Steampunk Holmes Merchandise?

Steampunk Holmes Pocket Watch

A while back I googled "Steampunk Holmes" to see if anyone had done a story with that title before. I was relieved to see that no one had but I was surprised to find that term was used to describe a pocket watch designed by a Steampunk jewelry and watch maker. This gave me an idea that I've been playing with:

What if the Steampunk Holmes app/book sold merchandise related to the story?

Since then I've been looking into it more and I'm really kind of excited about it. Imagine if you could read the story and then buy some of the clothes or devices in the story? For example, the pocket watch used by Steampunk Holmes. The other merchandise I had in mind was Music. I hope to have more to say about that within a couple of weeks.

What I love about the Steampunk genera is the gadgets and clothes - there are a lot of people who like to dress up in Steampunk and have Steampunk parties. The possibility of doing merchandising tie-ins to the story is really intriguing because if this kind of business is going to work at all its going to have to have a commercial aspect to it and what would be cooler than selling Steampunk jewelry, clothes, and gadgets?!

Of course it has to be done right or not done at all. I can't just stuff a bunch of banners for merchandise into the story - that would ruin it. But, if I could provide a menu option where you could go, when not reading the book, to view merchandise related to the story. That would avoid tainting the story with adverts and blatant product placements while providing a possible venue for earning more income beyond the cover price of the book.

One of the things I want to be careful of, however, is that I don't end up buying merchandise wholesale and shipping it myself. I've done that before in one of my other ventures and it was horrible. Instead I would like to be the conduit to sales allowing the vendors themselves to handle the customers relations - I'll just take a small percentage for referrals. Anyway, there is a lot of thinking to be done before I go down the marchandising road but I wanted to share the idea with those of you following the blog - this is in keeping with my totally open policy on the entire venture.

UPDATE: 7/27/2011

Announcements about Merchandising Deals for Steampunk Holmes

• 7/20/2011 - Abney Park to provide music for Steampunk Holmes!
• 7/25/2011 - Steampunk Holmes and the Black Widow