Friday, May 29, 2009

Shakespeare T-shirt for Writers

It's taken awhile, but we here at Words Plus Paper have finally created a Shakespeare t-shirt. As much of the Bard's life is undocumented and photography did not exist in Elizabethan England, we took some liberty in trying to produce a more handsome version of the great poet and playwright than the one seen in the Droeshout Engraving. We think Shakespeare would be pleased with the result.

So if you're a fan or you know someone who is, head over to our store at Zazzle and stock up now. This design is available on buttons, magnets, mugs and more fun stuff. To buy or not to buy, that is the question.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Edward Abbey Quote T-Shirts

We loved Edward Abbey's novel "The Monkey Wrench Gang" and its somewhat zany cast of characters. We loved his non-fiction works such as "Desert Solitaire" and"Confessions of a Barbarian". Now we've designed a couple of t-shirts featuring quotes from this complex and gifted writer and conservationist. The hard part was choosing which quotes to use.

From his essay collection "A Journey Home", which is something of a sequel to "Desert Solitaire", we took the quote about unchecked growth being analogous to cancer cells. And on the lighter side, we have his humorous quote about dogs that any dog-lover will enjoy.

These designs and more can be found at our Zazzle store, Words Plus Paper. Stop by some time!



Friday, May 8, 2009

Rewriting History

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at Words Plus Paper, but we've finally managed to not only get all of our designs transferred over to Zazzle, but also to rewrite all the links in this blog to point at Zazzle rather than Cafepress. Word of mouth advertising is the best, they say.

Today we will begin the process of shutting down our Cafepress stores. We have the Words Plus Paper premium shop and then 50 or so basic shops for designs that didn't fit in to our main store. The good news is that Zazzle doesn't charge for its galleries so we've split off our Chinese and science designs into their own stores. Links to these sister stores, Rising Tide Tees and Beijing Central, can be found in our sidebar.

Also, as promised, we now have writer t-shirts featuring Emily Dickinson and Ambrose Bierce. Stop by our new location on Zazzle and take a look. Thanks!





Friday, May 1, 2009

Cafepress Slits Own Throat

In a surprise announcement last week, Cafepress said they would restructure marketplace commissions so that designers would only receive 10% of the selling price. Prior to this designers were free to set their own mark-ups and many of them set theirs on the high side. Cafepress claims this move will provide a more uniform shopping experience for customers, but what they have actually done is lay off thousands of shopkeepers who depended on their Cafepress sales for a living or, at least, to make ends meet. Most of these people will not be able to collect unemployment even though they will lose a good deal of their income. Many may now have trouble making mortgage payments. Cafepress has said nothing to counter these claims and shows no concern for their so-called "partners".

We think Cafepress is either insane or on the verge of bankruptcy to institute such a change. This new pricing scheme reminds us of a wolf caught in a trap who will chew off his own foot to regain his freedom. Afterwards, of course, he is crippled and may not be able to survive. So, too, shall Cafepress be crippled and we predict they will be out of business within 1 year.

The changes do not go into effect until June 1st, but we have been hard at work setting up shop over at Zazzle which we now find to be a superior platform. We plan to have all of our designs transferred within a couple of weeks. And because Zazzle does not charge a fee for its galleries, we have split off our science and Chinese designs into their own stores.

On the day of the announcement, we had been uploading new Chinese character designs and, strangely enough,two of them speak quite directly to this current situation. So without further ado, here are our two latest from our new Zazzle store, Beijing Central.