Hi. I am a writer. An established writer. I want to publish a portion of my writing, quotes, jokes, inspirational poetry on t-shirts, mugs, posters, greeting cards, stationary and other gifts.
I am at the beginning of research and uncertain as to whether I want to delegate/contract with others the whole thing, or parts of it, or own a pertaining business. Want to research first and learn some specific things.
Caught on to this forum and would like to connect with others who are in the t-shirt business. I really know nothing about it.
At this stage, Jan 15, 2018. I have about 30 what I think are excellent quotes, jokes, etc. that I think would make excellent t-shirts.
So, for this type of writing, I can come up with a lot. Was thinking of submitting them and getting royalties to a companies that buys rights to designs and produces and distributes t-shirts, but I would like to investigate... and would likely prefer to have a collection of designs available on t-shirts, and get eager people in the t-shirt business to sell them. And I could see they could get a lot out of it, too. I really would not spend time selling, but rather writing. The other thing is I can come up with 30 solid designs a month which is a lot. A royalty company is never going to buy all my designs.
I thought about print on demand, online, but.... headaches with that too. i want to know what is standard because some like some of you know very much how to do that.
I don't know what to expect financially (assuming they are decent).
I don't know if I should pick one design, do a small run and try to sell it. Or just contract with a really good company or distributer or printer? Should I try to get some into a department store?
At any rate, I think I could learn a lot here, once I figure out how to navigate through this posting process.
I would rather not only offer print on demand.
I have an unstocked gift shop under construction on my website, and was planning on filling it with t-shirt designs, so those who are fans of my writing can buy gifts. But I also think it will be a very small percentage of sales as compared to if I printed them by a company and found others who know how to sell t-shirts.
The print on demand t-shirts are good in that i can test designs easily without many variables, but the choice of products are not necessarily as complete and also the cost is much higher than printing a run of them. And the ones I found don't seem to sell whole sale. But they have their purposes.
I don't think this will take long to establish if I keep things simple and get good advice. Will be expanding forever, but to get something started, I am confident can happen in a few months, or even very very quickly.
I don't want to skip on quality or efficiency.
I have many questions, but will post them singly.
Look forward to posting with many of you.
Joanne
