Richard, a Question re the Publishers List

[Dormouse]

Do I understand correctly that those publishers who Reply Negative (Llewellyn and US Games so far) will not even permit you to display 1 or 2 thumbnails of their product as samples?

Sue Jones

[AngelDancer]

Is there a standard letter that we could send to the publishers?

Cheers, Lisa

[Programmer]

Hi Sue,

In both case I explained to them how the program works, how it gives users a chance of viewing thumbnails (where permission has been granted) or downloading the deck to use with the program, and how they could give permission for either of these things separately.

US Games explained that they have a completely restrictive contract with Tarot.com which means they can't allow their images to be used with any other tarot software. I thought they would say this but I also thought it was worth trying because it depends on the interpretation you give to software - just viewing the thumbnails is hardly the same as using them with the program. Still, the only thing they offered was that I get in touch with Tarot.com about becoming an affiliate. I took a look at the Tarot.com website and found it to be a very educational experience. For those who don't know, they SELL canned (i.e. not touched by human hands) readings on line for about five dollars each, via a system of tokens or credits that users can buy in advance. And the interface wasn't even that good - the cards were really quite small so you couldn't see any detail on them (I guess that was USG's requirement).

Llewellyn simply said that they decline for the moment, which I take to mean that they don't want to close the door to the possibility in the future. So that was a bit more positive.

I also had a fairly promising reply from Lo Scarabeo. They don't want to give blanket permission to something they don't fully understand and I am still corresponding with them.

I will update the Publishers page with these comments so people can keep abreast of any developments.

Cheers
Richard

[Programmer]

Hi Lisa,

There will be very soon - I have been putting something together with some advice from Sue and I hope to post it here (probably in the articles section) at the weekend. I will post in the Forum when I do.

Cheers
Richard

[Rhutobello]

hehehe...I reg myself at Tarot.com...after 3 days I removed myself from their list....Yes in my opinion it's canned, they have 1 goal and that is to get the most out of each customer. They spam you with free readings and hope you shall jump on and pay for a bit more for some PC readings...
Will never touch that site agein, buy a magazin instead :)

[purple_scorp]

I'm registered at Tarot.com too. I actually subscribe to their daily Tarot Advice email readings which I find quite accurate but I very rarely go to the actual site.

Occasionally they will send an email that offers a free reading. Free meaning, you can select the cards for free, but if you want the interpretation, you have to pay. I've never paid for a reading there but they give you free tokens (karma coins) and I have used them before. And I agree Richard, the software is substandard to Orphalese. At a quick glance, it looks as though they are using the Matrix Tarot software and as I've commented before, that's one that is not being further developed.

I've been thinking about the Deck Exchange and publishers that have not given us permission to view and/or download their images. For the purpose of downloading, we need access to every card. However, for the purpose of viewing, could we not just show a few sample cards?

I know from the work I did as Administrator here, researching decks and their publishers, that US Games card images are displayed on sites other than Tarot.com.

Take the Aeclectic Tarot Forum deck section for example.

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/

It has hundreds of deck reviews and each one shows up to six card images.

At worst, could we at least seek permission to show a sampling?

Regards
purple_scorp

[Programmer]

Hi Scorp,

Yeah, I don't see why not. I will forward you the contact details that I have with them. It would let people at least upload an XYZ Sample deck, even if the deck only held six cards.

Cheers
Richard