Sean K. Reynolds talks RPG salaries, puts his on record.

[aramis erak]

w

I suppose value is in the eye of the beholder, but when I looked at Columbia Games' website it looks like the current edition of Harn retails for $50 with most of the larger source books going for $30-40. That doesn't strike me as being particularly outrageous. It's true that you could spend hundreds of dollars without touching the bottom but that's only because they have so many books available for purchase.

Hârmaster can be run with just the core...but then one has mostly implied setting.

 

[Sacrosanct]

You’re talking about economies of scale and marketing reach, and yes big rpg publishes like WotC and Paizo absolutely benefit from that. But let’s be realistic — they are not representative of the industry, most of which is a hundred times or more smaller. A small company often literally can’t sell a couple of hundred books, let alone a hundred thousand. There’s no magic wand (Kickstarter is the closest thing to one).

Yep. It's super hard for smaller publishers to come close to paying reasonable rates because the sales volume is so small. Just throwing numbers out there:

Assume a 175,000 word book (that's about 300 pages)
$0.07 a word for writing = $12,500
Editing = $2000
black and white art = $150 per page, average 1 full page every 8 pages (or 1/4 page every other page) = $5500
color interior art = $500 per page, average 1 full page every 8 pages (or 1/4 page every other page) = $20,000
Cover = $500-$1000
layout $10 per page = $3000

To put out a professional looking book, you're spending $23,500 for a black and white interior, $38,500 for a full color interior book.

If you manage to sell 500 of them (which is a great amount for a small timer), using a channel like DTRPG (which takes 30% if you're exclusive) at an MSRP of $49.00 and print&shipping is $16, that nets you $9,100. Most indie small time publishers are lucky to sell half that, so let's round to $5000. Just to break even, you gotta look at that cost list above and decide what you're not paying for.

The small time publisher (and most medium sized ones), will have to rely on stock art, which these days is much better than it was 10 years ago in quality and quantity. That saves you a lot of money, but the danger in that is that your book starts to look like every other book. And most indie publishers do their own writing and layout (too many do their own editing as well--yikes; that's the one thing I wouldn't skimp on, speaking from experience).

Those rates above are pretty industry standard average for decent quality, and we all agree that industry standard is probably too low.

As you say, kickstarter is really the only tool that allows a small timer to put out a professional looking book unless it's funded personally by the creator (which is what I do).

My recent Chromatic Dungeons book that ended last month raised just over $10,000 on KS. After costs (and I did use stock art as well as privately commissioned stuff, and did my own writing and layout), I broke even. That was black and white interior. The art budget was $5000 and editing was $2000, and other costs ate up the rest.

The project I'm working on now is full color interior, and my allotted art budget is over $20,000. That's just art. I'm guessing your art budget for Level Up is significantly more. I'm hoping my new project will be more successful than my Chromatic Dungeons was (I think so, since this new one is 5e compatible and not OSR). I'm pretty sure you'll make a tidy sum on Level UP due to the money you've been able to invest in it (top quality looking books), and due to having a large platform. But for the average indie publisher, doing a project like that is simply out of reach. I'm just now at a point where I can start investing decent money into projects.

Which circles back to the point: it's hard for writers and artists to make a living in this industry because most publishers outside of the big names can't afford to hire them.

 

[Jd Smith1]

w

I suppose value is in the eye of the beholder, but when I looked at Columbia Games' website it looks like the current edition of Harn retails for $50 with most of the larger source books going for $30-40. That doesn't strike me as being particularly outrageous. It's true that you could spend hundreds of dollars without touching the bottom but that's only because they have so many books available for purchase.

You've missed my point: to get the full use of the Harn setting, its detail, you would need at least a couple hundred bucks, and that's for pdfs. Not system, (the system is not great) just the setting. RPGs used to be a cheap hobby, but those days are long gone.

Look at 5e: scores of 5e products, and countless writers and producers hustling to sell even more splatbooks, tweaks, and the like.

They're all milking the same small herd of cows. There's simply not enough to go around. Either they will have to increase the size of the herd while keeping the number of milkers stable, or drastically reduce the number of milkers.

 

[Bohandas]

Note I said hobby, not industry.

This is indeed a very important distinction

 

[aramis erak]

This is indeed a very important distinction

Exceptthat there is an industry in direct competition with the hobby.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I can’t speak for them.

That’s part of the problem. Many people say that RPGs are too expensive already.

And yet you mention that a significant part of the market buys printed books and not PDFs. So they are willing to pay a premium for the object over what they would pay for the content. I found that very interesting, and it probably explained a question I had: the revenue from PDF-only RPG books is small, because we compare it to the cost of living in Western EU or Australia, or Seattle, all expensive places to be in. The revenue would be much more attractive to a prospective author in low cost-of-living countries, and yet we don't see say, a lot of inner China authors publishing RPG contents despite the entry cost to a globalized market on DMsguild being low if I understand it correctly.

 

[Morrus]

yet we don't see say, a lot of inner China authors publishing RPG contents despite the entry cost on DMsguild being low if I understand it correctly.

I image the reasons for that go way beyond the structure of DMs Guild.

 

[Jd Smith1]

And yet you mention that a significant part of the market buys printed books and not PDFs. So they are willing to pay a premium for the object over what they would pay for the content. I found that very interesting, and it probably explained a question I had: the revenue from PDF-only RPG books is small, because we compare it to the cost of living in Western EU or Australia, or Seattle, all expensive places to be in. The revenue would be much more attractive to a prospective author in low cost-of-living countries, and yet we don't see say, a lot of inner China authors publishing RPG contents despite the entry cost to a globalized market on DMsguild being low if I understand it correctly.

You do see authors from non-Western states trying to sell indie books on Amazon.

But cultural and language issues generally undo them (although Russian authors are doing very well in many cases). RPGs combine creative with technical writing.

 

[darjr]

@Galandris @Jd Smith1 @Morrus

It definitely takes a good understanding of games and being a fan.
Elven Tower is AN example. His stuff is fantastic and I had no idea he was not from the US or that English wasn't his first language until I saw him on the MCDM Arcadia youtube authors interview.

Elven Tower | Patreon

Creating maps and adventures for D&D 5e and Shadowdark RPG

www.patreon.com

 

[pemerton]

the 1987 median personal income in the US was $26,464; the 2020 was $35.805. ¹

¹ Real Median Personal Income in the United States

we compare it to the cost of living in Western EU or Australia, or Seattle, all expensive places to be in.

This data is always very tricky to interpret, but Australia seems to pay better than the US:

Average Salary in Australia 2021 - Recent Reports Show Steady Growth

The average salary in Australia in 2021 will not see a dramatic increase from 2020 as per recent reports.

blog.y-axis.com

And we have a national health system: I'm a well-paid white collar worker and do not pay for health insurance. (I think the figure for private insurance in Australia is < 50% of people: Private health insurance - Australian Institute of Health and Welfare)