darjr
I crit!
I'm just saying, my flgs hosts games. The B&N does not and will not.
Retailer's Stance on PDF Deals
I'm just saying, my flgs hosts games. The B&N does not and will not.
gamersgambit
First Post
To: Erik
Erik,
You've my sincere apologies for my mischaracterization of your situation. I did not do due diligence in my research regarding Paizo products and Amazon (frankly, I did a search, found Pathfinder Chronicles, and its two companion books, on sale there, and made my judgement from there).
That being said: Keep in mind I have NO problem with your subscription model or your online store. I understand your issues with programmers (if you saw my store's website...well, let's just say I do it myself and leave it at that, and I am not an expert at HTML by any means).
I look forward to what you have planned for Free RPG day, and everything else you do. I am not a Pathfinder player myself, but the quality and number of your products draw high praise from my customers and (speaking not as a fanboy, but as a business owner) it's my belief that you are the future of the development of the 3.5-esque model of D&D and I wish you nothing but the best.
My apologies, again, for the adversarial tone.
Erik,
You've my sincere apologies for my mischaracterization of your situation. I did not do due diligence in my research regarding Paizo products and Amazon (frankly, I did a search, found Pathfinder Chronicles, and its two companion books, on sale there, and made my judgement from there).
That being said: Keep in mind I have NO problem with your subscription model or your online store. I understand your issues with programmers (if you saw my store's website...well, let's just say I do it myself and leave it at that, and I am not an expert at HTML by any means).
I look forward to what you have planned for Free RPG day, and everything else you do. I am not a Pathfinder player myself, but the quality and number of your products draw high praise from my customers and (speaking not as a fanboy, but as a business owner) it's my belief that you are the future of the development of the 3.5-esque model of D&D and I wish you nothing but the best.
My apologies, again, for the adversarial tone.
Friadoc
Explorer
Now that is how a game store lost my patronage, as they moved to a larger space, advertising what would be more playing space and display space, only to fill most of the store up with bulky, wide-display board game items and exiling the role-playing game books to a library-style shelf display that only showed spines and crammed them into a fractional portion of their store. Prior to this moment and move, this was a store that had a fairly equal display of all their games, be it board, role-playing, collectible card game, or what not, yet after the move I felt as if they did not want my business anymore.
Thus, they lost my business and that was their fault, not that of PDFs or an online store. While I prefer to be a patron of a local game store, specifically a friendly one, it is not something I owe them, but something that they have to earn from me.
When I first moved to Boise, back around 1996 or so, Dark Horse Comics and Games earned my loyalty, through the moves, including the one out of town a bit, and until the store transitioned away from being a store front place. The owner was a solid, gregarious guy who loved talking about the industry and offered nice member serves and other things that earned loyalty. He also got that PDFs were PDFs and books were books, or seemed to, but he also knew that it was up to him to lose customers, nobody else.
While I might do it differently than some folks, I don't go to game stores to play my game, I go there to get products, talk game talk, and sometimes meet folk, sometimes even participate in an event. That's it. The only time that I ever played in a game store, not counting Free RPG Day, is when I was a member of White Wolf's demo team, starting with Kindred of the East, and ending a few years ago.
I'd almost be willing to be that the sheer majority of gamers play at their residences or residences of friends, too. While I could be wrong, I've a feeling that I'm not, and I think that one thing that some of these game stores might be forgetting, understandably given the economic weight of the subject, is that they are their for the customers, just like the gaming producers are, and not the other way around.
If we want to buy PDFs, we should be able to get PDFs, just like if we want books, we should be able to get books, and that's just that.
gamersgambit
First Post
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.
-----------------------------------
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.
JohnnyQuest
First Post
Great stuff, Scott. Thanks!
Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. There are a lot of avenues to explore and do follow on for smaller publishers, and even the bigger ones who might not be taking full advantage of these options.
That's probably true of most role-players and when we didn't have much game space at our first store, RPGs were a solid seller, proportional with everything else. When we moved to a much bigger store, with lots of game space, RPG sales didn't budge, while the other games skyrocketed in sales by about 60%.
