Hitchhiker's guide to printing one's scores (this time for real!)
Posted: 04 Oct 2022, 06:49
Dear all,
I have been publishing my own scores for almost four years but, so far, I have kept my distances from the printing and distribution side, due to how menacing it all looked to me. My experience as an engraver for publishing houses gave me the impression that you needed to have a print run of 400+ copies for each score to make it viable. After that you needed to store them, plus organise shipping and distribution worldwide. Knowing how impossibly expensive is shipping anything in from Italy (even within it), I simply abandoned the idea. Moreover, in Italy one would need to open a publishing house business (my engraving one wouldn’t suffice), then have a web store, add a system for electronic invoicing emission, and, finally, set up a way to handle returns. In short, too complicated for the volumes I was seeing.
Reading OCTO’s two excellent posts (here: viewtopic.php?f=13&p=10057#p10057 and here: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=482) I understood that, after all, there was a way (said with Mandalorian voice tone)!
Since I am now pretty serious in going to the bottom of this, I will write here a few questions & reflections about the process, hoping that someone with more knowledge or that simply has gone through it would agree to help me set this up. I have tried to contact OCTO directly via the private message feature of the forum (as he encourages us to do in the first article), but, so far, he has not opened the message.
POINT ONE: Hiring vs Selling
I am not sure I understand how this works. If one sets up a print-on-demand service, how does one offer scores for hire? I guess one prints them the first time and ship them to the first customer. Then, where do they send this back? To them or to the printer? If to them, the storing issue would come back; if to the printer, will they charge me for storing that?
POINT TWO: Channels for printing and distribution
This is what I had tried to contact OCTO about, but it seems that Halstan is a good starting point. I wonder how they handle renting, though. Has anyone here had any experience with them? How would you suggest one approached them?
I have about 30 scores in my catalogue so far and, to see how things go, I would prepare them one at a time. I have InDesign files for most of them. Will the printer give me specifications? The product I envision is a book with harder cover (300gsm?) and 9x12in paper with stitch binding (what Barenreiter, Henle, etc, do). That would work with the score, but then I would like to have parts inside as separate items, again, what we usually see in the professional world. How should I phrase this request so that it is crystal clear?
Now, which one to choose: Halstan seems to offer the hiring service but shipping must be handled “manually”, plus promotion etc… Lightining Source, instead, seems to lack in hiring, but directly connects you to the online shops worldwide, is that correct? Has anyone tried this? LS seems to be the poorer choice for binding in the way we are used for chamber music scores. Also, is 9x12 an accepted format? I use that for my scores. I can resize the PDF to Letter, similar proportion, but I’d rather scale up than scale down.
POINT THREE: Where is the industry going?
OCTO’s first article was back in 2019. Is this still the case that non-digital sheet will remain the dominant slice of the market? I understand the piracy point but:
a) now almost all big publishers offer digital as well (see Schott, for example)
b) when I was a student teachers were encouraging us to go to the Conservatory library to scan music, not to buy it. I still bought plenty of it if I could afford it, but that was the drill, and I guess still is. From my contacts in Eastern Europe, close to no musician has original scores, just copies.
I am also uploading my scores as EPUBs to Apple Books with DRM protection, but that is not really selling much.
POINT FOUR: Requirements
Are ISMN / ISBN a must? If so, why and how should one work towards obtaining them? I have once stumbled upon a website selling them, but they were quite expensive, so I’m not sure where to start with this.
PART FIVE: Pricing
Starting from my sell price for the digital copy, I would add printing & shipping cost for the final price, but how do you manage this on your website? Standard and Express shipping would have two different prices, as would different destinations. OCTO mentioned flat rate, but that’s very risky for products which have a generally low price.
Also, I see some publishers offering digital and physical scores at the same price, the only differencebeing shipping. I guess they do it to give the same value to both, but what do you think?
I use Gumroad for digital copies, where they also seem to handle physical products, but I have not yet looked into it. When I know more I will just update this part of the post.
I could create a webstore on my website but with all the VAT / shipping handling I would like to get access to some good tutorials about that before creating issues. Again, the electronic invoicing issue is a real pain, so I need to thread carefully there.
For webshop I could just use a wordpress.org blog-site, but is there anything else/better/suggested?
PART SIX: Promotion
OCTO suggests “internet forums, libraries, institutions (flyers), cooperation with Musicroom, di-Arezzo and similar.”
Internet forums: that’s not different from what I already do now. Checked.
Libraries & Institutions: should one make flyers and ship them? Any suggestion on this point?
Cooperation: how would this work in practice? Would also contacting sheet music shops count? E.g.: La Flute de Pan in Paris. What would be the pricing scheme for this? That is: if a score costs 20+shipping, what would the shop pay? Will the printer/distributor make a better price for shipping a bulk of scores to the same recipient?
I have a friend in Torino who owns a sheet music shop, I will ask him what’s the price scheme and report back.
Are there any pro-forma contracts to regulate this available? Or how would you structure one?
PART SEVEN: Shipping
For shipping: will the printer handle tracking?
If the order is from my website, it should be easy to add a tracking code to the order, but what if the order comes from an online shop, e.g. Musicroom?
I think that’s it for now.
I am sure I will edit this post many times with all the discoveries I make along the way, and with your suggestions.
If you think I should arrange this post differently, please let me know.
