Month: December 2011

We’re now about halfway through our series, and I figured it was time to talk about the resource that has allowed me to make a living for the past eight years: The various sites operated by OneBookShelf.

OneBookShelf began operations in 2001 as RPGNow — a site dedicated to the digital delivery of tabletop role-playing game products. Coinciding with the industry expansion brought about by the Open Game License, which allowed publishers to utilize the rules system for the market-leading Dungeons and Dragons in their own products, RPGnow ushered in the viability of digital delivery as a business model. In 2006, a merger occurred between RPGNow and their largest competitor, DriveThruRPG, forming OneBookShelf. The two sites were maintained as individual storefronts (both a result of brand loyalty on the part of customers, and also in product focus — RPGNow was viewed as more “Indie” than the “Mainstream” DriveThru), although both now operate on the same back-end. Since the merger, OneBookShelf has expanded with additional digital marketplaces: Wargame Vault (devoted to products supporting tabletop wargaming), DriveThruComics (the first digital comics shop online) and DriveThru Fiction (concentrating on genre fiction – specifically fantasy, sci-fi and horror).

The back-end process on these sites are the same — a creator signs up, provides payment information, uploads product, and it becomes available on the marketplace. Creators have full control over every aspect — from descriptive texts, to footers on the page, to cover image uploads, even to activation of the product for sale. The following two-part video offers an overview of the process for new creators:
 

 
 

 
The OneBookShelf sites have, in the past, focused on the PDF format for delivery: Flash-based product previews, for example, require the original to be in PDF. OneBookShelf also offers digital watermarking for those creators who wish to use it, where a file is imprinted with the name of the customer ordering it, and I believe that function also requires the file to be PDF. However, there are no restrictions on file formats — anything that can be delivered digitally is an option: Video, audio, and more. In addition, over the past year, they have also gone live with a Print-On-Demand program (production services provided by Lightning Source) where a customer has the option of ordering a digital file, a print copy via mail, or both.

The marketplace code that runs the sites offers creators dozens of tools: real-time sales and royalty reporting, freelancer royalty management, complete control over product listings, marketing tools to promote your products and more, including instant royalty pay-out (I can’t rave about this one enough — I have this linked to Paypal, and Paypal linked to a debit card. Need some cash while I’m out somewhere? Fire up the phone, browser to RPGNow, dump earnings to Paypal. Use card.). In addition, OneBookShelf can also create self-branded digital download stores dedicated to a creator’s product lines, able to be embedded on your own site. They are a full-service back-end service provider, and their staff is great at offering solutions for anything that comes up.

Perhaps the best part of my business relationship with the OneBookShelf sites since 2003 is that it allowed me to be an early adopter of the digital delivery business model. Now that the model is going mainstream, and as new tools are rolled out every week by services like Amazon and others, they’re often just larger implementations of concepts that I’m already familiar with via OneBookShelf — which means that I’m better placed to exploit these tools; able to jump right into a plan of action rather than having to spend time on a learning curve.

In a very real sense, OneBookShelf allowed me to become what I now refer to as an Insurgent Creative. I’m glad that this blog series has allowed me the opportunity to publicly thank them for that. They gave me the tools and the experience that allow me to storm those gates.
 
 
 

Going a bit outside the box on this entry. When we talk about Insurgent Creatives, we’re usually focusing on writers, artists, musicians… but what about clothing and textile designers? Today, we take a look at Spoonflower.

Spoonflower is a service that started in 2008 and offers digital printing of fabric, allowing designers to create and order custom fabrics for use in the making of curtains, quilts, clothes, bags, furniture, dolls, pillows, framed artwork, costumes, banners or whatever else they can think of. They offer different fabric stock (quilting-weight, upholstery-weight, and organic cotton sateen) at different prices, and print up to 5 yard lengths at a time (although you can order multiple 5y lengths). They take your digital file (JPG, PNG, GIF, TIF, SVG, AI and EPS format), at a minimum resolution of 150dpi and a maximum file size of 40mb, and run the blank cloth through an inkjet printer (which produces finer detail than screen printing of fabric is capable of).

Here’s a video made by the North Carolina Arts Council about Spoonflower:

In addition to producing custom fabric for designers, Spoonflower also serves as a marketplace for designers to sell their fabrics, although this is largely an afterthought: Designers only earn a 10% royalty on sales of yardage of their fabrics. So the focus of the site for designers, really, is for the production of custom fabric for use in your designs — which you then must sell through other means, whether on your own site, or craft storefronts like Etsy.

For an example of an Insurgent Creative using Spoonflower as a major tool in their business, check out the dice bags produced by Lyndsay Peters at Dragon Chow Dice Bags, who has turned her custom designs into an Award-nominated successful business.

Storm the gates!

In the second of our two-part feature on Amazon’s offerings for Insurgent Creatives, today we talk about Createspace, the production and distribution tool for physical product (well, initially, but there’s more to it, as I’ll discuss below).

Createspace began as CustomFlix Labs, a service that made distribution easier for independent filmmakers by providing on-demand DVD production, and Booksurge, a print-on-demand book service. Both companies were acquired by Amazon in 2005, and four years later, they were combined under the banner of Createspace, offering on-demand manufacturing of books, DVD’s and music formats, and distribution through the Amazon.com storefront.

Essentially, the process works along similar lines to Kindle Direct Publishing, which I covered yesterday. The creative uploads their particular file (although, given that we’re talking about physical merchandise here, manufacturing specs are much more important — and Createspace provides clear guidelines on these for each category), provides the details, and then activates the product, which is then made available for sale via the Createspace storefront (which earns you the highest royalty rate), the main Amazon storefront (which earns you a slightly lower royalty rate — but still good, and obvious reaches more customers), and, in the case of books that have signed up for the Pro Plan, wholesale sales to other retailers (bookstores, etc.).

The site is no longer limited to physical merchandise. Music can now be offered not only via CDs sold on Amazon, but as DRM-free mp3 downloads via AmazonMP3, which launched in 2008. Films have the option of being sold as DVDs on the site, or being made available as Video-on-Demand via Amazon’s streaming service. Books, however, remain physical — if you wish to digitally release, that must be done via the separate KDP program — it is my hope that eventually they fold all of their independent production and distribution functionality under a single site.

Obviously, given the wider array of product, along with the variables due to formats, size, distribution options, etc., Createspace is far more complex than the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program — and I’m only barely touching on the tools offered and resources available. I urge you to kick around the site for yourself. Certainly, there is also an argument to be made for not putting all of your eggs in one basket. However, when a distribution source has as massive a market share as Amazon does, an Insurgent Creative could easily make a comfortable living just by focusing on having product available there. There are many other platforms available, and you should take advantage of as many as you are comfortable using — but the old marketing adage holds true: Fish where the fish are. Getting your products available via Amazon will definitely drop your line in the most heavily-trafficked waters.

As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below.