Merchandising!

A bunch of my readers were talking about doing t-shirts for themselves; they've been creating logos and stuff, and one girl designed a bunch of wallpapers that I'm going to put on my site as free downloads under a Creative Commons copyright. (Another logo is on the Goodreads group they started for the series.) Anyway, since they were doing the designs, and since they wanted shirts, I thought, well, why don't I set that up, and that way I have some control over it and can maybe make a few bucks?

So that's what I'm doing!

I talked to the girl creating the wallpapers and asked if she'd be interested in designing some shirt logos, and would she sell me the copyrights cheap. She said yes. Then another reader volunteered to do more, and she'll give me the copyright in return for being able to use the designs in her professional portfolio (I still want to pay her something, though, even if it's just free shirts or signed books or something). So right now I have three or four finished designs.

They're not book covers or anything like that. The first one is a logo for a bar mentioned in the books, Chuck's, with a "Cold Beer*Live Bands" thing across the top and the address, 55th and Ace in Downside, at the bottom. Another one is a logo for the Church that runs my world, the Church of Real Truth. We're doing one that uses a particular term from the book, and some that have quotes from the epigrams I put in the beginning of every chapter, and a couple that are about the hero...stuff like that. I want people to have a lot of choice, and for the products to be clearly related to the books, but I also want the shirts to be not too obvious advertising, you know? Something people can wear and not feel like a walking billboard, stuff that looks cool.

I looked into having shirts printed, but while you can actually get them done fairly inexpensively, it's a huge pain, because you have to handle all the shipping etc., and unless you have a lot of money for an initial outlay, you're kind of stuck with one style/one design/one color. So I could charge a lot less for them, but there would be very little choice. The lowest price I found was $5.83 per shirt, which meant that I could sell them for as low as $12 and make enough to earn back my initial outlay and do another run of the same size with the profits.

Someone suggested Zazzle, so I looked there, which looks really nice. I also checked Cafe Press, because I'm familiar with them, but their shirt prices are outrageous; $30 for a long-sleeve t-shirt? Ha! No. And then I found this place:

http://www.spreadshirt.com/

which has quite a few advantages. First, their prices are the best. Of course they're still going to cost more than if I bought them from a printer and sold them to the readers myself, but Spreadshirt is more reasonable than Cafe Press or Zazzle. They have a good variety of shirt styles and colors--more black shirts than the other places too--and some items the other places don't carry at all, like cardigans. But the biggest thing is, they'll print on the sleeves or on the back. So I can have whatever design on the front, then my logo & web address on the back or on the sleeve, which will be awesome! I can set up a store there for free, and even use the same design as my website or fit the store into my website (I'd have to ask Frauke, my webgenius, to do that, but it can be done).

My husband and I were talking about maybe occasionally doing a new design as a "Special Limited Edition," with a print run of 50 or 100, and that's it. We would have those printed ourselves and handle the shipping and everything (that's if the shirts and stuff prove remotely popular; if nobody wants those we're of course not going to spend any money to do more shirts nobody wants, lol).

So I'm really excited about this. I don't expect that I'll make a ton of money off of it, but I think it'll be fun, and a cool experiment. I've had a lot of readers tell me they can't wait to buy a shirt, but we'll see how many of them actually do, you know? (Not like they're big liars or anything, just that when it comes down to actually paying for stuff you don't always have the cash.)

I've registered the domain "DownsideMarket.com" for my store, too; I wanted to get that done early on (of course).

Also, a few days back I'd been talking to a guy from Twitter who works for a company that produces promo merchandise etc. Like, all kinds of things, from shirts & keychains to tennis rackets and stuff. He offered me some really good shirt prices but I decided to go for a variety of designs instead, as you know.

Anyway. He emailed me today to let me know that they can handle a storefront like that for me, if I want. They'll do single orders and everything, and the basic price for say, printed babydoll shirts, would still be less than Spreadshirts, which means I can charge my readers less and still make a profit, and they can afford to buy more than one thing if they want. His company can set it all up under my own domain name and everything, and people would pay for their merchandise through Google shopping cart.

So now I'm really unsure what to do, again. As much as Spreadshirts is easy, I also really like the idea of not only being able to offer better prices--nobody has a lot of money these days, right?--and be able to actually discuss the things I want to offer with a person, who can ask me if they have questions or whatever. Do you know what I mean? Someone I can discuss my ideas with and stuff like that. And because their base prices are lower, even with me charging less I'll actually make a little more.

