Mallory and Rebecca - Following up on Tina's remarks (which I largely agree with), I think that it's tough to make a go of an art cookies-only business and expect it to be your sole source of income. One, the market is a niche one, and then there's the price pressure that we all know too well. I think you'll see that the baking businesses which have been most successful over time (by that, I mean profitable) are those that offer a diversified portfolio, particularly some items that can be churned out (low labor costs) yet are still relatively high profit margin. Simple designs also make it easier to expand your work force to handle increased volume. I also think these challenges are partly why you see art-cookiers doing so many other things - teaching classes, selling books and videos, etc. It's tough to make a living doing just one of any of these things!
That's not to say that successful art cookie- or cake-only businesses don't exist, because they do. Take Sylvia Weinstock or Eleni's Cookies (one of the first art cookie businesses that I know of) as examples. But they're in markets (New York) that command larger premiums and they're probably the exception rather than the rule. Even Eleni's has dumbed-down their designs quite a lot (in my opinion) over time. And their very simple cookies are quite expensive by comparison to the pricing that I hear most of you quoting online: http://elenis.com/store/produc...favor-cookie/?cat=43
Aymee VanDyke, one of our new guest bloggers, is much more optimistic about cookies-only businesses than me, though. She'll be talking about key success factors in some of her upcoming blog posts. However, I do know that she is also a proponent of relatively simple designs for some of the reasons I mentioned.