Holy cow, man, even browsing the fantasy page has a hundred entries!
Though it takes a lot of maintenance, people have a serious aversion to dealing with more than ~30 items. ~7 is a real nice number.
I look at that list and just have to go 'wha?'
Products come in genres (fantasy d20, fantasy, horror, modern, sci-fi, superhero, and other, or some other short list)
And categories (Settings, supplements, GM Aids, adventures, characters, maps, other, as before)
No category of a genre should have more than 30 items, even people seriously looking through everything will begin to forget or just skip over items otherwise. It's nice if this can cut it down to less than 18 items.
As it stands, it really does scream 'glut' to me. I mean, some of the products there are uh, a little uninspired.
And though I'm not exactly a terribly prudent person, a picture of exposed breasts on the front page is going to annoy a couple of people.
Anyway James, thanks for listening to us. It's rare that you get direct interaction with a Internet commerce site, or one that actually tries to pay attention. (Anyone tried to talk to Jeff Bezos lately? )
I'll give you their response right now. Since the bigger companys (Malhavoc, Nat-20, RPGObjects) go to print with their stuff anyway, you already have access to giving out their products. So there is no NEED for what you're asking and they won't be interested. It's the small vendors that might be interested in this grass roots support you offer- but they are also going to be the ones most concerned about you just burning a bunch of CDs.
....
James
I'm not so sure print publishers would be all that reticent about this. Many print publishers are starting to shift their OOP stock to e-books and having a new way of selling those would be very appealing.
LSI's print-on-demand service has some pretty reasonable print costs. A small setup fee, then under $4 per book for a 108 page 8.5x11 book with 4-color cover and B/W interior. You do lose full bleeds and both the cover and interior stock are fairly light but I'd much rather have a bound, double-sided print book than the ugly stuff that comes out of my printer.
If an independent gaming store could afford whatever machine they use, has the space for it, and can keep the paper and ink costs reasonable it'd be a pretty convenient way to have a wide inventory base, a large selection of OOP books, and minimal inventory risk.
I'm confident that the technology for such an operation is either already here or shortly on its way. The only outstanding issue then is going to be accountability. When Ryan Dancey talked about something similar to this, but regarding in-store "spincasters" and miniatures, he suggested having special keys ship with the templates and each use of the key racks up a charge. Regardless, the accountability problem can't be that difficult to solve.
On a side note, from what I understand the PoD service even has an added feature in that it uses digital printing, which can make for crisper images in the printout. There's no reason it couldn't also offer 600 dpi prints as compared to the typical 300 lpi you get from a conventional print house.
Originally posted by 2WS-Steve If an independent gaming store could afford whatever machine they use, has the space for it, and can keep the paper and ink costs reasonable it'd be a pretty convenient way to have a wide inventory base, a large selection of OOP books, and minimal inventory risk.
One of my (many) current projects for SJG is researching and testing these machines. The quality is not yet there . . . even on the $96,000.00 machine I'm testing right now.
I don't know of many stores that could afford this much just for the machine.
On a side note, from what I understand the PoD service even has an added feature in that it uses digital printing, which can make for crisper images in the printout. There's no reason it couldn't also offer 600 dpi prints as compared to the typical 300 lpi you get from a conventional print house.
Just a technical note...Dpi and Lpi are two completely different things...The films that are produced to make plates for printer (at least the small press place where I worked) were calibrated for 2400dpi. Printing is MUCH better. And that was with 5 year old equipment.
Digital is cheaper, faster, and for many things a 'better' decision. But for Quality you are not going to beat conventional printing.
Just a technical note...Dpi and Lpi are two completely different things...The films that are produced to make plates for printer (at least the small press place where I worked) were calibrated for 2400dpi. Printing is MUCH better. And that was with 5 year old equipment.
That's interesting; the printers I've been working with request 300 dpi images for grayscale and color and say that their half-tones are typically done at 300 lpi (I think). Is it two different resolutions, one for the text and one for the images?
Personally, I love PDF products. I generally scan my gaming materials in to have them in electronic form, anyway. They're a great timesaver, and for the price on one print book, I can usually get 3-4 PDFs. I've purchased about 50, so far. True, some have sucked, and some have been awesome. But, they're generally cheap, so who cares.
That's interesting; the printers I've been working with request 300 dpi images for grayscale and color and say that their half-tones are typically done at 300 lpi (I think). Is it two different resolutions, one for the text and one for the images?
