Man, I don't know how people play these things. You gotta contort your hand all over, and the strings
still buzz anyway! It's maddening! But I'm doing my ten minute exercises, maybe I'm even developing some skills. On the other hand, without a teacher, it's more likely I'm just developing really bad habits.
Got a calendar program today with an alarm feature, so I rigged up my daily schedule as a series of alarms. Should be fun to experience.
I will posit here what I said on the forums, see what you think:
I have signed up to have discs printed by www.discmakers.com (self-service option, it's pretty cool if you have some CDs you want to make yourself!), which will then be shipped out by Plimus (my new order processing company). Here are the options I have, and what they cost me:
- DVD case $7.44+shipping - Just like before (but with nicer printing quality! They look good), but with no manual inside. The big problem I have with this is that the sample I got has an extremely weak center stud holding the CD in. The CD arrived loose in the case (with lots of little scratches on it, though it worked fine), and I quickly discovered why - I could put it back on the stud and shake it quickly once, and it would pop right off. I was not happy and told them so, we'll see if they have a reply to that. It wasn't broken or anything, just a really bad design.
- Jewel Case $8.24+shipping - Like the old hamumu days (with nicer printing, again!). Manual, tray card, color CD, the works. Very pretty, and very pricey. I have not seen a sample, but I can't imagine it has the looseness problem the DVD case does. I've never seen anything like that before!
- Flexi-plastic $6.69+shipping - The cheapest option, and I think maybe kinda cool. Just a "semi-clear flexible plastic case" with the color CD inside. No cover art, no manual, just the disc looking pretty.
- Paper sleeve $6.49+shipping - Only 20 cents cheaper than the flexiplastic. It does have one advantage though, see below. Oh, and I'm sure it would have the lowest shipping cost.
All those costs are based on getting batches of 100 done at Discmakers and stored at Plimus (which adds $4 packaging+handling to ship each one). In addition, if I store more than a 3-month supply at Plimus, they will charge me $1 per cubic foot per month to store the excess. So the larger size options will end up costing me money in that way, but probably not much. Even DVD cases, you can fit about 30 in a cubic foot, so even if I sold zero of them, it'd cost about $3 a month to store 100 (of course, that's 100 PER game... but on the other hand, if I was gonna sell zero, I wouldn't bother with the whole thing!).
So I will of course charge for them based on the cost... I want to make roughly the same profit on a CD sale as on a download, so that it's all your business whether you want one or the other. So it'd cost maybe $8-$10 total (I think Plimus automatically adds the true shipping cost, so I'd charge just the rest of the cost).
You can look at the various container options
here if you're interested.
I just don't know!
