Publish your Patterns for Profit!

The last class I took at the Chicago Quilt Festival was Publish your Patterns for Profit also taught by Morna McEver Golletz, publisher and editor of Professional Quilter Magazine.

If you're interested in maybe publishing patterns in the future, read on.

This, too, was an awesome class with an overload of information. It was geared mostly towards people who have written a pattern and are looking for ways to increase their profit. I don't necessarily fall into this category, but I felt it gave me a head start so I'm not swimming in circles before I do it correctly.

One of the first major points discussed was how to grab your prospective buyer's attention. This can be done with some sort of Bonus! offer, maybe offer a hot tip for a the project. This almost always grabs the buyer's attention.

Some things that should always be included on a pattern cover:
-UPC
-Photograph of sample project
-Project Title
-Project Number or Code
-Your company name and contact information

The UPC doesn't have to be on the cover when you first start to sell items, but as your pattern business starts to grow, you will need to purchase them. You can get them at a discounted price at a place like upcexpress.com, but the part of the code that signifies who owns the UPC was sold to UPCExpress, so it doesn't point to your own company. If you want the part of the code to signify your company and not someone else, go to uc-council.org

One more thing to consider for your pattern cover is your future patterns. Do you want to create some sort of template now to use on future patterns? This will help streamline your patterns. If your logo, photograph, title, code and UPC information are always in the same spot and always done in the same font, there is no question about whether or not the same company did the different patterns. If someone buys one pattern of yours and likes it, they'll be more likely to buy another. If they can easily identify you buy your cover, it's even more likely that you'll get a repeat customer.

An interesting thing I learned in the class is that it takes $22,000 to self publish a book. Wow!

Some good resources that were given in the class were:
-uc-council.org
-Publish Your Patterns! by Nancy Restuccia. This book is apparently known in the Quilting Pattern World as the Green Book or The Bible.
-422 Tax Deductions for Business and Self-Employed Individuals by Bernard Kamaroff, CPA.
-The Creative Woman's Getting-it-all-Together-at-Home Handbook by Jean Ray Laury.
-The Basic Guide to Pricing Your Craftwork by James Dillehay.

Jason, if you read this blog post, replace the section above titled "Some good resources that were given in the class were" with "Books Jessica would like as gifts" and re-read.

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