Dynamic setting is very appealing, but also raises some complexities, like whether you should cripple the rendering, since some people will just set&grab what they need, without buying the font. My own feeling is that -unless it's a bitmap font- you should give away high-quality renderings, and hope it creates a dependency (= sales) in users. Anything else is too protectionist in this hyper-competitive type design scene.

Yes, 50% is good - if you take on some promotional costs.

Top-seller prize: be careful, that might cause people to make fewer fonts.

hhp

The flash preview is ok (particularly useful for type id purposes :-) but not very helpful for text fonts � more for display. Give me pdfs. I want to be able to print and look at the fonts up close to get a clue about quality and how they will function (display and text). Particularly given who you are: a relatively new font house, with relatively unknown designers. And make the pdfs unbelievably pretty, showing the font in the best light and causing customers to drool over how much better they will be as a designer if they have your font.

R

Yes, 50% is good - if you take on some promotional costs.

I would expect a lot of active marketing from anyone taking 50%, and not just marketing of their own services: marketing of individual typefaces and foundries. In 'this hyper-competitive type design scene', the days when vendors could collect a substantial percentage just for reselling a font is over. Frankly, I wouldn't be inclined to let any reseller take more than 40%, and I would want to see copies of every marketing piece they produced to make sure that they were doing a good job and not just using my typeface to pad their library. There are a lot of font resellers now, and the Internet has largely levelled the playing field: foundries and individual designers can afford to be picky and demand that the resellers be competetive.

Top-seller prize: be careful, that might cause people to make fewer fonts.

OH NO! Ha, ha.

�

John: However there's also the costs of building and keeping up a nice font sales site with ecommerce, reporting, etc. Plus designers should expect to give up some percentage for the benefit of having their fonts sold through a more prestigious outlet than just their own little foundry.

hhp

The disadvantage of running your own e-commerce site is running your own e-commerce site.

The advatages are that you only need to sell half as much if 50% is your discount level. Also you get paid quicker, know how much you are making as you make it. You get to know your clientel. And they are your clientel. Also you have a chance to actually sell something rather than let someone merely order from the order desk of a large impersonal vendor.

Also I have found the customer can often add valuable input to your products, market changes etc.

Plus you can build brand name. With such you are in a better negotiating position when dealing with vendors.

But before proceeding read my first line.

I see no disadvatages in running one's own e-commerce site.

Terminal Design's e-commerce has been up since November 2002 and I couldn't be happier with the results.

Whatever small headaches come with e-commerce they are more then

To finish that thought...

Whatever small headaches come with e-commerce are more then offset with the knowldege that you are not getting the short end of the royalty deal that has been so common in dealing with most distributors these last ten years or so.

... a more prestigious outlet than just their own little foundry.

As someone who once licensed fonts for sale by one of the most prestigious names in 100+ years of type, and who was soon counting down the days -- along with numerous colleagues -- until the contract expired and I could stop these inept parasites devaluing my work, I have long since realised that the 'little foundries' have a much higher prestige among serious customers than any reseller. You want prestige? Buy your fonts directly from the people who make them. What resellers like MyFonts, Union, etc. offer is not prestige but convenience.

I greatly admire the way Jeremy Tankard handles resellers: he offers them a small percentage (usually less than 20%) and he demands results. If they don't adequately market his fonts, he reduces the percentage. If they don't sell enough, he cancels the contract. How can he do this? Because his 'little foundry' has established a prestigious reputation through the quality of his work and very active marketing.

James, I'm curious, how much did the ecommerce setup cost you?
(Assuming you didn't code it yourself - if you did, how much effort was it?)
And who designed/implemented your site, for how much?
(Hey, I'm nosy - I know. :-)

hhp

James

...with the knowldege that you are not getting the short end of the royalty deal that has been so common in dealing with most distributors these last ten years or so.

No kidding. I couldn't agree with you more.

Terminal Design's site was created by adcSTUDIO.

Chris Andreola is the principal of the firm. As to cost, I'd rather not say, since it was his firm's first shot at writing the database and shopping cart software, and it took a long time (which gave me more time to fine tune fonts) and he gave me a big break on the cost since I wasn't demanding it be finished by a certain time.

He is more expensive now.

Chris and I have since become good friends and having adcSTUDIO manage and work the site has been a great experience. I guess that is why I see no disadvantage to having an e-commerce site.

I have been fortunate to have made some good friends with principals of other small businesses as we have entered into business relationships.

Stephen,

Obviously you need a body of fonts to make an e-commerce site pay. After a certain critical mass is achieved, adding more fonts subtract from the others. Much like shareholder dilution.

I don't think I am feeling well, maybe I have bird flu. I am agreeing with everyone.

50% royalties seem reasonable. For that number a designer such as myself would want lots of marketing going out, especially printed.

