Self Publishing – How much are your products worth?

[daranp]

Self Publishing – How much are your products worth?

After reading through SelfPublishing – What's an artist worth? I was wording a reply that basically supported the notion that I do not believe that anyone should work for free. This opinion is based on the fact that I've worked in print and publishing for many years and understand and value the work produced by all contributors to the process –writers, artists, designers, editors, proof readers, printers and distributors etc. I've had my fare share of being asked to produce material at “mates rates” or just to help get people going... and it is for this reason, as an aspiring writer and publisher of RPG products myself, that I am attempting to raise funds over at KickStarter to help pay for illustrations for my next project In the Shadow of Wraiths: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paraspace/awakened-earth-in-the-shadow-of-wraiths

It is not an easy task and involves many hours of hard work. Whilst I certainly have the passion, drive and commitment, unfortunately, I do not (yet) make a living from this hobby.

That aside, I never posted my reply to that thread as I kept coming back to a nagging issue that, actually, many of us, as aspiring writers and publishers, seem to work for free all the time. Most of us have day jobs and do this as and when we can, because we love it – perhaps just dreaming that one day we will be able to pay the rent from the passion we have for the material we write. It therefore struck me that the same topic of debate could be had for those of us within or trying to break into this industry: Self Publishing – How much are your products worth?

When I started gaming back in '82, there was no internet and certainly no free products. Not even quick-starts or trial versions. In the UK, we had very limited means of finding out about new products and rarely a chance to play before purchase. Now, of course, things have drastically changed. Let's face it, the internet is so full of free RPG material that, if you never purchased another product again, you could still never get through it all in a life time.

So my questions to the community at large (both buyers and sellers) are, should we, as aspiring writers or publishers, whether as a blog, article, advice, adventure, monster or magic item etc. be producing our work for free? Do we feel that the amount of freely available material means that people are generally less inclined to purchase products or, certainly, products of a particular type e.g. a book of magic items or new spells? Does the market-place now demand that any new writer or publisher must have tried and tested material in the “free arena” before they have a hope of graduating into sales?

 

[Celebrim]

Usually, nothing.

The big problem with most tRPG products is that they are labors of love in a glutted market where most of the money that people would spend on RPG products they are already spending. We're talking very small markets for a luxury product no one actually needs. Add to that the fact that many of the consumers are also producers themselves and usually expect to have to adapt the writer's tastes to their own, and well it's just a crowded field to break into.

It's similar to trying to paint landscapes for a living. Go into a any small gallery in any mid-sized city and you'll see tons of hobbyists paintings and sculptures and other expressive art forms, and they'll be these $200 or $300 price tags on them which is more hope than anything else. They'll be lucky to cover the cost of their materials, much less get any sort of wage out of the hours they spent making the painting. In a way, it's a hold over from a culture now 200 years dead, where the painter was a respected and necessary professional with no end of work and no limit to how far they could rise if their work was good. People don't need a portrait painter any more. They don't need a landscape painter. These days, most of what they have on the walls they have their because it has deeply personal meaning to them, and paying a stranger to create it is a rare extravagance most middle class homes will never engage in. Even photographer is starting to go in that direction. Ask photographers about how hard it is to get paid for their work these days.

It's just too easy to publish now and too many are doing it. There isn't a shortage out there. If you are doing it, it's not for the money. It's because you've got this bug inside you that you just got to get out by getting it on paper and nothing else will do. There is no upward path out of that in my opinion. Your stuff is likely to be obscure and nearly worthless even on the rare occasion its actually good. Sorry to be cynical, but that's what I see.

If anything, it's harder now than it was in '82 to find the good material. I've been terribly disappointed by the quality and more importantly the utility of almost every pdf I've actually purchased. My overwhelming sensation has been, "I'll never use any of this stuff." At least back in the day I could open up a book in a game store and read through it. Mostly I'd put it back down but sometimes you get that sensation, "I just have to have this." Now I'm expected to buy a pdf with nothing more than a blurb and a 4 sentence review by a stranger.

