Self- Publishing Playing Cards

This is really about self-publishing playing cards, but it's easily applied to other works of art and I encourage hobby artists to consider self-publishing their work.

First things first.  You aren't going to make a lot of money.  You aren't.  Unless you're an extremely hard worker, incredibly persistent, and unbelievably lucky.  So don't approach this with the expectation that you're going to quit your day job and happily make art all day long because you aren't.

Playing cards are a mass-manufactured item with lots of societal expectations.  Modern customers expect the cards to be certain sizes, certain shapes, and to contain certain familiar elements.  They want the international standard suits (hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades), they want a King, Queen, and Jack in the court.  They want an ace in every suit.  They want a joker or two.  They want decorated card backs.  And so on.  There are thousands of different card designs out there and all the truly successful ones cater to these desires.  Any deck of cards you produce that doesn't conform to these expectations is losing market share.  The more different your deck is, the fewer people who will be interested in purchasing it.  Unless it captures the market's attention.  This is true even in the medieval recreation market where people should be more concerned with authentic design, appearance, and construction.  You have been warned.

Playing cards using standard elements, the ones that cater to the desires of the modern market, are produced in job lots of hundreds of thousands.  This reduces the per unit cost of a deck of cards down to fractions of a dollar.  A standard deck of bridge size playing cards can cost as little as five cents a deck when ordered in lots of a thousand or more.  Which is fortunate because production costs are actually one of the smallest expenses.  Once a deck is produced it has to be shipped, stored, marketed, sold, and shipped.  On top of that there are the associated costs of running a business.

While it's tempting to say, I'm not running a business, I'm just doing this as a hobby, you can't really do that.  To some degree or another you will be running a business.  It is possible to minimize your overhead but that comes with associated costs.

I'm going to be very brief here and, despite what you've read above, my intention is to encourage hobby artists, particularly people in the SCA, to look at making some of their work commercially available. Why?  Not because you're going to make money, but because it makes your art available to a wider audience.  It can be very satisfying to walk by an encampment and see people using your artwork to have fun and enhance the atmosphere of the event.  Which is why I focus on doing things for the lowest possible cost.

I'm going to address three basic ways of making cards:
1) By hand using traditional techniques and tools.
2) By hand using modern techniques and tools.
3) Using a commercial print-on-demand service.

Method 1 is practiced by more people than you would think.  There's a certain satisfaction that can only be found in hand-carving print blocks, printing on authentic paper, adding color with stencils, and hand cutting the cards.  There are tutorials on this process that can be found on the World of Playing Cards website and on YouTube.  You should look them up even if you have no intention of ever making cards by hand.  A deck of cards produced in this fashion should be priced at $50-$100 per deck.  You can also produce hand-painted decks of cards that will be a more accurate representation of the earliest decks and some of the more opulent decks.  Decks produced in this fashion should be priced at about $300-$1,000 per deck.

Method 2 uses period techniques (wood-block printing, stenciling) but 'cheats' by using modern tools.  You might use a CNC laser or router to produce the wood-block.  Or you might use a lino block rather than a low grain seasoned wood.  You can laser cut the stencils.  Or use modern inks instead of mixing period paints.  There are too many possible combinations of choices you can make based on the availability of tools and materials to discuss this at any length.  You should be able to reduce the price of a deck produced in this fashion by about 30%.

Method 3 is the method I will discuss at greatest length.  This involves creating card designs, uploading them to a commercial print-on-demand service or sending them to a professional printer and producing the cards on demand or in small batches.  I will note that if you are producing your cards in small batches it is worth your while to make the small batches a little larger and to introduce a method of keeping track of which cards were produced in which batches.  This will help your cards become collectible.

