Here is the link to the MyFonts page I quoted above:

http://new.myfonts.com/info/prospectus/

ChrisL

Mr Coles mentions a 65% rate here...

http://typographica.org/001157.php

Here you go - you can check these links and see at what point it changed...

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.myfonts.com/info/prospectus/

Dammit dammit dammit! I was about to sign with them too. Does anybody else now offer a better deal?

Here is a screenshot of the prior page with the 65% rate:

ChrisL

What do designers get for the extra 15%? For foundries 50% is still more than they get reselling their back catalogs through some of the other big vendors. But to a new font designer I don’t see much reason to go right to MyFonts at 50%—there of foundries that pay 50% and will go out of their way to help with the final design, production, and testing of the fonts. MyFonts marketing is good, but I don’t see it as being worth another 15% now that Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube have made online marketing much easier and less expensive than it used to me.

Thanks, Si.

That is a HUGE cut and really depressing to see designers getting the shaft again :-(

ChrisL

I hope Jos and other type designers who have been with MyFonts for a while will chime in and tell us if ther percentage went down for recent sales as well.

ChrisL

...unusually high 50%...

Actually, that is the norm.
Someone just changed the number, without editing the sentence for meaning.

MyFonts has always offered good added value while returning a high percentage royalty, and still does at 50%.
For instance, there is no other foundry or reseller that has an interactive Type Tester that demonstrates OpenType features. If you are publishing OpenType fonts, that is "priceless".

That is what I meant, Nick. Everybody pays 50% if you do all the work and submit release ready files. The percentage is less if they help you finnish and prep the fonts, though.
So now what has MyFonts got as a big advantage? Nothing!

ChrisL

Nick,

Did your percentage go down for recent sales from MyFonts or has it stayed the same?

ChrisL

As I said Chris, the OpenType type tester, and also a lot of other marketing services.
BTW, you are confusing reselling with manufacturing/publishing.
Resellers/retailers pay 50% and do nothing to the font files.

Chris, I can't discuss my percentage, for contractual reasons.
I'll big-up any and all of my distributors for what they do well, but I can't criticize them individually or talk specifically about the business arrangements I have with them

James, MyFonts has established its brand and has massive traffic.

"Get a taste kid, you might like it."

Thanks, Nick. I understand. I don't want you to get into a problem about it, sorry.

ChrisL

James, MyFonts has established its brand and has massive traffic.

I’ll defer to you on the value of the MyFonts brand and assume that it’s worth the 15%, then.

It is actually more like a 25% reduction for the designer.

ChrisL

It is actually more like a 25% reduction for the designer.

Good point. Math isn’t really my strong suit.

dezcom said:
> It is actually more like a 25% reduction for the designer.

i'd say myfonts just raised their price by 42.85%.

they used to take a 35% cut, and now a 50% cut.

-bowerbird

...for the designer...

Actually, these percentages are for the foundries that MyFonts distributes, not for the designer--unless he or she owns the foundry.

You are right, Nick. I was assuming most of the designers there were selling their own work.

ChrisL

> MyFonts had been giving type designers 65% of the
> retail price of their fonts since its inception.

Actually at the beginning it was 85%!

hhp

85%?

Wow! I didn't know that. How long ago was that, Hrant?

ChrisL

Maybe the first two years?

hhp

Chris, the most important thing in a distribution agreement isn't the percentage that you get, but the number of transactions that your fonts have.

If you sell 100 fonts at $30 a piece on a site that gives you 65%, then you get $1950. But if you sell 300 fonts at $30 a piece on another site that gives you 50%, then you get $4500. And zero font sales at $30 a piece on a site that gives you as much as 85% of each sale will only net you $0. You shouldn't assume that any two sites will sell the same number of your fonts.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the MyFonts today is more likely to sell more of your fonts than say, the MyFonts of two years ago (or any arbitrary figure…). Look at MyFonts.com as a full package. They have a new site, with features that Nick already pointed out. Look at their newsletters. They didn't do as much promo a few years ago as they do now. They have regular content being written by (at least) Jan Middendorp, JLT, and Nick Sherman, at least that is how it looks to an outsider like me.

Ask not what you can do for the site; ask what the site can do for you.

Of course, I don't have any direct info to back it up, but I'll bet a good beer and donut that it is those newsletters (and other marketing and list activities) that sell fonts on MyFonts more than any other factor. If I were a designer considering whether or not to list my fonts there, those are the sorts of things that I would look at. Not the exact cut that you get.

After you get a good look at what you'll really get at MyFonts, compare that with other options. Stephen Coles' Typographica article is a good start. Fill in the gaps with offline discussions with designers you know who have chosen different options. Many people aren't going to be able to talk about their contracts (or royalty figures) on a public forum. The internet is great, but it is not for everything :)

In the end, maybe MyFonts would be the best bet for you. Or maybe your research will point to better chances via another route. You won't be able to come to that conclusion just by comparing royalty rates.

I wonder if this is a harbinger of the dropping of royalty rates at other venus? If MyFonts, with all of its perceived value is paying 50%, perhaps some of the other larger resellers, who may not offer as much, will rethink their 50% royalty. Race to the bottom?

Looking at the MyFonts library, they appear to take pretty much anyone who submits, no? If so, perhaps that is part of the puzzle.

James,
I think they do take all comers who can make a working product and who are not pirates. I don't think they would deny anyone who submitted a less than stellar design but I think they might not allow one that was technically unsound and buggy. They also expect a full character set--at least as full as the old type 1 model.

ChrisL

Thanks, Dan. I am not sure how I could get all the other data on volume but I see your point.

ChrisL

James, sadly I think you're right, on all counts.

hhp

Chris: Yes, you've got it. They expect a really basic level of technical functionality, that glyphs render and it doesn't crash anything, and a basic character set. Beyond that, there isn't a quality barrier at all.

But even so, they couldn't make money very effectively when taking only a 15% slice. At 35% they were able to be profitable. I'm sure they'll do very well for themselves at 50%.

I think Dan put it very well regarding comparing different licensing arrangements to resellers, though.

Cheers,

T

Thanks, Thomas. I hope all is well with you and your family.

ChrisL

I think MyFonts "take all comers" approach may have finally caught up with them, and they are lowering their royalty payments due to the expense of carrying all of that "dead wood".

Perhaps the more discerning organizations like FontShop may be better able to keep their royalty at the current level.

…due to the expense of carrying all of that “dead wood”

What expense? Those old fonts just take up a tiny bit of disk space; they don’t need to sell very many of them to pay for that.

@james (both, I guess)
Dead wood = the hundreds of bad fonts that get in the way when searching for something good to license. It's not about file size at all, it's about shopping for nice fonts.

It may cost more to do the labor of deciding which fonts make the grade than just allowing all comers. They may find a way to sort the crap to the bottom though to make searching quicker for thr better customers.
The other thing is, who is to say that there are not plenty of customers who like crap? Never underestimate the taste of the average consumer. They could have a metadata search term called "kaka"added to keywords :-)

ChrisL

interesting seeing this post and that font designers get as much as 50% of the retail price from online font stores. Most of our clients who sell physical products to stores large and small get only 1/3 or less of the retail price.

