Store owner complains about Kickstarter and Twitter and D&D

[Umbran]

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.

Maybe I wasn't clear. A million dollars, at (I am assuming an average) $100 per order, is 10,000 orders.

I'm assuming basically all those orders will have the central product for the campaign, and then some of those orders will have some of the various add ons.

You seem to be telling me that of those 10,000 orders, only half of them will actually contain that core product. Is that what you mean? Or do you mean that the average order is more like $200, so there's only 5000 orders?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The full reason why a Publisher would opt for Kickstarter is IMO like this:

"Normal" Distribution looks like this:
Creator creates content hoping someone will publish, distribute, stock, and buy it.
Publisher publishes content hoping someone will distribute, stock, and buy it.
Distributor distributes content hoping someone will stock and buy it.
Store stocks content hoping someone will buy it.
Customer decides if they want to buy it (or not).

Pre-orders can work their way back up this line (and you can self-publish) but at each stage, there's a chance that it's all a waste of money if ANY OF the next guys down the line don't bite.

Kickstarters ask "Who wants this?" and then collects customers who are willing to put the money up first (hard core customers!) THEN makes it, skipping the Distributor and the Store (They need the creator and the publisher, though are often the same people).

There's just plain a LOT LESS RISK.

Did I miss anything?

 

[prabe]

The full reason why a Publisher would opt for Kickstarter is IMO like this:

"Normal" Distribution looks like this:
Creator creates content hoping someone will publish, distribute, stock, and buy it.
Publisher publishes content hoping someone will distribute, stock, and buy it.
Distributor distributes content hoping someone will stock and buy it.
Store stocks content hoping someone will buy it.
Customer decides if they want to buy it (or not).

Pre-orders can work their way back up this line (and you can self-publish) but at each stage, there's a chance that it's all a waste of money if the next guy down the line doesn't bite.

Kickstarters ask "Who wants this?" and then collects customers who are willing to put the money up first (hard core customers!) THEN makes it, skipping the Distributor and the Store (They need the creator and the publisher, though are often the same people).

There's just plain a LOT LESS RISK.

Did I miss anything?

It seems as though any break in the chain (creator-->publisher-->distributor-->retailer-->customer) might be harder, or at least more complicated to work around, than a problem with a Kickstarter campaign.

 

[Morrus]

The full reason why a Publisher would opt for Kickstarter is IMO like this:

"Normal" Distribution looks like this:
Creator creates content hoping someone will publish, distribute, stock, and buy it.
Publisher publishes content hoping someone will distribute, stock, and buy it.
Distributor distributes content hoping someone will stock and buy it.
Store stocks content hoping someone will buy it.
Customer decides if they want to buy it (or not).

Pre-orders can work their way back up this line (and you can self-publish) but at each stage, there's a chance that it's all a waste of money if the next guy down the line doesn't bite.

Kickstarters ask "Who wants this?" and then collects customers who are willing to put the money up first (hard core customers!) THEN makes it, skipping the Distributor and the Store (They need the creator and the publisher, though are often the same people).

There's just plain a LOT LESS RISK.

Did I miss anything?

Seems like a fair summation.

 

[Parmandur]

The full reason why a Publisher would opt for Kickstarter is IMO like this:

"Normal" Distribution looks like this:
Creator creates content hoping someone will publish, distribute, stock, and buy it.
Publisher publishes content hoping someone will distribute, stock, and buy it.
Distributor distributes content hoping someone will stock and buy it.
Store stocks content hoping someone will buy it.
Customer decides if they want to buy it (or not).

Pre-orders can work their way back up this line (and you can self-publish) but at each stage, there's a chance that it's all a waste of money if the next guy down the line doesn't bite.

Kickstarters ask "Who wants this?" and then collects customers who are willing to put the money up first (hard core customers!) THEN makes it, skipping the Distributor and the Store (They need the creator and the publisher, though are often the same people).

There's just plain a LOT LESS RISK.

Did I miss anything?

I mean, once.the Internet came long, some form of this became more.or less inevitfor niche products.

 

[Morrus]

Maybe I wasn't clear. A million dollars, at (I am assuming an average) $100 per order, is 10,000 orders.

I'm assuming basically all those orders will have the central product for the campaign, and then some of those orders will have some of the various add ons.

