What you should know about posting images here

These links are excellent.

I also think that if we are making a "sticky" it's worth adding some more general advice (with the proviso that we are not lawyers). This would be:
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Be careful about assigning ANY credits or rights over your work without taking professional advice. The basic advice is don't make any verbal agreements or sign anything giving such credits or rights without taking advice.
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I think this is essential to say, because even if you do register copyright, if someone unscrupulous manages to get you to sign part of it away then you could still be in trouble.

Tom - I think it might also be a good idea to edit in some of the advice in the thread about "review copies". I think it's less important (finding you have sent free copies to people who are not reviewers is annoying, but not a major loss) but it is still worth putting the advice in as a small secondary part of the document if you have the time.

baba-prague said:

Tom - I think it might also be a good idea to edit in some of the advice in the thread about "review copies". I think it's less important (finding you have sent free copies to people who are not reviewers is annoying, but not a major loss) but it is still worth putting the advice in as a small secondary part of the document if you have the time.

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Hiya Karen,

What else?

How about a sticky about the process of publication? It could cover finding a publisher or publishing yourself. That would include advice about review copies would it not?

A sticky about practical drawing and scanning issues?

A sticky about why you should make a tarot deck?

A sticky about the spiritual aspects of drawing your own tarot deck?

Maybe we could gather the topics together and make a table of contents that could be a sticky?

What are our frequently asked questions?

Anyone is welcome to answer these questions.

Hudson: its a good thing ya managed to save the situation on time with those dolls. Same goes to baba-prague.

hmm. just toying with the copyright issue some more. would it be possible for a work created in, say, country A, to obtain its copyright in country B? (where the creator is based on country a)

oh. and also, the copyright thing got me interested some more, so i also posted inquiries on one of our online forums here in the philippines. One of them, responded with this link, which i think seems very useful in the issue: http://www.wipo.int/ its the world intellectual property organization.

hope that helps this thread some more.

blue_fusion


edited to add:

oh. and how about a sticky on general advice (as opposed to guidelines) on deck creation (perhaps a survey of resources/potential media [oil, watercolour, digital, etc] as well as perhaps suggested methods on working with a theme, etc. )


re-edited to add:

and also, why not just one sticky thread to post all of the deck ideas/themes that come up in our minds every now and then.

Hi Tom (and everyone),

Yes, all those topics seem useful. But it's a lot to take on. Are you sure you want to do so much work? If so, it's positively heroic of you!
I think the first two issues might be the legal protection ones - but we seem to have got those almost sorted out already, which is terrific, and then the general questions about finding a publisher - that keeps on coming up and could do with a sticky.

I think it might also be a good idea to say something about the finances of publishing. I hear again and again that someone published a deck themselves and then only just broke even (Lee quotes Arnell Ando saying this about the Transformational, which must be one of the most successful self-published decks). I think that a designer sometimes looks at the price of printing, compares it with the retail price and thinks something like "Great, I can make $20 a deck!" In fact of course, it isn't like that and the real profit is a fraction of that. It's well worth pointing out all the real costs - the cost of design time (and all the electricity, rent and so on that you use up), then the cost of printing and packaging, then marketing (even if you don't do a great deal it adds up) then postage, distribution (you only receive a tiny proportion of retail value from a distributor - but they are not being unfair, it's just that they also have big costs) - all of this adds up.

I know that people like Hudson, who have actually done it all, will have a lot to say about all this. It's people who have never done it before that can get a shock when they realise that it's actually quite hard even to cover your design time for the work.

I don't mean we should put people off - more than ever, we need self-published decks to keep tarot interesting, it's just that giving people some of the hard realities at the beginning might really be a help in the longer run (for example, it may help someone to work out a true realistic price). What do you think?

Tom, if you can figure out a way to post all of it as a single sticky, more power to you!

How about a single sticky with links, and start a specific thread for each link, that you can prune if the topic wanders?

That would let us add new information as time goes on, the market changes, new tools and printing methods (and maybe publishers?) become available.

Baba-prague - there's no way to recover design time on a deck (at anything like reasonable rates) unless it becomes a best-seller, and if a new deck author looks at that part of costing equation they'll never start. If I sell 50,000 decks (eek!), I've got a shot at breaking even on that if I sell at a price that's affordable to the general reader. Well, maybe, but we're still talking about recovering design costs over the entire life of the deck.

But I agree that it would be really helpful to have a listing of all the associated costs, including things like signing up to get your own UPC codes, FedExing proofs, etc. That alone could almost give a step by step lesson in how to get a deck on the market.

Astra said:

Baba-prague - there's no way to recover design time on a deck (at anything like reasonable rates) unless it becomes a best-seller, and if a new deck author looks at that part of costing equation they'll never start

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Astra, I agree with you on this, but I do think it needs to be said all the same. We've all come across people who think that they will manage to do a deck quickly and will then sell 100,000 or something ridiculous. It's a mixture of over-enthusiasm and naivity perhaps, which is fine but not if it leads to disappointment or financial problems. I agree we don't want to put people off, but I do think that if we just warn about some of the realities then they can make a more informed decision.

