Store owner complains about Kickstarter and Twitter and D&D

[Mezuka]

Gone are the days when I could walk into a game store and find oodles or role playing games like I could in the 80s and 90s. These days, most game stores I go to have tons of D&D and Pathfinder books but not much of a selection for anything else. After D&D and Pathfinder, my LGS has RPGs on their shelves from the following companies: PEG, Inc., Modiphius, Chaosium, Fee League, and occasionally a few others, but all of them combined pale to the number of books they carry for D&D and Pathfinder. And I don't blame the LGS, they have a business to run. But I certainly can't fault publishers for distributing their product in whatever way works best for them. They have a business to run as well.

Indeed. We used to have one store that was the Mecca for RPGs. Rows upon rows of books. I spent hours browsing before buying. Now it's D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, Free League Aliens, Modiphius Dune and the occasional KS (retailer pledge) the owner likes.

A long time ago in the late 80s, I used to own shares in a sci-fi and fantasy bookshop. Big publishers and distributors were not nice to small independent retailers. They asked for pre-order numbers that were far too much. I'm glad today's creators can circumvent these bloodsuckers!

 

[Jer]

Gone are the days when I could walk into a game store and find oodles or role playing games like I could in the 80s and 90s. These days, most game stores I go to have tons of D&D and Pathfinder books but not much of a selection for anything else. After D&D and Pathfinder, my LGS has RPGs on their shelves from the following companies: PEG, Inc., Modiphius, Chaosium, Fee League, and occasionally a few others, but all of them combined pale to the number of books they carry for D&D and Pathfinder. And I don't blame the LGS, they have a business to run. But I certainly can't fault publishers for distributing their product in whatever way works best for them. They have a business to run as well.

The nearby FLGS has D&D and Pathfinder and then most of their RPGs are games from companies that also make board games - and generally are licensed properties for the most part. For example, that's where I saw the Power Rangers and GI Joe RPGs in the wild - and Renegade also has deckbuilding games for both of those properties that the store already was selling. And they don't seem to get entire lines on the shelf beyond D&D - everything else is a core book and maybe 1 or 2 supplements at most in stock. They'll happily order whatever you want, but they're not speculating on what RPGs people are going to buy anymore (and not getting stuck with the stock on their shelves when they guess wrong).

I don't blame the game store for not stocking more RPGs though - 20 years ago the local game stores used to be RPGs, wargames and Magic/Pokemon and they eked along - most of them always seemed to be on the verge of shutting down. The boardgame boom and the d20 bust combined made it make more sense for them to shift to boardgames - and all of the stores are more populated and better stocked than they were before so they seem to have healthier business models as well.

(Origins is the same way - I was just commenting to a friend last week about how much Origins has changed since I started going decades ago. It used to be RPGs, minis and wargames dominated the vendor hall, now it's mostly board/card games and only a few booths are selling RPGs. And it's been that way for a while now.)

 

[Umbran]

And those will likely be spread across multiple (often dozens of) products; it's rare to see a million dollar Kickstarter that's 10,000 copies of one product. Usually there will be various books, add-ons, all sorts of stuff. So it's not really a 10K print run.

I was assuming that the thing that is the central product for a kickstarter is going to be common across all orders. Many of the add ons may be smaller runs, or course.

But either way, it is a ballpark cap on the size of the productions runs.

 

[Morrus]

I was assuming that the thing that is the central product for a kickstarter is going to be common across all orders. Many of the add ons may be smaller runs, or course.

Yeah but it's probably only half of the total items. So 5000 of whatever the central product is, and 5000 combined for the rest.

But either way, it is a ballpark cap on the size of the productions runs.

We usually do a print run twice what we need to fulfill the KS so we have stock to sell afterwards. So yeah, 10K would be a fair cap on a million dollar Kickstarter.

 

[MGibster]

I don't blame the game store for not stocking more RPGs though - 20 years ago the local game stores used to be RPGs, wargames and Magic/Pokemon and they eked along - most of them always seemed to be on the verge of shutting down. The boardgame boom and the d20 bust combined made it make more sense for them to shift to boardgames - and all of the stores are more populated and better stocked than they were before so they seem to have healthier business models as well.

I don't either, and in addition to national trends, retailers need to take their local market into account. Back in the 1990s, I used to work for Lone Star Comics who had 5+ locations in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Even though we were all owned by the same person, we didn't carry the exact same stock at each store. My store sold manga like it was going out of style, and we had a greater variety of it than you would have found at the other locations. Likewise, my LGS today no longer sells games that seem to be successful elsewhere. The Marvel miniatures game seems to be doing well, but my LGS stopped carrying it because it wasn't selling well enough for them here.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Well my FLGS doesn't stock anything but D&D and some Pathfinder, so Kickstarter is my only option for buying other games. If my FLGS stocked the games I wanted to buy, I would buy them there. It's a self-fuflilling prophecy.

Have you asked them? As a small comic and game store owner myself, we bring in whatever our customers want to buy, but we don't always "shelf-stock" stuff that moves slowly (which is, to be frank, everything other than "D&D andsome Pathfinder"). We'd be HAPPY to bring in more, if we can find someone who wants to buy it!

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yeah. Stock our games, and we'll support you as best we can as a small publisher. It has to be a two-way street. You have to support us, too.

It actually has to be a three-way street. We'll stock them, if our customers ask for them, (assuming they buy them when the order arrives, which is no guarantee).

It's an unfortunate vicious cycle.

I find these days that 90% of the time distributors don't have any of the stock that our customers ask for, which is yet another problem.

I get the retailer's complaint, but I also understand why publishers go for kickstarters. It's a more direct (and therefore logistically easier) way to get product to a core customer that wants it.

The next step, once successful, can (and IMO should, when possible) be to get distributed through traditional means, in order to get the product into the hands of the customers who don't use Kickstarter. (This step is these days too often skipped in favour of another kickstarter). Again, I understand why, but it's unfortunate.

 

[Voidmoji]

I think another factor is PDFs vs. Physical. I recently KS'd DIE, but only for the PDF. I recently have gone very heavy into Cortex, but only bought the PDF from their site. Basically, the chances of me buying another physical RPG book are very slim, and would mostly be for something that is almost an art book, like Ptolus.

I know a lot of people still love physical books, but many are going to PDFs for most things, and as the cost of printing continues to rise* and tablet prices fall, PDFs will be even more common.

And, so, it really doesn't matter to me if the PDF is from KS or DTRPG, it is not going to be a sale for a local game store.

*One of my job functions is print buyer. I know all too well how paper shortages are affecting the print industry.

 

[Morrus]

The next step, once successful, can (and IMO should, when possible) be to get distributed through traditional means, in order to get the product into the hands of the customers who don't use Kickstarter. (This step is these days too often skipped in favour of another kickstarter). Again, I understand why, but it's unfortunate.

It’s not ‘skipped’ — small publishers want to be in distribution. Why wouldn’t they? It’s not instead of another Kickstarter, it’s as well as.

It’s not up to them though. It’s the distributors who make those decisions. A distributor wants my stock? It’s in my warehouse waiting for them.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

It’s not ‘skipped’ — small publishers want to be in distribution. Why wouldn’t they? It’s not instead of another Kickstarter, it’s as well as.

It’s not up to them though. It’s the distributors who make those decisions. A distributor wants my stock? It’s in my warehouse waiting for them.

I'm sure that's true of ENPublishing. But take a company like Reaper - they already had a long relationship with distributors before KS ever existed, but they quit, in order to do KS after KS. I assume there was just more money in it, or at least they felt there was.