Robert, good luck with the poster project. I've always believed a poster to be worthwhile, but various approaches have been tried by the PGCA with disapointing results. We have done two, one poster and one calendar, the subject matter and style of which were decided upon by committee, as we were obligated to do when acting on behalf of an organization of members with various views. Although the membership said in pre-publishing polls that they would be interested, and we took that poll to mean that we would be successful in the calendar offering, we sold few of them at $25, which included a very modest profit and mailing/shipping costs. We had a large surplus and ended up giving them away. Calendars are time sensitive and gave us a narrow window for success. The previous item was the Tarnation poster, which was not time sensitive and again, a poll showed great interest among the membership. We ended up with a large surplus and ended up giving them away. Maybe our poll methodology was faulty, maybe our subject matter was off, but in each instance, bright and thoughtful people went into the projects with the best of intentions.
In another approach, Ed Muderlak privately printed a large number of reproductions of the vintage Parker squirrel poster. They were well done and I have one, but he told me he had overestimated the interest on the basis that he was interested, so he believed others would be. He also ended up with a large surplus after an initial offering, which it took years to sell. Mr Muderlak also re-printed Parker catalogs and ended with a large surplus that took years to reduce and he finally gave them away. He used to complain that the market in Parker paper was not as great as he believed as it would or should be despite the stated interest of members that talked to him.
I am not a printer, but I felt that if an on order/as required print method could be developed then a project of unknown volume might be successful, but with the economies of the print profession as explained to us, that was not to be. In our case, we were interested in Parker posters/calendars, the people that responded to our polls were interested and we thought they were representative of others who did not respond. In retrospect, we were mistaken and the interest was much narrower than we thought. I and several others were leaders in those efforts; maybe you can do better, but it was not for lack of trying and best intentions on our parts. Our print consultant was a PGCA member print business owner who advised us of the methods and economies of production.
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