Not only did my mom have the honor to be the first one receiving a print of my book ( on her 70th birthday), she also became the first person receiving some sweet Hypersensitivosaurus merch, for Mother's Day.
To be more precise, this mug was a single print, that she collected in a store near her, yesterday afernoon ( on Monday, the day after 'Mom'day ). I had informed her about this surprise, on Mother's Day.
Yesterday afternoon, she shared the above selfie ( without the glasses ) with me and, later, with my siblings and I, on Whatsapp.
Moederdag verrassing!
( Mother's day surprise! )
She also sent me the following text:
Wat een leuke verrassing!! Veel dank daarvoor xx
( What a nice surprise! Lots of thanks xx )
De beker drinkt lekker, in tegenstelling tot bv de Paddington bekers
( the cup is nice to drink from, contrary to, e.g., the Paddington mugs )
FYI: I think she got, or bought, a bunch of 'ugly' Paddington mugs, decades ago, by saving stamps on coffee wrappings.
Anyhow, she now has this sweet Hypersensitivosaurus and Cold Turkey collector's item, with the illustration that can be found on the cover of my book, 'wrapped' around it.
I think it looks pretty cool
if I may say so as the person who designed it ;<)
Meanwhile, I am having an internal conversation going on - with no final verdict in sight - on whether I should focus much more on merch or not.
It kind of sucks that, as creatives, it seems like we should be jacks ( or jills ) of all trades, these days, and that we're hardly being awarded for our energy.
As mentioned above, I feel my merch looks cool and I sense that some people might actually like it more than the book itself, but it's hard to make any profit on merch.
In all honesty, it seems that it will mainly go to the print on demand company that I would outsource it to and I already feel that the minimum prices they set ( that would give me a measly amount of money ) are too high.
The same goes for when I'd publish my book on Amazon ( another thing I haven't decided on yet ). Too much of the money would go to Amazon and I'm not sure whether I grant them that. Not that I expect this to be a bestseller but still...
It seems like I will need some more time to figure all of this out.
Is it really worth the energy or should I, perhaps, just continue with my writing and illustrating and focus on printing the book in A5 and selling individual, signed copies to those who are genuinely interested and willing to actually pay me some money?
Whatever I decide on, it's nice to know that my mom will be drinking her tea from this mug, for the unforseeable future :<)
TO BE CONVINUED...
And if you wondered about my mom's fancy glasses, I did a (MS)Paint job there, as I know she likes her privacy
