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[UPDATED] Pie For Everyone, Just Sliced Very Thinly: The Economics of RPG Book Production
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<blockquote data-quote="CardinalXimenes" data-source="post: 7660781" data-attributes="member: 58259"><p>This a an extremely interesting article with a great deal of useful information in it. It's particularly worthwhile to see some of the cost structure of another small publisher, one who goes in for full-color books with high-end production. The costs on some of those books seem brutal to me- $15K in production cost for Ashen Stars, for one. I can see how it could work out that way for a 300-page full-color game by a nameworthy author, but I can also see how it would be hard to make a lot of money with it. My own b/w interior games average about 175 pages and yet cost me only around $3K to produce, with POD sparing me from any capital investment in printing.</p><p></p><p>I've always been very hesitant to go in for high-end production values because I'm just not sure the ROI is there. I just don't feel confident that a $10,000 investment in lavish art is actually going to return me $10,001+ in additional sales that I'd not have otherwise made. I'm sure there's some kind of premium for full-color glossiness, I just don't know that it's going to be sufficient, and I'm very leery of sinking large amounts of capital into finding out.</p><p></p><p>Of course, this spring I expect to be running a Kickstarter for a small product explicitly to pay for that kind of fancy dress, so I can somewhat alleviate my ignorance. The product is a mercenary campaign supplement of essentially the same character as my other campaign supplements, so I'll have a good comparison baseline between it and the earlier b/w products. The Kickstarter itself is apt to distort things, though, since that's going to catch a lot of eyes that the earlier products didn't get a chance to play for. Still, I should be able to sift a few hints out of the resultant sales data.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CardinalXimenes, post: 7660781, member: 58259"] This a an extremely interesting article with a great deal of useful information in it. It's particularly worthwhile to see some of the cost structure of another small publisher, one who goes in for full-color books with high-end production. The costs on some of those books seem brutal to me- $15K in production cost for Ashen Stars, for one. I can see how it could work out that way for a 300-page full-color game by a nameworthy author, but I can also see how it would be hard to make a lot of money with it. My own b/w interior games average about 175 pages and yet cost me only around $3K to produce, with POD sparing me from any capital investment in printing. I've always been very hesitant to go in for high-end production values because I'm just not sure the ROI is there. I just don't feel confident that a $10,000 investment in lavish art is actually going to return me $10,001+ in additional sales that I'd not have otherwise made. I'm sure there's some kind of premium for full-color glossiness, I just don't know that it's going to be sufficient, and I'm very leery of sinking large amounts of capital into finding out. Of course, this spring I expect to be running a Kickstarter for a small product explicitly to pay for that kind of fancy dress, so I can somewhat alleviate my ignorance. The product is a mercenary campaign supplement of essentially the same character as my other campaign supplements, so I'll have a good comparison baseline between it and the earlier b/w products. The Kickstarter itself is apt to distort things, though, since that's going to catch a lot of eyes that the earlier products didn't get a chance to play for. Still, I should be able to sift a few hints out of the resultant sales data. [/QUOTE]
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