Digital BW, The Print

Maria:

(Long post follows.  Forgive me if any of this has been covered already; 
I'm a few days behind in my e-mail. Also, please forgive any of this that 
is so obvious that I deserve to be slapped.)

All of Stan's observations about costs are right.  You've discussed 
printing your own cards on inkjet and contracting with a greeting card 
company.  But there's another option that sounds like it would make more 
sense given your goals.  That option is to self-publish in small printing 
runs.  By small, I'm talking about printing 4-10 different image cards at 
750-1000 cards per run. This would give you enough volume, at reasonable 
cost, to get started on the art-fair/small shop market. And if you want to 
scale up, that's easy to do at very, very low incremental cost.

A few words of experience if you do go this route:

Price:  Because of high competition in the printing industry, the prices 
for doing this kind of run are quite low. You will probably have to invest 
a couple thousand dollars (depending on number of cards, size of run, 
number of colours, quality of stock), but your margins will be reasonable 
and, assuming your cards sell, you will easily recover the cost and go on 
to profit.  (How much profit is up to you.)

Quality:  It can vary a *great* deal from print shop to print shop. As 
with all craft businesses, get recommendations from other photographers 
who have had cards printed. 

Quality II - The high end: There are printers that specialize in high-end 
photography reproduction.  Their work is wonderful, and their prices are 
high.  Remember, you're publishing greeting cards.  They need to be 
beautiful enough to sell and (we hope) touch the receipient, but they will 
more likely end up in the trash than in a frame, so watch your printing 
costs.

Quality III - The low end: There are web-based printers with literally no 
human interaction required.  You upload your images to card templates, and 
the cards arrive in the mail a surprisingly short time later. It's almost 
magic! The quality is what it is: sometimes fine, sometimes not.  I've 
worked with two of these types of setups, and both were fine for 
non-critical work...and the price was extraordinarily reasonable.  One of 
them had quite excellent phone-based customer service. Note, however, that 
these outfits are usually brokers--agents that farm the job out to various 
contract printers--not the printers themselves.  That's not necessarily a 
bad thing; it does, after all, get you a very, very low price if that's 
what you need to get started.

Customer service and relationships: If you go this printing route, you 
will find your eye for quality develops very, very quickly. I have found 
that having a relationship with a good printer (not the sales guy, but the 
*printer*) is very valuable.  You know about your photographs and how they 
should look.  He (usually he) knows his press and how to deliver what you 
want, down to recommending different stocks or approaches.  If you're 
going choose a local shop, specifically choose to work with someone you 
like and respect.  Printing jobs *can* be a hassle, and you want to be 
doing this with someone whom you trust, and with whom you can chuckle when 
the first proof comes back looking shocking.

Color: Why on earth would you care about colour? You may find that your 
work produces well in a single ink color (ie black). I haven't.  After 
having tried everything from single ink to full process color, I now work 
almost entirely in duotone for press output. This is very much personal 
preference and is all about how you want your final product to look...and 
what cost trade-offs you want to make. Working in duo- and tri-tone has 
only reinforced the above comment about the value of your relationship 
with a good printer. 

Design: If you've got a good eye for design, by all means design the cards 
yourself.  Don't forget back-side branding, copyright etc.  Designing a 
card that conveys that feeling that it's a piece of art--vs Hallmark and 
the like--is a fun challenge. 

Size:  The size of your card (by which I mean shape and dimensions) is an 
important design element, but it's also critical to something else: cost. 
*Card* size and shape, per se, has only tiny influence on cost: everything 
gets printed on large sheets and is cut when it comes off the back of the 
press anyway, so choosing a custom size won't have much, if any, cost 
impact. BUT you need to use a standard size *envelope*, or your custom 
envelope costs will kill your margin. 

Stock:  Get recommendations on stock from your printer unless you already 
know what you want.  Choose a stock that suits your images (color and 
weight). You're freed to some extent from the inkjet 
coated/uncoated/smooth/velvet/matt/gloss/ tyranny, but you enter a world 
of even more options (some of which have similar names--eg "coated"--but 
different meanings, so watch your step). Furthermore, you need to keep in 
mind the card/envelope match.  Make sure the stock you choose goes well 
with a readily available--ie, inexpensive--envelope size and color.

The business you're in: I'm probably talking down to you, here, and, if 
so, I apologize in advance.  But this is a point that bears making, just 
in case you haven't thought about it.  When you get into selling greeting 
cards, it's certainly a way of selling your photography, but go in with 
your eyes open that you're getting into the business of selling greeting 
cards.  The two can live in a very happy marriage, but trudging around 
trying to sell your cards is time you're not spending making photographs. 
That said, if you can make money selling your images this way, more power 
to you. I'm all for people getting out and making their living (or part of 
it) from their passion.

I worry, looking back over this long screen of text, that I'm making this 
sound scary.  It's not. I jumped in with a 4-card 1000 sheet run a few 
years ago, having no idea what I was doing.  They turned out nicely, were 
popular enough that I never got nervous again about recovering print 
costs, and quality has only improved with each bit of knowledge accrued in 
successive runs.

So, if you've got the energy to sell 'em once you've got 'em, then go get 
'em!  And leave your inkjet to do beautiful, but high cost, master prints 
and limited editions that you sell at high prices beside your cards at the 
art fairs. 

I'm surprised that Lea (from whinydogpress) hasn't piped up on this topic. 
 Are you tuned in, Lea?

Cheers. --h 
...on a gobsmackingly beautiful day in Paris


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Message: 12
   Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 12:00:23 -0700
   From: sierra <artistasierra@...>
Subject: Re: direction

Stan, 

Thank you for your response.

My ultimate goal would be to be published by a greeting card company.  Of
course, I don't know the pros and cons to that, so...  My plan was just to
start going shop to shop and possible art fairs and sell them on a small
scale at first. 

Is there a better site to explore the options available and pros/cons to
creating income with our photography.  The only other thing that I know
about is stock photog.  Does publishing our photog. legally prohibit us 
from
doing any kind of art exhibits in the future?  Is this the site to 
continue
to ask questions like this?

Maria