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?
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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.
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
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!