What products?

ChrisL

I see the business as a whole becoming more sophisticated.
At the moment, ads are free, and there is no standard size.
Noting that MyFonts now has a sponsored font in its latest newsletter, I can imagine that in future, resellers will charge to place foundry ads in high-traffic positions, and that this would be a more significant means of generating revenue than cutting royalties.
two years ago I released a typeface, and provided all my distributors with advertising material and a launch date.
It was a disaster; few of them even used my ads, or released the font anywhere near the suggested release date.
But I am optimistic that things will improve and become less amateurish.
If resellers want to charge for ads, they can't continue to make the ads themselves, and run them at their discretion.
And if I'm going to be paying for an ad, then the revenue from it must warrant the expense, which means there must be a balance between the cost of the ad, the number of fonts sold, and the royalty percentage.

Nick,
Was the problem that they did not coordinate with your release date? I assume they allwere early.

ChrisL

Hi Chris (and others),

We at MyFonts made the choice recently to switch to a 50/50 percentage agreement for several reasons, but the most notable is the simple fact—which Dan already pointed out—that MyFonts does a heck of a lot more to help sell fonts now than when the old 65% rate was put in place, back in 2003.

Consider, for example, my personal employment as a full-time designer for the company. Before I was hired by MyFonts, they didn't have ANY full-time designers (and many of you would agree that the fact was painfully evident). I like to think that since I've started, the design level for the company has improved noticeably and, in turn, helps to sell more fonts.

Another huge factor is the new website. We started work on a completely rebuilt version of the site as soon as I was hired, so the version which is now up in beta mode represents more than 2 years of design and development time. And it isn't just re-skinning work; as Nick Shinn points out, the new site offers new OpenType testing functionality and a slew of other technical advancements (with more still in the works). Again, all the work we've put into (and continue to put into) the new site helps sell more fonts.

Also worth consideration is the increase in exposure that now is associated with our marketing campaigns. The MyFonts newsletters currently go out to more than half a million registered users (!). That beats the hell out of the number of people subscribed back in 2003, which was about a tenth of that. To add to that, we've also just started a blog which will take time and effort to maintain. Again, all of these things help sell more fonts.

For the foundries already signed up with MyFonts, we have no intention of changing their contracts. That is our way of thanking them for signing up in the earlier stages of the game. Having said that, we aren't planning on fully instituting the 50/50 contracts until the end of this month (so, cuttlefish, if you want to still get the 65% deal, get on it before April :)

We do take an equal opportunity stance on which fonts to sell through MyFonts. As long as the fonts are technically and legally sound, we let the customers decide what is worthy of buying or not. Since the fonts are just digital files, carrying that many more of them has little to no affect on our cost of operation. Anyone familiar with the "long tail" business model understands how this works.

I am one of the first to agree that we carry some less-than-desirable fonts on our site; however, the way our promotion system works, anything that doesn't prove itself as desirable pretty quickly settles to the bottom of the barrel, and the more successful stuff bubbles to the top.

Anyhow, to summarize, MyFonts is a totally different product/service now than it was back in 2003, and that change is the result of a lot of work and building over time. Considering all the new benefits that we now offer, we're still more than confident that the 50/50 agreement is a great deal for people looking to promote and sell their fonts.

Thanks for the explanation, Nick.

Thanks Nick.

Is leaving out the history 1999 to 2003 intentional?

@Nick,
"(so, cuttlefish, if you want to still get the 65% deal, get on it before April "

Since you offer Cuttlefish the 65% deal, I assume I too can qualify prior to April? If so, send me the 65% contract and I will sign it tomorrow.

ChrisL

Nick,
is it possible to sign a contract but not immediately offer any fonts for sale?

hhp

sii, I made comparisons to 2003 specifically because that was the year the 65% rate went in to effect. Prior to that it was an even higher 80%.

Chris. indeed the 65% deal would apply to you and anyone else interested (I, for one, would be glad to have you!). Anyone who wants the 65% contract should just send an email to foundry@myfonts.com saying so before the end of the month.

Hrant: yes, you (and anyone else) could sign the contract now even if you don't offer the fonts immediately.

Nick started working for MyFonts three years ago, so I guess he left out the pre-2003 history simply because he was ancient history for him. So let me join in an fill in some gaps.

MyFonts was in fact my first professional involvement in the font industry — I was hired as part-time typographic consultant in mid-2000, some nine or so months after the site was launched. And I've been part of the team ever since. I never worked for MyFonts full-time but instead, I was involved in a number of projects with the large and small vendors in the industry, and in 2005, I started working half-time as FontLab's product and marketing manager. I hope that this allowed me to develop a reasonable understanding of all the aspects of the entire font industry.

When MyFonts was set up ten years ago, the surrounding reality was that lots of promotion and advertising was done through print: printed catalogs and specimens, printed ads in magazines etc. MyFonts didn't offer that. In a sense, MyFonts offered little more than a convenient way to just sell fonts online: let the user select the font, collect the payment and forward the money to the foundry. Back then, there was no PayPal or Google Checkout so setting up an electronic shopping cart and accepting online payments was a challenge — so MyFonts was a fast, accessible and powerful platform that offered foundries an online shopping cart for their fonts.

Gradually, both MyFonts and the market evolved. Today, it is no longer sufficient to have an online "presence", it's necessary to put up some competition efforts in the online world. Having just a sales platform is no longer sufficient, we need an effective platform for both sales and promotion.

Ten years ago, it was not a good idea for MyFonts to do extensive promotion using the print channel, because good print promotion is highly individual. Everything — from the design through the choice of paper, colors and printing process — should be done with extensive creative influence from the foundry and from the designers. So it is the foundries rather than the distributors who presumably will always do a better job at print promotion — therefore, it was logical that MyFonts consciously did not get involved in that, and offered a higher
percentage to the foundries.

From 2000 to 2003, MyFonts gave 80% to the foundry and collected a 20% commission. It was a deal that it was unheard of in the industry, and it was clear from the day one for both MyFonts and the participating foundries that this was a sort of an "introductory deal". And indeed, in 2003, MyFonts changed the commission to 35%, which meant that 65% of the retail price went to the foundry. This was a realistic split that allowed MyFonts to cover the operational and development cost, and left some moderate means for some promotional activities — and it was still the best deal in the industry.

Ten years from MyFonts' inception, things have changed.

With "Web 2.0", the role of the internet has changed. More and more users can be effectively reached through various online promotional channels such as online ads, blogs or social networks. The visual fidelity of the online media has vastly improved, reducing the gap between online and print. Very few will remember that five years ago, the MyFonts newsletters (and most other e-mail newsletters) were plain-text-only, without any images or an actual layout!

But unlike print promotion, the online channels benefits much more from a solid technological background and the online-specialized know-how that a foundry might not necessarily have, but an online distributor should. For example, MyFonts does not host the website on one server but on a few dozens (!) separate machines connected by sophisticated load-balancing systems, so the website runs fast despite the heavy traffic, and the risk of the service not being available is minimal.