I've learned over the past few years that its just easier to write all my own stuff.

Lists of things I'll never use and which are almost invariably stupid:

1) Books of spells. In the defense of the amateurs, TSR/WotC were actually the worst at this, publishing scores if not hundreds of variations on 'blast someone in a bizarre horrific way for YdX damage'. 'Cause someone to bleed from the eyes. They take 1d6 damage per level of the caster'. 'Dehydrate a living target. They take 2d6 damage per level of the caster.' Wasted ink. Unfortunately its created a thousand imitators.

2) Books of magic items. The worst of these are aimed at players (rather than GMs) with a sort of Sears catalog mentality. "New items for Bashers. Now with improved brokenness and more perfectly tailored for your build. Thrill your GM with your ability to evade all limitations." Again, they are just following TSR/WotC's lead.

3) Books of prestige classes or in general any class with a narrow archetype, no archetype, single personality or shtick, or which is simply mechanical variation for its own sake (ei, a fighter or wizard that uses slightly different mechanics). Basically, if my players haven't asked to be this character and I've had to say, "No, you can't, because I don't have a mechanical way to handle that concept", then I don't need your class.

4) Books of monsters (99% of the time). If your monster book contains a monster that is vaguely humanoid and has a claw, claw, bite routine, and a rend extraordinary ability, often with rage/frenzy as the cherry on top, you have no business publishing. Period. Get out and stop wasting people's time.

5) Books containing minor variations on or new ideas of any minor mechanical feature of a game. Books of feats for example. Nothing so tempts a would be designer into producing a pdf quite like a book of feats because they seem so darn easy to design because they are so short and in fact they are one of the hardest things to design well in 3.5.

6) Books on necromancers. There must be a thousand of them. All insipid and obvious.

There are tons of equally bad ideas, that's just off the top of my head. If that's your idea for a pdf, just save yourself the trouble and don't.

I'm on the fence about Fantasy Heartbreakers. I think in theory a new rules engine could be a really cool thing, but the problem right now is that there are so many engines being published that there is no way to create a gaming community with your new set of rules. And without a gaming community playing your game, its just going to wither. Creating a whole new innovative rules engine is probably the hardest thing a designer can set out to do, and supporting it probably the most expensive and laborious. It's probably less wasted ink than your average book of spells for D&D, but it's probably going to make even less money. It's hard enough making a living as an RPG designer working for WotC (consider the tiny size of their staff now), Green Ronin, or Pazio. Striking out on your own, I got to be honest, if you do it, you'll be one of the only people in the world who does it.

 

[Celebrim]

Things that probably are worth money:

1) Maps: They aren't worth much to me because I can do my own, and if you can do your own, no one else's are usually worth anything because its your own imagination you care about. But many otherwise very capable GMs lack either the ability or the time to create maps, so really good maps are something they need and will pay for.

2) Adventures: Likewise, not everyone that can run an adventure well can write one. This is an area where the work might have marginal value to me in that I might buy it, because it might save me some work even if I just can use a couple of the encounters or find the basic plot really well done and worth implementing with some changes.

3) Support for an unsupported setting using a familiar game engine: For example of something that was innovative here was using OD&D style rules to support a heroic sci-fi setting. If you do something obvious like that, but its despite being obvious something no one else has thought to do, you'll probably make some money doing it if you do it at all well.

4) Fifth Edition Support: Only because 5e is terribly supported by WotC right now, there is a tiny window where offering obvious things like new clerical domains to bridge play for people turning 2e specialty priests or 3e domains into 5e equivalents has value, at least until WotC shuts it down by doing it themselves (which, it's doubtful with their tiny staff they are actually going to do, preferring apparently a more Steam/Diablo III model of making money off of other people's transactions).

I don't know. There are probably other concepts out there; those are just ones I thought of. The important thing is that a lot of this is really hard to do well. I mean, the things I listed as being valueless are valueless largely because people seem to not grasp just how hard it would be to do that thing really well.