You seem to be telling me that of those 10,000 orders, only half of them will actually contain that core product. Is that what you mean? Or do you mean that the average order is more like $200, so there's only 5000 orders?

With a million dollar campaign the chances are that the core product isn’t just a single thing — it might be a choice of books (limited v regular), various combinations of a core set (we had 3 core books, and people could choose any combo of those those three). Or a starter set. And of course PDFs. Half of the orders will be for digital versions of the product.

There are exceptions of course, but in my experience the larger a campaign is the less likely that a single item on it would form a 100% core choice. It’s not impossible, of course.

 

[Mezuka]

The full reason why a Publisher would opt for Kickstarter is IMO like this:

"Normal" Distribution looks like this:
Creator creates content hoping someone will publish, distribute, stock, and buy it.
Publisher publishes content hoping someone will distribute, stock, and buy it.
Distributor distributes content hoping someone will stock and buy it.
Store stocks content hoping someone will buy it.
Customer decides if they want to buy it (or not).

Pre-orders can work their way back up this line (and you can self-publish) but at each stage, there's a chance that it's all a waste of money if the next guy down the line doesn't bite.

Kickstarters ask "Who wants this?" and then collects customers who are willing to put the money up first (hard core customers!) THEN makes it, skipping the Distributor and the Store (They need the creator and the publisher, though are often the same people).

There's just plain a LOT LESS RISK.

Did I miss anything?

GMT understood this and that is why they were doing their P500 program long before KS was a thing. Take 500 pre-orders fully paid, then do the print run.

 

[Umbran]

With a million dollar campaign the chances are that the core product isn’t just a single thing — it might be a choice of books (limited v regular), various combinations of a core set (we had 3 core books, and people could choose any combo of those those three). Or a starter set. And of course PDFs. Half of the orders will be for digital versions of the product.

There are exceptions of course, but in my experience the larger a campaign is the less likely that a single item on it would form a 100% core choice. It’s not impossible, of course.

Okay, because I was thinking about things like the Coyote & Crow, Avatar Legends, and Old Gods of Appalachia - all have a central product that's going to be in pretty much every order. There's definitely the collection of add ons as well, but it looked like pdf-only was down under 20% of backers, and anything above that was getting the book.

 

[overgeeked]

The full reason why a Publisher would opt for Kickstarter is IMO like this:

"Normal" Distribution looks like this:
Creator creates content hoping someone will publish, distribute, stock, and buy it.
Publisher publishes content hoping someone will distribute, stock, and buy it.
Distributor distributes content hoping someone will stock and buy it.
Store stocks content hoping someone will buy it.
Customer decides if they want to buy it (or not).

Pre-orders can work their way back up this line (and you can self-publish) but at each stage, there's a chance that it's all a waste of money if ANY OF the next guys down the line don't bite.

Kickstarters ask "Who wants this?" and then collects customers who are willing to put the money up first (hard core customers!) THEN makes it, skipping the Distributor and the Store (They need the creator and the publisher, though are often the same people).

There's just plain a LOT LESS RISK.

Did I miss anything?

It's the same in traditional book publishing, only the publishers give the stores permission to strip the cover off the book and mail it back for a full refund on the cost of the book. It's barbaric and wasteful.

It's also one of the big reasons I switched to ebooks/PDFs and would rather things be POD than offset printed. There's a lot of cool stuff you can't do with POD, but the technology will get better. Also why really high priced PDFs bother me. Without all that cost of physical production, distribution, stores, etc, there's no reason the PDF should be anywhere near as expensive as the print book.

 

[Morrus]

It's the same in traditional book publishing, only the publishers give the stores permission to strip the cover off the book and mail it back for a full refund on the cost of the book. It's barbaric and wasteful.

It's also one of the big reasons I switched to ebooks/PDFs and would rather things be POD than offset printed. There's a lot of cool stuff you can't do with POD, but the technology will get better. Also why really high priced PDFs bother me. Without all that cost of physical production, distribution, stores, etc, there's no reason the PDF should be anywhere near as expensive as the print book.

Maybe think of it as because so many people are taking a gigantic cut of the print book before the publisher sees a penny (the distributor takes 40-50%, and that's not counting the printers, warehouses, internationally shipping pallets of books about), the print books should be twice as much as they are. Or that the larger PDF margin is what makes the print book even viable. The PDFs aren't incorrectly priced; the print books are. But people won't pay that much for their print books, so PDFs it is.