On the Sell tab there is an announcement that Zazzle is beta testing digital downloads on some specific card and invitation types. There is a market for it and a customer demand for it, as documented in these forums.
This is great news for people who use all their own artwork and want to sell this way. However if, like me, you bought some POD-approved clip art from Creative Fabrica and/or Design Bundles (both of which sell clip art you can put on POD products unchanged for only a slight markup from their regular prices) that clip art comes with one huge caveat. You are absolutely not allowed to sell a digital download. That is strictly forbidden. You can put that clip art on any POD product but the customer may only buy it on a physical product. Selling it digitally is off the table. If you bought clip art, check your license and you’ll see. There is not one single clip art sales company that allows digital resale- products only.
Ok, cool. I’ll just opt out. And that’s do-able. Zazzle says you opt out by disabling Design Migration in the Advanced Settings of your store and do it by Oct 31. But I like design migration. 😟 It’s how my designs get auto-migrated to new iterations of products. But if I leave it on, I auto-break the license terms of the clip art I bought even if I only put it on a few invites/cards.
A questions for the mods:
If I opt out of design migration (I just did, I had to) can I opt back into it after this has auto-migration has happened? I’d like to have design migration enabled but doing so before auto migration will break the terms of licenses I bought. If yes, when can I opt back in without having my products auto migrated to digital download? Nov 1? Or later?
I’m curious where you’re getting this information. I’ve seen several references to digital downloads on the forums, but haven’t received any emails or notices. Maybe it’s something only a few select designers have been opted into? Just wondering if I missed something.
After today’s website update there will be a new section specifically for the digital migration. The section will contain a light orange background so it’ll be easy to find. This will allow you to handle physical product migration and digital migration separately.
Thank you. I saw that in the How It Works section but when I went to Store Settings>Advanced Settings it wasn’t there. It’s good to know this will soon be an option.
I am not averse to digital downloads. I just have to be able to do it on a one-by-one basis for any I decide on to make sure that any that I allow downloading for do not have any purchased clip art.
I think allowing us to pick and choose which products would be fantastic! I also like many, many designers have used clipart that won’t allow us to use this feature. But I have so many requests for digital downloads, I think it would be a great addition to Zazzle.
Is it fine for digital downloads for designs that were changed in some way? I don’t think I use anything from Creative Fabrica “as is”. I always add other bits and pieces to make my own design. Although I guess even that is down to interpretation (as to how much something has to be changed) - as I’m on a subscription over there, and if I ever cancelled it, I believe I would have to delete all my historic products if they used their designs without any changes. That’s why I change stuff, to cover myself in case I ever decide to let them (Creative Fabrica) go. But it equally applies here, as KC’s original post explained.
My guess, from reading the licenses of both Creative Fabrica and Design Bundles (I bought POD approved clip art from both) is that the customer must not be able to have the original design in digital form. So it must depend on the nature of the change. If the added bits and pieces are next to or behind the purchased clip art, the customer could excise the original clip art with a selection tool. But if the original clip art is partially obscured by added bits and pieces on top of it or if it is literally altered perhaps by Photoshop layer styles or a filter that changes more than the color (one of those painting filters that smudges the edges) then it might be a safer bet. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take, however.
Just an FYI for anybody reading this post: the separation of Enable Design Migration from Enable Digital Download has now gone live as Scott said it would. In the store settings under advanced you can now disable the digital download without having to also disable the design migration.
I read all three of them and tried to figure out the nitty-gritty, but I saw no explanation of the percentages in the examples they showed. Are they percentages of the total of the printed price and royalty? Of just the printed price with the royalty then being applied? It would have helped had they given a real life example. For instance:
A poster might have a printed price of $14.80 and you have a royalty of 10%. Is the final price to a customer 94.25% of $14.80 ($13.95) plus 10% of the new price with a total of $15.95? Or is it $14.80 plus $1.48 times .9425, the result being a final cost of $15.34, which means, of course, that our royalty has been reduced?
It says customers get a personal use license to edit your designs.
People already take our designs and use them for their own purposes. There is nothing to stop someone from taking your art through personal use license and doing whatever they want with it.
I think recent events have clearly highlighted this issue
What’s to stop those thieves we all know about from downloading one of our popular designs and then using that design over and over again to sell on pillows, t-shirts, clocks, etc. on Amazon?
I just went to opt out and discovered it’s an opt-in situation, which is, of course, the right way for Zazzle to have done it.
There is nothing to stop them and I assume it will happen. The way I plan to approach this (on a one-by-one basis, having disabled auto migration) is to behave as though I was selling POD approved clipart on CreativeFabrica/DesignBundles. Designers who have opted in on those websites have an upcharge on their clipart for it to be allowed on POD unchanged. This upcharge makes it worth it to them to let go of their clipart and know it can appear everywhere from Amazon to here (though not in digital form). The license won’t allow that of course but it will still happen if I opt in for selected products. I’ll only allow it for designs where I figure the royalty will be sufficient compensation for seeing it in other places.
Other POD’s aside, a frequent worry for card designers is somebody buying a single card, scanning it and making their own card set printed by themselves or taken to a printer. That now absolutely WILL happen so the price must be high enough to compensate for people buying the digital download and printing it out themselves. I made some very simplistic monkey, elephant and giraffe vectors that I’d be willing to part with for baby shower invites. They took me maybe half an hour total to make in Adobe Illustrator. I also have a giraffe that took me hours because it’s made with all sorts of subtle gradients and I’m not so sure I’m ready to let it go. And then there’s public domain vintage. Letting it go is no problem at all.
It will be interesting to see where this goes. I see many possibilities. Purchased clip art is ubiquitous in the Invitations department. So now what happens?
The people who used purchased clip art have altered or obscured it to the degree that digital download no longer violates the license. They are good to go.
The people who used purchased clip art as-is decide to take the gamble, violate their license, and the artists of CreativeFabrica/DesignBundles come after them. I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen. It’s a worst case scenario.
The digital download market tilts in favor of those who use their own art or public domain vintage. It only makes sense to lose control of your own art if you sell it to many customers, racking up the royalties.
The digital download market tilts in favor of those who use neither purchased clip art nor their own art but instead have an exquisite design sense that lets them design desirable invites/cards with only the most minimal tools, possibly just those in the design tool itself. There are a small handful of designers who already sell well by doing this, or adding in something made in Illustrator in 5 minutes. I predict they will dominate this market at least at first.
Thanks for the heads up, I just disabled digital downloads on all of my stores as well. It just isn’t worth the risk at this moment. I will consider a new store with just my own graphics at some point.
You sound like me. I do go to the main page but very seldom.