As MyFonts is well-rooted in font technology, things like online previewing of OpenType Layout features are not only possible but are also fast and reliable.

Larger websites are more discoverable through search engines — just think of how much more likely is it to find the entry for a book at Amazon than it is on its publisher's website.

Thanks to sophisticated statistics, an online distributor such as MyFonts can detect trends, effectively position ads in search engines (larger clients can negotiate better rates when buying ads), and use various online communication channels to do good promotion in a more cost-effective way than an individual, small foundry. So at least it is not unreasonable to assume that the online distributor will spend the extra money well.

James writes: I think MyFonts “take all comers” approach may have finally caught up with them, and they are lowering their royalty payments due to the expense of carrying all of that “dead wood”. I think that James will be glad and relieved to hear that there is little, if any, expense of “carrying the dead wood.” With the highly automated infrastructure that MyFonts had, the marginal cost of adding new fonts is low, and the transaction cost is also independent of the overall number of products on sale. As Nick points out, MyFonts operates by the “long tail” principle (also known as the “80-20 rule”): roughly 80% of the expense is generated by 20% of the products, and 20% of the expense is generated by the 80% of the products. Indeed, this means that cutting off all those unpopular products wouldn't really have much influence on the costs.

Also, it is important to point out that the new standard contract rate to 50% applies to new foundries. Existing contracts will keep the existing terms and will not be automatically changed to the new scheme.

Because there seem to be some foundries that had the intention of signing up but "haven't gotten around to doing it", we have decided that they still have the chance to sign up with the old rate of 65% if they contact foundry@myfonts.com by the end of this month (i.e. by March 31, 2009). So in a sense, the “early early birds” who have signed up with MyFonts 8–9 years ago were rewarded by the extraordinarily attractive rate of 80%, and a number of foundries that have joined so far, the “before lunch birds”, have profited from the attractive 65% rate. And this offer is now prolonged until lunch is over :)

But — why the change the rate at all? James rightly points out that it is desirable if distributors “keep their royalty at the current level”. But one way of looking at this is to ask: just how much MyFonts has achieved with the unusually low commission rate? Rather than being just a simple click-and-buy anonymous site, the MyFonts website has been in constant development for the last years.

We have collected excellent editorial content in form of articles, blog entries, interviews and newsletters — originally written by Laurence Penney, and more recently, by Jan Middendorp, Joshua Lurie-Terrell and Nick Sherman. We plan on continuing and expanding these activities. Better content, better educational materials, better instructions and explanations to the users — this will automatically benefit all participating foundries.

We have developed WhatTheFont, a massively popular online font recognition tool — which recently has been extended by the addition of an iPhone version, which has remained one of AppStore’s top 10 free applications in the “Reference” category. If you sign up with MyFonts and submit your fonts, they will automatically be searchable using WhatTheFont.

We have spent months and months tweaking the purchase process and the buying experience, in order to simplify the encoding and format selection and adjust to various licensing schemes required by the foundries. One example: after purchase, the customer can download the fonts as a ZIP archive or as a simple wizard-based installer for Mac OS X or Windows — which greatly simplifies the font installation process and reduces tech support calls.

We have invented various ways for customers to discover new fonts and quickly find the fonts they are looking for. We developed “More fonts like this”, introduced tags/keywords, flags and other concepts — and we were more than happy to find out that other font distributors have adopted these solutions. These concepts are industry standards now. We have a slew of great new ideas that, I'm certain, will benefit font vendors and customers.

We have invested two years of our time to design a new website from the ground up, bringing together great design talent (Nick), excellent web programming skills (Chris Lewis and Kevin Woodward), online marketing expertise, solid linguistic, typographic and font technology know-how, high-quality content as well as, simply, innovation. We have been rewarded with very positive feedback from both foundries and customers — and we are constantly working on “ironing out” some weak spots.

But the work is not finished, we have great plans. The extra money that will come from the increased commission on new foundries will certainly help further improving the MyFonts online platform. With our new design and editorial content, we have merely indicated the direction. Design and content is not everything, so our future activities will concentrate on online promotion and marketing. We will do some of the work ourselves. But more importantly, very much in-sync with our approach so far, we will develop new innovative easy-to-use online tools that will help foundries direct the marketing activities themselves.

Until this date, we have done all that work at a commission rate that for years was way more attractive than anybody other's. So I believe, so far, the participating foundries can safely say that the money (the commission) was, indeed, well spent — simply because they have been enjoying steadily increasing income from us since MyFonts' inception.

And that money will continue to be well spent — for the existing foundries whose contracts we of course honor, for the new foundries that manage to snatch the old commission rate if they sign up by the end of this month, and also for the future foundries which will not enjoy the “early bird” privilege, but will nonetheless benefit from all the innovation and effectiveness that MyFonts has to offer.

OK, everyone in the first row can wake up now. ;)

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......

twardoc-

that was extremely well-spoken...
sounds like myfonts earns its pay.

-bowerbird

Adam, polish that up and publish it!

BTW, somewhere I have Laurence's original
email offering me that 80% (and not 85% as I
remembered). Please excuse me while I kick
myself to Kinshasa.

hhp

No better way to celebrate 10 years of Myfonts than to sponsor an old-school Bitstream (AKA Beerstream) party during ATypI

" polish that up and publish it!"

I think he just did :-)

ChrisL

Makes sense to me, guys.

Example: "a few dozens"
I guess one man's polish is another man's tarnish.

And one entry in some thread is pretty meager publishing,
especially with Typophile's inebriated search function.

hhp

If you're going to publish it Adam, you could make some mention of Makambo, the first online font retailer.

Thank you Adam, for the insight. But you have forgotten one powerful thing MyFonts has, too: A very fast and reliable Whatthefont-forum. Don’t know how many requests are coming in, but sometimes it is 3–4 in the minute. Which will be solved in record-time. The TypeID-board here doesn’t get so much traffic, as the forum over there. Most of the requests are solved in as high quality as the one here. Guarded by skillful moderators like Akira, Marcelo (=plumbago), Philippe2 and many more. Don’t know how the Whatthefont-forum influences the sales over there, but I am convinced it is a quite big part of it.

Ah, forgot one thing: The people over there are all volunteers, like the one here.

P.S.: And for those who don't know: The Whatthefont-forum is dedicated to Type Identification.

hrant said:
> a few dozens

great catch!

are there more?

because i count 10300+ characters, 1700+ words, 185+ lines,
70+ sentences, and 50+ paragraphs, so if there's only 1 error,
then that's a whole lot closer to "polished" than to "tarnished"...

in fact, if that's all there is, and we fixed that, we are "finished"...

moreover, when we get that level of cleanliness from an author,
outtadabox, we don't call it "polished", we call it "well-polished".

if you can find more mistakes, though, it would sway the score.
(but probably have to find many more to end up at "tarnished".)

anyway, i will use this fantastic content as the textual matter for
some more of the research experiments that i'll be doing here...

here are the opening paragraphs, our header the 2.5 alphabets
which is typically recommended as a most desireable measure...