I'm going to reply to him and see what if any the set-up costs would be, and ask him to send me more info. I'm probably making this much more complicated than it needs to be, but I just want to do the best thing for everyone, you know? The simplest thing for me, the cheapest thing for the readers, etc.

This is the company he works for: http://southernpromo.com/



I'd really like to have an ongoing discussion about this here, if we can. I know a few other writers who've set up online stores for themselves; Karen Marie Moning has a store on Zazzle, for example. http://www.zazzle.com/karenmariemoning

I do think that this sort of thing is going to become more and more important as time goes on. Loyal and enthusiastic readers like to show off their connection to a series; they like to be able to identify each other. I know several people who had a friend design jewelry for their series, and she sells it for them through her Etsy store. And while I doubt anyone is getting rich off their merchandising--at least nobody who isn't already a very big seller--it can potentially be a nice little secondary income stream, which we all know is a good thing to have.


So what I'd like to do is set up this thread--and possibly, if there's enough interest, a subforum--to discuss all things merchandising, from keyrings and buttons to t-shirts and blankets. I'll keep updating here when I take another step, and let everyone know how it's going and how I'm doing. But please feel free to join in with your own experiences, recommendations, thoughts, whatever! Have you had a good or bad experience with a particular vendor? Do you know someone who has, or who set up a store like this for themselves? How are they doing with it? Please let me know!

Southern Promo is a small company, and they deal mostly with corporations who want to order, say, shirts for their annual company picnic, or whatever. Their prices are extremely reasonable, from the quotes he's given me.

They do offer some nice brand-name shirts, and they're very interested in working with writers (the gentleman I've been speaking with is an aspiring himself, so is really into the whole idea) and exploring this side of the business as well. I got the feeling they like the idea of expanding in this direction, though of course that's just a feeling. And, he says they can pretty much print on anything I can imagine, so I'm not limited to just a few items; I can do shoes if I want to, lol, or chairs or something.

Like I said, I just really like the idea of being an actual client, and thus having someone to speak with if there's a problem or something needs to be changed or whatever, you know?

Hopefully he'll get back to me in the next couple of days, so I can make a decision.

Medievalist said:

For t-shirts, avoid polyester since they don't take ink well.

You want to talk to someone knowledgeable about the color separation, even if you're doing black and white.

Ask the shop what resolution in dpi they want--the most common error I see is using the wrong dpi. You want the highest dpi possible for the specific screener.

Ask about color pricing--for some shops they'll do two color, but charge a very high price for yellow (and that's going to affect green and orange).

Click to expand...

Thanks Lisa! Good stuff to know! (As far as I can tell, they don't even offer polyester or poly-cotton blends, so that's a good thing.)


Okay, so chugging right along...


I heard back from the gentleman at Southern Promo I've been dealing with. He gave me a list of basic packages they offer for their hosting/printing/fulfillment service, and they're extremely reasonable; like, less than/about what I spend on cigarettes for a week (and I smoke about half a pack a day).

Yes, someplace like Spreadshirt wouldn't charge me anything, that's true. But as I said above, with Spreadshirt if there's a problem I have no one to talk to. If one of my images isn't uploading properly, I'm out of luck. Items, while cheaper than CafePress or Zazzle, are still going to run in at least the $16-$25 range. And I'm more limited on items I can offer.

With Southern Promo I may be paying a little, but my readers get more affordable merchandise and a better selection. I do feel more confident in the quality of items that will go out, and again, I like the idea of having a person I can call, who handles my account, who will solve whatever problems come up.

So I'm still making my decision, but that's probably how I'll end up going.

It's been a while, so I thought I'd post an update. (And look, during the week this time!)

I did decide to go with Southern Promo in the end. The package I chose gives me up to 500 items; they're building the store website (I'm providing a banner), they registered a domain name (I already registered www.downsidemarket.com, if you recall, so now I have that and www.thedownsidemarket.com). I get unlimited bandwidth and all of that stuff, plus secure credit card checkout, and it's extremely reasonable as far as cost to me; much less than I expected. I can cancel or up/downgrade my service at any time.

There are a lot of reasons I picked them, some of which I mentioned before and some of which I'm mentioning in this post. Price is a very important one. I just can't bring myself to charge readers $30 for a t-shirt. I'd rather charge $15 or something, and maybe they can buy two. Not to mention that, like I said, because the merchandise itself is cheaper, I'll actually have a larger profit margin than I would at Zazzle or Spreadshirt. So that's a win-win situation right there. My goal is obviously to have the store site pay for itself.

