to publish or self publish

[Marie]

Hi
I just caught up on this thread and noticed my deck mentioned and thought I would add some input being in the throws of it.

Cafe Press: It was a neat idea and some neat stuff. I sold a few things (very few!) but I found I just didn't have any extra time to do any upkeep on it, it was pretty low on my list of priorities. That and it made me feel kinda over-commercial. So I let it lapse recently. Oh, I also didn't like the thought of products going out without being able to inspect them first.

Self publishing: Well, I'm only doing 250 so not much compared to a real publishing run. A lot has come up that I didn't plan on or had no idea about or mis estimated. I really waffled about the price not wanting it to be too high or too low and I am actually glad I priced it high because there were a lot of costs I didn't think about.

For example Paypal is charging me $2.00 - $4.00 for every 1 deck transaction because of the account I had to have to accept credit cards. I would estimate a good 80 to 90% of the payments so far have been through paypal so that could end up being a $500.00 expense in the end.

The spreadcloth. I have had problems with that from the beginning. It started out I was doing the design with the brush ended fabric pens. After I started doing a few I realized the pens were drying up after only 1 cloth, consistently. The pens costed about $3.00 each! I searched for another that would work better, last longer or not cost so much but to no avail. And then to make things worse they ran out of them at every single place I could find. Someone must have bought them all (just like I planned on doing) and I had orders waiting! So I ended up using paint and a brush, the costs are lower but it is way more time consuming, taking me a day or two for each one just to do the design on it.
The ribbon I tied it with was a similar situation. I didn't even plan on it being an expense and then not only did the ribbon I originally like seem to dissapear off the face of the earth, but all replacements were a lot more costly than I had originally calculated.
Shipping has been more expensive than planned, as well as shipping items like bubble wrap. A lot of stuff is just little things that are slowly adding up.
One of the biggest expenses I totally missed was the printing on the backs. It never occured to me that the 1 color would turn out to cost about the same as the fronts, but it is still a color and a color that comes from mixing several other colors, so there is not much difference between the fronts and backs.

I wanted to add this stuff, though, because I wanted it to be a quality item. I know that someday I will have it mass produced as a 78 card deck hopefully by a good publisher but in the meantime I wanted to give the deck a chance to get out there and show its best face. Plus I was getting requests for it sometimes several a day!

Another thing I didn't think of was how much time it was going to take just to answer correspondence. I can spend at least an hour a day just answering emails. The shipping is time consuming, the cutting etc., all time consuming. Not a big deal usually but I happened to be crunched for time anyway with my current life situation.

I think if I was to offer advice to someone about to embark on a similar project it would be to:
1. Plan ahead and purchase all the materials for the whole project beforehand.
2. Make plans for accounting and keeping paperwork in order before starting sales.
3. Get the best equipment you can afford rather than having to upgrade in the middle because your cheap equipment didn't cut the mustard and cost you more in the long run.
4. Be prepared to have enough products done to meet the demand.
5. Go over every material and every step of the process with a fine toothed comb so you can accurately calculate costs, materials, equipment and prduction time. You can't be too prepared!


Astra, thanks for the input on the site design! I am really bad about testing my site on other computers or browsers.
I'll switch out the animation for something faster:0

If there is anything else I can help with feel free to ask.

Marie

 

[Astra]

Marie - if what I said sounded like a put-down, it wasn't, and I'm feeling a bit guilty, but looking at what you were offering left me confused (not about what you were offering, but about the tentative pricing, etc., that I had been looking at.)

So far, I've come across two main types of people who want decks - the collectors who are willing to plunk down extra bucks for something either really nice, or rare, and the people who don't see why they should have to pay much of anything unless they're getting a published deck in a store. I know there's a huge middle market, and I'm one of it, but most of the posts I've seen are at one end of the spectrum or the other (not necessarily in aeclectic, I should say).

And since my background (in paying jobs) has been as a packaging engineer, sales analyst, and a few dozen other things that tend to consider mainly mass marketing, I'm having some trouble getting a real feel for who's out there buying Tarot decks and what they want/expect. I'll get there eventually, but in the meantime I suspect I'm going to be boggling a lot at what actually sells and how it's done.

Your cards, by the way, are lovely.

 

[HudsonGray]

Thanks for all the feedback! It's important to find out as much as a person can before starting something like this, and as you're currently going through the hoops on it we get this right from the source. It's not just 'take it to the printer, pick it up, send it out'. Not by a long shot!

I suppose Cafe Press won't send you a free item, just to check, will they? Probably not. Not cost effective. At least it didn't cost you anything more than time--no stocking up on each item & having to store it somewhere. And that Paypal sure is a lot more expensive than I thought it would be. That's a significant chunk of money.

I was thinking of doing drawstring bags for mine....but reconsidered. Even had the fabric for it and everything but will use that for something else. It would be SO much nicer to just let a publisher take care of everything.

If you ship in padded envelopes, I don't have any suggestions there, but if you use boxes, check Uline and Ship-It, both have low cost sturdy boxes, no minimum order, and ship same day. Ship-It has a white corrugated box (top closure) 4x4x4" for 17 cents each in batches of 200. Or in brown cardboard for 13 cents a box for 250 units. www.shipitcatalog.com The other is www.uline.com Both have tons of sizes. Best prices I could find for shipping boxes.

