Under the Hood – The Future of Sales

[Morrus]

Under the Hood – The Future of Sales

Once you have a game designed, tested, and ready to engage a skeptical public, there’s still one last hurdle to overcome: selling the damn thing. And if you thought you busted your hump just getting a finished product ready, you’re in for a nasty surprise.

Read this excellent article over at Roleplayer's Chronicle.

This touches on some comments I made in a recent thread - that the RPG industry is a growing number of thousands and thousands of small-press publishers, and a handful of larger full-time companies. The former operate in an arena where it's getting tougher to sell more than a few dozen copies simply because there are so many publishers, selling through so few online retailers which are taking in close to 50% of the gross revenue of each of those products.

So the selling of product is getting increasingly hard for those in the small-press market. The sheer volume of them exploded with the PDF market, and again with the Kickstarter trend (I know - I've taken advantage of both!) When I started selling PDFs over a decade ago, back when RPGNow was just starting out, our "Wild Spellcraft" supplement for D&D 3E sold thousands of copies in a short period of time. These days, a product of ours at RPGNow will sell perhaps a couple of dozen copies - it stays on the front page for a matter of hours before disappearing into the vast backend warehouse. Where I'm lucky is that I have EN World subscriptions to back that up and keep me selling the numbers I need, but not everyone is that lucky. And I feel it's likely very difficult for a lot of small-press publishers - it's never been easier to produce content, and the result of that is that it's becoming increasingly harder to sell it. That's great for consumers, of course!

 

[gdmcbride]

It is still possible for a small publisher to do well in this market. I know. I started a small imprint Fire Mountain Games in September of last year and in less than a year have grown into a company that is supporting two full time employees.

All without a kickstarter.

It took creating a unique and compelling product that fulfilled a niche that everyone had been ignoring -- "Way of the Wicked" -- an evil campaign for Pathfinder.

The first book was nominated for an Ennie. We have Jason Bulmahn freelancing for our upcoming fifth and sixth books. And we've social networked extensively.

It is possible, but it is hard work. I've gotten very little sleep the last year. But it has definitely been worth it.

Gary McBride
Fire Mountain Games

 

[prosfilaes]

Personally, it's hard to sell PDFs to me outside DriveThruRPG. I was considering buying Zeitgeist and would have done that directly, but Curse of the Crimson Throne won out. Steve Jackson Games sells directly to me through e23, mainly because they're the only supplier for GURPS and In Nomine. I've bought a few on Kickstarter. I really don't want to fuss with other companies, especially as I can trust e23 and DriveThruRPG to have the most up-to-date copies of my PDFs.

 

[Morrus]

It's probably worth noting that for those publishers who go the Kickstarter route, while that undoubtedly results in additional exposure and sales, it also functions as a pre-order system and so likely cannibilizes potential later sales. Not that that's a bad thing - it can be more profitable and less risky to do it that way, especially if you're effectively paying a 4% sales fee rather than a 50% sales fee by simply switching out the middle man in favour of Kickstarter.com.

 

[gamerprinter]

It's probably worth noting that for those publishers who go the Kickstarter route, while that undoubtedly results in additional exposure and sales, it also functions as a pre-order system and so likely cannibilizes potential later sales. Not that that's a bad thing - it can be more profitable and less risky to do it that way, especially if you're effectively paying a 4% sales fee rather than a 50% sales fee by simply switching out the middle man in favour of Kickstarter.com.

While I'm certain there's some truth in that. Our patronage payed for product from last year, Curse of the Golden Spear trilogy of modules for Kaidan still continually sells in stores world-wide, through Cubicle 7 Entertainment's distribution channels - so the previous patronage didn't necessarily rob from potential buyers.

Now the Kaidan Campaign Setting Kickstarter is substantially more expensive, so I'd have to agree with you more, regarding this one, as I am sure I have not sold $4000 worth of Kaidan anything over the last year, and that's how much we've collected so far.

That said, I know for a fact that a good number of our current pledge makers never heard of Kaidan, prior to this Kickstarter, so the pool of people who are aware is much larger now - which I think is a good thing, and possibly suggesting a much larger market available.

Things are looking good!