thank you for waiting.
It took much longer than I expected, but we finally released the Plink remix CD. I'm really happy with it. The remixes are very good, the mastering sounds great, the package is simple but pretty, and the Wordclock limited release strategy is going to work.
The costs to put this CD together were dramatically lower than others that we've done, and most importantly we're able to do a small initial release. That means I don't have to fill up my basement with unsold CDs, and it doesn't hurt financially if we only sell a few copies. It also means that if the CD sells well, our initial sales finance a big second pressing. It's an engine that runs on its own exhaust!
Of course nothing's free. The hidden cost of the limited-release strategy is time. Here's all the things I did to produce this CD.
- Create CD art. This took forever because I'm a lousy designer.
- Burn screens and silkscreen the 2-color cover onto 200 arigato paks. Leave all 200 on the floor overnight to dry. Wake up early to collect, before 1-year-old destroys them.
- Silkscreen the Wordclock logo on the inside of the package. Again, 200 times. Again, dry overnight.
- Silkscreen a hundred or so white CD-R's and let dry overnight.
- Burn CDs. This I did while doing other stuff on the computer.
- Print barcode stickers. I don't know if we'll actually end up using these or not.
- Fold arigato paks (11 folds each) and insert CDs.
- Design and implement CD info page. Write copy for each track.
- I'll also need to design and burn review copies, if we decide to send any out. (reviews are sort of useless.) I'm not wasting the nice handmade packages on reviewers; they'll get sleeves with stickers.
Each of these tasks took a late night or two. That's a lot of nights. But still, empowering. I'm much less afraid of putting out new releases now.
(I also wrote the Wordclock store in a couple of nights last week. I love you, PHP.)