I often compare fiction writing and publishing with game designing and publishing. They’re similar creative efforts in many ways, especially in tabletop and in the lower ends of video games where you can have one person creating the game.
To compare with my own book Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish (2012 McFarland), I wanted to find out what the average nonfiction book sells over a lifetime (turns out, about 2,000). Along the way I ran across “10 awful truths about book publishing,” an online by the president of Berrett Koehler publishers in late September 2016. It's about books, but if you change a few words eight of the ten points are also about games, especially RPGs (which, after all, are books). RPGs face the same problems for much the same reasons.
I am going to paraphrase and talk about these “Truths” in RPG terms.
Sometimes the truth is daunting, but it's better to know the truth, than to act on bad assumptions.
Reference: The original awful truths.
This article was contributed by Lewis Pulsipher (lewpuls) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. You can follow Lew on his web site and his Udemy course landing page. If you enjoy the daily news and articles from EN World, please consider contributing to our Patreon!
To compare with my own book Game Design: How to Create Video and Tabletop Games, Start to Finish (2012 McFarland), I wanted to find out what the average nonfiction book sells over a lifetime (turns out, about 2,000). Along the way I ran across “10 awful truths about book publishing,” an online by the president of Berrett Koehler publishers in late September 2016. It's about books, but if you change a few words eight of the ten points are also about games, especially RPGs (which, after all, are books). RPGs face the same problems for much the same reasons.
I am going to paraphrase and talk about these “Truths” in RPG terms.
- The number of book (or RPG) titles published has increased immensely. As a result, each individual title sells fewer copies even though the market as a whole is growing. My book publisher McFarland, which is a large independent, reacted to this by publishing more books. The reaction of most game publishers is to publish more game titles, even though they can sell fewer copies of each. They're trying to avoid a drop in total sales. But the result is even MORE titles being published. Further, in RPGs it becomes easier over time to self-publish an RPG thanks to crowd-funding (which is particularly friendly to tabletop games of all kinds) and to digital printing, which makes small print runs more practical right down to Print on Demand (PoD).
- Book industry overall sales are stagnant despite the explosion of titles published, and despite the growth of e-book sales.
- (Cont.) Nowadays RPG sales are increasing, but each individual designer or publisher below the very top has a smaller piece of the pie.
- Average individual book (RPG) sales are shockingly small and falling fast. Also true in tabletop games in general. Here I’ll take average to be the median, not the mean, as the big hits in RPGs skew the mean. Think about the hundreds of self-published RPGs: usually the Kickstarter has attracted, not thousands but hundreds of backers,. Sometimes they get into main distribution, usually they don't, and however many backers they got is the amount of the sales they get. 500 (not thousand) is OK for independents selling games, modules, and settings.
- A book (RPG) has far less than a 1% chance of being stocked in average bookstore. Go to a game shop, compare the RPGs they have in stock with the number of RPGs and supplements being published. In many cases the RPGs on the shop shelves were published years ago, not published in the past year.
- It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books. In games, we lose many friendly local game shops annually, despite the profits that come from Magic: the Gathering which tend to keep shops afloat. There are so many new games coming out that people don't pay attention to the old ones for long, and neither do the retailers. They move on to the next new one. The “Cult of the New” is very strong. So the game sells when it’s released (if at all), but not later.
- Most books (RPGs?) today are selling only to the author’s and publisher’s communities. Discoverability is a big problem. Discoverability essentially means “if they don't know your RPG exists they can't buy it;” it's hard to get the attention of buyers. (Example: how many readers knew I’d had a game design book published, though it has been mentioned here before, and even though it’s been selling for six years?)
- Most book (RPG) marketing today is done by authors, not by publishers. That’s certainly true for independent RPGs. Think about this from a major publisher's point of view: they sell fewer of each title so however much money they have to promote games, they have to allocate more carefully, that usually means they allocate to something they think is going to be a hit. That is, only a few potential hits get the big treatment, so designers have to go on social media, blogs, podcasts, and so on simply to let people know that their game exists. Reviews may not make much difference.
- No other industry than books has so many new product introductions. [Video games may have more, and pricing there is dismal indeed, with many products free-to-play.] Not true for RPGs, which are a small part of the tabletop game industry and don’t approach numbers of book introductions. But the volume of RPG introductions may still be very large compared with the damand.
- A never-ending state of turmoil. It’s a mess, with the market changing rapidly. Whether RPGs are also in a state of turmoil is unclear.
Sometimes the truth is daunting, but it's better to know the truth, than to act on bad assumptions.
Reference: The original awful truths.
This article was contributed by Lewis Pulsipher (lewpuls) as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. You can follow Lew on his web site and his Udemy course landing page. If you enjoy the daily news and articles from EN World, please consider contributing to our Patreon!