EN World GameStore Closing

[GMSkarka]

So, our choices are:

DTRPG, with all their demands, bad rep, and deeper cut, where there's bonafide, well documented traffic from both themselves and the two companies they merged with.

OR

Tiny PDF Shop dot Com, which had 20% or less of the traffic.

I'll repeat this, since it's getting missed in all this chicken-little-ing:

This is NOT DTRPG taking over RPGNow. This is a new company, owned in a 50/50 partnership between James and PSI (the owners of DTRPG), now owning both sites.

Let me do the math for you: On one side of the 50/50 split, you have James Mathe, who owned Minion Development, which ran RPGNow. On the other side of the 50/50 split, you have *multiple* shareholders in PSI, who ran DTRPG.

James isn't going anywhere. This is not a DTRPG takeover.

The new company is charging the same rates as DTRPG, but most of the functionality will be RPGNow's model, as I understand it.

Take a deep breath. Calm down. It's a merger. It's not armageddon. Yes, some publishers will be paying more for their sales. I'm one of them. But I'll be blunt: If a *maximum* of a 10% increase is so much that the publisher feels the need to raise prices, then, simply put, they had priced their product too low to start with.

Feel free to discount my opinion, since I handle customer service emails for RPGNow, which, for some, makes me suspect.

 

[jgbrowning]

One thing that nobody has really talked about in this discussion is that RPGnet is also getting an affiliate store in this process -- RPGnet is one of the two largest sites (along with ENWorld), and they have not had PDF sales before. There is some cross-traffic between RPGNet and ENWorld, but there are also "site loyalists" who stick with one community.

The opening of a new affiliate store at the other major RPG forum represents direct access to more customers. It is my firm belief that increased sales will result from that.

Again, my two cents as a publisher.

RPGnet is already linking to DTRPG.

joe b.

 

[Alzrius]

We have not been bought (or merged) with RPGNow, DriveThruRPG, or OBS. We're looking into what happened.

Well, that last sentence certainly sounded ominous.

 

[Henry]

EDIT POST: I agree with Mark CMG.

 

[Mark CMG]

Probably best to avoid speculation.

 

[tensen]

If time is that tight, I'm sure he could also be writing new PDF's during that 15-20 process?

No he couldn't. It wasn't 15-20 of upload time. It is modifying graphics to fit a different upload format. Different keywords being entered. Different format for demos. And other things that all added up to constiute the time. The upload of the file itself was probably around a tenth of the time used.

 

[BryonD]

Me, all I see is a monopoly. And monopolies are always bad, no exceptions. Regardless of what they may promise you, regardless of what bones they might throw you, monopolies are in a position to bend you over as far, and as often, as they feel like. And it's pretty rare when they don't.

First off all, can we avoid the monpoly myth and stay on topic. I'd love to get into larger topic you've touched on, but can't without breaking forum rules. (Which, IMO, you have already done with the generalization)

That aside, THIS is not a monopoly. The current store fronts are merging. That doesn't constitute a monopoly. Anyone else CAN start a new competitor any time they want to.
Who gets to say that the owners of the sites should be denied their right to do with their property as they wish?

Beyond that, if they even start trying to "bend you over", a) you can walk away and b) the hypothetical more profits would immediately create interest in new competition.


The world is not ending. The world does not even have the sniffles.

 

[Henry]

The world is not ending. The world does not even have the sniffles.

It does, however, have vertigo from the speed at which this is moving.

 

[Justin Bacon]

I'm not saying it magically creates new customers; I'm saying that the combined customer base of all three stores will have more choice and variety. And these things lead to more purchasing.

So, let me see if I've got this straight. OBS thinks that:

(a) The merger will produce at least a 15% increase in sales.
(b) OBS doesn't want the publishers to benefit from that increase in sales, so they've jacked up the publishers' commissions so that OBS will be the only ones benefitting from the 15% increase in sales.

Hmm... I see why OBS thinks this is a great thing. I'm not sure why you think the publishers should be jumping for joy.

Or perhaps OBS' thinking is like this:

(a) As a combined company, we'll be able to consolidate our infrastructure and minimize our overhead as a percentage of revenues!
(b) So we'll need to charge the publishers even more to cover our reduced overhead costs!

Hmm... That doesn't even make sense.

 

[HinterWelt]

I think it would work particularly well for digital sales. After all, you don't have to go applying price stickers to physical books.

One approach is the across-the-board markup. That's the simplest.

Some PDF vendors could decide to invest in software development that would give them a competitive edge, by polling current prices on their competitors' sites and offering a price matching, or beating it, or putting together bundles that would effectively price match if the customer is willing to buy something more as well. There are a lot of innovative possibilities here -- innovations that could benefit both consumers and publishers -- if there were competitive pressure.

Even without such sophisticated software, vendors would be given liberty to put together deals according to their own strategy -- having a "10% off everything" promotional day, if they wanted, or offering bundles (get a second item at the wholesale price if you pay regular price for the first, etc.), or whatever.

I have written page scraping software and use some third party software that works well. It would be interesting to have the ability to scrape other sites for their catalog and compare prices. I am not a big fan of competing on price but it is a consideration.

I guess I was thinking along the lines of being able to "fire sale" all HinterWelt products;i.e. by company, product line or the like. Alternatively, you could put the breaks on rampant sellers by increasing margin and decreasing bandwidth usage. Or, for that matter, just general pricing controls based on genre for holidays; i.e. Horror on sale for Halloween.

The big difference, and I think this would be the stumbling block, is that promotion and sales responsibility would be more heavily shifted to the store front. To be sure, there is still the motivation for the publisher to get paid by promoting their own products but now the store front's profits would be tied to the sales and their margins. Who knows though, that could be a selling point since they would have more control over pricing and promotion.

For the record, I prefer this line of discussion much more than registering complaints. Not that those are not valid but I like finding solutions.

Bill