-bowerbird

p.s. as you can see in the screenshot, i found two errors there.
in the rest of the piece, i got another 8, so 10 total. very clean.
(not counting 15-20 times when we disagree on serial comma.)
i'd be interested in any other edits that anyone has done on this.
and, of course, anything that the author might want to rewrite... ;+)

in looking at that screenshot, we've got a nice rag there.
indeed, the only lines i would change would be to move
down that lonely "a" at the end of the next-to-last line
in the second paragraph, then do the same for that "for"
at the end of the next-to-last line of the third paragraph.

moving further analysis of this to an appropriate thread;
thanks for your understanding during this short side-trip.

-bowerbird

MyFonts has a selection of Arabic fonts, and the neat OT display shows the text you type in any number of sizes using a slider, and various colors. Unfortunately the text is displayed from left to right, inverting the natural order of the letters. In this image the test text (the name of the font المستقبل لنا shown correctly in green) is displayed back to front in the orange, which of course disconnects the letters as well as makes the text unreadable. I wonder if this can be corrected? Thanks Adam!

Vladimir:

We have recently made good progress in correct OpenType rendering of complex script fonts such as Arabic, and you should be seeing this live on MyFonts anytime soon.

Others:

Thank you for your warm reception of my somewhat unorganized notes. I have read your feedback and will publish an edited version of the text soon :)

Hrant:

I would just say that one man’s polish is another man’s Polish. ;) Your feedback also noted, thanks!

Cheers,
Adam

@Dezcom
"What products?

ChrisL"

Toys, furniture, ceramics and paintings

Adam, now that you are here, is OTF class kerning working OK at this time in the beta MyFonts samples?

Jan,

currently no GPOS features are working (including kerning) but the new update for the OpenType engine will fix both GPOS problems as well as complex-script rendering problems (and a number of other smaller problems).

Cheers,
Adam

Thanks, Adam.

> that’s a whole lot closer to “polished” than to “tarnished”...

Agreed.

> we don’t call it “polished”, we call it “well-polished”.

Try making a text font.

> one man’s polish is another man’s Polish.

Ah - I should have used that myself! :->

--

Previously:
> I think they do take all comers who can make
> a working product and who are not pirates.

But there are clear cases of plagiarism. Yesterday I saw what was basically Industria with parts randomly chopped off the bottoms*, and I've seen that sort of thing many times on MyFonts.

* BTW now I can't find it again, and that might in fact be a reflection of what James was saying in terms of crowding.

Are there legal issues with rejecting that sort of thing? Can't you just say "we reserve the right to refuse service" or something? Because you really should block those, especially since you do have good ID hounds on your roll.

This is basically the one thing that persists in bugging me about MyFonts.

hhp

> The other day I saw what was basically Industria
> with parts randomly chopped off the bottoms.
> Can’t you just say “we reserve the right to refuse
> service” or something? Because you really should
> block those, especially since you do have good ID
> hounds on your roll.

I'm not sure what you mean by we "do good ID hounds on your roll". If you refer to the WhatTheFont forum, all users there are volunteers, so they're not "on MyFonts' roll".

But we certainly have the right to remove fonts that infringe on people's intellectual property, and we rigorously make use of this right — if we are notified by the rights owners *or* by any users. I would really like to encourage users to report such things directly to MyFonts.

It's like with bugs in software applications: many users assume that the ominous "they" will "take care of it". And then bugs get propagated from version to version because, as it happens, nobody reports those (as everyone assumes that someone else will have done so).

Seriously. We have removed offending fonts in the past, and will in future. I have myself reviewed the outlines of such fonts and compared them in order to determine if portions of the outlines have been reused of if a font is an independent digitization of the same design. Unfortunately, some shady doers simply go undetected for some time. On the other hand, fortunately, such cases occur rarely.

Quite a few fonts submitted to MyFonts are poor designs — but that is another issue. With MyFonts being a meritocracy, we believe that it will be our users who will ultimately judge on whether a font becomes commercially successful or not. Many of the poor designs never will. To some surprise of traditionalists such as myself, some fonts that are do not meet our æsthetic standards still find a large number of followers. But that is, again, a completely different discussion: should any appointed panel of judges serve as the authority that denies the right of existence to the Comic Sanses of this world?

Regards,
Adam

" To some surprise of traditionalists such as myself, some fonts that are do not meet our æsthetic standards still find a large number of followers. But that is, again, a completely different discussion: should any appointed panel of judges serve as the authority that denies the right of existence to the Comic Sanses of this world?"

This is no surprise to me and goes along with my earlier comment.

I prefer your "Let the buyer Choose" method over a panel of judges--and the cost of the panel.

ChrisL

> all users there are volunteers, so they’re not “on MyFonts’ roll”.

Could you pay some of them a stipend to screen all incoming fonts? Not for design quality, but simply for plagiarism. That sort of thing would add even more value to MyFonts (most of all for scrupulous font designers). You might even pay for them to [gradually] go through all the fonts you already have. This isn't as time-consuming as it might sound, because a good hound can very quickly get a vibe with a quick glance at a pangram; then the potential offender would be moved to "level 2" for closer inspection.

> I would really like to encourage users to
> report such things directly to MyFonts.

Cool.
Assuming there isn't one already, it would be nice to have an official channel to go through specifically for this, and announce its availability on various fora.

> With MyFonts being a meritocracy, we believe that it will be
> our users who will ultimately judge on whether a font becomes
> commercially successful or not

To me that's the only solid way for MyFonts to work.

BTW, do search results depend on popularity?

hhp

And/Or:
You could have a [hidden] "plagiarism tally" for each font, where foundries that have signed up with MyFonts can add a "black mark" for a given offensive font. And maybe more than 2 black marks automatically brings it to the attention of somebody who can follow up and possibly remove the font. In this way you would have those with the most interest in reducing plagiarism do most of the work for you. More: if you deem the font inoffensive you would remove the black marks, and prevent those who put them from putting them again - but of course more people can put enough black marks again (although you might have raised the threshold to 4 at that point) possibly causing you to reconsider. Even more: you might alert the recipient of black marks, as a feedback mechanism to guide future development.

> And thus pass along the costs to the designer, further
> decreasing the percentages paid out per font.

But the designer might see it as added value, just like marketing costs.

hhp

>>Could you pay some of them a stipend to screen all incoming fonts?

And thus pass along the costs to the designer, further decreasing the percentages paid out per font.

Hrant,

> BTW, do search results depend on popularity?

The first two sorting modes for search results (relevance and best selling) take popularity into account. Best selling is a straight popularity sort while relevance combines popularity with other factors (for example if a designer name is used as the search term, the fonts designed by that designer score higher than those for which the designer's name is only mentioned in the accompanying article).

We'll take your suggestions into consideration!

Cheers,
Adam

Hrant, I greatly appreciate your thought and consideration!

In a sense, we do have a team of people checking all incoming fonts for plagiarism (and then some). Other than running new submissions through WhatTheFont, there are at least 3 of us that watch the new font RSS feed. As no one is perfect (and plagiarists can be sneaky), every once in a great while things do slip through the cracks. But so far the method has worked well enough that developing a whole new system for reporting issues would probably take away from time that could be better spent helping our foundries to make money in other ways.