 

[delericho]

After reading through SelfPublishing – What's an artist worth? I was wording a reply that basically supported the notion that I do not believe that anyone should work for free.

Eh. IMO it's okay for someone to choose to work for free. It all depends on what you want out of it and how you think you'll best achieve that.

But the key word there is "choose" - and in particular...

I've had my fare share of being asked to produce material at “mates rates” or just to help get people going...

Yeah, you shouldn't be being asked to work for free/reduced rates. If you want to help out a friend, that's another thing... but it should be coming from you, not them.

So my questions to the community at large (both buyers and sellers) are, should we, as aspiring writers or publishers, whether as a blog, article, advice, adventure, monster or magic item etc. be producing our work for free?

No. You'll want to create some stuff prior to publishing in order to get used to it, get it polished to standard, or whatever else, but there's no requirement that that stuff ever be made public in any form. You can choose to put it on a blog, or you can equally choose not to.

Do we feel that the amount of freely available material means that people are generally less inclined to purchase products or, certainly, products of a particular type e.g. a book of magic items or new spells?

Conversely, and unfortunately, the answer to this is probably "yes". The more free material there is, the more likely it is people find what they need for free, and the less likely they are to buy a product that might suit.

Does the market-place now demand that any new writer or publisher must have tried and tested material in the “free arena” before they have a hope of graduating into sales?

No, I don't think so. But that the market-place probably does demand is that you have something that sets you apart from the competition - either you already have a 'name' (Monte Cook, John Wick), or you have a high-profile blog (Zak S), or something.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm currently running 3.0e edition with extensive house rules. I will be doing so for the considerable future, as it's now the 6th year real life of the campaign with 4 or 5 more years to complete its main story arc. That in itself is a good indication of why I don't need to buy a bunch of material. As someone doing this for 30+ years now, I already have more than a life time's worth of ideas and resources to draw from.

I made a list once of everything I would like to have and will probably end up writing myself, organized how I'd like to have it organized, and done according to my personal tastes.

1) Player’s Handbook
2) Dungeon Master’s Guide
3) Monster Manual 1 (Animals, Beasts, Dragons, Plants and other Creatures of the Natural World)
4) Monster Manual 2 (Aberrations, Constructs, Undead and other Unnatural Things)
5) Monster Manual 3 (Spirits)
6) Monster Manual 4 (Outsiders)
7) Rogues Gallery 1 (Common Folk)
8) Rogues Gallery 2 (Noble Folk)
9) Rogues Gallery 3 (Legends, Heroes, and Villains)
10) Deities & Demigods
11) The Book of Craft
12) The Book of Books
13) The Book of the Apprentice
14) The Book of the Journeyman
15) The Book of the Archmage
16) Manual of the Planes
17) Elf Handbook
18) Dwarf Handbook
19) Sidhe Handbook
20) Changling Handbook
21) Pixie Handbook
22) Goblin Handbook
23) Human Handbook
24) Orine Handbook
25) Idreth Handbook
26) Sorcerer’s Handbook
27) Shaman’s Handbook
28) Champion’s Handbook

To give you the idea, the current 'Player's Handbook' is about a 600 page document based off of parts of the 3.0 and 3.5 SRDs, mashed together with a few good ideas from the 3e Ravenloft core book, and some of Monte Cook's alternate Player's Handbook, the Green Ronin Shaman master class book, and Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous (all books I bought because I admired them so highly), and otherwise about 1/3rd original content. It would be basically impossible to obtain that document on the market place, because it's too my personal tastes.

But for many purposes, the 3e official Player's Handbook is a sufficient reference.

For many of the books on the list, I'm not perfectly happy with the official references but the equivalent is 'good enough'. Until I take the time to write the monsters up to my particular tastes and rules modifications, the SRD and PRD's are generally good enough and often used in play. Ditto the Manual of the Planes, even though the planes in some details work very differently than the normal D&D world which you'd find out the first time you tried to turn ethereal and walk through a stone wall.