OK... Greyscale images and most interior illustrations are OK at 300dpi resolution scanning wise..as long as you scan them at 100% the size you want them in the book. Line art and text (Especially text) pretty much need as much reslolution as you can muster. (line art is 800dpi minimum). I've been on projects where art for the cover was sent out to a place with a drum scanner that could get a really good high res-12-24dpi resolution.
LPI is a standard for measuring halftone 'screens'. Conventional printing is done with tiny-tiny cyan, magental, yellow and black dots all clumped together in different sized to make images.
DPI is used to measure 'dots per inch' and is a measurement of digital image stuff (computer screens -typically 72-100dpi, scanners, digital cameras, inkjet and laser printers all use that as a measurment of quality.
Comparing DPI and LPI is like comparing inches to degrees. Can't do it.
Getting a 300dpi image and a 600dpi image outputted to a film calibrated with a 300lpi screen will look pretty much the same..which is why printers don't recommend anything higher...it just wastes all that presious memory.
Text and line art (Vector art such as from illustrator...logo making) are made with a different format. They can have sharp edges without being memory hogs that raster images (pixels) are, but need the high dpi capable imagesetter (the equipment that makes films that are used to make plates).
Help a bit? Its been 2 years since I had to know all this stuff.
The POD service RPGNow plans to offer WILL allow for bleeds and is perfect bound and costs less then $4 as well. We just have to buy in 10 quantity batches and thus have to warehouse them at RPGShop.com
Again, why would a FLGS want to bother getting some books made on POD and selling them? Why wouldn't they just order some POD from us and resell them at a profit? Maybe we could work out some deals with a larger discount on POD product sent to a FLGS type of store. That way the CAN sell some products that my never see the light of true print.
James
Last edited by rpghost; 14th November 2002 at 04:44 PM..
Originally posted by rpghost Since the bigger companys (Malhavoc, Nat-20, RPGObjects) go to print with their stuff anyway, you already have access to giving out their products. So there is no NEED for what you're asking and they won't be interested.
Not entirely true. We don't have print agreements on all of our books (but if some publisher wants to offer to put out a print version, we're all ears, ), and though we do eventually hope to get enough capital to put out print runs of some of our own books, it is definitely a bit of a ways off. An interim opportunity for print sales like this might be a good idea.
__________________ Ryan "RangerWickett" Nock
Author of the War of the Burning Sky serialized novel, free at EN World. Part Two, The Irons Have Tolled, now available.
Back to the question of how to bring more customers to the shop to keep up with the increasing number of products.
Off the top of my head, there are a few ways that advertising can be leveraged to do this. But what are the benefits and drawbacks of each. I'm just throwing this out for discussion, I'm probably way off base way too often to run with this, but hopefully it can be turned into something useful.
1. Differentiation: If I recall the RPGNow ads in Dragon they were very broad. "This is our service. Its easy. Try it." That is the impression that I was left with -- there may have been more details, but they didn't stick with me.
That's a good message, but it is not very focused. Emphasizing one or two key selling points will have more of an impact. Ideally these selling points should differentiate the service from other vendors: Amazon, B&N, and, unfortunately, FLGS. These are places where people buy RPG materials. I think that a service-based ad-campaign should really emphasize "why should you buy products here instead of there". You really need to answer the question, What makes PDF purchasing better than print purchasing?, and answer it clearly and unequivocably.
Speed, Convenience, Time Savings, Inexpensive, Unique Products, Cutting-Edge Products, etc. Pick one or two adjectives, maybe three if two of them are closely related and sell those adjectives in relation to the Site. I would probably go for the Cutting Edge and Convenience angles so you don't sound like a bargain-basement store.
2. Parity: Many people already know the basic drill of purchasing online. If the potential customer has internet access and a credit card and still isn't checking out RPGNow there must be another reason. The advertising should make the similarities to book purchasing (through Amazon as well as FLGS) as clear as the differences.
I would start with the broad selection (there is a comparable number of d20 products in RPGNow as in my FLGS or on Amazon). Browsable? Well, to an extent. You can't flip through the product, but many products have previews, samples or web-enhancements available. Publishers should really take the lead on this one and provide a representative sample, as well as a full table of contents on their web-site. Ideally, RPG now would host these so that you don't have to leave the site then return to purchase the product if you like it. I would also emphasize that it is a specialized RPG materials store. Amazon doesn't have a separate category for RPG books, let alone separate categories for Fantasy d20 vs. Superheroes d20. RPGNow is laid out for the convenience of Gamers, and only Gamers.