These other games actually blossom and become a much bigger money maker with game space. However, that empty space is expensive, and it puts a new perspective on what you're selling. There is pressure to keep up the sales, as the rent on that empty space is thousands of dollars a month. With that in mind, RPGs now seem like an immovable section of wood pulp, immune to promotion. You start looking at the games that do well with in-store gaming and wonder how they would look in the RPG section. Also, imagine having to keep up and promote 30 games (our RPG section) while the same space in miniatures comprises 4 games.
I often joke that I should replace our game space with a selection of dining room tables, since so few people seem to have them to play on. The reality is that all the other games require new opponents on a regular basis, while RPGs tend to be played among friends, usually at home. There are exceptions, obviously, and our RPGA group fills the game center every Thursday night, with overflow into other evenings.
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About the Distributors
There is a lot of anger directed at the game distributors. Here's how RPGs generally get to the game stores:
Wizards of the Coast. The only "major" direct to retailer company will ship books directly to the store with a 50% margin for the retailer. Wizards makes 50%, and the retailer makes 50%. 50% is generally what retailers need to survive in a brick and mortar location. The actual "profit" on game sales is about 5-8% (most stores do about $250,000/year in sales, so do the math). Nobody but the landlord is getting rich.
Distributors. Distributors have traditionally been the "gatekeeper" of the game industry. They decide what game will get "picked up" and sold to retailers. Retailers are pretty much out of the loop here, although we reguarly request distributors to carry an item. If a distributor wants to carry a role-playing game, they'll take 10% for their efforts. 40% will go to the publisher and the other 50% (it's shrinking) goes to the retailer. This isn't a bad deal for the publisher, provided they get paid on time (they don't), everything arrives in one piece and they don't have damages (they do), and the distributor re-stocks regularly (they apparently don't). The publisher also pays for the shipping, which is probably another 10% of the value of their goods. But what if the gatekeeper says they don't want your product? You've got a couple options.
Consolidator. There are several companies in the game industry that will collect all the publishers that the distributors denied and bundle them up in a more managable package for the distributors. For example, a distributor might not want a lot of a product, maybe a dozen copies of an RPG book, making it not worth their while. However, if a consolidator can bundle that with ten other companies with a dozen product, we're talking something more cost effective. The consolidator, however, is not a charity, and it demands about a 33% or so cut of the profits. So we have 50% for the retailer, 10% fo the distributor, 33% for the consolidator, and a measly 7% or so for the publisher. That's pretty crummy for the publisher, but it's that, or sell direct. In other words, the gatekeeper says the product isn't worth their time, but the publisher wants to get it through the tiers to the game stores and into the hands of happy customers. Some of the known entities that use a consolidator include Goodman Games and Pinnacle.
So why not go direct to the retailer? It's clear you can make a 100% margin by going direct to the consumer, but that's difficult, and many publishers already do that online and at conventions and need additional revenue streams. It's difficult to go direct to the reatailer because of the difficulties in bookkeeping and shipping. For example, my store carries books from 30 different RPG publishers. If I had to manage invoices and receiving directly, it would be overwhelming and I would cut it down to about 10 companies. The smallest guys, likely the ones using the consolidators, would get hurt. Likewise, small publishers, many of whom have day jobs, don't want to manage invoices and individual shipping for 1000 game stores. Granted, it may actually be cost effective if you're paying a consolidator, but there must be a better solution, right?
The answer here, the publishers will tell you, is not PDF sales. Those are "different" products sold for a different purpose and experience. Retailers are highly suspicious of this argument (I agree with the publishers). Posts here tell a muddled story.
There is a lot of anger directed at the game distributors. Here's how RPGs generally get to the game stores:
Wizards of the Coast. The only "major" direct to retailer company will ship books directly to the store with a 50% margin for the retailer. Wizards makes 50%, and the retailer makes 50%. 50% is generally what retailers need to survive in a brick and mortar location. The actual "profit" on game sales is about 5-8% (most stores do about $250,000/year in sales, so do the math). Nobody but the landlord is getting rich.