 

[Marie]

Thanks Astra
I didn't take your post as a put down at all! Actually some criticism is very helpful now and then.

Me, I don't know much about marketing or sales beyond working in the occasional retail store so this is all a learning experience for me and the print run is small enough that by the time I get it, I will be done LOL.

Marie

 

[LittleWing]

can't the printers use laser printers?? surely this would be alot cheaper than them making individual plates.

 

[Astra]

LittleWing, the problem with using laser printers is that even if you get the colors correctly, the printing simply doesn't last as long as if you transfer the actual inks to the page in a printing press. It's a question of how the colors bond to the paper.

Printing inks, being liquid at the time of printing, actually permeate the paper surface and stick with it as long as the surface is intact. Laser "inks" go on dry, and have a mechanical bond with the surface which gets eroded as the paper is flexed and as it comes into contact with other surfaces.

So if you're actually buying a deck you want to be able to do a few hundred readings with, one that's laser printed is going to look bad a whole lot sooner than one that's done on a printing press. Still, for self-publishing, if it's cheap enough and if you include a note about the expected durability of the deck - might work.

 

[LittleWing]

thanks astra ....... oh my ......... so much to consider!!!!!!! - im so glad i started this thread!!! otherwise i would have been clueless!!

 

[cirom]

Regarding the option and cons of laser print out that was mentioned earlier. That can be addressed, inkjet printers are excellent. In my case, the special edition of the Gilded Tarot, I'm using Epson 2200 printers for example. This uses seven colours, as opposed to the four of a commercially lithographic press run. This translates into a much richer and vibrant colour gammut. The inks used are archival quality, and while such a deck is in all likelyhood going to end up as a collectors item as opposed to a deck for everyday reading. (most people will wait for Llewellyn's published deck for that) My edition is nevertheless further protected by being laminated.
The fact that one can produce a deck to order avoids the cost and risk of unsold inventory, but these customized decks do not come cheaply just because they are "home made". The inks are expensive and are a rapidly consumed, the paper has to be specially coated and there's a front and back issue. The 'cold' lamination alone works out at almost $50 a deck. And last but not least the whole process of hand trimming each card is extremely time consuming. I'm not trying to put you off, because the whole process can be very satisfying, but not as profitable as the layman may assume.

 

[HudsonGray]

You're HAND TRIMMING a 78 card laminated deck?? OMG. The time alone....Bet you have to round the corners too...

Good luck on that, save your rejects for samples, and I hope you make enough money to keep you happy! That's a lot of work. Satisfying, yes, but a LOT of work.

 

[baba-prague]

Marie wrote:
1. Plan ahead and purchase all the materials for the whole project beforehand.
2. Make plans for accounting and keeping paperwork in order before starting sales.
3. Get the best equipment you can afford rather than having to upgrade in the middle because your cheap equipment didn't cut the mustard and cost you more in the long run.
4. Be prepared to have enough products done to meet the demand.
5. Go over every material and every step of the process with a fine toothed comb so you can accurately calculate costs, materials, equipment and prduction time. You can't be too prepared!

______________

I'd second all of that. We are in a slightly different position as we are, in effect, a very small-press publisher, so we had the deck professionally printed. Even so, as Marie says, there are lots of things to consider. For example we actually ended up taking a whole afternoon finding a supplier of large rolls of bubble-wrap in Prague. Similarly, it took some time to find good quality affordable padded envelopes. It this maybe sounds ridiculous, but these things have to be done. Like Marie says, the time and the small amounts of money all add up to more than you imagine.

We probably under-priced our deck. Well, any comments we have had on pricing have all been along the lines of "you should be asking more". But we wanted to make the price accessible to people here - remember that the average wage is a lot lower than in the US or UK for example. Pricing is such a difficult issue. I think, as Astra says, you have to decide whether you are basically charging much the same price as a mass-produced deck (ours is not that much more, especially the price for the set) or whether you are going for collector's market. If it's the latter, you won't sell thousands. If it's the former - well you may sell thousands but make a very low profit on each! Whatever you do, tarot is not a way to make lots of money - so also bear in mind that you should do the business/production side in a way that suits you and that you enjoy - because that enjoyment is part of your "payment".

To give an example, we have really enjoyed the production of our "book binder" cover (even though it has been very problematic and slow at times) because it's the kind of workmanship that is dying out here and it's been a real buzz to be able to commission this kind of thing.

We have been over to the workshop that does the production for whole days and it is not "sweatshop". It's kind of old-fashioned and nice, with music playing and ancient posters of the Beatles on the walls The work is quite routine but as far as we could see no-one was (at all!) pressurised - lots of chatting and coffee-drinking going on. This sort of laid-back approach to hand-work may not be possible in years to come - there will be more and more competitive and financial pressures on little workshops like this. So we're lucky to be involved with it. I think what I'm trying to say is that if you self-publish you can make this sort of decision for reasons that aren't purely commercial. Our "book binder" cover is probably a silly idea financially - but it's been a great experience for us and I get a small thrill every time I see it. So follow your dreams a little if you self-publish. You don't have to think like a big publisher, that's part of the fun.