Publishing through a foundry

Justin Penner

I've self-published a few fonts, but I don't have much interest in the business and marketing side of things, so I'm considering publishing my work through another type foundry (or perhaps multiple foundries). There seem to be a lot of foundries that publish fonts by independent type designers, but I'm not sure where to start.

How would you decide which foundries to contact? Does anyone have experiences to share about publishing through a foundry versus self-publishing? Any recommendations for foundries that have been a great partner for you?

Jens Kutilek

This very old article by Stephen Coles boils it down to these questions:

Questions to ask yourself about a foundry

• Is the library a good fit for my style of type?

• What production assistance do they offer?

• Where are the foundry’s fonts sold and how are they marketed?

• What is the length of the contract agreement?

JoyceKetterer

Most foundries want an exclusivity period for a given font but wont care if you have multiple fonts with multiple foundries.  

Justin Penner

@Jens Kutilek I've definitely read that article at some point but had since forgotten about it. Very helpful.

Some of the questions in Stephen's article won't be answered until after getting in touch with the foundries, but "is the library a good fit for my style?" and "where are the foundry's fonts sold?" are pretty good questions to narrow down my search. I've done quite a lot of research in the past couple days and have settled on a few foundries to contact.

Jens and Joyce, thanks for answering, and if anyone else has experiences or tips to share, please do.

Dominic Stanley

Best of luck with it! I can't say I've had success with approaching foundries but make it hard for them to say no (by being easy to market). Being a "good fit" would include filling an obvious gap in their library. Show a nice spec of potential usage and write the font spiel yourself: 1. Where it came from, 2. What it does well, 3. How it can benefit the customer. 

Sorry, I get that you don't want to do the business and marketing yourself but you still need to, even if it's to go through a foundry. DM me if you want any help with it. Dominic 

Christopher Slye

Not to sound too pedantic, but personally I’d use the term “distributor” or “distribution partner” for this. It’s nitpicky; there are indeed foundries that will accept other designers or foundries into their libraries. It’s just that there are still some distributors (e.g. Type Network, ILT, Fontspring) which don’t own their own font IP and to which I would not refer as a “foundry.”

In my experience (and that includes Adobe Fonts), good font distributors have a backlog of interested designers, so one might just run into a roadblock from that. Any good distributor will take time with onboarding — executing a contract, checking font data, getting problems addressed, loading fonts into their backend, planning some marketing — and that’s only after they’ve decided it’s a good fit. Most don’t want to accept just anyone. Having a well-rounded selection of high-quality typefaces helps a lot, although it’s not out of the question to begin with one or two compelling typefaces.

When considering a distribution partner, pay attention to the contract term, exclusivity-related restrictions, royalty share, pricing policies, sublicensing rights, and termination rights (among other things).

Do you like to do your own marketing and run your own website? Or are you looking for someone to do all of that? Deciding what you want out of distribution partner will help you decide whether the royalty share is acceptable. Having a partner to handle marketing and/or ecommerce and/or license compliance and/or licensing negotiation can be worth quite a lot if you’d prefer to just quietly design more type!