Distributors. Distributors have traditionally been the "gatekeeper" of the game industry. They decide what game will get "picked up" and sold to retailers. Retailers are pretty much out of the loop here, although we reguarly request distributors to carry an item. If a distributor wants to carry a role-playing game, they'll take 10% for their efforts. 40% will go to the publisher and the other 50% (it's shrinking) goes to the retailer. This isn't a bad deal for the publisher, provided they get paid on time (they don't), everything arrives in one piece and they don't have damages (they do), and the distributor re-stocks regularly (they apparently don't). The publisher also pays for the shipping, which is probably another 10% of the value of their goods. But what if the gatekeeper says they don't want your product? You've got a couple options.
Consolidator. There are several companies in the game industry that will collect all the publishers that the distributors denied and bundle them up in a more managable package for the distributors. For example, a distributor might not want a lot of a product, maybe a dozen copies of an RPG book, making it not worth their while. However, if a consolidator can bundle that with ten other companies with a dozen product, we're talking something more cost effective. The consolidator, however, is not a charity, and it demands about a 33% or so cut of the profits. So we have 50% for the retailer, 10% fo the distributor, 33% for the consolidator, and a measly 7% or so for the publisher. That's pretty crummy for the publisher, but it's that, or sell direct. In other words, the gatekeeper says the product isn't worth their time, but the publisher wants to get it through the tiers to the game stores and into the hands of happy customers. Some of the known entities that use a consolidator include Goodman Games and Pinnacle.
So why not go direct to the retailer? It's clear you can make a 100% margin by going direct to the consumer, but that's difficult, and many publishers already do that online and at conventions and need additional revenue streams. It's difficult to go direct to the reatailer because of the difficulties in bookkeeping and shipping. For example, my store carries books from 30 different RPG publishers. If I had to manage invoices and receiving directly, it would be overwhelming and I would cut it down to about 10 companies. The smallest guys, likely the ones using the consolidators, would get hurt. Likewise, small publishers, many of whom have day jobs, don't want to manage invoices and individual shipping for 1000 game stores. Granted, it may actually be cost effective if you're paying a consolidator, but there must be a better solution, right?
The answer here, the publishers will tell you, is not PDF sales. Those are "different" products sold for a different purpose and experience. Retailers are highly suspicious of this argument (I agree with the publishers). Posts here tell a muddled story.
Cost effective? 7% sounds really scary to cover development and printing costs and probably shipping costs to such a consolidator. Unless I have a wrong impression on printing costs here. No, really, how much do printing costs usually are for these books? Some examples would be appreciated.
Sorry, but one does not need to stock every terrible game with a terrible risk-to-reward ratio and profit margin on the earth to be a "game store."
Rather, a game store that doesn't stock games that aren't worth selling at a store that supports gaming.
The question here has nothing to do with PDF-supporting companies and everything to do with "why should anyone bother buying from you instead of Borders, Barnes and Noble (not to mention Amazon)?"
The answer to that question should be the same with or without PDFs entering into the equation. It isn't like selection is going to help you get ahead if the Borders or Amazon have all the same access as you do but with lower prices and more inventory.
Now I am intrigued by the idea of direct and exclusive support of Game Stores. Offering products and purchase promotions that are exclusive to hobby stores is probably the only way for publishers to continue to enjoy the marketing features of brick-and-mortar stores. Without such initiatives the Big Chain Bookstores and Amazon are going to put an end to Books in Game Stores one way or the other. Either game store owners will stop taking risks on book inventory and shelf space and focus on games better for their business models (Board Games and TCGs) or they will go out of business due to assuming unnecessary risks and losses on inventory that is constantly being undercut.
Without those brick-and-mortar fronts I honestly don't see smaller publishers having good long-term prospects in TRPGs.
- Marty Lund
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