Creating your own products used to mean a significant up-front investment — purchasing a minimum amount of the product as dictated by the manufacturer, paying for warehousing, packaging, point-of-sale systems, and other overhead costs. And that was all before you even took a single order! Thankfully, for many types of products, print-on-demand technologies have made it possible for anyone to create and sell goods over the Internet with little or no up-front costs.

Below is a roundup of 15 great print-on-demand sites that will help you create and sell everything from t-shirts to clocks, from books to skateboards, from board games to fabric. If you know of additional print-on-demand sites to make and sell your own products, let us know in the comments.

Read the rest here: 15 Places to Make Money Creating Your Own Products.

I have been working on recreating my Tarot game, and found this new POD card printer online. Here is a list of image resources that they provide.

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This list includes sites that offer free and pay-to-use artwork. You will not find places to contract artists for custom artwork. Basically, these are resources that offer the designer immediate gratification.

Free Art

Flickr Advanced Search: Flickr’s Advanced search has a similar option allowing you to search through people’s photos that have a Creative Commons license, some of which would allow reuse in a commercial product like a game. Just make sure you check the boxes that allow for “Commercial use” and “modification/adaptation”.

Dingbat Depot: Fonts that are iconic.

Google Advanced Image Search: Google’s Advanced search includes a Usage Rights filter that allows you to search for images that allow commercial reuse.

Cliker: Royalty free and public domain clip art.

MorgueFile: A collection of over 200,000 stock photos that are all licensed under the MorgueFile license, which allows commercial reuse, adaptation and does not require attribution.

Open Font Library: Collection of 169 fonts licensed for commercial use under the Open Font License.

DaFont: A huge collection of beautiful, free fonts. Be sure to check the usage rights of each particular font you intend to use. While many are royalty-free to use, some are not.

Larabie Fonts: Ray Larabie offers free fonts for both personal and commercial use.

Open Clip Art Library: Collection of 20,000 clip art images released into the Public Domain.

Open Game Art: A collection of video game and board game art made available for free or attribution.

Spiral Graphics: offers free versions of their high-end texture-creation software. They provide many modifiable and customizable textures that you can use in commercial projects royalty-free (see usage rights here). Both Genetica Viewer and Wood Workshop are amazing tools for creating tileable, high-res textures, the latter for wooden textures, the former for almost everything else.

Stock.Xchng: Another collection of over 350,000 stock photos that are licensed for commercial use as long as you are not selling the images themselves (e.g. – a T-shirt with the image on it). Using the images to enhance other creative works such as books, websites, or games would be OK.

Wikimedia Commons: Over 5 million public domain and Creative Commons licensed images.

L3DT (Large 3D Terrain Generator): Free version has some limitations on map size, but otherwise a very good program for generating textured 3D terrain, height maps, and other things. Great for creating realistic landscapes.

Pay To Use Art

Pixmac: The Pixmac Picture Market offers stock photos and vector illustrations for all of your printing needs. Prices are very reasonable and they also have over 45,000 free images available.

RPGNow Stock Art: RPGNow is a PDF publisher that offers a decent number (877) of reasonably priced collections of stock art that can be reused royalty-free in your game once you purchase a license. Great resource if you’re looking for some cheap fantasy art (which is often hard to find at “typical” free image repositories).

Photos.com: A couple million stock photos as cheap as a couple dollars each.

Clipart.com: About 10 million stock clip art images.

Getty Images: The largest purveyor of images in the world. Also sells music and and stock video footage.

Shutterstock: Possibly the best stock photo provider out there with over 16 million images in its library. Also sells stock video footage.

Via https://www.thegamecrafter.com/

In recent months, the iPhone has been released on a few U.S. prepaid carriers, allowing consumers to purchase the device without a contract on a much cheaper plan than what a post-paid carrier would offer on a contract.

Unfortunately, the device selection is limited to only the 8 GB iPhone 4 or the 16 GB iPhone 4S (available in black or white) on both Cricket and Virgin Mobile. The unlimited plans are only $55 depending on either carrier. The data runs over Sprint’s 3G network, however, which is one of the slowest 3G networks available. This really limits the iPhone’s potential and ruins the experience of using such an advanced device. I am sure many people believe the old “you get what you pay for” saying is true—an iPhone on a prepaid carrier will never be as good as an iPhone on a contract carrier.

However, those people could be wrong.

Recently, I started to look at running an iPhone on Walmart-promoted prepaid carrier Straight Talk. I was cautious at first…

Read the rest of this review here: Review: The iPhone on Straight Talk | 9to5Mac.

via How To: Straight Talk and iPhone – SIM Swap.

