Simon Rogers of Pelgrane Press talks about the tabletop roleplyaing game industry again. Simon previously wrote an article on the economics of RPG book production for EN World; this time around he's addressing eBooks (for the purposes of this article ebook includes the dominant PDF format, together with epub, mobi or similar formats for displaying RPG content.) "[When] I’ve finished speculating who actually would win, atoms or electrons (it’s electrons), I’ll explore the history of the ebook in roleplaying, then then in the next part, move on to some tasty data served with a side dish of speculation."
[h=4]Atoms versus Electrons: eBooks and Roleplaying Games (Part 1)[/h]
At Gen Con this year I met Mark Morrison, owner of Campaign Coins, sponsors of this year’s ENnie awards, and creator of the best-looking ENnie medal to date.
He was insistent on a meeting in person, and I soon discovered why. He dropped a bag full of dwarven tower coins he’d created on to the table in front of me – they landed with satisfying heavy chink of metal - a more effective demonstration of the physicality of his product than any email. They were beautiful and stackable. I spent the whole meeting playing with them, and we ended up agreeing that he would make icon tokens for 13th Age. He told me that Allen Varney, one of the Dying Earth team, had told him “Mark, you want to get out of atoms and into electrons!”
I love physical books; casebound books with smythe-sewn spines, shiny opaque china paper, paperbacks with matt covers and smooth ivory paper or linen-covered board with gilt and embossing. I love my original battered copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guide with its yellow end sheets and exposed signatures. Then, the other day, though, I caught myself touching an entry in a table of contents in a printed Word document, with the momentary expectation it would jump to the right page, and frustration that it did not. I love the ease of storing and searching ebooks, their modest price and the immediacy. So, electrons vs atoms, who would win?
Now that I’ve finished speculating who actually would win, atoms or electrons (it’s electrons), I’ll explore the history of the ebook in roleplaying, then then in the next part, move on to some tasty data served with a side dish of speculation.
So, which was the earliest ebook roleplaying game? Shannon Appelcline (Designers and Dragons) tells me that the FUDGE rpg was made available free online in 1993, and then in 1996:
Ron Edwards was emailing the text of his game Sorcerer as shareware, and gamers sent him money and checks through the post on a pay-what-you-want basis.
But there are other challengers for the title first commercial ebook RPG. In 1996, the earliest snapshot I can find on the Internet Archive, Terry Austins’ hyperbooks.com was already selling roleplaying supplements by Robert Kuntz, for download in text, Acrobat and HTML format. In February 1996, Jeff Dee tells me he sent Terry Austin the Word file for the Quicksilver RPG and it appeared on Hyperbooks in PDF form. It was priced at $6 for as 69-page book – close on $9 in modern terms. Was this the first RPG PDF on sale?
[h=4]OneBookShelf[/h]
Ebook publishing really took off with the release of the d20 license and the huge demand it generated. James Mathe founded RPGNow.com in 2001, which brought ebook sales to roleplayers in to the mainstream, and Monte Cook showed how successful PDF sales could be, and that they could have high production values. The instant gratification of these sales allowed impulse purchasing of modestly-priced PDF-only supplements and games from a host of new publishers, and gave publishers their first taste of the long tail - the steady trickle of low-maintenance sales of older books.
RPGNow and newcomer DriveThruRPG.com merged to form OneBookShelf, and with their exclusive publishers such as White Wolf and large user-base, they created an unstoppable juggernaut in the ebook market – they have a greater share of their market than any mainstream equivalent.
When they decreased their publisher margins after the merger, there was an abortive attempt to set up a rival company YourGamesNow.com which sponsored the ENnie Awards in 2007, but OBS’s dominance was too much and they folded. They currently offer 70% of takings to exclusive publishers; 65% to non-exclusive publishers. In 2013, Pelgrane sales of ebooks outside direct sales were such that we would have made more money going exclusive, and while that has swing back little, I feel that supporting Indie Press Revolution (disclosure – I have shares) and other ebook stores helps them, us and the market in general. However, it makes perfect sense for most publishers to go exclusive with OBS.
OBS now also offers Print on Demand, a program which has grown, so clearly the demand for physical books continues and OBS want a taste of that, too. They are fulfilling the business model their name promises: One Bookshelf to Rule Them All, indeed.
Overall, though, OBS has been a huge boon to roleplayers and publishers, forging a new market and offering good service to customers, amusing and grabby site-wide marketing and excellent data tools for publishers. OBS has also been great for Pelgrane’s bottom line, and Matt McElroy and his team are professional, accommodating, and a pleasure to work with.
