Licensing… Oh, My…
Taking A Day Or Two Away From the Novel…
I will be back on Monday talking about my regular routine, but for today and tomorrow I don’t want to have to push the book into a small place and time as I have been doing. I want to give it more time. So going to get a ton of workshop and business stuff done first, then focus on the run to the end of the book.
But in the mean time, licensing…
It has now been suggested that we all wear face masks when going out. Now that “suggestion” from medical folks doesn’t mean we should all go out and buy medical masks. Nope. We leave those masks for the brave folks in the hospitals. In fact, we all need to go the other way and use cloth masks.
And in that other direction lies an interesting concept in licensing.
You see, this kind of directive will turn this culture to a place where wearing masks, even after the virus is gone, will be acceptable. I remember clearly in the month or more after St. Helens blew and we got buried by ash at the University of Idaho and WSU that everyone wore masks.
Except in banks. The banks had signs asking us to lower our masks when entering.
I don’t remember when I stopped wearing the few I had made out of bandanas, but it was months and month.
But now masks will be world wide. And thus a licensing opportunity for us writers to promote our work.
Put images of your characters or art on your mask. Easy as printing a t-shirt.
Not saying you should go out and try to make money off this awful situation we all find ourselves in. But masks are going to be a part of this, so why not use it to promote your work some?
Stores will do this. Restaurants. Sports teams. Why not writers?
I told Kris today that my theory is when Allegent Stadium opens here for the first game with the Raiders in August, everyone entering will be handed a mask, more than likely black. Won’t that be a sight?
So anyhow, no one will make a killing off of masks, nor should they. But this is an example of when you are keeping your mind open to licensing your work, things come to you in the strangest ways.
Be safe and wear a mask.
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Tomorrow I am uncertain who will take the lead in the great Cheeps vs Gavin battle to promote the cat bundle. Kris is keeping track of the battle on Facebook. But my opinion, everyone wins if they grab this story bundle. A lot of great reading for a very low price.
Get it at StoryBundle.com/cats and follow the cat battle on Facebook.
7 Comments
Leigh Kimmel
I’d say treat logo masks as advertising — every person wearing one is a walking billboard for your book, webcomic, manga, or whatever work of storytelling. Don’t see them as a profit center at all — sell them at cost or maybe even less if you can afford it, and the cost of having them made goes into your advertising budget alongside your ad campaigns, etc.
dwsmith
Yeah, what I was thinking. More like give-aways. But either way, great fun spot in this strange and ugly world at the moment.
Mike
So funny, I was thinking about how masks will almost certainly become fashion items, similar to how they are at some rave / concert scenes (and I think possibly in some of the places that wearing them is more common).
Didn’t make the leap to licensing, though—don’t have much art or branding yet but a very cool idea and another reminder how many opportunities there are out there.
Leigh Kimmel
I’m particularly aware of the licensing angle because I have a business selling at anime conventions, and one of our lines of product is emoji masks. Cotton nose-and-mouth masks with an emoji or other cute symbol on them. Most of them are generic, but every now and then there’ll be a seller with designs that are clearly copyrighted. I steer clear of those.
dwsmith
You mean copyrighted by someone else and you believe the seller does not have the license? Is that what you mean? Or didn’t get them from a licensed distributor?
How would you know? Did you ask the seller?
MJ Silversmith
Love the branding concept. Also, got the cat bundle the first day I got the newsletter from storybundle. Cat lady here, ha. Website is looking good. I’m still figuring out how to go back to your previous post. I realize there’s a “Recent Posts” section on the far right bottom, but it only shows a half dozen posts. I usually catch up on your blog in big batches. I think that means I need to use the Archive dropdown and select a month?
It’s funny how you get used to certain ways of doing things on a site and then have to adapt, whereas if someone were coming here for the first time they wouldn’t know any differently. Sort of like making masks the new normal – anyone born now may treat masks as just a thing we do.
This is a great look for the site. Clean. Love the header and all the white space. When I click the triple bar at top left next to Home, I get an error message that says “No widgets found in the sidebar alt!”
dwsmith
There’s a triple bar? I’ll figure that out. Thanks! And thanks for the kind comments. Appreciated!