Reblogged from Author Solutions - The Indie Book Writers Blog | Self Publishing | Get Published:

For many years of my career, I was a creative director at an ad agency and one thing I would tell the writers on my team is we do not work for a deli. We are not paid by the pound or volume we write. In fact, many times when they would bring me copy for an ad, I would ask them to go back and  take 30% of the words out of what they wrote and see if it hurt the communication.

Read more… 606 more words

Read the rest of this article here: Self Published Authors Get Ready, You’re Being Dumped » The Vandal.

If you want to post things that you see on other websites, I recommend the tool called “Press This.” You need to add it to the toolbar in your browser.

Press This is a bookmarklet: a little app that runs in your browser and lets you grab bits of the web.

Use Press This to clip text, images and videos from any web page. Then edit and add more straight from Press This before you save or publish it in a post on your site.

• To add the tool, select “Tools” in the sidebar to the left when you are in the WordPress shell (what you see after you log in).

• Drag-and-drop the following link to your bookmarks bar or right click it and add it to your favorites for a posting shortcut.

• When you see something you want to grab for blogging when you are on the web, just select whatever piece you want — text, images, video — and then click on the Press This icon on your browser’s toolbar.

• A dialog box will show up that will allow you to post what you grabbed, add tags and categories; in short, everything that you would have to do if you were inside WordPress.

• If you want to include any picture on the page, just click on the picture icon at the top of the dialog box.

• Click “Publish” when you are done.

Aliyah Marr, author of Bird Seed, advance your cause, your business or yourself with social media

SETUP
1. Login
2. Go to your dashboard
3. Go to Settings > Sharing
4. Enable “Sharing Buttons”
5. Choose Linked In sharing button

HOW TO SHARE
1. Write an article or find one you want to share
2. Publish it
3. Click on the link on your blog to get to the article page (just the article, not the home page of blog)
4. Scroll to bottom of your article
5. Click on the LI share icon
6. In the dialog box you can choose to post to your profile AND to the discussion section of any group that you belong to.
7. If you have a photo at the top left of the article, it will show on your LinkedIn post.

Sweet!

NOTE: please don’t abuse this process. Social media etiquette is important here: refrain from posting material that your group may find irrelevant.

Aliyah Marr, author of Bird Seed, advance your cause, your business or yourself with social media

Conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh has taken one step further in creating a full-fledged lifestyle brand by announcing the launch of a new fragrance called “Rush.” The musky, some might say musty, scent with a hint of cinnamon and black powder will make its debut at gun shows across the country this fall.

“A signature fragrance is simply a must-have for any lifestyle brand, and Rush Limbaugh is no different,” said Mr. Limbaugh’s Brand Manager, Chandler Duckenbill.

“When I came on board, Rush sold the usual assortment of books, tapes, and coffee mugs. I told him straight out, ‘Boyfriend, if going to work with you, I must be allowed to do my magic without any interference,’” Mr. Duckenbill recalled. “Of course, Rush struck me. Right here, on the cheek. But it was a good kind of violent outburst. Ralph Lauren often hit me. And don’t get me started about Donna Karan. Rush was very sorry, of course, and instructed his secretary to apologize to me.”

After a rocky start to their relationship, Mr. Duckenbill said that he began lining up licensing deals to lay the groundwork for the Limbaugh brand. “We started with blousy shirts and action pants, but soon we added belts, wallets, and shoes. Rush loves his leather.”

Other accessories followed, including cigar cutters and pinky rings. “I have to admit that Rush had a good idea for a ring with a secret compartment large enough to hold a OxyContin tablet, but you didn’t hear that from me,” Mr. Duckenbill said.

“What I just love about Rush Limbaugh is that you get two brands for the price of one,” Mr. Duckenbill continued. “We see the Limbaugh label as a little more downmarket. But when I say ‘Rush,’ what do you think of? I mean, other than that Canadian rock band with that annoying high-pitched singer and pretentious lyrics. Tell it to the moose, boyfriend!”

The Rush label, Mr. Duckenbill said, is reserved for higher-end goods. “We also used it for the car interior we designed for a limited edition of the Hummer. That vehicle looked utterly hideous. Loud. Vulgar. It said ‘Ugly American.’ No, it actually says that on the mud flaps. In other words, it was just absolutely wonderful.”

Mr. Duckenbill said that a number of other projects are in the works. “We’re thinking there’s room in the financial sector. Limbaugh credit swap derivatives. Something like that. Nothing too fancy. We’re also likely to open a few boutiques in cities like Birmingham, Alabama. Eventually Rush would like to take over a third-world country. From there, boyfriend, who’s to say?”

via Limbaugh Announces New Fragrance.