Lay out all of the type showings the same way, like font bureau. If you want to show the font in use, design posters or other material to show them off on the site. Or even collect samples of the type in use and put those up there.

PDF showings are a nice feature to have.

Flash typesetters are cool, but I don't use them much.

Definitely go for quality fonts over quantity. A good selection of average fonts will bring some people to the site. Unique designs will draw more traffic and sell better in the long run.

The bonus incentive is very appealing. I'm considering submitting fonts to the Bitstream New Font Collection, they give you the option for $2000 immediately or a royalty plan. That's a nice way to make a quick 2 Gs.

A quick 2 Gs
That depends on how long it takes you to make a font. :-)

Font Bureau
Two peaves with them:
1) Stonehearths is annoying (the posters & pdfs are good)
2) Their fonts must be kerned with gold.
But aren't they lovely beauties?

While I'm talking price, I assume most foundries look to balance volume and price to maximize profit (cash and reputation). FB, DTL and Ensched� are as yet prohibitively rich for my (clients) wallet. I am forever impressed at how Storm manages to sell workable text families for less than $100 (four weights for 55 bucks!). Move to Czech Republic I guess!

R

"That depends on how long it takes you to make a font. :-) "

True. :-) But, if you have hundreds laying around your hard drive...

"2) Their fonts must be kerned with gold."

I was solely speaking of their showings, which I really like. I don't think I have used their fonts on anything though.

>FB, DTL and Ensched� are as yet prohibitively rich

Font Bureau, at $40 per weight, is nearly double the $21 of many at MyFonts. But DTL at $100 per weight is 5 times coompetitors' - really at a different, much higher level than FB. TEFF is still more expensive than DTL, if I remember correctly.

I like big, fast loading gifs/pngs. Pdf's are nice, but I need some nice big images to convince me it's worth my time to look a little closer. Despite the super cheesy navigation, and a lack of font thumbnails, I think Font Bureau does a great job on their posters. Flash previewers can be nice, but aren't a substitute for well set samples.

From the perspective of a purchaser/ user, rather than creator, of fonts, I have a few general 'shopping experience' preferences and pet peeves:

- Printable samples (PDFs): The impact of printed samples, showing the font actually in use (along with blown up, with ligatures, etc.) is much greater for convincing the people who provide the $ (client and/or me). Like Randy, I find this is particularly true of text faces.

- Flash preview sampler: For logotypes, I really like having this kind of tool available. It definitely helps my purchasing decisions. And while I understand that some people screenshot the type without paying, making it harder to do that by using weird patterns (as Hoefler does), or not offering the feature at all isn't going to get them to buy your fonts anyway. Plus, you can zoom in with Flash and see the juicy little details.

- On-screen samples: Images of type in use, even if it's short strings of words, like FB does. I find these much more telling than "Meta Book Roman" set in Meta Book Roman, or a character chart (not that I don't want to see one of those as well). For quick browsing, (like you have on your site) I don't mind, but I like having them available to look more thoroughly.

- Please don't hide the price: I don't mean put it on the first page per se, but don't make it tedious to access. I understand that there are different prices for different situations, but a single-user license price gives a good sense of price scale.

I've been to the current Union Fonts site, so I know that a lot of this isn't news to you, and that some of these features are already in place. Consider this my plea on their behalf. I look forward to seeing what you guys do.

>Font Bureau, at $40 per weight, is nearly double the $21 of many at MyFonts.

Yes, Font Bureau fonts are a little more costly than the average these days; I personally believe you get appropriate value for the additional cost.

I would like to point out that the FB pricing structure is volume-based. The $40 price so often cited is only if you buy only one or two styles at a time. When you buy three styles, the per font price goes down to $35. If you purchase six or more, the price drops further to $30 each. These are the most significant break points; there are others as you increase the volume further.

This is, unfortunately, not immediately apparent from their website. To see the structure spelled out more clearly, go to www.fontbureau.com and click on the little Help icon in the lower right hand corner of the front page. From the new Help window, select the topic "Font Pricing" from the list on the right.

So, when it comes to buying a family of FB fonts (which is really the better way to go about it) the price quickly comes down to a more reasonable territory -- never cheap, I admit, but reasonable.

Note that these volumes apply regardless of whether the fonts are in the same family or not -- a unique circumstance, as far as I know. So you can buy just a handful of styles of Miller, for instance, and maybe a few weights of Interstate, and throw in Mantinia, and put together your own package for $30 each. That's not too bad, when you think about it. (Well, when *I* think about it, anyway.)

Just felt compelled to clarify.

-- Kent.

Kent, personally I think Font Bureau's prices still give good value, given the very high quality and usability of faces such as your wonderful Whitman.

In spite of the outstanding quality of DTL and TEFF fonts, to me they are over-priced. The point of my post was really to note that Fontbureau is nowhere near the prices of DTL and TEFF.