Hi All,

Well, we are just about finished tweaking the code on our new e-commerce store for GOB Retail and we'll begin promoting it shortly. You can find the store at:
http://www.guildofblades.com/gobretail-ecom/AllGames.php

Over time we'll be populating this store across several of our websites, includes the new sites of CreatePODBooks.com and CreatePODCards.com (both under consutructions) in addition to its place on the guildofblades.com domain. Next spring we'll likely also registering a new domain to become to primary home on the web for the GOB Retail Group, rather than us just piggybacking on GOB Publishing's domain. In any case, our new e-commerce store can be populated to any site we operate, essentially.

Why you might care: We have two no cost opportunities for independant creators to sell product through our B&M and e-commerce stores. Now, I've detailed our "Retail" program for games here before, so won't go over it again. Just offer this link ( http://www.guildofblades.com/retailprogram.php ).

But we have also begun to populate and expand our "Custom Poker Deck" category of products and are now opening that up to our retail program as well. What this means is, as a publisher or artist, you can supply us to a unique piece of back artwork for a poker deck and we will offer to sell custom poker decks with that artwork in store and online under our retail program. So you supply us with artwork for cards, we print them and offer them for sale and continue to POD print them as needed to fill orders. And you earn 35% of each sale. For these purposes we are fixing all custom poker decks at the retail price of $9.95 for the deck and custom box, so a creators cut on each sale would be $3.48 on each deck sold. Custom Poker Decks can be seen at:
http://www.guildofblades.com/gobretail-ecom/Games.php?gametype=Custom%20Poker

I haven't figured out the limit just yet on how much, but each custom deck will support a small amount of text on the back of the box that can be used to promote the game, brand, artist, etc from which the artwork comes. The fronts of the poker cards will all be a standard design that we use and won't be custom.

If anyone is interested in this program you can join our Yahoogroups for a POD service where we will be detailing artwork specs, etc. http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/GOB-POD-Printing/join

But feel free to ask any questions you have here as well.

Thanks,
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com

The game I'm building works with dice, but I think would work slightly better with cards.  Is your poker deal flexible with regards to the number of cards printed/what's on the faces of the cards, or are the only designable sections the backsides?  What I'd be looking for would be a set of the numbers 1-4 each printed five times, a set with 1-6 each printed four times, a set with 1-8 each printed three times, and a set with 1-10 each printed twice.  Ideally each set's backside would be different, although as long as a two from the 1-4 set looked different than a two from the 1-8 set it wouldn't be absolutely necessary.

It's a long time from when I'd actually be ready to put the game into print, so this is all completely theoretical for now.  I probably will need to find some place to print custom cards for me in the future, though, so it's worth keeping my eyes open for good printers who do that kind of work.

Hi Otspii,

We offer fully customized POD playing card printing as well.

http://www.guildofblades.com/pod.php

The Poker decks are just a new option we're tossing out there for the publishers and artists here to potentially use to promote thier other works and make a few bucks while doing so.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com