Printing cards and postcards

my brother and i have a booth at a local weekly faire this summer. he will be selling his

handblown glass, and i will be selling my photography. i will have a few larger matted

prints available. but i feel that people will be more inclined to spend $20 than $150. My

plan is to sell postcards/cards in packs of 10. My questions for you are as follows

 

1) Should i do folding cards or postcards? If i do folding cards there is an extra cost of

the envelope. If i do the postcard, where can i get the print on the front side and then

the standard postcard info (place stamp here, to, from) printed at.

 

2) How much do i charge for 10 cards? or should i do 5?

 

I have more questions i just can't think of them right now. but i'll post them when i get

them.

I have sold folding/note cards on occasion, but not postcards. I think folding/note cards would be a "classier" addition to your prints than postcards. I printed the cards myself with an Epson inkjet on folded half sheets of 8.5 x 11 Heavyweight Matte Paper. There are envelopes (I forget the number) that are made for "quarter fold" cards. The only negative thing about this size card is that you have to crop the image lengthwise some to fit on the 4.25" x 5.5" card front. I printed the back side also with the card's description, e.g. "Wild Rose", and my name, contact info, copyright, etc. Otherwise the cards were blank.

 

I had calculated that I had less than $1.00 in a card, including envelope and protective bag/box. Perhaps have a couple of sizes of packs of cards, such as 5 or 6 and 10 or 12, but have individual cards for sale, too. You can get clear "bags" for individual cards and clear boxes for packs of cards from "ClearBags" in a variety of sizes.

 

http://clearbags.com/

I have made note cards as Alan describes, and though I give them to friends or just use them myself, I have given the possibility of sales some thought. I crop the image to 3 1/2" by 5" at 360ppi, make the card 5" by 7 1/2", and print on a half sheet of Epson "Premium Presentation Paper Matte Double-Sided" S041568, then trim to 5 1/2" by 8" after printing. This gives a nice white interior to the card, and a 1/4" border all around. I print on an SP870, so the inks are not archival. Also, the optical brighteners in this paper go away over time, causing the paper to yellow a bit when exposed to air and light. These are the reasons I haven't wanted to market them so far. You can find a better paper for this, I am quite sure. You need A2 envelopes, 4 3/8" by 5 3/4", which are widely available (even WalMart has them). Here is an example.<div></div>

OOPS! I forgot to convert from AdobeRGB to sRGB for the web. It is prettier than this! But you get the idea.

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i was planning on outsourcing because i don't have a printer. if i had one i would be well on my way. does anyone have any suggestions.

one more thing. did you print on glossy or matte? could i just get some 8x10's printed out with the file similar to above and cut it myself?

Ben has some good suggestions there. The double sided paper, which I have used also, is nicer because both sides are white. The Heavy Weight Matte has an off white back side (which ends up being the inside of your card). (I think both of us mentioned using Matte paper.)

 

You could get an Epson Stylus Photo R280 for under $100, an Epson 1400 for under $300, or one of Canon's or HP's similarly priced printers and make nice looking cards with them. The inks these printers use are dye not pigment so images aren't archival, but for cards, I think they work just fine. Quality otherwise may not be that of more expensive printers and the ink economy isn't the greatest, but you can make a lot of small cards with a set of inks.

I have been selling a few folded note/postcards in a local cafe. When folded the

image is on one side with a 3/8 inch border and a discrete caption in the border,

where applicable. I use a reasonable quality gloss photo paper as I found this sells

better than matte. The downside of this is that people can't write a message on the

slippery inner side; so I paste in a piece of writing paper.

 

The reverse outer side contains a small advert for the cafe plus any additional

information about the print. The cards plus an envelope are inserted into a

cellophane sleeve and priced at $3 each.

 

If you aren't printing them yourself it might get expensive unless you go for larger

quantities of litho printed cards, but I think this does reduce the quality and calls

for a little upfront investment.

 

I also sell a few framed prints there. $30 for 10 x 8 ins and $40 for 16 x 12 ins.

Higher prices don't sell, so I reckon it is better to sell several cheaper prints than

not to sell a dearer one.

 

This area is mostly holiday homes now; they willingly pay $1m for a house plus 4

wheel drive vehicle and speedboat but complain about the little expenses.