Like Adam said though, if we get notification of a sketchy font from an outside source—be it from a foundry or from a random user—we'll take the font down until we've had a chance to investigate and proceed accordingly. In that sense, using the "black mark" system for comparison, we take down anything that's received even one black mark.

With that in mind, I'll repeat Adam by encouraging anyone to report to us anything they see that they think infringes on others' intellectual property. A quick email is all that's needed :)

>>running new submissions through WhatTheFont
Ingenious! I didn't even think of that. What a great idea.

50% ?! Wow, what a scam.

Seriously, coming from the software development side I just can't wrap my mind around this number. Even if it's 65%. Jesus. I hope they at least provide the Vaseline for free.

> 50% ?! Wow, what a scam.

I dunno. Write a book. You will be lucky to get 15% of retail for hardcover, 10% for paperback.

A normal bookstore gets 40% on most books. A distributor gets 5 to 10% more. So a place like Amazon, the bookstore equivalent of myfonts, is probably getting 50% for selling the thing.

I know that jewellery often is marked up 50% (doubled from wholesale price) as are occasional other items. Some novelties are more than double the price you pay in a variety store.

What does an artist get if his work is sold in an art dealer?

It's called retailing ... the guy who sells the stuff deserves to make a living too.

Don, The cost of printing, storage, and distribution of books is WAY more than hosting a small file to download.

ChrisL

Don, these are irrelevant examples.

The costs that are typical to a physical goods distribution are just simply not there when it comes to the virtual goods. Think about it. No stocking, no transporting, no disposal of outdated items, no huge upfront costs for maintaining an inventory, no need for the hoards of sales people, running costs are WAY lower than maintaining, say, a mall outlet, etc.

The cost structure is different. The 30% Apple charges for their App Store sales is unheard of, but it is somewhat justified by the awesomeness of Apple's brand. And when they initially announced 30%, a lot of jaws dropped.

T-h-i-r-t-y p-e-r-c-e-n-t for an option of selling under the umbrella of THE brand. And you telling me that 50% fee is justified in an online font retailer case ? Give me a break.

Alex, markets sort themselves out.
Whatever the market pays is justified, fair or not.
For fonts, the price the end-user pays, the retailer fee, the publisher fee, and the designer royalty are all related, and have evolved through several generations of digital commerce. No doubt shrinkage (i.e. bundling, piracy and free fonts) fits into the equation too.

If distributors kept 75%, the font market would be quite different.

The MyFonts business model has certainly been successful for that company, and has been the driving force in creating a retail font market with hundreds of independent foundries worldwide; and done it by paying suppliers considerably more than App Store, with a really wack branding to boot.

You lost me there at the end, Nick. How's 50% that MyFonts pays is "considerably more" than Apple's 70% (which in itself is atypically low for the software market) ?

Sorry, I got it backwards.
So you're suggesting that font distributors should charge 25%?
I like that!

If you join the affiliate program you could actually make 75% on some sales (if you have the 65% now of course).

Please explain the Affiliate Program, Jos?

ChrisL

Here's the info: http://new.myfonts.com/info/affiliate-program/

whining about this is so unproductive.

if you think you can do the same job
for a smaller fee, go ahead and do it!

if you really can, people will choose you.

nobody says you have to use myfonts...

you can sell your fonts on your own site,
where you'll keep 100% of the proceeds...

chances are, though, that another dealer
-- whether myfonts or someone else --
will bring you new customers, and _that_
is what you are paying them their fee for.

all the other stuff that they might do --
like storage and bandwidth, and collecting
the money -- is the frosting on the cake.
(and believe me, collecting the money is a
pain in the ass, especially internationally.)
the cake? it's new customer development.

it costs a lot -- time, money, energy --
to bring customers into the tent, and if
someone else can do that for you, great!

especially since once you get a customer,
you can convince them to come to _your_
tent, where you can keep the full 100%...

(and then you'll see that it's not _really_
100%, because all of those other things
cost you money, and time, and energy.)

***

as a reference point, authors can upload
a book directly to amazon for the kindle.
they keep 65% of the "suggested list price".

and yes sir, that's a very high commission,
especially for handling a _digital_ product.
(no warehouses, no transportation costs.)

but what's more important is that amazon
delivers you a ton of customers and _you_
get to keep 35% of the suggested list price.

and you gain a lot of fans in the process...

-bowerbird

p.s. same thing with the 30% apple retains
for apps sold in their app store. worth it!

Thanks, Jos!

ChrisL

Now it's a Bird in Cat's Clothing. Cannot be plucked.

You're welcome, Chris. Every little swan counts ;)

(and believe me, collecting the money is a
pain in the ass, especially internationally.)

Oh stop it!

Have you ever heard of credit cards, payment gateways? 50% of my sales come from outside the US and I have never had a problem getting paid with a customer using a credit card.

I have more of a problem buying things from international sellers since they seem to have an aversion to using credit cards, and insist on bank transfers which cost way too much.

And just forget about Paypal, that bunch of crooks.

Alex,

I'm completely with you on the wish that the type designers should receive the best possible financial conditions. Having worked with hundreds of professional type designers over the last ten years — be it in my FontLab or MyFonts positions, or as an independent consultant — I know very well how challenging it is to make a living on type design.

However, I cannot agree with the use of the word "scam". I think there is a fundamental difference between general software distribution models and fonts. First of all, software applications are relatively short-lived as they are. One committed and successful type designer designs numerous, sometimes dozens, families — overall, dozens or even hundreds of fonts, over the path of their career. But do you know any individual software developer who has developed dozens or hundreds of software applications? No, this does not work that way.

Software applications need constant maintenance, one and the same software application needs to be constantly updated with bugfixes or adjusted to new operating systems, new features need to be added. Otherwise, the software product will "die of natural causes" after two or three years. The higher "royalty" that may flow back to the developer is not really pure royalty — a significant part of that is simply money that goes into maintenance and continued development of the same product, in order to keep it afloat. In the software application business, it is the software developer who is mostly concerned with the maintenance of the product — while the distributors "merely sell it". More often than not, it is also the software developer whose task it is to promote the software, while the distributor — at least those distributors who take low commissions — basically provide an e-commerce platform, take transactions and process orders. And in such case, a typical commission is, indeed, between 20% and 30%.

The money a type designer, or a foundry, receives, is much more of a pure royalty. Once the designer has completed a font family, it is "final". Of course, not entirely, because there may be cases where an update is needed. Some are fairly minor, such as adding the Euro character or converting into a different format. Some are more extensive, such as expanding the character set. But I don't think there really are many cases when the same font family needs to be updated and revisited every year or two, "forever".

I hope it's clear that I'm not trying to downplay the type designer's role — I'm merely indicating that the product lifecycles for those product types are inherently different. After having worked both in font development and distribution as well as in software development and distribution (for FontLab), I think I can safely say that _after_ a product is released, one needs to spend FAR more time to maintain it in the software business than in the font business.