[h=4]eBook Bundling and Bits and Mortar[/h]
Pelgrane Press started bundling eBooks free with the print books for direct sale in 2005, but I can’t believe we were innovators. So, where did this leave our stalwart bricks and mortar retailers? At a competitive disadvantage! To level things out, Pelgrane and other companies had been giving ebook copies to retail customers who asked us; and some publishers experimented with putting voucher stickers in books (Cortex) allowing free download. Fred Hicks of Evil Hat was the driving force in persuading forward-looking retailers to join the ebook revolution. In 2010, with the Dresden Files launch, he offered retailers the chance to give pre-order PDFs to their customers and that lead to discussions with other publishers such as Arc Dream, Cubicle 7 and Pelgrane Press and the founding of Bits and Mortar – a trust-based system which allows retailers to give their print customers generally DRM-free ebooks. Retailers signed up now number in the hundreds, and I am making a concerted effort to get many more signed up by the end of the year. We still regularly supply ebooks to end-users whose FLGS has not signed up, and we aim to change this.
[h=4]The Bundle of Holding[/h]
In 2013, Allen Varney launched The Bundle of Holding, bringing the Humble Bundle software model to roleplaying ebooks. Customers pay a fraction of the retail price to get a bundle of roleplaying ebooks, or pay more to get bonus books. This model is only possible because of the ease and simplicity of delivering digital content. Allen Varney asked if we would like to participate. This was a scary prospect for me. First, would our existing customers think it was fair? Would it affect our future sales? Would it cheapen our brand? With this very much in mind, we launched the GUMSHOE Bundle of Holding. We emailed existing customers who had everything already with a voucher, and we also did something for people who had recently bought any of the games in the bundle, and I looked with trepidation at the data.
The bundle was a great success in sales terms, though I don’t have data on how many people actually download and open their ebooks. I’ve examined post-bundle sales very carefully, and I’ve seen no evidence that it affects future sales except in the very short term.
When I looked at the data, I found half of the customers of Bundles in which we have participated have bought one or more previous bundles of any kind; 40% were existing Pelgrane customers, presumably completing their collections. And 10% become customers and went on to order directly from us online.
OBS stepped in to take over the heavy lifting for downloads, and as another benefit, now customers' bundle ebooks appear on their OBS bookshelves. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed customers picking up physical books at Gen Con, when they first saw the book in a Bundle. We’ve sold over 4000 bundles, and in 2014, our bundle revenue was 80% of our OBS revenue. I am particularly pleased with the interest in our novels, music and The Dying Earth.
So what’s the downside? Bundles rely on a large back catalog of quality games, and repeated bundles bring diminishing returns, so mush be treated carefully - I wouldn’t let a new product near a bundle.
[h=4]Now[/h]
So, with the large exception of Kickstarter this leaves us here and now. Next time I’ll look the effect of crowdfunding, and punch down into some historical data to find some trends and find out Atoms vs Electrons – Who Would Win?
[h=4]Atoms versus Electrons: eBooks and Roleplaying Games (Part 1)[/h]
At Gen Con this year I met Mark Morrison, owner of Campaign Coins, sponsors of this year’s ENnie awards, and creator of the best-looking ENnie medal to date.
He was insistent on a meeting in person, and I soon discovered why. He dropped a bag full of dwarven tower coins he’d created on to the table in front of me – they landed with satisfying heavy chink of metal - a more effective demonstration of the physicality of his product than any email. They were beautiful and stackable. I spent the whole meeting playing with them, and we ended up agreeing that he would make icon tokens for 13th Age. He told me that Allen Varney, one of the Dying Earth team, had told him “Mark, you want to get out of atoms and into electrons!”
I love physical books; casebound books with smythe-sewn spines, shiny opaque china paper, paperbacks with matt covers and smooth ivory paper or linen-covered board with gilt and embossing. I love my original battered copy of the Dungeon Master’s Guide with its yellow end sheets and exposed signatures. Then, the other day, though, I caught myself touching an entry in a table of contents in a printed Word document, with the momentary expectation it would jump to the right page, and frustration that it did not. I love the ease of storing and searching ebooks, their modest price and the immediacy. So, electrons vs atoms, who would win?
Now that I’ve finished speculating who actually would win, atoms or electrons (it’s electrons), I’ll explore the history of the ebook in roleplaying, then then in the next part, move on to some tasty data served with a side dish of speculation.
So, which was the earliest ebook roleplaying game? Shannon Appelcline (Designers and Dragons) tells me that the FUDGE rpg was made available free online in 1993, and then in 1996:
"Hero Games was supporting fourth edition Hero itself through “Hero Plus.” Here they broke new ground by distributing their books in a brand-new form called PDF — years before that was a buzzword. This first book, The Ultimate Super Mage — released in September after seven months of delay — was a completely new release. Others would be classic reprints. In all, Hero would print over 20 electronic Hero System PDFs. For the particularly savvy, the PDFs were available from Hero’s website, but for the rest of the world, they could be purchased on floppy disk from local game stores or at conventions."
Ron Edwards was emailing the text of his game Sorcerer as shareware, and gamers sent him money and checks through the post on a pay-what-you-want basis.
But there are other challengers for the title first commercial ebook RPG. In 1996, the earliest snapshot I can find on the Internet Archive, Terry Austins’ hyperbooks.com was already selling roleplaying supplements by Robert Kuntz, for download in text, Acrobat and HTML format. In February 1996, Jeff Dee tells me he sent Terry Austin the Word file for the Quicksilver RPG and it appeared on Hyperbooks in PDF form. It was priced at $6 for as 69-page book – close on $9 in modern terms. Was this the first RPG PDF on sale?