Man-Dog/Dog-Man © Aliyah Marr (reversible diptych)

You Want to Be a Book Illustrator

I recommend going to school and getting professional training. Take design and illustration courses from working professionals in the field. The design department of a university or art school is a great place to start. I would say that design skills are more essential than illustration skills in this field, since illustration can range from “raw art” (naive) styles to hyper-realistic art.

An illustrator or artist sells rights to their work, not the original, unless the piece was commissioned, in which case the work probably belongs to the agency. This is called “work for hire” and basically means that in accepting the commission, the artist has given up all ownership and even copyright rights to the work. They may not even get their name in the credits, although it is considered a good practice to credit the illustrator and designer. However, getting your work on a book cover is a great way to advertise your art.

There are three ways to work as a book illustrator:

1. ARTIST’S WAY – make a portfolio of work that you think will appeal to a certain genre of books, for example, romance and sci-fi/fantasy always need good illustrators.
2. EMPLOYEE’S WAY – work as an illustrator for a publishing company.
3. FREELANCER’S WAY — establish a portfolio of work (best to specialize in 1-2 genres), and do custom work.

Should a book illustrator worry about “work for hire” or retaining some of their rights? I don’t think so; this is because book illustrations are too visible in the public sphere to be able to be used for any other book covers; no client would agree to letting you sell the book cover twice.

An illustrator should be able to retain the right to use their artwork in a personal project. An example of this might be a choice to use the illustration as an interior illustration in your own book. I have done this with my full-color book, Celestial Navigation. Above are some pages from the interior.

You Are a Writer/Publisher and Want to Buy or Commission Illustration for Your Book

1. Expect to pay a minimum of $500 for your book illustration. More rights are more expensive; a traditional rights agreement is North American rights, however, with the international book market, you should negotiate for world-wide rights, and pay the illustrator more. After all, your book cover illustration is one of your key marketing tools.
2. Please, please do not allow yourself to be too literal in your approach. Educate yourself on good design by looking at award-winning books. The covers of these books are almost never literal interpretations of what is inside the book, and good design often plays a bigger part in the cover than the illustration. Research the idea of how metaphor  can be used in design/illustration to convey a subtle yet powerful idea. Hire a sophisticated illustrator, someone whose work wins awards; preferably someone who went to art school or got a degree in art or design. Your nephew or the cheap illustrator that you find on the internet is probably not going to help you, and the resultant illustration is more likely to make your book look cheap and unprofessional. Nothing screams SELF-PUBLISHED and AMATEUR like a naive or literal book cover illustration.
3. Do you really need illustration? Look at your genre, especially the book covers that win awards. Are they designed (just typography) or designed and illustrated?
4. The best books are designed well. Hire a good designer, and let the designer choose the illustration. Clients often get off-track because they try to hire the illustrator directly, without understanding the value of good design, or understanding what makes a good illustration. A good designer–educated in design in art school–has sophisticated tastes that can put your book in the running for awards and best-selling status. Letting an amateur designer design your book is analogous to letting your ten-year old nephew design and sew your business clothes.

From Wikipedia
A work made for hire (sometimes abbreviated as work for hire or WFH) is a work created by an employee as part of his or her job, or a work created on behalf of a client where all parties agree in writing to the WFH designation. It is an exception to the general rule that the person who actually creates a work is the legally recognized author of that work. According to copyright law in the United States and certain other copyright jurisdictions, if a work is “made for hire”, the employer—not the employee—is considered the legal author. In some countries, this is known as corporate authorship. The incorporated entity serving as an employer may be a corporation or other legal entity, an organization, or an individual.[1]
Contents

The actual creator may or may not be publicly credited for the work, and this credit does not affect its legal status. States that are party to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works recognize separately copyrights and moral rights, with moral rights including the right of the actual creators to publicly identify themselves as such, and to maintain the integrity of their work.

For example, Microsoft hired many programmers to develop the Windows operating system, which is credited simply to Microsoft Corporation. By contrast, Adobe Systems lists many of the developers of Photoshop in its credits. In both cases, the software is the property of the employing company. In both cases, the actual creators have moral rights. Similarly, newspapers routinely credit news articles written by their staff, and publishers credit the writers and illustrators who produce comic books featuring characters such as Batman or Spider-Man, but the publishers hold copyrights to the work. However, articles published in academic journals, or work produced by freelancers for magazines, are not generally works created as a work for hire, which is why it is common for the publisher to require the copyright owner, the author, to sign a copyright transfer, a short legal document transferring specific author copyrights to the publisher. In this case the authors retain those copyrights in their work not granted to the publisher.

more…