Of course, both the software developers and type designers can use their royalties to fund the development of new products — but they can also choose not to make any new products and undertake other things. Fortunately enough, if a font family proves to be interesting to the market, the royalties WILL continue to flow in a year's time, in two years, three and further. Some of the seasoned type designers have been receiving royalties for font families that they have designed ten or fifteen years ago, without ever having revisited that particular family — which I believe is hardly possible in the software application business.

As I've written above, MyFonts started as a "mere e-commerce provider" for type designers, and for that it rightly accepted a 20% commission. But, while the type designer can "sit back and relax", or — much more likely :) — spend his or her time designing new typefaces, it is much more up to the distributor to constantly "remain in the game" and make sure that potential customers get the fonts they need. Every online font distributor needs to heavily invest in the online platform, fix bugs, adopt the platform to new browsers and operating systems, add new features, come up with innovative ways to present the typeface catalog and allow customers to find the font they want as quickly as possible — and perhaps convince the customer to buy a few more fonts than they originally intended ;)

Does this sound familiar? Yes, in fact, in the font market, it is the font distributors that need to do lots of the very same heavy-lifting that the original software developers, and not the software distributors, do in the software application market.

In order to remain fresh and attractive, it is very important for the font distributors to take care of the whole maintenance process. In other words, part of what the software vendors do for software needs to be done by the distributors for fonts.

And this is the reason why I believe it is sensible that a comparably larger part of the money stays with the font distributor — namely the expenses that go into maintenance and upgrading the software. When it comes to what should count as actual royalty, I don't think there are many differences.

And as I said earlier, we at MyFonts have serious plans to make our platform even much better than it is now. With the redesign and the new newsletters, I think we've indicated the direction, and I think the participating foundries like it where we are heading.

Or have you seen an online software distributor that has developed a system that allows the user to "testdrive" the software applications online before purchase? If there are such vendors, I doubt they charge just a 20% commission.

Oh, wait. :) Actually, I really wish such an online testdrive platform existed in the Apple AppStore. This would certainly have spared me the purchase of a couple of iPhone apps that had promised but did not deliver, so the only option I had was to grind my teeth, delete the app and forget about the money (since AppStore does not accept returns).

Sure, some developers may be thrilled with the "opportunity to sell your iPhone apps under the Apple brand" (not that there is any other option, because the Apple AppStore is the ONLY option to sell iPhone apps, when you forget about illegal hacking).

But I'm rather confident that for the end-user (and, ultimately, the vendor), MyFonts or FontShop offer a much better discovery and shopping experience than the AppStore. (Have you ever tried to print out your purchase history at AppStore? I have. I had to take 20 screenshots as this was the only option).

Cheers,
Adam

We have recently made good progress in correct OpenType rendering of complex script fonts such as Arabic, and you should be seeing this live on MyFonts anytime soon.
Adam: Sounds good!

Adam,

> However, I cannot agree with the use of the word “scam”.

I'll take "scam" back. It's indeed more of a rip-off if I were to use a catchy description.

> More often than not, it is also the software developer whose task it is to promote the software, while the distributor — at least those distributors who take low commissions — basically provide an e-commerce platform, take transactions and process orders. And in such case, a typical commission is, indeed, between 20% and 30%.

Here is the pricing for a well-establish ecomm provider - 6.9% + $1 - and this is considered "really-pushing-it" expensive.

20% in the software world buys you not just the payment processing services (shopping cart, invoicing and what not), but also the promotion support, the retail packaging when needed as well as the frontline technical support. Latter is a really big deal because it's an actual expense that grows with the sales volume.

>The money a type designer, or a foundry, receives, is much more of a pure royalty.

I don't see how this justifies paying the font designers less.

And I'm sorry I don't buy the argument about the huge expenses you are routinely encountering while "fixing bugs, adopting the platform to new browsers and operating systems, adding new features, coming up with innovative ways to present the typeface catalog, etc". If this does in fact force you to drop royalties from 80% to 50%, then it means you are not doing a good job in controlling your operational expenses or these expenses are not applied most effeciently.

>Or have you seen an online software distributor that has developed a system that allows the user to “testdrive” the software applications online before purchase?

You and I both know that an online "testdrive" of a downloadable application is an oxymoron. Please don't compare apples to oranges.

However, adding an option of "testdriving" a typeface to a website, even the one that works in an interactive manner, is few man-months worth of work for any professional developer. It is also essentially a one-time expense if it's designed properly.

If you are to tell me that you need more than that, then you are living a luxurious development life at an expense of your fellow font developers. The fact that you can hire a dozen developers to write a Flash applet, another 10 to add an Ajax support, and few managers to manage them all doesn't mean that it should be done.

All in all, I'm still in awe over the commission rates. That's just unbelievable. It really makes me wonder if an expense-conscious font distribution start-up would be worth a shot.

@epsilicon,

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you don't need Nick's, my & Jan's endless, tireless work on behalf of MyFonts designers - each of us spends a fair amount of time ever single day writing copy, editing press releases, conducting interviews, designing specimens for all of our designers ... well, then go with a distributor who doesn't do those things for you. MyFonts may begin to decrease commissions, but we are increasing the level of service - and the truly massive amount of PR we give to our designers - every single day.

And that's not all of it. There are a several other people who work endlessly - weekends, holidays, Jewish holidays and on our kids' birthdays - to make sure that those regular newsletters and other mailings actually get to the tens of thousands of people who want to see them. We all answer emails, field criticism - always addressing whatever we can - and do everything we can to make sure that our designers are getting their due.

We're doing this because we feel that all independent designers deserve at least a shot at the kind of massive PR that large corporate foundries give their new releases. In fact, I think if you look closely you'll find that we are giving far more targeted press to the folks who sign with us than ITC or Linotype or Agfa are offering their designers.

I am very proud to work with these folks and very happy that we're able to offer such a complete service. While I have heard a little bit of criticism from some folks, I don't recall ever hearing any from designers who are actually selling their fonts via MyFonts.

I am one of those and I like MyFonts approach best: submit a font for sale and let the punters decide whether it was worth it.

All these comments about quality on MyFonts miss a major point: MyFonts is all inclusive and non-judgemental. Please name one distributor here who takes all comers and charges less than 50% commission?

And for all the folks being disappointed with the change, now that you have been offered the 65-35 split, what are you still doing here carping, instead of signing on and designing some fonts?

@jlt,

I am sure you are putting a lot of hours into MyFonts, and nowhere I meant to imply you are not taking your job seriously or anything like that. But as I have already said the 50% is an outrageous number from where I come from. Publishing services in a software domain routinely operate on substantially smaller commissions.

I just called a friend of mine who is in the shareware publishing business. He said 7% for a simple e-comm, 30% for "give it to us and forget" kind of service, which includes (re-)branding, positioning, promotion, sales and support.

Details of the software publishing are of course different from the font distribution, but there's a very large overlap between their general problems, expense structure and operating principles. That's why I feel the comparison was justified to begin with.

Alex

I don't think you can compare apples to oranges.