I don't expect that the profits from the store will make me wealthy or anything, lol. I just hope it will help increase awareness of the series and make the readers happy (this all started because they asked for it!), and maybe not cost me anything in the end. I have some GREAT stuff, mostly words or phrases from the books, and logos for places in the city. Stuff that people can actually wear.

Last night I spent something like four hours making the big huge list of stuff for each design to go on, based on the items on Southern's website. I have fourteen designs in total at the moment.


So right now we're considering whether we want to hold some back to introduce later, or just set them all out at once. Because it is only fourteen items; I mean, it's about 200 items, but only 14 designs (each of those are available on anywhere from five to twelve or thirteen different items). T-shirts, hoodies, tanks, totes, messenger bags, shot glasses, and in a few cases this adorable t-shirt dress. All of the designs will have my "SK" logo on them somewhere; on the left sleeve for t-shirts and on the back of the neck for tanks etc.

My feeling is no, to list everything all at once, but then I'm also concerned about having a fresh supply of items. I want to be able to add something new at least every month or so, because otherwise people will get bored. I'm no good at creating digital art, not remotely, but I can handle doing quotes and stuff. So hopefully I'll be able to do that, and maybe I'll set a certain date when new designs come up. I shop occasionally at an online store that has a sale on the 13th of every month; I don't know that I'd do a new design every month, but it might be fun to do it every other month or something, and have it be a set thing so people know and can check in.

What I've tried to do is offer the biggest variety on items I think will be the most popular. Like one character calls my heroine a certain name, and the reader response to that was HUGE, so I'm doing two different designs with that name, and offering them in a lot of styles, because I think people will really want that one. Or a character's tattoo, which another reader has gotten tattooed on herself already; I think that one will be a big seller too, especially since it's unisex.

Pretty much all of the merchandise is black, gray, red, white, and pink, with a few baby blues thrown in (and a dark green or maroon here and there for the men), so we have a fairly cohesive "look" that fits with the tone of the books. I think it would be weird to offer lots of pastels and citrus-y colors, you know? Since again, this is promotion/merchandising for a series, I want & need it to fit in with the series. So I'm sticking to colors that my MC would wear (she doesn't wear pink, but enough people do that I figured I should offer it) and colors that I think reflect the books. And I'm doing things like ringer tees and tanks, and later bowling shirts, because again, I want it all to fit in with the world of the series. The goal is to have people wear this stuff and feel like they're part of that world in some way, so I want to make sure it all fits in. And eventually I'd love to be able to offer accessories and stuff too. That's another reason I chose to go with Southern Promo; I have more options for if I want to bring in unusual items. I'd probably have to pay for those upfront, but it's still good to know.

I figure, I can always discontinue items as well. So if I'm wrong, and something doesn't sell at all, I can do a special "going out of stock" kind of sale for it; I don't have to, because I won't technically have stock, but it might convince people to grab it and maybe buy something else while they're there. This is another benefit to going with Southern; I can offer items at cost if I want, or do special coupon code sales for members of the Downside Army, stuff like that. Which I think is really cool.

And all of this will be based on sales. A design that only sells once every few months when others sell once a week doesn't seem worth it to keep around; I can take it down and put up something readers might like better. So it's something I'm going to be watching; which designs sell, which ones don't, and which items do and don't sell. I'm hoping readers will give feedback on that aside from just what they actually buy, like if they want a certain shirt in purple that they'll say so, or if they want a racer-back tank or whatever. Luckily the checks and statements I'll be getting should have that information and make it easier for me to track that stuff. What I plan to do is just keep a list of items and make hashmarks for each sale, honestly, so I can see it at a glance (I'm so high-tech). I also figure that I may pre-order some of the really popular ones myself, so they have a supply and we don't have to wait for them to be printed.

And of course I'm going to be thinking of ways to do cross-promotion between the store and my site/the books. Like maybe special items for each book's release. And like I said, special sales and offers and stuff, and shirts that people will want to wear or will think look cool even if they're not familiar with the series. I'm hoping that they'll stir up more interest in the books and vice versa.


At this point I'm very, very worried that this will be a huge failure and no one will buy anything, and I'll have wasted a lot of time, effort, and money. But I'm trying to be hopeful.


