d20 bubble bust?- High Prices, too many books

[RangerWickett]

And you could still sell the books on top of having them come as part of membership! There will always be unsubscribers etc.

Ah....the possibilities are endless!

I'm personally a bit wary of offering some sort of ENWorld/ENPub subscription. I think Russ is a little wary about mixing E.N.Publishing money with ENWorld money, and though I'd love it if a thousand people got all our books (like I said above, EOM-R has sold slightly less than 200), it would make management a problem for us. We wouldn't be able to have sales, because then people who paid for a subscription would have ended up paying too much. There's also the issue of what if we don't put out as many books one year as another? Would we put out books faster to increase the apparent value of the plan?

It's just a muddy area. I mean, I'll bring it up with Russ and Jake again, but it's certainly a very complicated issue.

 

[Monte At Home]

Even the top name in pdf publishing, Malhavoc, is selling less

Eh?

This isn't a true statement by any definition.

I can only assume that you're basing that comment off of something like the RPGNow bestsellers list, where it lists our bestselling product as Book of Eldritch Might II. That's nice and all, but not at all an accurate look at our sales.

(Our bestselling pdf--by far--is Book of Eldritch Might I, just not on RPGNow. Mainly because that product existed longer than RPGNow has by a fair bit. Plus, RPGNow represents only a part of our pdf sales and--for reasons I can't yet explain--RPGNow sales trends do not always coincide with our main site pdf sales.)

We just celebrated our 3 year anniversary since Book of Eldritch Might came out. Our best selling pdf products are our oldest ones. You could look at that and say that things sold better in the past. But when you look closer, you see that's not the case. Pdfs aren't like print books. They stay "in print" forever and no one ever runs out of stock. It's always right there "on the shelf."

When we track 1st day sales, 1st week sales and 1st month sales, we see that a strong selling pdf now sells in it's first week what a strong seller sold two years ago. But, with a few exceptions, mainly adventures, pdfs keep selling--they are, to use Ryan Dancey's term, "evergreen."

Much to my surprise, we're still selling new copies of Book of Eldritch Might every day. Thus, we've found that our older pdf products outsell our newer ones because they've had longer in the run. But our products aren't selling worse. It's about the same, actually, on a title by title basis. As a business, our pdf sales have only increased with each month, but again, that can be attributed to the evergreen nature of pdfs and our growing catalog of titles.

On the broader topic of the d20 bubble bursting and all that, well, I've been meaning to write a column about that for a while now. (Maybe I'll go do that right now.) In brief, though, I think the days of putting out any old crap, slapping the d20 logo on it and selling a half-decent number are over, and I say good riddance. I love the way the d20 industry is shaping up. There's some great stuff out there now.

 

[RangerWickett]

Question asked, question answered.

Ryan

That's sort of simplifying the matter, isn't it? Kinda like:

Q: We're going to run out of fossil fuel in a few decades. How will we survive afterward?

A: Convert to renewable energy.


How, if I may ask, should we raise a barrier of entry to keep newbie publishers out? I used to think it would just be that the cost of printing would be too high, and that only folks who had surefire wins would bother. But apparently that's not true, and a lot of stores are getting a glut of material they can't sell (kinda like back in the . . . I dunno, 80s, 90s? when all sorts of comic stores bought rather worthless 'collector editions' which were never collectible because so many were printed).

Really, I might be inclined to say that small hobby stores shouldn't bother carrying big name publishers. I mean, from a logical, broad view of the economy, why go to you FLGS to buy a WotC book for $30 when you can use your discount at Waldenbooks and get it for $27? Sure, we all want to support our FLGS's, and if they didn't sell the big name books, they probably couldn't have a high enough profit margin to sell the small name ones.

Ah, it's a conundrum.

 

[RangerWickett]

Eh?

This isn't a true statement by any definition.

I can only assume that you're basing that comment off of something like the RPGNow bestsellers list, where it lists our bestselling product as Book of Eldritch Might II. That's nice and all, but not at all an accurate look at our sales.

Oh, my bad. Yeah, I was misreading the information. I was looking at the best-sellers of the month, and by guestimating how Hallowed Might II was doing compared to other books and compared to Elements of Magic Revised, I interpreted it that you were having fewer sales. I didn't mean to mislead anyone. Apparently I just misled myself.