Alex, I can understand why software publishing seems comparable, but until you've built a website that renders hundreds of thousands of fonts in a large range of formats (some ancient) from hundreds of manufacturers, each with varying technical standards, methods, prices, package download options, and meta data, and then organize and display them all in a way that's usable to a wide range of customers, both expert and novice, and then support those fonts as they interact with dozens of operating systems and countless applications, you really can't have any idea what you're talking about here.

Trust me, I once assumed operating in this market was like any other e-commerce business. Experience has taught me otherwise.

terminaldesign said:
> Have you ever heard of credit cards, payment gateways?

yes, but i don't know of any that do the job for free.

do you?

and no, heaven's no, i've never _ever_ heard _any_
horror stories about the _credit_card_ companies,
they are exemplars of wonderful vendor relations.

> I have never had a problem getting paid
> with a customer using a credit card.

ok, and how do you get paid from the
customers who don't use a credit card?

what, you just give up those sales? ok...

but if you _did_ want to actually accept them,
you'd be stuck with the bank-transfer thing,
which is a pain in the ass, and costly as well.

and if you don't take those customers, then
how do you know how much money you are
losing, directly in the present, and long-term
in the future because you failed the sale today,
meaning you didn't cumulate the new customer,
thereby losing that customer's word-of-mouth,
which could have brought in _other_ clients, etc.

you sound pretty haughty for someone who has
so little information about the fish under the sea.

> I have more of a problem buying things from
> international sellers since they seem to have
> an aversion to using credit cards, and insist
> on bank transfers which cost way too much.

yet another example, from the customer side,
of how the payment process is a pain in the ass,
both in the execution and in the transaction cost.

> And just forget about Paypal, that bunch of crooks.

it sounds like you've had an experience that _some_
might characterize as having been "a pain in the ass",
one that likely cost you time, energy, and/or money.

so, you made this post in an attempt to refute mine,
but nearly everything you said actually supports me.
maybe you should engage your brain before typing...

-bowerbird

Stephen, at some point I built an online service that accumulated few million users before it was acquired by a larger company. So I have a very good understanding of what it takes to build very complex scalable systems and to deal with supporting a wide variety of end-user environments. It is effectively what I do for a living. Just an FYI.

I was not however aware that MyFonts takes responsibility for resolving application compatibility issues with the fonts they sell.

Alex

i said:
> maybe you should engage your brain before typing...

i have been instructed that this was impolite.

i apologize.

i meant it simply as "good advice" --
i always try to think before i type,
and i'm often glad that i did that --
but i surely didn't mean to offend...

i ask everyone to please accept my deep regrets.

-bowerbird

Hrant - As one of the original WTF moderators I can definitely say that you overstate the frequency of plagiaristic fonts appearing on MyFonts.

Prior to being asked to become a moderator (on the roll? ,,, I wish!), I reported a couple of cases of clear font cloning. MyFonts responded promptly with a thank you and the offenders were kicked out.

As a group of moderators, we have been known to jump all over an illicit clone that shows up. We don't see them very often, though.

As to that font that "... was basically Industria with parts randomly chopped off the bottoms.", ever since the appearance of Industria there have been lots of freebie and some commercial similars available. A key word in what you wrote is 'basically'. Unless a font IS Industria with parts lopped off it may be ethically and typographically undesirable but it's not legally wrong or, I suspect, from MyFonts view - actionable.

Edit: I missed that there was a page 2 to this popular thread, so please excuse the even-tardier-than-I-thought post to you, Hrant.

"now that you have been offered the 65-35 split, what are you still doing here carping, instead of signing on and designing some fonts?"

I signed and mailed my contract yesterday and will soon have fonts released by MyFonts.

ChrisL

...will soon have fonts released...

Great!

>I don’t think you can compare apples to oranges.

Totally agree. Alex has chosen a seemingly random example, software, to make his point. If he’d chosen say prostitution where the pimp routinely keeps 110% of the prostitutes earnings, then the deal the MyFonts is offering looks great.

Also it’s possible for type designers to keep close to 100% of the money by selling fonts directly. That’s not too hard to set up. However they choose to license their IP through distributors like MyFonts. They may grumble about the royalty rates, but if MyFonts wasn't putting additional cash in their pockets then they wouldn’t sign up.

Fellow Typophiles,

I have “polished up” my initial posting, and published it on the MyFonts blog.

Thank you for your valuable input so far!
Adam

i ask everyone to please accept my deep regrets.

I don't

Mike, I was glad to hear you state that the plagiarism problem isn't so bad. But then I read the rest of your post, and I went back to worrying! As I said before (maybe in that other thread*) it's not really a legal issue in my mind, at least not mostly. Just like it's not illegal to go a [decent] restaurant barefoot, but they can kick you out anyway. When people see a copy-cat font on MyFonts, they think less of MyFonts, hence pay less for MyFonts products. I have to believe that raising the integrity of MyFonts even further goes along with lowering the royalties even further.

* http://typophile.com/node/56010

I ran into that Industria mash-up* about one minute into some light browsing in MyFonts the other day, in fact with no intention of looking for trouble. That makes me think more action is probably needed; and the best place to seek help is MyFonts signatory foundries.

* And just because Industria has been copied a lot doesn't make it OK, in fact it makes it more deserving of protection. Just like how they changed the rules of soccer because Pele was being violently fouled.

hhp

What James (terminaldesign) said: Race to the bottom? Indeed race to the bottom. BT needs more money -- and that's ok! The fourth quarter is down -- $0.07 per share; last year -- $0.11; the big numbers: something around $1.15 milion last year, and only 700,000 this quarter. And with bad economy every cent is important! Simple, no? :^)

Alex, something to consider is the size of the market for fonts. From what I can tell, as a font developer, it's significantly smaller than the general software market, perhaps magnitudes smaller. If you take this into account, it may be easier to understand the "weird" economics of the font industry, and some of the comments of people regarding the benefits of working with distributors vs. doing it yourself. The pie is smaller, but marketing and support costs are not proportionately smaller, so they take a big piece of the pie, no matter how you cut it. At least, this is how it appears to me.

some people always grumble about the other guy's cut.

it's amusing... :+)

-bowerbird

...will soon have fonts released...

DUDE!?!?!!!!

Tracking. The send-in-contract-before-end-of-the-month is interesting... Should I read that as hard copy or online? No idea if a hard copy would get in on time.

Yes, Nick--hard to believe :-)

ChrisL

Jelmar,

the end of March deadline is primarily for a "statement of interest" and "getting the ball rolling". The final hardcopy of the contract can be signed a bit later, we're flexible in that regard.

Cheers,
Adam

Oh, I really believe you now, Chris ;-)

Business is business.
When a supplier signs up with a distributor, the rate is established in the contract, and either party can renegotiate the terms.

So a distributor-driven plan that signs up suppliers at rates favorable to them will help get the distributor established, and build a customer-base for the supplier. Suppliers have to worry about that distributor then cornering the market and reducing their payout, distributors have to worry about suppliers selling direct.

MyFonts has built up a lot of traffic, but its market is different than FontShop, Veer, and Monotype, the other big multi-foundry retailers, so there are alternative distributors available to foundries. But those retailers don't take anyone who knocks on the door (no need for purging!).

