color made it look so ancient/archaic and 'different'. Hmm.

Still--there's stuff to consider before going to the printers & doing the next steps once you have the art done.

1. Do they work off disk? Can you scan the entire deck on a disk & let them work off that rather than cut & paste up hard copies?

2. How much will they do for you & at what price?

3. Which box company has the best prices? (there's a thread on this under tarot deck creation somewhere). Uline is pretty good on small box prices, but there was another company that beat them out in prices. Neither of them had any minimum order requirements which was great. If you pre-buy blank boxes, do you need to have stickers made up for the fronts of them?

4. Can you do with a 'cheat sheet' instead of a little white book? The LWB costs will equal the deck printing costs if you decide to go with the entire booklet.

5. Do you do 80 originals (1 image multiple times per card stock page plus a back and front card image) and have those cut in groups so each entire deck goes through the cutting machine at the same time, making decks whose edges all match up----OR do you do 10 originals with 8 cards per page (reduces costs because you have fewer originals) then hope the cutting machine is accurate so all the card edges match perfectly? The Hello Kitty decks are done with 80 originals, he's the one who suggested it this way for me. I was thinking of doing it the other way with fewer originals, to save money, but he had a good point & now I'm waffling.

Hey, HudsonGray, the deck's done. I'm enough of a mundane to think that if I can actually get a company to publish the dratted thing, I'm one ahead, so I'm going after publicity for it, but I know durned well that there are a whole lotta decks out there and a limited market, so I'm storing up advice on how to handle publication if I have to do it. I liked the note on coffee cups and such - haven't spent much time with the site you mentioned, tho I've got it bookmarked. It strikes me that a few t-shirts wandering around a few cons might make a big difference in the long run. Besides, I want coffee cups with the cards for ME.

If you're fannish and SCAish, and you've been around for more than 10-12 years, we probably know each other from one or the other. If not, probably not, since I haven't been a big presence in either for a while.

Re #4; It's not all that hard to print the LWB yourself on a laser printer at 8 pages per standard sheet front and back. Getting the page order right can be a pain, but that's what wastebaskets are for. After that, a good paper cutter and a standard stapler (and a few boring hours) are all you need to turn out a professional quality booklet.

Re #5; if you're going with a run of under 500 (or whatever the breakpoint is), go with the smaller sheet. Even on professionally published decks, the cut can be visibly off, and even though you may know, I guarantee it's not going to make a big difference to the buyers.

Ya know, sitting behind a hucksters table (dealers table for non-fen) wearing a great t-shirt of your favorite card, sipping 'blue stuff' from your own decorated coffee mug...can't hurt sales!

I used to sell at 5 to 7 cons a year, in WI (Wiscon, X-con), MN (Minicon) and IL (Windycon! Capricon!) under the name Dragons Grotto back in the 80's-mid 90's. Stuck to the midwest though, only did one worldcon & that was down in Atlanta, Georgia when Anne McCaffrey was guest of honor. Sales were good pretty much. A friend (large lady, name of Liz) & I shared a table at the cons, she had a tarot deck out at the time done in black and white, self published, for $18 called The New Vision Tarot & they sold like hotcakes. She'd do readings after the dealers room closed down at night.

(You do know that site does underwear & other things too...wanna put your Devil card on a pair of briefs? Or the tower on a thong?)

Good luck on your deck. If a publisher says no, well, that's happened to a lot of decks & they still did good in the market!

And don't forget to stick one up on ebay occasionally! I make the stuffies for www.sluggy.com and when they were first starting putting them in the online store they put a dozen up on ebay--damn things went for an average of $75 each! I got a cut of that, which was pretty cool as they'd already paid me for them in the first place.

If you want to see how the CafePress sells, contact Mary -el about it--she's got some of her things up over there (her site has the page listed on it), she can tell you how things have been going there. I'm sure other tarot is represented at CafePress, I just haven't looked yet.

HudsonGrey - Mary -el? Can you check the name? Couldn't find it in the listing, and I do want to take a look at her site.

Here ya go, there's not a space in it I found, but her deck is done with the majors & several of the minors. She frequents this board a bit when she has time (she just had a baby).

http://www.mary-el.com/

I think they even have a feature on her deck here at Aeclectic and over at Tarot Passages' site.
--------------------
Wait--use this one instead, it loads faster for some reason:

http://www.mary-el.com/tarot.html

HudsonGray - The mary-el site main page loads slowly because it contains a 14 card (I think) animation. Looks wonderful, but it's bad site design unless you're sure everybody is going to wait. Oh, well....

26 cards for $65? I'm trying not to revise my expectations upward too much! What I want to publish is a deck that people will use to do readings with, without worrying too much about whether they're going to damage it because they can afford to pick up a new one when it gets too worn.

Am I the one out of step here?

I don't think so--I was planning on keeping mine at bare bottom prices. Part of the cost on hers is that they're on great paper and are in color, which means you pay for color separation which costs a bundle. She may be paying the printer upwards of $25 for each deck just for their side of it. Plus you get the extras she offers, which includes a hand decorated reading cloth.

It's cheaper in color if you don't use waterproof inks, cut corners as much as you can and even do the card cutting at home--just get the printing done on larger sheets. But it depends on how much work you want to put into it too. Hand laminating a deck of 78 cards takes a long time & probably $12 worth of laminate pages, for instance. You don't get a price break on laminate even if you tell Office Depot you want a case fo the stuff (I checked).

The Hello Kitty deck is on plain old xerox. It sells for $12 I think, and he went completely no-frills. So I know it can be done. It helps a lot though if you've got a black & white deck.

well i really want to keep my cards colour .........

so i am thinking - major arcana in colour, pips in monochrome or one colour - ie red , white and black for wands, blue white and black for swords etc .....

this could help

and monochrome card back designs

it is good for me to be thinking of these things when starting - thanks all.

Well, everything I've got is 24 bit color, so I suspect there's no way of getting off very cheaply, but I was thinking that there are some really great color laser printers out there - getting cheaper all the time. Now, if I can justify getting one that will handle heavy stock...

Hint* Take blank cardstock samples and a color original to the office supply stores & have them do a demo on how their color machines run your original onto the paper you bring, you'll be able to see color balance in the image and if the rollers pull the paper through (or not!). VERY eye opening. Some machines have trouble with their reds, some with blues.