Benchmarking your PDF company

[RCanning]

The one thing that I love about d20 (and all of D&Ds history) is adventures. I love getting and running adventures, and a lot of game companies seem not to publish them, concentrating more on sourcebooks.

There seems to be a lot of PDF publishers here, so I have to ask; why are adventures done so little. Everything from single shot 30 minute encounters to massive campaign style games seem to lend themselves to PDF a lot more than they do to Print, but they seem to be mostly print companies that release them.

I personally get adventures in PDF so I can scribble all over them, make changes to suit them to my campaign and then release them onto my players. This means for me PDF is so much better than print.

I am repeating myself.
RCanning

 

[Warden]

We include some type of adventure is every product that we release so far as a bonus to our modules and have looked at publishing sole adventures. Unfortunately, they are commonly situation specific, even when they are not locked on a particular campaign world or location, and most GMs are looking for a specific situation game that will suit their style and campaign. With PDF sales generally much lower than print, and since print adventure sales are not enough to companies to pay the bills (from my understanding), it's a bit risky to fork over the money to produce a PDF adventure and be able to make back the money you invested. A book that may only sell in the dozens will not pay you back for the artist's fees that you coughed up. As with all other materials, there will always be an exception, but I believe that to be a consensus among many PDF publishers.

 

[philreed]

Adventures . . .

There seems to be a lot of PDF publishers here, so I have to ask; why are adventures done so little. Everything from single shot 30 minute encounters to massive campaign style games seem to lend themselves to PDF a lot more than they do to Print, but they seem to be mostly print companies that release them.

Ronin Arts has produced a few adventures and with the exception of one, A Matter of Family, they've all been failures. We spent a lot of time and energy on them and sales have not yet made up for the investment put into them.

If I ever see our adventure sales greatly improve I'll consider them again.

Please note, I am talking about D20 System adventures. Those for other games are considered on a case by case basis.

 

[Prest0]

This is getting away from the thread topic, but thus far we've published ONLY adventures. None of us will be quitting our day jobs, but we're not in the red either. Of course, we focus on modern horror adventures in PDF, so we're a we're a niche of a niche of a niche.

To get back on track and add something meaningful to the disussion:

The other factor in benchmarking is it allows for one to see a hole in the industry by watching waht others are doing and how thier product is recieved it allows for developemnt beyond the current offerings,

I think this is too often overlooked. A year ago we saw a need for d20 horror material and decided to plant our flag in the ground and stake a claim as THE company to turn to for these types of adventures. Again, we're a niche of a niche of a niche, but we have a very positive reputation among those who have tried our adventures. We have a long way to go, but we have lofty goals and equally lofty standards.

 

[GMSkarka]

I'm currently in the lead-up to a re-launch of Adamant Entertainment (I'm currently re-designing the website, and completing a bunch of products so that I can have a regular release schedule), and I can tell you that I view several folks on this thread as my benchmarks.

Hell, it was seeing what Phil and Louis have accomplished that made me seriously consider phasing out design work for other companies and concentrating on my own PDF stuff in the first place!

 

[pogre]

I'm currently in the lead-up to a re-launch of Adamant Entertainment (I'm currently re-designing the website, and completing a bunch of products so that I can have a regular release schedule), and I can tell you that I view several folks on this thread as my benchmarks.

Hell, it was seeing what Phil and Louis have accomplished that made me seriously consider phasing out design work for other companies and concentrating on my own PDF stuff in the first place!

Forgive me for not being up to date on your efforts, but have you put out a d20 version of Fvlminata? If not, is it a PDF project you will be doing? If yes, where can I get it?

Thanks!

 

[tensen]

This is something I have been doing lately, benchmarking myself against other PDF companies in the market. I use Phil Reed and Ronin Arts as the company I should try to emulate their publishing model. Since Phil is at the top of his game in PDFs I love seeing what his is going to do next. Thanks Phil, keep up the good work.

Only lately? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding exactly what you are doing or wanting to do. But this is something to do from day one.

Of course there is also starting to be several ways to compare you product. Looking at Ronin Art's model is a good way to see small PDFs done well. Whether you chose to utilize it as your goal for large products depends on your own intended business model.

Just as you can see in this thread there is a goal to strive for if you wish to release d20 adventures.

For me, there are a few publishers that I pay attention to their writing. And others for their art and layout. And of course doing my best to keep the products released under my banner and EN Publishing as the targets that others look for.

 

[GMSkarka]

Forgive me for not being up to date on your efforts, but have you put out a d20 version of Fvlminata? If not, is it a PDF project you will be doing? If yes, where can I get it?

Thanks!

To answer your points in order:

1) That's OK, I haven't been up to date on my efforts recently, either! (Hence the re-launch)

2) No, I haven't put out D20 FVLMINATA yet.

3) Yes, it's one of the first releases of the new re-launch, currently slated for release on 8/13.

4) It will be available via our exclusive vendor, RPGNow. No DRM nonsense from us....EVER.

5) You're very welcome. Thank you for your interest!