If you've been to the Patreon page  you know about the "Behind-the-scenes" stuff there, and the "What's Needed" post, which tell the whole story, all of the software and hardware, tricks, every bit of what went into this whole Samurai Ruach project to get it done. I do that because, basically, life is life, but living it is a jerk sometimes, so for whoever needs the help, here's how I got THIS SITE (and store here) done. If you didn't know how to do it, and wanted a straight up, no sales pitch, no "like and subscribe" but "JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU DID SO I CAN GO DO IT AND GET ON MY FEET!!!" answer, here it is.... Go be successful. This whole page is linked, btw.

Fun-fact: #1 - I originally made this site because I was looking to use the Print On Demand services/companies CustomCat and Printful for merch, but couldn't link them to Patreon. POD or Print On Demand is where I go to POD website, with my logo or image or thing... I pick from their selection of shirts, hats, mugs, bags, socks, cards, stickers, whatever.... I put my image on their stuff... I post that picture on my site which is linked to their site. You come to my site, you see it, click to buy.... the order goes to POD company. POD company prints and ships the order. Most will keep their cut, then send you yours. Some will just charge you, and you pay for it with what the customer paid you. But there's no overhead. You don't have to store anything. It's print (or make)... on demand. Nothing exists until it's ordered. I ended up going with Printful who connects directly to WIX where I built the site. I had to link the WIX store to PRINTFUL and could design merch in PRINTFUL and it would then be added to the WIX store (here). Printful shows you the cost they'll charge you (but not with the sales tax or shipping prices) so you know "If I sell a shirt for $10, they'll charge $6 and I'll make $4. All I have to worry about is sales tax (paid by whoever buys it), and what I'll be charged for shipping." Printful has a decent selection, but I also like CustomCat because they're more local/close (Michigan?), and I've heard the shipping times are faster. CustomCat (Custom Catalog) also has a different garment printing technique (Digi-Soft) that no one else (at the time of writing this) is doing, which is a blend of the top techniques: supposed to be the best of all worlds. Youtube all of them for your self so you can choose. As far as shirts, which ones, how they hold up, you can look at Shimmy Morris, who did a good study on t-shirts, but just going with a company and getting one is the best way to see if it works for your design.

As for the setup here, I'm still working on "THE HORSE." (laptop), which is at least 4 - 5 years old. The screen is falling off and the LCD panel kinda comes out but it's doing the job but it's time for an upgrade as they say. SPECS: HP Pavilion Laptop 15 cw1xxx - Processor AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx 2.10 GHz - Installed RAM 8.00 GB (5.92 GB usable) - System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor - Pen and touch Pen support.

All of the designs I have I either drew on an XPpen 15.6 Pro tablet which you can get at their site, or did in the old Photoshop 6.0, which is giving me issues at times (understandably). The laptop in general is slow. It sometimes takes me 2 mins (60 seconds) for a letter to pop up when I start to type. Write a 100 page book with that. I was given a desktop which stopped working just as soon as I loaded everything (that would fit) onto it. I says all of that to say, more than likely, your equipment is better than mine, and there's AI out there, so you should easily be able to take this info and do what you have to do, and do way more, faster, and better than me. There's more about my setup, what gets used in this Patreon post here that shows how the character sketches were done.
 

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Fun-fact: #2 - If you buy or sell a book in the US then an ISBN is involved. An ISBN number is the "social security number" for your book. EACH FORM OF YOUR BOOK needs it's OWN ISBN NUMBER. If you make 1 book (The Book of Blacklights) you need one ISBN for HARDCOVER, another different/separate one ISBN for the SOFT-cover (paperback).... ANOTHER DIFFERENT/SEPARATE ISBN number for a comic book... another for an EBook... ANOTHER for an AUDIOBOOK. Right there, one book, all of those 5 formats= 5 ISBN numbers for one book. In the USA the "only" place to really get an ISBN (or the place that makes them, where everyone who will give you one got it from) is called BOWKER (Bowker.com). At the time of writing this, the price for ONE ISBN is $125, or you can get TEN ISBN's for $295... keep in mind, all of those formats for just one book was FIVE ISBNS. You can get 100 ISBN numbers for $575, or get 1,000 ISNB numbers for $1,500. If your book is in stores and sold, you need an ISBN number so the sales for that one book in that one format can be tracked.