So there may be a place for a no-frills all-come all-served distributor, along the lines of the original, Makambo. At Makambo, suppliers uploaded font files, price information, and gif specimens -- all automated. Makambo returned 81% of retail price to suppliers. Was that too much to keep it in business? It's hard to say, as it was closed by Flashline (the parent company) during the dotcom bust, so that company could concentrate on its core business.

Alex, this could be your big opportunity...

Amazed that this link still works...

http://jyanet.com/cap/2001/0315ob0.shtml

Flashline/Makambo seemed to be a reasonably classy operation - when they shuttered their site in March 2001 they redirected customers and vendors to MyFonts.

At MyFonts suggestion?

Adam; thanks for the info. I'll definitely think about that 'statement of interest'. :)

Adam, pardon me while I get anal:

In the "Origins" section, first paragraph: you need an "and" or an "or" before "sent", here: "different channels: they accepted phone orders, offered postal delivery of floppy disks and CD-ROMs, sent font files to customers by e-mail."

Same section, third paragraph: in "decided to close down Makambo and redirected all their customers" it would be better to say "redirect" or "started redirecting".

A couple of places in that section you have "80-20%", which would be better without the "%"; in fact you have "50-50" further up.

Last paragraph of that section: in "cover the operational and development cost, and left some", "costs" is better.

Same paragraph: "It was still a deal that was way better than the industry standard, and has remained so to this day." Well, now that you're going to "50-50", that "has" has to go! :-)

In the "The things as they are" section, first paragraph: "in" or "with" instead of "into", here: "It was a wise choice for MyFonts not to get involved into extensive print activities"

Same paragraph, further down: "Today, it is no longer sufficient to have an online “presence”. It is necessary to put up some competition efforts in the online world." 1) A semicolon instead of that period would be nice; 2) "some competition efforts" sounds... Polish? ;-) Try "a competitive effort".

Immediately following: "Having just a sales platform is no longer sufficient, we need an effective platform for both sales and promotion." Here a semicolon is de rigueur.

Second paragraph: in "The visual fidelity of the online media has vastly improved", cut the "the".

Same paragraph: in "the online channels benefits much more", singular for "benefit" of course.

Third paragraph: in "So at least it is not unreasonable to assume that the online distributor will spend the extra money well." I don't really get that "at least"; you might just ax it.

Fifth paragraph: "better instructions and explanations to the users — this will automatically benefit all participating foundries." 1) "for user" instead of "to the user"; 2) the second part is phrased a bit like Eastern European military propaganda... Just replacing the "this" with a "which" should do it.

Sixth paragraph: in "The automatic WhatTheFont identification system backed by the WhatTheFont Forum where", you forgot the "is".

Eighth paragraph: in "We developed “More fonts like this”, introduced", say "the “More fonts like this” feature" instead.

Last paragraph: in "immediate font downloads are industry standard now", either hyphenate "industry-standard" or say "an industry standard".

Immediately following: in "and less and less distributors actively promote", since you can count distributors it should be "increasingly fewer".

In the "So, what now?" section, first paragraph: in "But the work is not finished, we have great plans.", that comma doesn't work; adding an "and" is probably best.

Same paragraph: "With our new design and editorial content, we have indicated the direction." is a bit stilted; maybe "shown our future plans" is good enough.

Last paragraph: in "some foundries that had the intention of signing up but “haven’t gotten around to doing it”, we have decided that they still have the chance to sign up with the old rate", 1) "have had the intention" is better; 2) instead of "they", say "foundries"; 3) "at the old rate" is better.

There are also some small things but nobody will notice those. :-)

hhp

> Alex, this could be your big opportunity...

I hear ya, Nick.

>At MyFonts suggestion?

Here's what I wrote back then... http://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/news.aspx?NID=1881

Certainly seems like there was some collaboration - creating a landing page would have required both sides involvement. I wouldn't be surprised if the foundries signed up with Makambo asked for this too.

Wonderful news Chris!!!

Hrant,

I have decided to stick with the asyndeton here and there but have incorporated many of your suggestions — thank you!

Cheers,
Adam

I wouldn’t be surprised if the foundries signed up with Makambo asked for this too.

I didn't, but it was a brilliant idea, whoever came up with it.

Congratulations, Chris.

Thanks, everyone!

ChrisL

Yes, Congrats Chris! If you had published with us, we wouldn't be having this thread bein' we publish and take 50%, less if the fonts ain't done. As Epsilicon put it, 'we are not doing a good job [of] controlling our operational expenses and th[o]se expenses are not applied most effeciently.' Furthermore, at 50% for 20 years now, we only ever screw it up, go on to the next design/sale/royalty cycle, and try to do better.

Cheers!

I love this emerging transparency. Just a few years ago when you asked somebody by private email how much royalties the font house they'd signed up with paid them, they'd say: "Please call me, I'd rather not tell you in writing."

hhp

This topic has been opaque with us forever, Hrant.

Cheers!

I don't get it. Do you mean your previous post was leg-pulling?

hhp

Sorry for seeming petulant earlier.

I contacted MyFonts for a prospectus years ago and truly haven't yet got around to completing the application. The text of the document certainly gave the impression of requiring the foundry applicant to have product ready to sell immediately (and being a perfectionist I never feel like anything is quite ready to let go to the public), but I am assured by comments in this thread that that is not the case, so there is nothing to hold me back now.

To paraphrase Matthew Carter, who was paraphrasing someone else, "Typefaces are never finished, only abandoned."

and some are recklessly abandoned :-)

ChrisL

"Yes, Congrats Chris! If you had published with us, we wouldn’t be having this thread..."

Hmmmm,

ChrisL

I think Carter was paraphrasing French poet Paul Valery: "A poem is never finished, only abandoned." Of course to typophiles, a typeface is as emotionally moving as a poem!

A poem by any other name...

ChrisL

( I so desperately wish I could, um, cowercringequail more effectually into these parentheses—but...as-i-am-so-very-not-triumphant...that—[SORRY!SORRY!]—I should be so mettleirksome to resurrect a topic left to the dust, um, a fair ways ago...but— )

...Mister Nick Sherman sir?—I sent an e-mail to foundry@myfonts.com expressing interest in selling a few fonts through MyFonts ’roundabouts a month ago...never received a reply—& lost heart the day that that 50% sidled in...butbutbut as soon as I read about the extension of the old percentage 'till the end of March, I sent another missive to foundry@myfonts—

Because I dread that this epistle will tumble into some binary purgatory [just like her hapless forerunner]...could you perhapsmaybe?—alert me here if you've still not received anything from me...? [& I = 'interrorobang']

...erkf.

Alleluia! A reply! (Kindly disregard my halfwitted perambulations that do precede, Collective Anonymous. Ain't nothin' to see 'ere, move 'long.)

Her Ladyships note in a bottle succeeds where the e-world fails :-)

Welcome to the Island of Typophile. :-)

ChrisL

Some things actually do come to pass... eventually ;-)

http://typophile.com/node/58191

ChrisL