I have used Printer's Studio, Arts Cow, and Make Playing Cards to produce decks of cards.  They each have their own advantages and disadvantages but they are all fairly alike in being print on demand companies located in China with no minimum order.  You can also print with companies like Bicycle, Cartamundi, and the like, but they will have minimum orders of 500-2000 decks at a time and considerably longer setup times.  They also produce better quality cards.  But they don't produce medieval cards. What do I mean by that?  Let's look at the compromises inherent in using this system.
-Modern playing card stock is very slick and/or has a 'linen' texture applied to it to prevent the cards from sticking together.  This is really the biggest issue.
-Modern printers are very reluctant to print right up to the edge of the cards as was the custom up until the 19th Century.  You can do it, but the results are inconsistent.  Also, be aware that customers are intolerant of manufacturing defects of any sort EVEN IF THEY ARE HISTORICALLY ACCURATE.
-Some manufacturers will simply not sell you a deck without rounded corners.  Some will but you have to request it every time you order cards.  That makes it hard for people to order decks without assistance and if you have to assist everyone ordering cards then that's costing you money in labor costs.  You want to make this as simple and painless and maintenance free as possible.
-You have to choose from standard deck size offerings.  MPC offers a lot of options but even they can't match all the sizes medieval playing cards came in.  You may have to alter designs to fit available printing formats.

One advantage to using a professional printer is they can do consistent card backs.  This is good, sort of.  Consistent card backs aren't a big feature of early playing cards.  It's why so many decks had plain backs or, in the case of more expensive decks, mono-color backs.  Deck backs relied on busy designs so that on average the backs looked mostly the same and individual cards couldn't be distinguished from other cards.  So the advantage of getting uniform backs actually detracts from more closely approaching an authentic appearance.  As a side note, you may be tempted to make a 'marked' deck of your cards.  I don't recommend this.  While it would be cool and probably sell a few decks, it will discourage the purchase of your regular version of the deck.

I'm going to go over the way I create a new deck of cards.  The first thing I do is the design work.  I look at existing examples.  I decide what I want to do.  I make notes.  I make sketches.  I get the deck straight in my head.  Then I decide what printer to use.  For me, I've standardized on Printer's Studio because that allows me sell my designs through their website.

Once the printer has been decided on I download their templates.  It's very important to use the printer's templates because if you don't you are going to get inconsistent (BAD) results.  Every printer will have a safety area that your file must extend into.  Every printer will have a safety area which they recommend you don't print in because imperfections in the cutting process may destroy some of the content there.  Finally, every printer will have a design area that will definitely print on every card.  I tend to use two free graphic programs: Inkscape and GIMP.  GIMP is the free equivalent of PhotoShop while Inkscape is a vector graphics program most easily compared to PowerPoint.  I do most of my work on elements of the cards in GIMP and then I import the elements into Inkscape, convert them from raster objects to vector objects and then assemble the cards using these individual elements in Inkscape.

Vector?  Raster?   Yeah, you'll need to learn some terminology.  I'm not going to cover this in any detail.  I suggest you look it up.  Both of these programs have a learning curve and take some time to learn.  I'm not going to teach you how to use them.  I will offer you one word that you should research in both programs as understanding the idea and how to use the feature is crucial: Layers.  The only thing I have to teach you is setting up the template.  Two things to remember: DPI and sizing.  Sizing is the physical dimensions of the image.  I always make my templates twice as large as the actual cards will be (actually, twice as large as the templates from the printer call for).  I do this because I find the printer will condense the image down to fit the card without a loss of detail.  In fact, I get finer detail.  DPI stands for dots per inch.  Simply put the more dots per inch your image has the more detail it will have.  You absolutely must have at least 300DPI.  400DPI is better.  600DPI is probably the best your computer can handle unless you've got a high-end machine with lots and lots of RAM (16GB or more).

Instead of teaching you how to do graphic arts on a computer I'm going to assume you've got more artistic talent than me and you created your prototype deck by hand.  You're going to take a high resolution picture of each card.  When I do this, I use my camera and I have the card lying flat on a mono-color surface with lights on three sides to eliminate shadows.  No need for an expensive camera, your typical cell-phone camera will take a great photo.  I find cell-phone pictures are better than using a scanner.  Unless you've got a really good scanner it's going to have less detail than a cell-phone picture.

Once you've taken 52 pictures you need to take two more.  You need a picture of the plain paper the cards are on.  You also need a picture of the back of the cards.  If you are using a plain back then you only need to take one more photo.

