One Post for Designers

Kaylie’s Digital World
An Open Letter to Digital Scrapbooking Kit Designers: « Kaylie’s Digital World

The above is Kaylie's blog post concerning her feelings and efforts in being true to her fledgling Scrap for Others business, and to the hundreds of TOUs out there. I thought I might comment on it, but realised that I have more power in simply linking to it from my own blog and commenting below.

Kaylie has said some things which many who have read my own blog here of late may recognise as frustrations I am finding myself. Like one of her commenters, I too am trying to form a business to make a little pin-money out there. It's a creative business, and certainly not one which is going to see me making any type of monies from it, getting rich, or presenting my ideas to the Dragon's Den (sorry, U.K. Reality TV reference). As such, I am learning this whole business thing slowly - but surely. As an aside, the accounting business is going to frighten the pants off me.

For me, I too suffer under the onslaught of trying to work out and maintain all the TOUs. As a pure consumer on personal usage, I must admit I simply filed the TOUs with the products I purchased, and very rarely read them. Why would I need to?

But now I do - every single one, and I'm confused and frustrated often, because I have spent literally hours doing this, sourcing some great and very generous designers for my scrap for hire minor business - but all this reading, researching, trying to literally understand non-specific terms and minefields of ifs, nos and buts - takes me out of actually doing any scrap for hire business. I've got some friends' orders for some Christmas cards to start designing up for, but I've spent the last two days trying to locate Christmas designs which can be used - and finding the TOUs has been near on impossible. I've failed miserably so far, but not one to give up on a challenge, I will not give up.

The Scrap for Others business is a new domain out there, and we are making up the business practices as we go. However, every single person I am aware of forming this new type of business is doing so as a strongly supportive business for the digital design industry out there. We care considerably about piracy, purchasing the correct goods, crediting designs and upholding Terms of Usage contracts.  It would be so much simpler to do this in the traditional paper-based form where you simply go and purchase consumable products where the designers do not have a worry about how you might use them (and looking at my local LSS craft store just lately - phenomenally it might even be a little cheaper to put together some good layouts nowadays - but that's perhaps another subject for the blog) - but we are all fully supportive of the digital design industry and morally we very much wish to support designers with their terms of usage, because we, of all people do appreciate the effort in putting this all together. But currently for all of us the business of scrap for hire has pretty much turned into one of a research analyst position.

Kaylie is not alone. The digital scrap for others business is growing exponentially, and we are a very supportive and enthused business group of women. I thoroughly understand those designers who don't wish to pursue this audience for their own designs, but even those could help with providing TOUs which are understandable and accessible. Many are not accessible until you actually download the products, and for me - accessibility is key. You've read previously of the costly mistake I made spending my last monthly allowance on a designer's goods which turned out to hold a S4O unfriendly TOU. That was an informational and access mistake. I did look all over the store and for the designer's blog or anywhere else to ensure my information was correct as to this particular designer's S4O friendliness, so I in no way blame the designer for my errors - other than the fact that the TOU appears to only be accessible via downloading a product.

One designer lately suggested in this type of discussion that we didn't understand how long it took to write or upload each TOU, into new products, old products and onsite of stores. No, I don't understand. That's not my business, but - what I do understand is that my business supports and needs such accessible and understandable TOUs and in return, I will purchase those designs (when I can) which do have this. My business also needs marketing plans, a website, terms and contracts of agreement, invoices, even taxes if I get good enough. It requires paperwork just like that of the designer's and for that I can understand both sides.

Read Kaylie's blog if interested, and as this Scrap for Others market does grow, consider your own options here too. I'd suggest that there are certainly some good gains to be made from both sides of the coin, if we work together, and I'm really thankful that so many designers do consider this an interesting market to investigate and work within.

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Comments

[Katie the Scrapbook Lady]

Thanks for posting this Michelle! I will copy you on the comment I put on Kaylie's blog:

I love the idea of pdfs and I will change to using that format after reading this post - never even thought about it before. I do also post my terms right into my product description so there is no question before you purchase an item. In my own experience I have bought commercial use items only to find once I read the tou that I can't use them the way I intended. Designers also have to read through a lot of tou files and follow them carefully as well.

Thanks so much for the well written post. And as a sidenote I do have several commercial use ok products that are ok for scrap for hire projects. I have very few restrictions on these and many of them are tools that you can use in many different ways and over and over again.

Best of luck to you in your business!

[blushbutter]

fantastic discussion I myself don't buy anything unless I've read the terms of use on the item. I'm a S4O friendly designer on all my kits(no extra fee) I have to admit though some of my older products still need links to the TOU which is in the store accessible for all to read.
I think where the lines get blurred is that some S4O people have included easy pages and quickpages into their business and it's made me specifically a little cautious as that's not acceptable to me, so I have to be long winded in my TOU and include every concievable use of my images to try and cover the possibilities. I'm sorry about that, I do answer my emails though if anyone has questions on TOU. I think alot of us designers just want to cover ourselves if a top business like Hallmark wanted to use an image, we can then charge a commercial fee for that usage and not be kicking ourselves. I'm possibly not the best to give a reply on this but I thought I'd try and tackle it. I welcome you to read my TOU and if you have a specific paragraph you would like added please feel free to let me know :)
http://www.blushbutter.com/store/index.php?main_page=conditions

[Deb]

thanks for the link to Kaylaugh's blog, and your own thoughts - this is a complicated process for everyone involved, but be assured that some of us are trying to work it out :)