We spent around 4000 hours on Tarot of Prague (between us) and it looks as though Baroque Bohemian Cats won't be so far short of that. So if we allowed even $10 an hour (and professional design time in a large agency is charged at AT LEAST $100 an hour in fact) then you can see that yes, the possibility of covering even a meagre wage is a bit remote. Add in costs and overheads...

I just think it needs to be said. As gently and kindly as possible of course, and in a way that won't simply put someone off - but it can be kinder simply to tell the truth and then let someone decide for themselves if they really want to take this on. There are many, many rewards to designing a deck other than the financial considerations.

Man, color work just eats up time!

I have NO clue how many hours I put in on the Ferret Tarot, I considered it a hobby & just worked on it in the evenings pretty much. Once things were scanned, I know there was about 20 hours of clean up on the images (done in 3 hour groups usually). And an 8 hour jag at one point when I didn't realize what the time was...my wrist felt it though with all the mouse work.

It might help others to check the independent decks listed over at Tarot Garden, looking specifically at what's listed as a print run on some of them. A lot of decks were 50 to 100 copies only. Or 200 copies. You have to be realistic with what you think you can sell so you don't get stuck with a closet full of them for years. If an initial run of 30 is 'safe', you can always do a second print run when those run out. IF you're still interested in keeping the deck available.

It was a stretch on my budget to do 500, and I wish WISH WISH I could have had a nice professional coating on the cards, but sales are 'great' in that half the decks sold before Christmas within 2 1/2 months---I broke even and then some (it's funding the next printing). The rest of the decks will be sold out by Sept. I'm pretty sure. With the Marseille deck, I'm thinking 100 decks (it's not a Rider Waite). If/when I get my other catdeck done, that one will be a better seller than the ferret deck, so I'll have to consider totals on that down the line. But I base it all on feedback & interest sparked. If I didn't get a peep, I'd only be looking at maybe doing up 30 and test/wait.

Unless someone's doing one that strikes a chord in a ton of people, I'd caution deck designers to NOT think they're going to make a living off their creation because that's not how it works out. (Baba being an exception, she & he do art for a living & can anticipate their decks selling strong & for the long term).

Beginners should ALWAYS give things a try, but just be realistic. It's like any piece of art.

(edited for spelling)

I have to admit that I am kind of happy that you wont get rich on tarot, because once money is involved it changes. Since the profits aren't high, right now people do it as a labor of love, which suits me fine.

Marie

Digital files & copyrights

blue_fusion said:

i was just wondering. how would one present digital documents to the said offices to acquire their necessary copyrights? is the work presented, say in some image format in a cd rom (digital medium) considered as such, "tangible"?

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Hi Blue,

As a photoshop user, I know you can embed watermarks into your file as well as add copyright info into it as well. Keeping your original files backed up and under lock & key doesnt hurt either. (in case of total copyright disaster). There are also forums on the Adobe Photoshop site that may help out with this as well. I hope this helps you out some.

FearfulSymmetry said:

I have to admit that I am kind of happy that you wont get rich on tarot, because once money is involved it changes. Since the profits aren't high, right now people do it as a labor of love, which suits me fine.

Marie

Click to expand...

I think that's right Marie, but I also think it's important to encourage people to at least do the figures. What I worry about is people getting a nasty shock when they find that it may take some months or years even to recover the costs of printing. We're very fortunate in having distributors who do sort of lay the facts down (in the nicest possible way) but if you are on your own and making a lot of assumptions about how many decks you will sell in a year then you may, as the saying goes "come a cropper". I think plenty of people on this list know the realities - which are, as you say, that you don't get rich on tarot!

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ps
I'm saying this partly because I get quite a few pms about this topic and I try to be honest about the numbers that I think people will realistically sell, the difficulties of getting a good, established distributor (about one in a thousand they say for a first publication, though in fact it may be more like one in five hundred) - and the reaction is sometimes to be quite cross with me - which doesn't feel great.

But I'm not trying to discourage, not at all, I'm just trying to be some voice of realism (and honesty for that matter). I don't like to see people left with absolutely no advice - though in the end it's up to them of course. I think Hudson's approach - which is to begin with a good knowledge of the demand and then to decide on the numbers of decks based on that - is a really sensible one. I like very much that she talks about "boring" mundane things that you have to think about - like storage (storage takes up serious amounts of space). It all has to be worked into the figures - we pay for storage as our studio is tiny and overflowing.

We started by printing a comparatively large number for a self-published deck, but only because we knew that the deck would sell to visitors here (we sell a lot at the Prague Castle shops - they say people often buy three or four at a time). If we hadn't had that market we would have thought differently. Even so, we took quite a large risk - even with the slightly lower printing costs here. We were also (and I can't say this enough) very lucky to find well-established US distributors who we like. Some publishers go some years without this. Those are the sorts of realities I'd like to pass on - not to discourage, but to ENCOURAGE and make sure that people don't end up losing money and being disappointed or put into a difficult financial situation.

Anyway, sorry, this turned into a monologue, but I DO worry about this!