The big hard work for me other than just compilation and revision would be #11-#15, and in particular #11 and #12 covering how to make things in D20 and how they work once you make them has been for me a huge hole in the rules since 3e came out. I've seen some very good attempts at patching this that only convinced me just how needed rules revisions actually are and just how hard they would be to do well. Just as 'Hot Pursuit' was an instant purchase because it filled a hole I'd found in the rules, a really good product that filled the holes as I saw them even if I wasn't 100% happy would be a 'just shut up and take my money' situation. Likewise, Green Ronin's 'Book of the Righteous' but with a much broader more traditional 'lots and lots of gods exist' pantheon rather than the beautiful tightly written one in the book, might be less aesthetically pleasing, but I'd buy it on practical grounds. Similarly, if Beta Bunny follows up on 'Predators', that's a shut up and take my money moment.

So consider the question, "How much is my product worth to Celebrim?", and then consider that your whole market is probably 10,000 people in the whole world who are each as esoteric and specific as I am. You've got a few hardcore people who collect RPGs as reading material who buy stuff they'll never use - the GURPS customer base if you will - but mostly you are dealing with a small niche in a highly niche market.

Basic economics says that isn't worth much.

 

[Reflected_Shadows]

This is kinda a situation of "too many chiefs and not enough indians", if you will. (I will try to find a better method to express the idea).

Everyone has 5-6 campaign worlds, classes and monsters and wants to publish their own stuff and very few people want to buy those works. The market is small, especially in any area, and when you find someone who plays, they might say something like "Me? Oh, I just LARP" or "I only play Rifts." One area I lived in, there were about 60 people who played other game systems that hated D&D. It was hard to find someone to play a few games. So, what is a book worth that I don't have an active use for?

Also, does a book force me to use your gameworld, or does it just fit like a puzzle piece into any? I find a lot of products take good advice and link all of their classes, races, spells and feats together but this also creates a tight system and many people prefer a looser system they can port in to whatever system they are using.

I will end by saying anything homebrew will carry the mark of being made by "some guy on the internet" and lack credulity to most people. Especially if there is an official product for it. The first time someone makes a popular book about Hobbits, Ents, Orcs and Wizards, everything to come after is just a cheap copycat and the first guy did it better every time. This is a problem of audience perception of cannon and anthology, and it is a problem of genuine authenticity. When twilight came out - many other crappy, cheap McVampire infestation occurred. In many cases, people said "Twilight did it first!" even when they were wrong (Vampire Diaries came out before Twilight), and even then, I used to say "Vampires don't sparkle. Bram Stoker's Dracula would gobble all those sparkling McVampires for brunch. Lestat from the vampire chronicles and interview with a vampire would totally screw their whole world up."

That doesn't mean we shouldn't try - but we should have realistic expectations about how the game is played, who the prime players are, and what the consequences of being a functional nobody are - and by all means, try to break out. I only know about Kaminanda music because he took the risk of competing in an ultra-niche genre of a market where more people steal than buy. So good luck to all of us! We will need it.

 

[delericho]

The first time someone makes a popular book about Hobbits, Ents, Orcs and Wizards, everything to come after is just a cheap copycat and the first guy did it better every time.

While there's some truth in that...

When twilight came out - many other crappy, cheap McVampire infestation occurred. In many cases, people said "Twilight did it first!" even when they were wrong (Vampire Diaries came out before Twilight)...

The fact that Twilight was a massive success despite Vampire Diaries getting there first... and Buffy/Angel... and Vampire: the Masquerade... and Interview with the Vampire... and indeed Dracula does indicate that you don't have to be first - you just have to bring the right product to the right market at the right time.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

I've been terribly disappointed by the quality and more importantly the utility of almost every pdf I've actually purchased. My overwhelming sensation has been, "I'll never use any of this stuff." At least back in the day I could open up a book in a game store and read through it. Mostly I'd put it back down but sometimes you get that sensation, "I just have to have this." Now I'm expected to buy a pdf with nothing more than a blurb and a 4 sentence review by a stranger.

I've learned over the past few years that its just easier to write all my own stuff.

