PDF Sales

Here is an interesting post from Tori Bergquist over at Realms of Chirak about the pricing of pdfs and the market for rpgs today.

I find it interesting because of the points that he makes.

I also find it interesting because a long time ago, when Tori was putting out some material for 4E, I produced a product that was a tie-in to one of his.

$$ $$ $$

It is a topic that many people love to discuss--sometimes related to their desires to make money in our little hobby.

I recently ran across two short articles by Monte Cook regarding the topic.  (I know that, to some, he is the devil, but I typically find his thoughts to be insightful and interesting.)

Here he writes about the highest paid authors in 2010.

Here he talks about rpg designers and money.

I do have to admit, however, that when he discusses money, I am left with the feeling that his words would be more meaningful if he would inform us of how well he does in his writing.  Obviously, well.  But numbers would be interesting.  I realize that it is personal, and that it is truly none of my business, but it would be informative nonetheless.

I also know that the vast majority of people in this world (that I have ever met) do not like to discuss money issues--at least their own personal money issues.  I suppose it makes people uncomfortable.  Emotions get involved, etc, etc.  I, on the other hand, don't feel that way.

To be fair, as an officer in the US Navy, my pay is fully public knowledge.  With a few pieces of information, such as where I live, how long I've been in the services, etc., any one of you could google some numbers and determine EXACTLY what the Navy pays me.  I guess in a way, that is liberating.

But I would still be interested in knowing what Monte Cook makes in a given year.



...



This post is also a little experiment to determine if the title leads to increased traffic over my typical posts.  Apologies if my experiment offends.

Questions of Legality and Recourse

So by no means do I fancy The Fantasy Cartographic anything more than a hobbyist venture.  As much as I would love to devote more time to my little rpg publishing experiment, family and career ensure that it will remain something to do on the side, something that, since I began, has made me only enough money to basically partake of this hobby for free.  For the foreseeable future, that will remain the case.

With that being said, I was over at RPGNow.com the other day, and I ran across this.  For those of you who choose not to click, the link leads to a product page at RPGNow for a Pathfinder rpg supplement detailing a new character class called 'The Martialist Base Class' from a company called Little Red Goblin Games.

This caused me to raise my eyebrows a little bit, as I put out a product back in the summer of 2009 for 4E (which I realize most readers around here do not play) called Fantasy Class: Martialist and, before that, a free preview, called Fantasy Class Preview: The Martialist Heroic.  I was extremely proud of these products; not only do I believe that they are visually on par with a lot of the 'professional' products being produced, it was the one product to this day that I had an art budget for.  (For the record, I highly recommend VShane for your illustration needs.)

The Martialist class that I had developed was an unarmed fighter that was not a monk.  There is no mysticism or Eastern philosophy in its conception.

Anyway, I know that 'martialist' is not a common title.  Frankly, if the nice people at Little Red Goblin Games had read some of the reviews of my product, they might have chosen a different name for the class, as it wasn't much appreciated.  But what is the chance that those little goblins came up with the name on their own and also attached it to an unarmed combatant class?

So the questions are this:  Is there anything to do?  Should I just let it go?  Am I being a buffoon for even getting upset about this?

I think that the answers to these questions may be 'No', 'Yes', and 'Possibly', but I'm interested in hearing what others think.

"New" Product for Release

Several months ago, I wrote a post about three products that I have for sale at RPGNow.com.  The punchline of that post was me telling you not to purchase any of them.  And I was serious.  (Seriously.  Go read that post if you don't believe me.)

Basically, as discussed in an even earlier post, I feel that the price-to-quality ratio of those products is poor at their current price.  If you were to ask me today, I would still tell you not to purchase them.

In that same post, I explained why I felt that way, and then went on to tell you about a compilation of those three products, to be called Basic Maps.  The idea behind Basic Maps was to take the maps in those three products, make them a little prettier, then combine them into a single document, and put them back on sale at a much reduced price.  (At the same time, I will discontinue the sale of the original products.)

This post is to announce that I have finally completed that project.  Basic Maps is now on sale at RPGNow for $2.30.  It contains 39 maps that I feel are pretty spiffy.  (Or, at least spiffy enough to charge you just under six cents per map, which was the point of the earlier post.)  Hopefully, some of you will feel the same way.  Please go check it out.

Thoughts on Business from the Spiderweb

I've linked to Jeff Vogel before, his blog is firmly on My Daily Read, and his most recent post proves that he and I share sensibilities.  In case you aren't familiar, he is the owner/lead-designer for Spiderweb Software, an indie computer gaming company that specializes in one person rpg games.

In his most recent post, he discusses piracy in computer gaming.  It is a very interesting read.  While the parallels are not perfect, I think that there is enough overlap to be of interest to those who play and/or write for the paper rpg hobby--especially people who consume or produce (as I do) pdf products.  Not only is his article interesting, but the comments (167 as of this moment) demonstrate the full spectrum of opinion on the issue.

Not directly related to his post, but something that came up in the comments was a discussion of pricing for computer games.  I believe that the points raised on software pricing are equally applicable to pdf pricing--that, in general, for a product that costs the same to produce one copy as it does to produce a million copies (anything digital)--a lower price will equate to higher sales, which should lead to more income for the creator.

