Cartoons & Costs

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Cartoons & Costs - 6/29/2010 8:08:05 PM

jeanjaz

Posts: 2
Joined: 6/26/2010
From: United States
Status: offline

You mention on your FAQs page that one of the biggest expenses is hiring a professional artist to make the initial pictures for the picture logic puzzles and that you publish 80 new puzzles every week.

Personally, my favorite 'pics' are the funny ones, the cartoons. Have you thought about giving up-and-coming cartoonist a place to publish their cartoons? You could even have pages dedicated to certain cartoonists who end up being popular. Wouldn't that be, at the least, another source of original, and a little less expensive, materials for Conceptis?

I have a program that will digitalize a photo, cartoon, or drawing and make a cross-stitch or needlepoint pattern out of it. So I know that part of it must not be hard for you - it is getting the material in the first place.

Another source is offering a credit of some sort for your own customers to submit original photos (or drawings) and for each one you accept you give 60 or 100 credits or something. If I were doing it, I would limit it to one submission a month and if it was ever found a submit wasn't original, that person would be blocked from submitting again. (Need to link I.P. addresses to accounts if you don't already - very easy to do.) You can do spot checks for originality - there are companies who do that.

People who do these puzzles are going to have a good idea about what they like to solve so there would probably be less rejects or editing than you might think. A standard, objective rejection letter might not be too hard either; "I'm sorry, we were (alt: our software was) unable to digitalize your submission. Try a different one next month..." and then maybe a reiteration of the submission guidelines again. Your artist might find it easier to convert a photo to simple, basic lines than coming up with something original, and also, if they can't actually convert it, it might inspire a new idea for them. You could give half or full credit in these cases.

Just picture it - your customers, upon sending an accepted submission, would be breathlessly awaiting 'their' puzzle :) and be more likely to buy puzzles until theirs showed up.

I think people, like myself, who love these kind of puzzles, would be willing to do quite a bit to make them more popular and so more affordable.

The type of people who do logic puzzles are usually pretty loyal (and logical - grin).

Post #: 1

RE: Cartoons & Costs - 6/30/2010 12:14:53 AM

dave

Posts: 855
Joined: 4/28/2002
From: Israel
Status: offline

Hi jeanjaz

If it was possible to digitize pictures or photos in the resolution we use for puzzles then we would have done this a long time ago. You will see the problem immediately if you try to digitize any photo into 30x30 or 40x40 pixels.

As for cartoons, our website is a language-free and culture-free zone targeted at people from all countries around the world. We don't use text (there are no crosswords or word search) and we don't provide anything which is local culture (such as jokes or humor). On the other hand, we plan to provide a Print & Solve PDF book section in the future. At that point in time we will look into the idea of offering cartoons as well.

Thanks, Dave

(in reply to jeanjaz)

Post #: 2

RE: Cartoons & Costs - 7/1/2010 10:19:15 PM

Ginkgo100

Posts: 15
Joined: 8/7/2009
From: United States
Status: offline

I've used websites where anybody is free to submit puzzles, and I have to say, the quality is lower. I now pretty much use Conceptis exclusively because none of the other online sites can match it for quality of images. Paying for the credits is well worth it to me. To maintain the quality with user submissions would probably require a lot of time from Conceptis to "train" the creators.

(in reply to jeanjaz)

Post #: 3