How do you sell your book? That's Distribution... people who distribute your book. There's a publisher (people who print/make public or make available) who does publishing and distribution, called INGRAMSPARK, which i use and was told about by my dad, MooreBooksR.us who has a bunch of books of all kinds done and in the works, from self help, to educational stuff, spiritual stuff, motivational... But INGRAMSPARK is a print on demand publisher, meaning AFTER YOU GET YOUR ISBN (or you can get it thru them, but they get it from Bowker, so you might as well get it and own it your self and use it however you want, says me)... you upload your book to their site. You're going to have to use an EPUB FILE if you're doing an ebook. People charge for that, or you can use the app I got which said it was free but later basically said, "YAY! You've magically used all your credits you didn't know you were using! Buy me now! :)  " as I was testing it out. I just went and paid for it, like $5 or something, because I was tired of everything saying it's free and then charging, and I just wanted to get the books done. I wasn't trying to pay someone who's going to use a program to convert a PDF file into an EPUB file, when I could just get the program to do it myself. Anyways, so after you get your EPUB file (which is the online amazon ebooks and all of that) INGRAMSPARK prints it up, or turn it into an ebook. THEN they put it out on Amazon/Kindle or wherever else (they distribute it to stores). You can get a link and post it to your own site, so people go to your site, click "buy", the order goes to them, they print it, ship it, take their cut, you get yours, people get your book, everybody's happy.

Also, there's DESIGNRR which is where I do the FLIPBOOKS. There are loads of places that do flipbooks, even CANVA which is free, so if that's all you need, check those out too. My dad has DESIGNRR and told me about it. I checked it out. To really use a lot of better features you need a paid thing. They have a few different conversions for book files (epub, flipbook, pdf, etc.) but normally I'll use WPS OFFICE which i have, and do a PDF file of the books, then upload that to Designrr as a PDF to convert to a flipbook. Then I just embedded the flipbook code that they give to WIX here.

Some of the books here I didn't get an ISBN number for because even though I own the copyright, YOU CAN'T MAKE YOUR OWN ISBN numbers. It has to be from BOWKER so it can be tracked. So, some of the books on here, no one will know you have it. A lot of the books I write and sell here you might only be able to find and get here. The books I did that have ISBN numbers, you "have to" put it in the title and copyright page for your book, which is the page in the front with all of the legal crap, the ISBN number, who published it, it has that "all rights reserved. Sales are illegal..." notice there, etc. I say that to say, there are a lot of games in the system to keep you down, hoops to jump through, things to pay for, things you "have to do". Here's one way around that whole book thing. This page is made on WIX. You need an upgraded (not free) account to get a store. I paid for that. I got the EPUB converter. I convert my books on my own from word/text file to PDF to EPUB. I load it up here. I sell it here. I keep 100% of it until by beloved uncle shkam comes around to rob me. Doing it that way I'll have to do my own "distribution" (making accounts on other platforms and loading it up (which you need an ISBN FOR)... OR.... just promote MY OWN SITE which is where you can buy my stuff.

Also, there are scammers out there who look for books and songs that are "hot", get a copy, and sell that. There are too many ways to scam these days. Too many "AI artists" making content. It's not art. They didn't express anything. They wrote a prompt. If anything, the prompt is poetry and that is the expression. AI converted their poem/prompt into a song or image or whatever. Whatever, people will do what they want, and do it more and at a lower level but higher rate when money is involved. The system of things is to keep you in need of them. Apply that to money. Pick what you have a need for and will spend your life never having enough of, for the chase.