We should be opening up for preorders soon, so I'll be able to post a link, and then I can start sharing information on how those are going, too. I think the preorder period is going to be quite short, just long enough to get some final details in place, really, before production starts. So here's hoping I have some good news in the next week!

brainstorm77 said:

Good luck with it. I think it's a great idea.

Click to expand...

Thanks!


They're getting products up on the site now, and I've just learned you'll be able to "like" items (like on Facebook) and write reviews for them, so I hope people do that. There's also an option to Register so I'm hoping we may be able to do Wishlists or similar.

And another quick update, with something I'm really hoping turns out the way I want it to!

They're still loading things up on the site; I've been checking it periodically and it's absolutely thrilling to see those designs on actual shirts!!

This morning I had an idea, though. I was thinking about urban fantasy as a genre and about reader identification, and I thought, why not throw in some pro-UF shirts and well? Those might attract readers who aren't familiar with my books and thus introduce them to the series, and for readers of my series they may want to add a pro-UF shirt to their basket, or whatever. Do I'm really hoping that works. We're keeping the designs and style options on those very basic, rather than offering a wide variety like the other stuff, because it's just for fun, really.

But I'm very much hoping that it broadens the reach of the store itself and gets the word out. I have slogans like "I read urban fantasy for the violence," "Urban fantasy: It's not just for chicks," "I like my fantasy urban," and my favorite, "I <3 UF," done in the style on an "I <3 NY" shirt, but with the heart hollow and looking like heart-shaped blood spatter.

I want to come up with a few more UF slogans as time goes on, too, but we'll see how they do.

....and we're OPEN!!


I officially opened the Downside Market for pre-orders yesterday, and we're doing a special 10% off coupon for the two-week pre-order period. Simply enter the code PREORD10 at checkout to get 10% off your entire order!


We had a few technical glitches the first day but things seem to have evened out and of course the gang at Southern Promo worked hard to fix everything as soon as we found out about it. Response seems really positive so far!


The UF shirts seem to be pretty popular so far too, so let's hope.

You can check it out at http://www.thedownsidemarket.com. Please feel free to let me know what you think!

Axler said:

Pretty cool...but--

I've been putting together various Cafe Press stores over the last little bit for various properties ( a Cryptozoica shop is in the works)...and although I agree that some of their shirt prices seem high, I think it depends on the imprinted design whether somebody will be inclined to buy the product.

Click to expand...

Nice stuff!

Oh, I agree. My concern wasn't that people wouldn't buy at a higher price; I knew they would. But I personally felt my products should be more affordable. $25 for a t-shirt is a lot for me. At my store people can get two shirts for that, and they're name-brand items and a lot more variety than CafePress offers. That was a big deal to me.

It may not be to someone else, of course. I'd never say it's wrong not to do it the way I did. I just made a decision based on what I feel my responsibility is to my readers, and what I think is a reasonable price to ask for stuff, that's all.

Robin said:

I love your shop, Stacia! Did you have to go through your publisher first for approval?

Click to expand...

Thanks Robin!

I didn't, no, but I did tell them before I started planning, just to be sure they didn't have any thoughts about it. Merchandising rights belonged to me in my contract, except I have to offer them first option on any paper products, like calenders or notecards or whatever, so I'm not doing any of those in the store. But all the rest of it, no.

KimJo said:

I'm glad you posted about this, Stacia. I've been wondering about some merchandising stuff for my YA series Reality Shift and my upcoming Dark Lines series, both of which are dark UF. My problem is I have enough trouble promoting the books; I don't think I'd be able to market the merchandise as well. (If my 15-year-old could have her way, I'd score a deal with the Hot Topic chain of stores...and yes, she's actually started researching how I'd go about trying to do that.)

I'm going to keep following this thread and check out your store as well.

And maybe I should start a separate thread, but I'd love to hear other authors' experience with merchandise tie-ins for their books.

Click to expand...

Thanks!

A big part of the reason why I started it, actually, was because a few readers asked me if I would, or if they could make their own shirts. I don't necessarily have a problem with them making their own shirts, but I did kind of feel like if there was going to be merchandise relating to the series it should come from me, you know? I wanted to establish myself in that area before someone else started doing it.

I'd love to hear other experiences too, but I don't think many of us have done it yet, really. I don't think it's an area many people are really looking into yet. But I think it should be. So I'm hoping that doing this and talking about it will help other people start thinking along these lines.