 

[BryonD]

Eh?

This isn't a true statement by any definition.
<snip>

Wow. Thanks for the info.

Well RW,
I still do not think that the larger economy is driving the D20 bubble thing.

But it is obvious that my perceptions and reality were not meeting on the level of success of electronic stuff. So I was wrong there. My apologies.

On the broader topic of the d20 bubble bursting and all that, well, I've been meaning to write a column about that for a while now. (Maybe I'll go do that right now.) In brief, though, I think the days of putting out any old crap, slapping the d20 logo on it and selling a half-decent number are over, and I say good riddance. I love the way the d20 industry is shaping up. There's some great stuff out there now.

I said we should be positive about it. This is an even better perspective!!
It is encouraging to hear (and I was not even discouraged to begin with )

 

[Ghostwind]

How, if I may ask, should we raise a barrier of entry to keep newbie publishers out? I used to think it would just be that the cost of printing would be too high, and that only folks who had surefire wins would bother. But apparently that's not true, and a lot of stores are getting a glut of material they can't sell (kinda like back in the . . . I dunno, 80s, 90s? when all sorts of comic stores bought rather worthless 'collector editions' which were never collectible because so many were printed).

Well, this isn't a perfect solution by any means, but requiring the new publisher to have three to six products prepared and ready for distribution before being picked up by a distributor would certainly eliminate Joe Fanboy from the equation. This would mean that publishers who were in it for the hobby and not the business end would be forced to look at different options such as pdf or print on demand releases. I'm sure there are other solutions, but this one certainly establishes a much higher bar for entry.

 

[Psion]

I love the way the d20 industry is shaping up. There's some great stuff out there now.

Indeed there is. And some companies I formerly would write off I now seriously consider buying something from every month.

And yet, I still hear publishers accuse one another of putting out "shovelware". Is that just ego talking, or is that insider talk with some merit?

 

[Psion]

Well, this isn't a perfect solution by any means, but requiring the new publisher to have three to six products prepared and ready for distribution before being picked up by a distributor would certainly eliminate Joe Fanboy from the equation.

How different is that from the current paradigm? From what I hear, it is really heard for Joe Fanboy to get distrubuted unless he piggybacks on an established publisher.

 

[Tav_Behemoth]

How, if I may ask, should we raise a barrier of entry to keep newbie publishers out?

The distribution pathway leading through brick and mortar stores does largely act to keep newbie publishers out. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that it keeps out cruddy products by established publishers. So Ryan's point (as I understand it) is that some FLGS are starting to act as quality filters.

By going to a store that has a good crud-barrier, you can be sure that whatever you see will be decent. But because any store also has a distribution barrier, you won't be seeing the best of what d20/OGL has to offer. Many great releases by PDF or small-press publishers won't get past the distribution barrier and onto shelves.

The big problem for newbie publishers is that, as far as I can tell, no one is filtering out the crud from their sales channels. And since it's so cheap to release a PDF, those channels are getting choked even quicker. Nevertheless, every online retailer I've seen seems to be thinking that, since virtual shelf space is unlimited, they should fill it all with whatever comes along. The result is that even if J. Gamer figures out that there's more out there than brick and mortar stores are carrying, as soon as J. steps into an online gaming store they're smacked with a faceful of crud.

IMHO, the best thing that could happen to the independent wing of d20/OGL publishing would be the creation of an online store that only carried the best. Start with only Ennie winners, or products that have received only 4-star or better reviews (minimum of three). Give each one of the products space, explain why they're great in a way that makes sense to J. Gamer, and make it clear that anything this store carries is guaranteed to rise above Sturgeon's Law.

In fact, I think this would benefit the community as a whole more than quality barriers among FLGS. The role of a local store should be organizing a local community; it's too much to expect for them to also be experts in picking the best of a crowded market. Even if there is a store that can attract and keep staff with such discriminating tastes, you and I probably don't live near it!

 

[MerricB]

One day, someone's going to compare the d20 market to the normal book market and things will start making sense. (Hey, even compare it to the normal fantasy book market...)

Cheers!