3. Flagship products: WotC has an entire marketing strategy built around selling a small handful of flagship products. But I do think that this is synergistic to a large degree and the flagship products also sell the supplements.
RPGNow (and this goes back to the "cutting-edge" angle) sells a few products by big-name publishers before they are in print. The more people who can be convinced to set up an account to purchase Monte's next book or the next Natural20 book the wider the potential market for everything else in the store.
We already see this effect in the large number of referals from ENWorld. It might be beneficial to enter into a partnership with Malhavoc to share certain advertising costs -- higher profile advertising that neither company would use if left to their own budgets. This would help out both companies directly int he short term (immediate increased sales of that product) and indirectly in the long term (expanding the customer-pool for subsequent products). Obviously the numbers have to be crunched, but it would be something that I would be looking into.
Additionally, I might even offer limited time reduced fees or advertising subsidies for other established publishers/authors to encourage them to place high-profile products on the site. In fact, if it can be done without losing the company's focus, reselling advertising might be another revenue stream. RPGNow purchases in bulk and offers space to publishers at a rate that is lower than what they would normally pay, but higher than a bulk rate. Again, numbers would need to be crunched and specific advertising contracts examined.
So that's my brainstorm for strategies to increase the customer base. LIke I said, I'm probably wrong in a lot of places so be gentle (and constructive) if at all possible.
This is a fascinating thread and I hope you guys don't mind me jumping in. I'm not a PDF d20 publisher. However, I am a marketing analyst for a subscription-based website with a ton of members, so perhaps I have some insights.
One of the big problems of selling stuff on the web, especially electronic stuff, is that it is difficult to create the perception of value for the customer. "Why should I pay for this PDF / membership when similar things are (or were) available for free?" is a commonly heard refrain. As the Internet becomes more and more commercialized and more and more big sites go pay, there will be some alleviation of this problem. The "everything is free!" mentality that afflicted the Internet when it first achieved critical mass has created a hurdle that is only beginning to be overcome. Consumers need to be retrained in the basic economic realities of life. Unfortunately, this takes time, and it may take too much time for a small d20 PDF publisher.
A converse to the "why isn't it free?" complaint is this: The low price of some Internet-based products also hampers sales, because it damages the value perception. ("Only five bucks for a D&D sourcebook? It must be crappy.") The membership my company sells costs in the $10 - $15 range per year. That is incredibly cheap when compared to magazine subscriptions (often $30+ per year) or Internet access ($23 per month for AOL). I believe we have hurt our revenues by not charging more. In fact, a price test we recently conducted shows that raising prices can eek out more revenue without hurting volume as much as we feared. In other words, our demand curve is relatively flat along certain price points. Of course, we have to balance this against the fact that in the future we would like to cross-sell to existing customers, so more members is good. (1000 members at $5 is better than 500 members at $10.)
For a PDF publisher, though, I don't think cross-selling is that much of a concern. The major concern is: what can I do right now to sell my product? Others have discussed some marketing aspects such as referring sites, banner ads, and so forth. I submit that PDF publishes should also examine their pricing. At five dollars you may not be charging enough. I will leave the hows of price-testing as an exercise for the reader. But if you are serious about making money off your PDFs, you need to gather this information, analyze it, and apply the findings.
One more thing. It can be tricky and expensive to sell to those who do not have credit cards. You can accept checks or money orders, PayPal, or even send someone a bill, but you incur costs for those alternative methods. Again, as consumers become more accustomed to shopping on the web, more of them will have credit cards and they will be more comfortable giving out that information. But, again, this takes time.
First of all, some people above mentioned a survey or study on the subject. I'm a market analyst in the telecoms and internet business, and would gladly (and obviously, freely) participate in a workgroup to design, administer and analyse the results from such a survey. I probably can't do this myself without the help of Morrus and/or James, and I don't have the technical expertise to deal with the coding involved, but if either are interested in discussing it with me, feel free to e-mail me at ben@planetharmonica.com
Speaking as someone who has done print advertising and marketing for various print RPG companies since 1996, what I'd suggest as an ad campaign for RPGNow would be something that focuses on the variety, and difference from the print products....
"What do you do when you've seen every D20 product your local store has to offer?
...come and see the stuff that THEY CAN'T GET."