I feel the same way. To be honest, I have had this same experience with most game products that I have purchased sight unseen in the last five years or so.

I have always tended to write my own stuff, but I enjoy reading rpg materials whether I am going to use them in a campaign or not. It's getting harder for me to find stuff that is both well written and has any hint of originality to it, though.

These days it's not very likely that I will purchase any game or supplement unless I have looked through someone else's copy or seen a pretty extensive sample of what's inside (most game stores in my area don't have a great stock of rpg material). I have just been burned too many times.

 

[Reflected_Shadows]

While there's some truth in that...

It came from a few interviews about the subject of contending with "being the default cheap copy" just because someone else came first. One of them was with a pro wrestler, Demolition Ax (Bill Eadie) who said "Yeah, the first Indian and all others are a cheap copy, the Road Warriors came out first... were we just a cheap copy? Well, if you let that stop you, you must have thin skin... besides, a lot of very successful products are heavily inspired".

The fact that Twilight was a massive success despite Vampire Diaries getting there first... and Buffy/Angel... and Vampire: the Masquerade... and Interview with the Vampire... and indeed Dracula does indicate that you don't have to be first - you just have to bring the right product to the right market at the right time.

Which shows the occasional reset button. I offer that when the first renditions of Ravenloft came out, that Bram Stoker was relatively in recent memory - so the vampires were inspired by that recent memory, much more than the popular film Dracula or the cult film Nosferatu. On one hand, we can all go around looking to be the next reset button, or we can look for problems in current markets to address. I strongly hate Twilight and feel it reads as it were written by a high school level writer. I have peer reviewed better stuff in undergraduate english classes, seriously. Twilight capitalized on the last 10+ years of Vampires being focused on the themes of Wes Craven's Vampires and Dusk to Dawn. Either a stupid, slapstick teen comedy - or as unintelligible monsters. The few efforts to portray a modern vampire - like Forever Knight, went largely unnoticed. There was also a few seasons of a Vampire: The Masquerade show. And it gained little attention. So, there was a desire among "Vampire Fans" to have vampires portrayed more like "The Crow" and less like "Dusk til Dawn".

That is where Stephanie Meyer capitalized. The people I know who said they liked twilight said it felt like "The Crow" version of a vampire movie (I strongly disagree for a hundred bajillion reasons, but the point is - people wanted a "The Crow" version of vampires, and whether or not she did create that, she made people feel like she did). Whatever it is you want to do - I think a good option is to find something that "I would like if it weren't formula fiction crap at the front register at Walmart", then make a more intellectual, in depth version that hits all the right marks. Because as said above, we still have to try whatsoever in order to succeed.

 

[delericho]

Which shows the occasional reset button.

Perhaps. But Buffy only ended in 2003, and the first volume of Twilight was published in 2005. That's not much space for a reset button, especially given how close some of the subject matter is.

I strongly hate Twilight and feel it reads as it were written by a high school level writer. I have peer reviewed better stuff in undergraduate english classes, seriously.

Stephanie Meyer knew her audience - probably largely the same girls who had read "Harry Potter" as children and were now teens. Indeed, some of the creative decisions are quite shrewd - notably Bella's relative vacuity of character, allowing the reader to project herself onto the character. As literature, it's dross; as a product, it's genius.

So, there was a desire among "Vampire Fans" to have vampires portrayed more like "The Crow" and less like "Dusk til Dawn".

?? Not only does "The Crow" predate "From Dusk til Dawn" by two years, it also doesn't feature vampires.

Whatever it is you want to do - I think a good option is to find something that "I would like if it weren't formula fiction crap at the front register at Walmart", then make a more intellectual, in depth version that hits all the right marks. Because as said above, we still have to try whatsoever in order to succeed.[/QUOTE]

Sadly, I don't think quality is a sure way to succeed... and may even be detrimental to that success. "The Da Vinci Code", "Twilight", "Fifty Shades of Grey", and the "Fast & Furious" movies aren't exactly shining beacons of quality.