Oh my gosh! Can we call ourselves that? A community — my heart flutters.

The RTC website received an important question and I know similar ones will follow. I am also receiving a lot of suggestions and questions which I do respond to as I want people to feel empowered to move forward. But please don’t consider me the authority. So I wanted to share my response with this question to the world at large.

Question: Just curious why you didn’t include an inspirational category? Thanks.

My response:

(Following Amanda’s response that she’ll add an inspirational category to the website checkboxes)

Definitely feel free to create an inspy category! We are not a “governing” body by any means and you can see how it can keep on growing and growing with all sorts of genres. This began as a decentralized grassroots/guerrilla promotion effort that will always depend on the authors in it.  I anticipate people will start spawning off YA, steampunk, and all sort of sub-groups, which is fantastic!

We are moving fast and agilently (the first #romancetradingcards posts were done Monday night, if you can believe it!). So please don’t take inclusion or non-inclusion as any sort of statement about any genre.

Design-wise: I have the layered files if you’d like to design your own border in the frame theme. Many people are just going out on their own with design.

This effort is open and evolving. It will continue to evolve. If the initial efforts are missing something, the beauty is it takes one person’s–any person’s–ingenuity to create it.

-Jeannie

The point being — If your question is “Can I….?” The answer is always yes, yes and Yes. 🙂

This is an open effort. Let’s see where it goes.

The name of the game: Move Quickly

I’m so excited that people are designing their cards! There are some awesome ones out there and we (meaning myself and my CPs Amanda Berry and Shawntelle Madison) hope to start compiling them on a site soon so readers can see all available cards and know what to look for. In the meantime, keep advertising them on your site and Twitter so other RTC’ers get some ideas of what to do.

Updated: http://www.romancetradingcards.com is now up. We are maintaining the list of participating authors over there. Please use the Questions/Contact form on that site so I don’t miss anyone over here in the comments.

We also have a twitter feed for news only:  @romtradingcards

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As you know, the Romantic Times crowd doesn’t have a lot of time. You should be getting your order in by next week to make Ground shipping rates for GotPrint.

Stock images can be found a sites like iStockPhoto.com, 123rf.com, or HotDamnStock.com which has images specifically taken with romance covers in mind.

Kimberly Killion of HotDamnDesigns (and fellow RTCer) is doing a 50% off sale on stock images for Romance Trading Cards. She is also offering to design cards for a small $20 fee.

From Kimberly:

If authors need a character image, I will sell the images off http://www.hotdamnstock.com for $10.

Send an email to kim @ hotdamndesigns.com and let me know which image you would like for you card.

She will ALSO design and order for you if you want cards, but don’t want the hassle.

HotDamnDesigns:

ROMANCE TRADING CARDS:

Printing costs and quantities are as follows:

100 cards: 15.75

250 cards: 17.41

500 cards: 21.00

1000 cards: 23.62

Ground shipping: 15.00 (approx)

Character image: 10.00 (if purchase from www.HotDamnStock.com)

Layout and processing fee: 20.00

Please send:

High-res book cover

Link to image that will represent your character

Text: (i.e. Character stats – Height, age, description, Best lines, short blurb)

Contact: Kimberly Killion at kim @ hotdamndesigns.com

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The design is completely open. However, if you’d like to use the common templates for a unifying look and feel, they’re available for download on the blog. Here’s my example:

Download RTC genre templates

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I’m offering a two hour web tutorial and just general Q&A session from 7-9pm EST on Saturday, March 5. E-mail me through the site or DM me on Twitter @JeannieLin to get the password. First hour: I’ll be walking through a technical tutorial on downloading the template and using GIMP to format the card, then uploading your order to GotPrint. Second hour we can just chat and discuss RTC and what people are doing for design, how it’ll play out at Romantic Times, etc.

A big ol’ link will be active on Saturday at 7pm EST. So get the password and come back on Saturday.

***

Also there were several discussions about affiliation stickers and buttons. I think that idea is capital. Design by committee doesn’t move quickly, so here’s what I came up with:

Fancy huh? I thought so.

The design has the added benefit of being easily reproducible. The font is AR Blanca.

As usual, the plan is simple. I’ll bring buttons and stickers to Romantic Times. Pay me $1 and get 1 button, 4 stickers. Add the button to your lovely badge flare and put the sticker on your signing table so readers can find you. I hope to get other people willing to take additional buttons to other conferences like Lori Foster and RomCon. I’ll be at RWA.

The costs:

300 buttons (2.25 diameter) for .50 per button.

2000 stickers (2.75 diameter) for .12 per sticker

I will put in the initial money to order in the quantities described. So far we don’t have 300 authors interested but at the rate things are growing…

You have a day to comment before we go ahead. 🙂