Thank you so much everyone for chiming in.
I have been publishing my own scores for almost four years but, so far, I have kept my distances from the printing and distribution side, due to how menacing it all looked to me. My experience as an engraver for publishing houses gave me the impression that you needed to have a print run of 400+ copies for each score to make it viable. After that you needed to store them, plus organise shipping and distribution worldwide. Knowing how impossibly expensive is shipping anything in from Italy (even within it), I simply abandoned the idea. Moreover, in Italy one would need to open a publishing house business (my engraving one wouldn’t suffice), then have a web store, add a system for electronic invoicing emission, and, finally, set up a way to handle returns. In short, too complicated for the volumes I was seeing.
Reading OCTO’s two excellent posts (here: viewtopic.php?f=13&p=10057#p10057 and here: viewtopic.php?f=13&t=482) I understood that, after all, there was a way (said with Mandalorian voice tone)!
Since I am now pretty serious in going to the bottom of this, I will write here a few questions & reflections about the process, hoping that someone with more knowledge or that simply has gone through it would agree to help me set this up. I have tried to contact OCTO directly via the private message feature of the forum (as he encourages us to do in the first article), but, so far, he has not opened the message.
POINT ONE: Hiring vs Selling
I am not sure I understand how this works. If one sets up a print-on-demand service, how does one offer scores for hire? I guess one prints them the first time and ship them to the first customer. Then, where do they send this back? To them or to the printer? If to them, the storing issue would come back; if to the printer, will they charge me for storing that?
POINT TWO: Channels for printing and distribution
This is what I had tried to contact OCTO about, but it seems that Halstan is a good starting point. I wonder how they handle renting, though. Has anyone here had any experience with them? How would you suggest one approached them?
I have about 30 scores in my catalogue so far and, to see how things go, I would prepare them one at a time. I have InDesign files for most of them. Will the printer give me specifications? The product I envision is a book with harder cover (300gsm?) and 9x12in paper with stitch binding (what Barenreiter, Henle, etc, do). That would work with the score, but then I would like to have parts inside as separate items, again, what we usually see in the professional world. How should I phrase this request so that it is crystal clear?
Now, which one to choose: Halstan seems to offer the hiring service but shipping must be handled “manually”, plus promotion etc… Lightining Source, instead, seems to lack in hiring, but directly connects you to the online shops worldwide, is that correct? Has anyone tried this? LS seems to be the poorer choice for binding in the way we are used for chamber music scores. Also, is 9x12 an accepted format? I use that for my scores. I can resize the PDF to Letter, similar proportion, but I’d rather scale up than scale down.
POINT THREE: Where is the industry going?
OCTO’s first article was back in 2019. Is this still the case that non-digital sheet will remain the dominant slice of the market? I understand the piracy point but:
a) now almost all big publishers offer digital as well (see Schott, for example)
b) when I was a student teachers were encouraging us to go to the Conservatory library to scan music, not to buy it. I still bought plenty of it if I could afford it, but that was the drill, and I guess still is. From my contacts in Eastern Europe, close to no musician has original scores, just copies.
I am also uploading my scores as EPUBs to Apple Books with DRM protection, but that is not really selling much.
POINT FOUR: Requirements
Are ISMN / ISBN a must? If so, why and how should one work towards obtaining them? I have once stumbled upon a website selling them, but they were quite expensive, so I’m not sure where to start with this.
PART FIVE: Pricing
Starting from my sell price for the digital copy, I would add printing & shipping cost for the final price, but how do you manage this on your website? Standard and Express shipping would have two different prices, as would different destinations. OCTO mentioned flat rate, but that’s very risky for products which have a generally low price.
Also, I see some publishers offering digital and physical scores at the same price, the only differencebeing shipping. I guess they do it to give the same value to both, but what do you think?
I use Gumroad for digital copies, where they also seem to handle physical products, but I have not yet looked into it. When I know more I will just update this part of the post.
I could create a webstore on my website but with all the VAT / shipping handling I would like to get access to some good tutorials about that before creating issues. Again, the electronic invoicing issue is a real pain, so I need to thread carefully there.
For webshop I could just use a wordpress.org blog-site, but is there anything else/better/suggested?
PART SIX: Promotion
OCTO suggests “internet forums, libraries, institutions (flyers), cooperation with Musicroom, di-Arezzo and similar.”
Internet forums: that’s not different from what I already do now. Checked.
Libraries & Institutions: should one make flyers and ship them? Any suggestion on this point?
Cooperation: how would this work in practice? Would also contacting sheet music shops count? E.g.: La Flute de Pan in Paris. What would be the pricing scheme for this? That is: if a score costs 20+shipping, what would the shop pay? Will the printer/distributor make a better price for shipping a bulk of scores to the same recipient?
I have a friend in Torino who owns a sheet music shop, I will ask him what’s the price scheme and report back.
Are there any pro-forma contracts to regulate this available? Or how would you structure one?
PART SEVEN: Shipping
For shipping: will the printer handle tracking?
If the order is from my website, it should be easy to add a tracking code to the order, but what if the order comes from an online shop, e.g. Musicroom?
I think that’s it for now.
I am sure I will edit this post many times with all the discoveries I make along the way, and with your suggestions.
If you think I should arrange this post differently, please let me know.
Thank you so much everyone for chiming in.