Now you need to construct your cards.  You will do this by cropping and sizing your images to fit into the template.  REMEMBER, the template includes area around the outside border that will not be printed and area that should be printed and, in the center, area that absolutely will be printed.  I like to use the blank paper image as a background layer.  Then each card is cropped and centered on the template in a layer above the background layer.  When I save this image (in a format the printer will accept, typically a TIFF format) the two layers will be combined exactly as I see them on the screen.  That's one card.  Repeat this process 51 more times.  Make sure to make a last image for the back of the card.

A typical deck will have 54 cards in it.  There are reasons for this that I'm not going in to.  That leaves you two cards to have fun with.  I recommend a joker of some sort.  Completely not a Medieval or Renaissance thing.  They typically had a Jack or Unter that was clownish rather than a separate Joker.  But modern customers like a joker.  So have some fun with this.  For the second card I recommend advertising. Take some credit for your work.  Put a copyright notice on your work.  Seriously.  Copyright your work.  It's your friggin' work and people shouldn't be stealing it. Put a link to your website, your blog, or whatever.  Remember, you can use both sides of this card.

The on-demand printers I have mentioned will walk you through the process of uploading cards.  You should expect to mess up more than once.  If you manage to upload your first deck of cards without having to re-build the deck at least once I will be amazed.  And probably hate you.  You have been warned.

Once you've successfully uploaded a design it's time to buy a deck to see if you like it.  All this work to get a test deck?  Yep, and there's more work to be done before you can sell the design on the internet.  That's why your decks will sell in the $10-$20 range.  They should sell in the $15-$30 range but no one will buy them at that price.

When you get your test deck you will probably find all sorts of things you want to change.  Make a list.  Put the list away for a week.  Come back to it and decide if you really want to make all the changes. Make the changes you really want.  Now get another test deck.  If that turns out okay you're ready to go.  There are a lot of ways to sell your cards online.  Some of those ways include:

Etsy.  Yes the cards are manufactured by pros but they're using your design.  It's good.

Ebay.

Square Marketplace.

Facebook.  There are several services that will help you set up a page to take orders through Facebook.  Shopify is just one example.

Or you can just spam places where people who want to buy playing cards hang out.  Your kingdom list/discussion group?  Facebook groups.  Whatever.  Then you are responsible for fulfilling orders.  What is fulfillment?  It is taking an order, billing the customer, making sure the money has been received, packaging the order, shipping the order, and confirming the customer has received the order and is happy.  This takes time.  Time is money.  Time spent fulfilling orders is time I can't use to make more art.  If I'm not making enough money (defined as being at least as much as I make at the job I work at to pay my bills) fulfilling orders then I don't want to do it.  I want someone else to do it.

Right now my best solution for doing this is Printer's Studio.  They will allow me to set up a free website, through them, and sell my designs.  I can set the amount of profit I want to make per deck, write my own descriptions, do my own advertising, and Printer's Studio will take the orders, bill the customer, and ship the order.  Once a quarter, if I've sold enough decks, I get a check (actually a PayPal transfer) from Printer Studio.

It's worth discussing how much I get.  I've got, at last count, 12 different decks for sale.  I've been selling cards for about three years now.  I have made approximately $300 dollars in that time.  I have spent easily 300 hours working on these decks.  Which means I've made less than a dollar an hour.  From a simple economic standpoint I'd have been better off putting in overtime at work.  But making money is not the point.  I've met some incredible people who share my interest in playing cards.  I've printed my own copies of these cards.  I've had fun researching, restoring, rescuing, and creating decks of cards.  And I've contributed, in a very, very, very, very, very small way to enhancing the atmosphere at some medieval events around the world.  That's my profit.

Now, since you've done all this work let's consider what else you can do with your artwork.  You can assemble your cards, put them all together as if they were a single printer's sheet and put them on a poster.  You can put individual cards on posters or clothing.  You can even print them on glasses (which was apparently popular in the 18th Century).  How? By going through a print on demand service like Printer's Studio, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, or even Cafe Press (I don't like Cafe Press for reasons that have nothing to do with their quality, selection, or customer service).

This has been, for me, a very long post and it has really only scratched the surface of what's possible.  I encourage you to make your artwork available to a larger audience and try to make a little money of it.  If you end up making a lot of money you can use that to make more art or you can give it away and make yourself feel better.  If you decide on the latter course, email me.