Or something along those lines.
Basically, you're looking at moving into the second phase of advertising now. You've succeeded in establishing your brand, to the point of near-monopoly. Now, you should concentrate on "putting asses in seats", as they say in the movie biz.
Print on demand (and all digital printing) is hampered by resolution issues, though it's beginning to look like newer PoD equipment can print reasonably well (better than most home printers, anyway).
Here's a little more lpi vs. dpi info that may help.
DPI stands for Dots Per Inch (obviously, perhaps), and refers to the smallest-sized dots -- actual little digital (on/off) dots -- the printer can cram into a 1-inch space. Things tend to look better than photocopy quality at about 600 dpi, and tend to look "perfect" to the average (but not super-picky) human eye at 1200dpi. All solid-color (black, cyan, magenta, or yellow) line art and text can take full advantage of the dpi of the printer.
LPI stands for Lines Per Inch, and refers to the number of lines of variable-sized dots that fit along a 1-inch stretch when creating a "screen" or "halftone". Printers simulate shades of gray (or shades of cyan, magenta, and yellow) by clumping dpi dots together into bunches, effectively creating variable-sized dots. Anything that's not pure black, cyan, magenta, or yellow is simulated by creating arrays of these variable-sized dots. That means all photos, anything that's photo-like (JPEGs, TIFFs, BMPs, etc.), and any colors other than the four i listed (red is composed of little dot-clumps of magenta combined with little dot-clumps of yellow, for example).
Most digital printing shoots for 256 shades of gray (or cyan, magenta, or yellow) in a given halftone to give it the most realistic look possible, but to make 256 different-sized dots (clumps of dots), if the resolution (dpi) isn't high enough the clumps of dots get really big. As such there's a constant tradeoff between shades of color and clumped-dot size.
Here's how they compare (numbers from memory but are close):
300 dpi printer is capable of 37 shades at 53 lpi. 53 lpi is extremely coarse: you can't make out any details at all. As such most 300dpi printers by default only print about 25 shades of gray at about 65lpi, which still looks lousy. Virtually nothing commercial (except for pizza flyers, perhaps) is printed at this resolution/screen combination.
600 dpi printer is capable of 50 shades of gray at 85 lpi. 85 lpi is the resolution of poor-quality newspaper photos.
1200 dpi printer is capable of around 150 shades of gray at 133 lpi. This is what "decent-quality" printing looks like. Many magazines are printed at this resolution and screen. If a PoD device printed at this quality you'd have something tht looked not quite as good at the stuff you mostly see on store shelves, but it's quite reasonable.
2400 dpi printer (imagesetter, usually) is capable of 256 shades of gray at 250 or so lpi. This is very good quality, as nice as you'll see in almost any professionally printed material.
To get a sense of it...
Newspapers: 85-100 lpi
Magazines that aren't focused on photography: 133-150 lpi
Magazines where photography is important but not essential: 200 lpi
Magazines where the whole point is photography, like Playboy: 300 lpi
SUMMARY: If you're getting your PDF printed on demand and you want it to look as good or at least nearly as good as the good stuff on store shelves you'll need at least a 1200dpi printer than can create 133 lpi halftones/screens.
Originally posted by rpghost The POD service RPGNow plans to offer WILL allow for bleeds and is perfect bound and costs less then $4 as well. We just have to buy in 10 quantity batches and thus have to warehouse them at RPGShop.com
Again, why would a FLGS want to bother getting some books made on POD and selling them? Why wouldn't they just order some POD from us and resell them at a profit? Maybe we could work out some deals with a larger discount on POD product sent to a FLGS type of store. That way the CAN sell some products that my never see the light of true print.
James
The picture I had, if the technology made it viable, was where the retail owner had the machinery in their own store; alternately, I thought what jezter6 was suggesting was putting a good computer in the store hooked up to a good printer, double-sided printing out copies of an e-book, perhaps comb-binding it, then selling that. The computer/printer technique could be fairly affordable, especially for a small retail owner who wanted to have a nice computer and printer for their own use anyway.
The significant advantage of this over ordering from a PoD company or RGPNow's PoD service is that the retailer takes zero inventory risk other than the cost of the machinery. Moreover, they wouldn't face the capital flow problems that stocking regular print products require; they don't pay for their e-stock until the customer hands over his credit card.
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But if you are serious about making money off your PDFs, you need to gather this information, analyze it, and apply the findings.
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