Getting Started On a Wide-Scale Plan!

Hello, and sorry for the long absence. I had a bunch of things going on in the past week-to-ten days. But now I just would like to let you know that the music portion of my project is pretty much complete, only needing a handful of refinements and adjustments. It'll be just under one year since I began writing the songs and putting down the first tracks. This thing has taken on a life of its own. The music may be nearly finished, but the CD art, lyric pages, and general design of the package haven't been devised yet. For this, I'll need to probably have an outside company print up some inserts. Hopefully I can do this without creating too many expenses; I believe you can do most of this yourself with minimal assistance from an outside source. Of course, it is laborious! I did this in 2007, after putting out an eight song album of old songs that had been kicking around in my mind for seven years or so. I had Fedex Kinko's burn seventeen discs for assorted family and friends. I bought the jewel cases from them too, and they printed the CD art, lyrics sheets, and tray inserts on semi-glossy paper. I was floored when the cost of all this approached $300. I felt very stupid for spending so much money on something that should have been done much cheaper. Lesson learned! As if that wasn't enough, I then had to take the sheets and cut everything down to size for each of those CD's. It took a while, but at that point I was just happy to finish it. A few months after finishing this, I had realized how unsatisfactory some of the music was, especially some of the vocals. I hadn't listened to it in a few months,, and I was so embarrassed that I had let seventeen of my closest friends and family keep this for themselves. I knew I couldn't ask for those albums back; that wasn't going to happen. So I went back to the master tracks and removed and re-cut a bunch of different things, just to satisfy my desire to make my music as true as it could be; and I was indeed pleased, if not ecstatic, about the final masters.

So my point here is that when getting yourself involved in a music or art project of any size, it does a lot of good to think things over beforehand. If you have aspirations of copying the art to sell, it does a lot of good to explore your options, so you can save your financial resources as much as possible.