Can you, please, delineate as many ways as possible that you consider a publisher to be supporting the B&M locations, such as the store locator, and also detail the ways Goodman Games does so?
I am going to expand my answer based on various differnt product lines (not just books).
Review of the big ones:
Wizards: Wizards has the best retailer support stuff, but then again, they can afford it. Posters, incentives to buy from them (depending on amount spent per year and number of organized play events, signs and a clock (for magic timing) and a serra angel print and bunches of other stuff. Their organized play materials are superior and changing--for their D&D lines, unique minis, tournaments solely available to premier store members, prize support for people playing their games, high quality everything. Wizards is the most invested in local gaming stores, much as we may bitch about other things they do. Full-color character folders, t-shirts from time to time. Wizards offers support kits that you can pay for that contain all sorts of neat things to give players, too, reasonably priced. Frankly, without Magic and D&D most gaming stores I know of would go out of business.
Goodman Games: These guys are pretty retailer centric. I've gotten...packs of catalogs, a 20% sale from them (with concomitant reductions in my cost), vivid posters, package deal offers, as well as a setup for a 50% off sale of their 3.5 lines. They also have mod writers come and visit (probably geographically dependant).
White Wolf: They could do a lot more, but: when they have new releases, like Changeling, they offer bundles to customers. When Changeling came out, frinstance, they offered t-shirts and glowy keychains to give out to players who bought their book. When D&D came out, they had a good idea poorly executed: players could trade in their 3.5 books for Exalted hardcovers. Problem was that retailers had to take all the risk and preorder the Exalted books based on our guess of who would do so, and eat the cost if we overordered. They also offer quick-start free booklets to promote new game lines they come out with.
Privateer Press: These minis guys do not screw around. Box-top promotions for unique figures, extensive organized play support, and other posters and catalogs are great incentives.
There are others, but these stand out.
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Suggestions:
I am going for minimum cost to the publisher here, as the target audience for this post are RPG publishers who want to expand their bases.
Note: OP means "Organized Play". Think the RPGA, or Game Day materials, etc. and other support for regular players.
1) Booklets. This is the White Wolf best practice in my opinion. Small (10 pages), B/W no art printing w/glossy cover, free quick-start rules of their game system. Selling someone a $30-$40 game book is a lot easier if you can give them a small version for free that shows their game system in action before they buy.
2) Explanation sheets. These can be as simple as emails. Retailers can't possibly play every game sent to them, nor become experts on them. Send me something that tells me, not in MarketingSpeak but in Gamer-to-Gamer speak, what the heck your game is about and what it does. The sort of answers you would give at a convention to a potential customer who would ask you "what's this game about?" and "I play D&D, why would I play your game?" Don't overstate the case, either...just something that a gamer would want to hear.
3) Free copies. This is expensive, but: giving a store a free copy of your game lets us take a risk and run games at the store. MUCH better if it comes with a quick-start, 30-minute demo, version of the rules. This can also be done via (watermarked) PDFs or simple emails, or no-art B&W printouts or emails, if you don't want to pay for a book.
4) Promo materials. First, GIVE ME POSTERS. Players love posters with good art. If you're going to spend money on anything to promo your game at my store, give me a poster to put up. They're something that decorates the store and causes people to look and go "what's that game?" Make them look cool. Perhaps the second-coolest thing to do is to give out stuff people can use (this can be expensive), like keychains, or walle-sized stuff, or dice bags, or t-shirts, or minis, or dice.
5) Free RPG Day. Totally do this.
6) Product line OP support kits. This is for people who get into your game and is probably best solely for publishers with a following, like Green Ronin or Paizo. However, smaller publishers may want to band together to provide these sorts of things. If I could get a Green Ronin or Pathfinder kit for $20 that lets me give out COOL STUFF to players if they participate in a demo or an OP thingie, things players might like about your game that I can give them.
7) Piggyback marketing. This is something I've only seen for minis games, but: whatever it is you make for your game system, if it is something that could ALSO be used by D&D players, sell it or make it or whatever. You have no idea how irritating it is in terms of loss of potential sales for something like World of Warcraft minis, which are beautiful sculpts, but aren't 1"-square scale minis. If your game has something that brands it uniquely but has a dual purpose you're in like Flynn in terms of eyeballs from your demographic. For RPG publishers I would recommend things like character folders where people can put their sheets in but which have your art on them. You don't have to violate GSL to put out a character folder, or a tracking sheet that covers your game but could also be used to track things for D&D, or other things: notepads may well be another thing that can be used.
8) Web stuff. Retailer locators. Invites to your forums. Questionnaires to find out what we want and what you have to offer. Personal contact stuff. There are a lot of us, mind you, but we're usually a talkative and inquisitve bunch.
9) Distributor handouts. Stuff that you ask a distributor to package with outgoing shipments...like flyers you give a distributor that they put in a box when a retailer orders stuff from them.
10) Printable flyers. If you can't afford posters, you definately can afford this: give me something in PDF or other format in my email I can print out and post in my store. Art is fine for these. I'll print it and post it. You can even make signup sheets for demos of the game (though I'd recommend you give me some quick-start stuff to actually run the demo with, too.
11) Sale items. Discount a product of yours at the distributor level, or even at the direct level, so that I can offer a 10% sale or a 20% sale on item X (or an intro sale). This works best for games that are already out as a core book, but want deeper market penetration. If Bob and Joe play game X and folks hear about it, but might not want to invest in a new game at full retail, they might do it at a sale price...but I can't afford to discount things without help from you on my cost end.
12) PDFs we can sell, too. PDFs available solely through retailer websites, not just yours (or not even ON yours, just through us). I know your margin on those is HUGE. You can afford to cut us in on it, and you should. I can afford some blank CDs to burn your PDF on and give away or even sell or package with other sales.
13) Bagstuffers. Same thing as many of the items above, stuff I can put in customer's bags as they buy other things that they might want to look at.
That's what I got for now. I tried to present a variety of items throughout the cost range.