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<blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 1565667" data-attributes="member: 94">I often fall into the trap of thinking the ENworld is representative of the buying public. It's not. Granted, if I could sell one product to every ENworld member, I'd be among the most successful publishers out there. Heck, if I could sell just 1 copy to a 3000-member exclusive subset of the ENworld market base, I'd be more successful than most publishers in the current market.Well... I'm bound to step on some toes here... In my experience, game store owners come in two camps.One camp is the &quot;Gamer Who Wants to Own a Game Store.&quot; Who's this guy? He's very opinionated, for starters. He's also probably not the best businessman in the world. He may even be a little lazy. I reckon he's likely to gravitate towards his own favorite publishers, do &quot;ok&quot; in his business (&quot;ok&quot; defined in most cases as losing money only very slowly), and have no real incentive to increase his knowledge of the market offerings. He might buy everything and throw it in a box-- as he never bothers to take stock of his stock, a publisher will be lucky if he actually reorders. If you ask him about &quot;Product X&quot; he will, at best, pretend to have heard of it and tell you that it's out of stock.In the other camp we have the &quot;Game Store Opportunists.&quot; They are businessmen. They don't game. (They sell a boatload lot of Today's Popular Collectible Trading Card Game.) They don't have a lot of store space for roleplaying. They may not even WANT roleplayers in their store for fear of scaring away mothers or taking space away from the kids. They're also just too busy to bother educating themselves about RPGs, which may not be perceived as a high-volume, high-margin offering. They won't stock stuff from smaller publishers, no matter how well acclaimed, because they don't have time to pick and choose from buyer's catalogs. They may take what their distributor recommends and no more. If you ask him about &quot;Product X&quot; he will stare at you like you just asked for a lightly toasted weasel on a bun.Well, I misspoke. There's three camps-- cause there's always Games Plus Mt. Prospect. They do game store RIGHT. Wulf</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Wulf Ratbane, post: 1565667, member: 94"] I often fall into the trap of thinking the ENworld is representative of the buying public. It's not. Granted, if I could sell one product to every ENworld member, I'd be among the most successful publishers out there. Heck, if I could sell just 1 copy to a 3000-member exclusive subset of the ENworld market base, I'd be more successful than most publishers in the current market. Well... I'm bound to step on some toes here... In my experience, game store owners come in two camps. One camp is the "Gamer Who Wants to Own a Game Store." Who's this guy? He's very opinionated, for starters. He's also probably not the best businessman in the world. He may even be a little lazy. I reckon he's likely to gravitate towards his own favorite publishers, do "ok" in his business ("ok" defined in most cases as losing money only very slowly), and have no real incentive to increase his knowledge of the market offerings. He might buy everything and throw it in a box-- as he never bothers to take stock of his stock, a publisher will be lucky if he actually reorders. If you ask him about "Product X" he will, at best, pretend to have heard of it and tell you that it's out of stock. In the other camp we have the "Game Store Opportunists." They are businessmen. They don't game. (They sell a boatload lot of Today's Popular Collectible Trading Card Game.) They don't have a lot of store space for roleplaying. They may not even WANT roleplayers in their store for fear of scaring away mothers or taking space away from the kids. They're also just too busy to bother educating themselves about RPGs, which may not be perceived as a high-volume, high-margin offering. They won't stock stuff from smaller publishers, no matter how well acclaimed, because they don't have time to pick and choose from buyer's catalogs. They may take what their distributor recommends and no more. If you ask him about "Product X" he will stare at you like you just asked for a lightly toasted weasel on a bun. Well, I misspoke. There's three camps-- cause there's always Games Plus Mt. Prospect. They do game store RIGHT. Wulf [/QUOTE]

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