Alternate PDF Sales Outlets

[D_Sinclair]

As for other sites, firstly 40-50% is not that great a cut, as in traditional publishing you would be lucky to get that as your share. Also there are a number of web packages out there that will allow you to sell PDF's using paypal. I would look at these as an option.

This is a very bad way of thinking. The 50% SVGames wants is indeed a huge cut, compared to the 30% taken by RPGnow and the 35% by DTRPG. As has been said many times before, once too many vendors find such high cuts acceptable, there won't be a thing stopping the lower-priced outlets from raising their cuts to match. And that should be considered a no-no when these online shops are simply delivering electronic product and aren't dealing with the overhead issues of a brick'n'mortar storefront. This in turn would stick us on virtually the same discount situation as the print prublishers and PDFs would quickly lose the pricing benefit that helps make them so popular.

 

[ukgpublishing]

This is a very bad way of thinking. The 50% SVGames wants is indeed a huge cut, compared to the 30% taken by RPGnow and the 35% by DTRPG. As has been said many times before, once too many vendors find such high cuts acceptable, there won't be a thing stopping the lower-priced outlets from raising their cuts to match. And that should be considered a no-no when these online shops are simply delivering electronic product and aren't dealing with the overhead issues of a brick'n'mortar storefront. This in turn would stick us on virtually the same discount situation as the print prublishers and PDFs would quickly lose the pricing benefit that helps make them so popular.

Actually, the 50% is below the 'cut' you would recieve if you were printing and distributing these products through traditional means. Actually getting 25% of the SRP would be the case for such a traditional route. Most distributors expect to pay between 25% and 40% of the SRP and then the shops would pay 50% to 75%.

The real problem here is that when PDF pricing starts to reflect the printed media, and the middle men are not cut out, the price of the PDFs will rise to the same as printed books, which is IMO bad.

John Milner
UKG Publishing

http://www.ukg-publishing.co.uk/

 

[D_Sinclair]

Actually, the 50% is below the 'cut' you would recieve if you were printing and distributing these products through traditional means. Actually getting 25% of the SRP would be the case for such a traditional route. Most distributors expect to pay between 25% and 40% of the SRP and then the shops would pay 50% to 75%.

The real problem here is that when PDF pricing starts to reflect the printed media, and the middle men are not cut out, the price of the PDFs will rise to the same as printed books, which is IMO bad.

John Milner
UKG Publishing

http://www.ukg-publishing.co.uk/

OK, what game distributor are you using that you're only getting 25 cents on the dollar for your merchandise? The only way I can imagine this happening is by you producing goods locally in the UK and then incorporating overseas shipping fees to reduce your net that low.

Here in the US, game distributors pretty uniformly expect to get a 60% discount off cover price and games-only retailers expect a 50% discount while comics & games retailers are willing to settle for as little as a 35% discount. And outside the game industry, non-periodicals uniformly look for 65% off on books (though a vast quantity is sold at odd net discounts), 75% off on periodicals, with retailers expecting no more than a 50% discount. These differences outside the game industry are due efforts to change existing return policy structures into a system where a bigger discount is easier and cheaper to deal with than the accounting and logistical nightmare that is the traditional return system.

 

[Andre]

As a customer, I'll join the chorus against SV Games. I placed an order almost exactly one year ago. They billed my credit card immediately, but shipped nothing. After a month and a couple emails, I got one item (out of three, all print products). I sent another email a month later, but nothing came of it. I only lost about $20, so it's not worth any more of my time, but they lost at least one customer for life.

 

[HalWhitewyrm]

Just to do a small update on my very first post (above):

Since posting that, Highmoon Media Productions has expanded a bit in terms of sales venues.
We are still (and will remain) at RPGNow.com - this is the main selling site, as 98% of our profit is made through it.
We have also opened our own HMP Store - it is PayPal enabled, and can take any form of payment. We've had a few sales through this venue and for now I'm keeping it.

Also, we just announced that we'll be selling our products at Steve Jackson Games' e23 (in fact, the announcement is still on the front page as of 2/18). Once we have all the contracts done with, we'll send our products and go live. In addition, we have contacted DriveThruRPG.com and have received a response, so we're in talks now.

Right now, opening the HMP Store has not really hurt me; on the contrary, it helped with a few sales from people who wanted to bypass the minimum checkout at RPGNow.com. RPGNow recently enabled a new feature where you don't need a min. checkout if you pay a small fee of .35 cents, and I am looking forward to see how this affects my sales since most of my products are under the no-fee threshold of $6.40. I am also very excited about the possibilities that e23 can bring. Right now there are not that many vendors, which increases visibility, and the site is bringing a whole new group of gamers (the GURPS followers) which means potential new customers.

We'll see how things go in the coming months.

 

[DBB]

Rather than starting a new thread about this, I thought I would just tag onto the end of this thread to announce the recent opening of The Digital Book Booth.

We have recently opened our virtual doors and are looking to stock our site with as many e-products as we can over the next few weeks, before making larger announcements about the opening. If any e-publishers (or traditional publishers) are interested in selling their e-products through an additional store front, please consider us as an option.

You can find The Digital Book Booth at http://www.dbookbooth.com. Our vendor agreement can be found here.