While that sentence is a gross oversimplification and the topic deserves a lot more indepth discussion, I think that it mostly holds true.  I've been thinking about it a lot over the last several months, and will post a longer explanation of why I believe this to be the case in the coming days.  If anyone has thoughts one way or another, I'm all ears (for the time being).

Marketing the OSR - My Thoughts

Al, the guy who lives past the Black Gate (Which one?  If you don't know, don't ask.), posted yesterday about marketing the OSR.  A very interesting post that led to an interesting discussion.  The Bat (over in the Attic) also had some thoughts to add to the discussion.  I think that the Bat is on to something with his idea of a collection of content producers pooling their monies to do some large scale (relatively speaking) advertising.  The Fantasy Cartographic would certainly be interested in joining such a collective, if it came to pass.

It seems to me that the collective could do some things that wouldn't be very difficult or time-intensive to "spread the word".  Here are some ideas:

First, an identity needs to be developed.  Whether you call it the 'OSR' or 'The Renaissance' or whatever, pick a name and have someone design a logo.  A logo is huge, in that it will become the visual focal point for our efforts.

Second, a website should be thrown together.  The logo across the top.  A few paragraphs on who we are and what the renaissance is all about.  Then some links:
- One to 'Member Companies' which goes to a listing of the companies who contributed the fee as described by Rob Conley in his post.
- One to 'Other Companies' which goes to a listing of all of the other companies who have any relation to the OSR.
- One to 'Blogs' which goes to a complete listing of ALL the blogs out there who consider themselves part of the OSR.
- One to 'Handy Definitions' that would go to a page containing just that.
- One labelled 'Rosetta Stone' which would describe, in general terms, the different games and their links to the D&D equivalents.

You get the idea--obviously, there are many other things that can be linked to.  Perhaps it also includes a news feed, similar to the 'This Week in the OSR'.  The layout and design would be important.

Third, a link, incorporating the group's logo, similar to the 'RPG Bloggers Network' logo that any website, blog, gaming company, etc with an online presence can add to their site.  The purpose of it would be to allow these people to show their support for or membership in the group.  Once that starts popping up all over the place on the web, people will start to take more notice, just as they did with the RPG Bloggers Network.  The link would point directly to the group's website.

Fourth, once a pool of funds have been collected, use it to purchase banner ads at RPGNow.com (and its affiliates), at ENWorld, and all of the other 'larger' sites in the rpg world.  Use it also to purchase ad space in the standards--Fight On and Knockspell, Kobold Quarterly, and any other print periodicals that might be read by those interested.

Finally, as suggested by Raggi and others, purchase a booth at GenCon to sell our wares.

I have other ideas as well, but I think that those things would be a good start.  I think that they would also go a long way toward getting the word out.

The pdf market today

The Fantasy Cartographic has released products only in pdf.  We may, at some point, go to print, but that isn't in the cards at this time.  Something that I’ve noticed is that the PDF market for Dungeons & Dragons is very different today than what it has been at any time up to this point. I say that based on the number of publishers currently putting out 4E material and the number of products that are currently available on RPGNow.com. Although I didn’t track 3.xE very closely, as I’ve said before, I feel that the number and pace of products being released for 4E is lower than what had been released for 3E. One could argue that the previously overly restrictive GSL is to blame, however with the revisions released last February, I would have thought that more publishers would be putting out material. A separate point but perhaps pertinent is the fact that a large number of Pathfinder titles are being released right now at RPGNow, as is material for other rpgs and other types of products. Is it possible that the 4E market for third party material just isn’t there? As someone who is attempting to put out 4E material, I hope that is not the case.

But it might be.  The announcement from One Bad Egg early last fall that they were closing up shop and ceasing production might have been an early sign. This came as a surprise to many people who felt, like I did, that One Bad Egg was one of the premier 4E publishers in the PDF market. You can read about their decision here. They listed two main reasons for ceasing production. The first is their sales numbers, which they didn’t feel was at a level sustainable for them is a company. From a business perspective, this makes the ultimate sense as sales drive profitability, and businesses need to remain profitable to continue to exist. To me, however, their second reason is more interesting. They felt that the quality of material that WotC is putting out and the quality and quantity of material that is available at D&D Insider makes it very difficult for small publishers. (I hope that I am not putting words into their mouths or misrepresenting any of their reasons for making their decision. This is merely my interpretation is of their announcement from last September.)

What I find curious is that Wizards has always produced good quality material. I wonder if DDI is such a game changer. Perhaps it is. It has been commented at other places in the blogosphere that third party publishers in general are not doing as well in the age of 4E. Whether that is a result of DDI, the current quality of Wizards material, or some other factor is, I believe, unknowable.

If the market for D&D material from third party publishers is in fact different than at any time before, what does that mean to me and perhaps to others as small press publishers of roleplaying materials? I believe that it means this: Basing a business strategy on the production of 4E materials is a decision that cannot be taken lightly. If the expectation of gaming material quality is extremely high (in other words expensive to produce) and the potential sales are low, 4E is a market that should only be entered with caution. Perhaps it would be better to enter the market for other gaming systems. Perhaps the market for Pathfinder, 3E, or even one of the retro-clones is stronger than that for 4E at RPGNow and elsewhere.

In the case of the Fantasy Cartographic, we are interested in pursuing both markets: some small releases for 4E complemented by releases in support of one or more of the retroclone rulesets.  However, dividing our efforts between the two stylistic extremes of the gaming market is a path probably best not followed.  Targeting the OSR might make better sense for us.