Yes Don, thanks. I know HOPC and I've been considering that as an option. It's the safest for now, although less profitable I guess. (Provided that they'll be interested).
I know the guys behind HOPC - I had dinner with Alex Pandrea Thursday night, in fact.
While you might make a little bit less going through them, they remove 100% of the hassle involved in running a Kickstarter project. No shipping to deal with, no promotions, no reward tiers - just your deck on sale.
Contact Russ Kercheval over at Circle City Cards, Emmanuel Jose (creator of the Curator deck, known here as "Emmanuel") or Randy Butterfield from Midnight Card Company and ask them what their experiences were like. They all produced decks through HOPC and let them handle all the distribution.
It's simple - HOPC vets your art. If they like it, they offer to make it for you. When it sells, after they recoup the expenses to make the deck, they give you a share of the profits on the deck. You also have the option to have your deck be an unlimited edition - they'll continue reprinting it for as long as there's a demand for it, should you wish to do so. Furthermore, you get to keep rights to all the artwork, leaving you free to create whatever merchandise based on it that you desire. All HOPC retains is the rights to make your deck and the uncuts. Finally, when the last of the cards are nearly gone and the demand for them appears to have eased off, either party may decide that you're finished and no more printings will be made. I believe it's one year after the final print run is created that the deck and uncut rights revert back to you, the designer.
It's worth checking out, definitely.