[h=4]OneBookShelf[/h]
Ebook publishing really took off with the release of the d20 license and the huge demand it generated. James Mathe founded RPGNow.com in 2001, which brought ebook sales to roleplayers in to the mainstream, and Monte Cook showed how successful PDF sales could be, and that they could have high production values. The instant gratification of these sales allowed impulse purchasing of modestly-priced PDF-only supplements and games from a host of new publishers, and gave publishers their first taste of the long tail - the steady trickle of low-maintenance sales of older books.
RPGNow and newcomer DriveThruRPG.com merged to form OneBookShelf, and with their exclusive publishers such as White Wolf and large user-base, they created an unstoppable juggernaut in the ebook market – they have a greater share of their market than any mainstream equivalent.
When they decreased their publisher margins after the merger, there was an abortive attempt to set up a rival company YourGamesNow.com which sponsored the ENnie Awards in 2007, but OBS’s dominance was too much and they folded. They currently offer 70% of takings to exclusive publishers; 65% to non-exclusive publishers. In 2013, Pelgrane sales of ebooks outside direct sales were such that we would have made more money going exclusive, and while that has swing back little, I feel that supporting Indie Press Revolution (disclosure – I have shares) and other ebook stores helps them, us and the market in general. However, it makes perfect sense for most publishers to go exclusive with OBS.
OBS now also offers Print on Demand, a program which has grown, so clearly the demand for physical books continues and OBS want a taste of that, too. They are fulfilling the business model their name promises: One Bookshelf to Rule Them All, indeed.
Overall, though, OBS has been a huge boon to roleplayers and publishers, forging a new market and offering good service to customers, amusing and grabby site-wide marketing and excellent data tools for publishers. OBS has also been great for Pelgrane’s bottom line, and Matt McElroy and his team are professional, accommodating, and a pleasure to work with.
[h=4]eBook Bundling and Bits and Mortar[/h]
Pelgrane Press started bundling eBooks free with the print books for direct sale in 2005, but I can’t believe we were innovators. So, where did this leave our stalwart bricks and mortar retailers? At a competitive disadvantage! To level things out, Pelgrane and other companies had been giving ebook copies to retail customers who asked us; and some publishers experimented with putting voucher stickers in books (Cortex) allowing free download. Fred Hicks of Evil Hat was the driving force in persuading forward-looking retailers to join the ebook revolution. In 2010, with the Dresden Files launch, he offered retailers the chance to give pre-order PDFs to their customers and that lead to discussions with other publishers such as Arc Dream, Cubicle 7 and Pelgrane Press and the founding of Bits and Mortar – a trust-based system which allows retailers to give their print customers generally DRM-free ebooks. Retailers signed up now number in the hundreds, and I am making a concerted effort to get many more signed up by the end of the year. We still regularly supply ebooks to end-users whose FLGS has not signed up, and we aim to change this.
[h=4]The Bundle of Holding[/h]
In 2013, Allen Varney launched The Bundle of Holding, bringing the Humble Bundle software model to roleplaying ebooks. Customers pay a fraction of the retail price to get a bundle of roleplaying ebooks, or pay more to get bonus books. This model is only possible because of the ease and simplicity of delivering digital content. Allen Varney asked if we would like to participate. This was a scary prospect for me. First, would our existing customers think it was fair? Would it affect our future sales? Would it cheapen our brand? With this very much in mind, we launched the GUMSHOE Bundle of Holding. We emailed existing customers who had everything already with a voucher, and we also did something for people who had recently bought any of the games in the bundle, and I looked with trepidation at the data.
The bundle was a great success in sales terms, though I don’t have data on how many people actually download and open their ebooks. I’ve examined post-bundle sales very carefully, and I’ve seen no evidence that it affects future sales except in the very short term.
When I looked at the data, I found half of the customers of Bundles in which we have participated have bought one or more previous bundles of any kind; 40% were existing Pelgrane customers, presumably completing their collections. And 10% become customers and went on to order directly from us online.
OBS stepped in to take over the heavy lifting for downloads, and as another benefit, now customers' bundle ebooks appear on their OBS bookshelves. Anecdotally, I’ve noticed customers picking up physical books at Gen Con, when they first saw the book in a Bundle. We’ve sold over 4000 bundles, and in 2014, our bundle revenue was 80% of our OBS revenue. I am particularly pleased with the interest in our novels, music and The Dying Earth.
So what’s the downside? Bundles rely on a large back catalog of quality games, and repeated bundles bring diminishing returns, so mush be treated carefully - I wouldn’t let a new product near a bundle.
[h=4]Now[/h]
So, with the large exception of Kickstarter this leaves us here and now. Next time I’ll look the effect of crowdfunding, and punch down into some historical data to find some trends and find out Atoms vs Electrons – Who Would Win?
