Too Merchandise or Not

I'm always interested to see what the more entrepreneurial writers are up to. So when Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta's new Terra Incognita project dropped into my myspace page I checked it out. K and R are releasing a CD (they wrote the lyrics) to coincide with Kevin's new Orbit series 'Terra Incognita'. The CD is a professional cut, using established musicians. Good luck to them all. I hope it works out.

I then had a browse through the Anderzone online shop, which made me wonder ... do writers ever make any money from these kinds of set-ups, or is it simply another publicity strategy? Many writers now use Cafe Press. I've held off setting something like that up, that despite numerous requests for Parrish t-shirts etc.

I'd be interested to hear what people think of author 'shops'. I've always thought you needed to be Neil-Gaiman-popular to make something like that worthwhile.