Unbelievable... He should be banned from the site for admitting to stealing in my opinion. Obviously he can just make another account, but this absurd. I feel like I need to start watermarking all my art, but that is not necessarily the best choice either for promotion or showcasing the products in the best way. I just had to issue a DCMA to have my e-book removed from a site where another person was offering it as the author. And I'm just a little barely seen artist/designer. It feels like the digital/internet attitude of "if I can get it for free it's mine" is running rampant.
Thank you Leah. I offer it for free as a thank you for signing up for my newsletter, so I am not sure if you would want to link it like that, but, if you still wanted to, I can send you the mockup image I use as well as the direct link to the squeeze page for the signup form. You can message me here if you want.
I don't have a dog in this race as I don't publish much in the way of stationery, but I am against Zazzle offering digital downloads.
I spent many years in a home-remodeling business. There are specialists and there are jacks-of-all-trades. And there's a saying "jack of all trades, master of none". Zazzle prints physical products (and does it well in my experience) with a heavy emphasis on customizing which no other POD I've looked into can do - letting the end-customer actually edit/customize the design. Digital downloads are a whole 'nother direction that would take focus away from their main business model of custom printing and there's enough there to be fixed/improved before venturing out into a whole different line of business. I don't want to see Zazzle become a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. The introduction of the Create tool for making downloadable images for use on social media complicated things enough. Does Zazzle want to be a printer or a stationer or a stock image site or something like Canva or all of the above? Trying to be all things to all people usually ends with not doing anything well.
That said, on to the other aspect.
People have mentioned $10-15 for a digital download and that while it wouldn't be much after Zazzle took a share, it would still be better than nothing. But would you really want to sell-out that cheaply? Once someone has a high-quality digital copy of your design, they can put it on ANYTHING . 25, 50, 200 invitations, t-shirts, signs, mugs, favors, anything. Here or uploaded to any other print service online or locally brick & mortar. It wouldn't matter what was written in the Terms of Use fine print as people are already OK with stealing images; if they paid for a download they would feel entitled to use it any way they wanted as often as they wanted and like, who would ever know if I violate those terms (if they even read them anyway). Digital download is giving customers carte blanche with your design.
There's another thread here somewhere where a designer had someone ask them if they could buy a digital copy of their design for a pretty paltry sum + some shout-outs and the responses where, no, that's not near enough, $300-400 were suggested. Why would one want to give away a "digital download" for less? Even if you were willing to settle for as little as say $30, it would probably have to sell for around $50 so Zazzle could take a cut and still give you the $30. And I believe Nelda is right - people aren't going to be willing to pay that much so they'll steal it anyway. I don't think they'd pay even the $10-15 when they could just grab it for free and who would ever know?
I don't think that giving your work away for peanuts because "it's better than nothing" is logical. Instead of introducing digital downloads I'd rather see Zazzle put that time & effort instead to developing anti-theft measures for their existing business model.
I currently sell digital invites and cards for $10-20. My share is around 80%, and of course I meant that in case it's implemented on Zazzle designer's royalty must be much higher than 14.9%, I think a good 50-60% is a minimum. Also, my digital cards can be purchased only after customization as PNG or flatten PDF so further reselling seems to be problematic as text often overlaps the artwork. I also only use fonts licensed for end customer.
==Once someone has a high-quality digital copy of your design, they can put it on ANYTHING . 25, 50, 200 invitations, t-shirts, signs, mugs, favors, anything.==
They only get a 5x7 digital INVITE, not an artwork. That means it's a PNG where text is put over an artwork in a nice way. Cutting out the artwork from an invite would require special effort and even then it would be too small to put it on t-shirts or "anything". Mugs maybe but who wants to do that.
For example, I have this Halloween invite on Zazzle:
I also sell elsewhere as a digital invite:
Someone may need it printed, someone may only need its mobile version.
As you can see, cutting out the artwork would be somewhat problematic but yes it can be done, the only question is what are the odds that someone would put effort into that only to find out that it is still too low res for printing on t-shirts and alike.
Of course implementing something similar on Zazzle can't be super easy but comparing to the Create tool already implemented (and I hope functioning), I don't think it would be super difficult either. And of course I agree with those who say that it should be an opt-in (a digital invite only exists on Zazzle if the designer of a printed invite (or card) chooses to create it). And it would require some different ToS maybe (regarding fonts, licensed artwork etc). And still, after all is done, for Z it would be just another stream of money because digital invites (or cards) don't require any production, shipping etc. Find an invite that has a digital version, customize using Template Fields, add to cart, pay, download. And the designers who currently simply lose sales could get a few bucks from customers who are not going to buy printed invites anyway.
When I wrote my post I was not talking about people wanting to steal the naked artwork w/ no text for whatever purposes. reselling it or otherwise. That actually had never even occurred to me and is an issue of itself. I was thinking strictly of people being able to use their customized digital invite image on anything they want as many time as they want. From an unlimited number of paper invites to mugs, pillows, ornaments, framed prints... anything that they might want as a keepsake of their wedding - they are now free to have a copy of their actual invite printed on it because they now have a nice digital file with no way of enforcing whatever Terms of Use came with it.
Flattening the image doesn't achieve anything because ... think about how the process works ...
The customer uses the provided template fields and/or the Design Tool to personalize the text exactly how they want it. Then they add to cart and buy whatever item. What's to stop them from leaving the template fields blank or going into the Design Tool and deleting them so the end design is nothing but the naked art which they can now buy as a digital file instead of on a physical product? Heck, you don't even have to buy that, you can steal that too, as I have done here for example purposes:
www.colscreations.com/
ScreenShots/
WittyBettyHalloween.png
The above is not a screenshot (that's just the directory I dumped it in) and I purposefully broke the URL up so it's not a clickable link, but put it together and you'll find a 2.5MB .png of your "naked art" at 1463 x 2028. (I'll delete it after you've seen this post.) Now let's say I bought the above as a digital download. What's to stop me from Photoshopping it any way I want to then printing and/or sharing it? Terms of Use that can't be enforced because who would ever know if the buyer is violating them?
Thieves can already grab your design, naked or customized, with or without buying a single print to reproduce themselves. Voluntarily providing digital downloads just makes it easier for them. Are the sales you'd make from honest folk worth that?
