"Exclusive deals suck!" - James Mathe's rant about the tabletop industry

[Thondor]

Sure. You have a right to be upset at anything you want. Would you agree the same holds true for small online PDF retailers being upset with RPGNow's policies?

I would agree. Both small pdf retailers, and the pdf producers have grounds to be unhappy with RPGNow's policies of exclusivity. And yes this makes it difficult to sympathize with James Mathe's rant.

The current rate on RPGNow is 70% exclusive and 65% non-exclusive. http://www.rpgnow.com/join.php
This isn't so exclusive as to make the 'exclusive' option the obvious best choice, althought the nebulous "more free promotion on the marketplace" could be significant. Ignoring that here's a quick example:

Assume you can find another sales channel that would give you the same 70% rate, and you are selling a product for $10.
If you could make 100 sales on RPGNow exclusively at 70%, your revenue=$700
If you could make 15 sales on your other channel at 70% and 95 on a non-exclusive RPGNow at 65%, then your revenue =$713.50

Would the extra 2% revenue be worth setting up and maintaining the extra sales portal? Unclear. Our hypothetical case would need more information.

 

[Morrus]

Would the extra 2% revenue be worth setting up and maintaining the extra sales portal? Unclear. Our hypothetical case would need more information.

Probably not. It took d20pfsrd.com bugging me quite a bit before I signed up with them -- and even then on condition I didn't have to sit there and upload all the inventory myself!

Simply signing up with a new PDF retailer is a barrier, because it's *so* much work preparing files and uploading them to various places. I'd imagine that any new retailer who was attempting to break into the marketplace would have to - given that they won't have a track record of sales - do that for the publishers if they're gonna get any volume of stock at all.

 

[Fiddleback]

I'm just turning this thought over in my head mostly, but bear with me:

Suppose there was a viable business model that allowed a local game store to not only offer the usual mix of games on the shelf, but also to provide print on demand services linked through to RPGNow or DriveThru. Like, I dunno, maybe a higher quality printing service or set up better than you could get just with your home printer. I know you can take PDFs to copy shops and print them out there, but what if that sort of thing was part of your local FLGS (smaller scale, admittedly). Would people be willing to pay, say, $10 or so for that?

Essentially you would go to your FLGS, log on to RPGNow or your favorite publisher at a sort of kiosk set up, buy your PDF as normal, but then print it out while still in the shop. Your FLGS could keep track of new offerings and etc. Do some simple binding perhaps, that kind of thing.

I know it sounds pointless, but I can't help thinking that there has to be a better way to get the FLGS to integrate with the print on demand side of things and at least make an attempt at turning it to their advantage in some way. How would you do it?

 

[Ahnehnois]

FLGS's are often touted as being the core of the RPG community. I'd love to see some statistics on that

Someone should start a poll.

I don't think they're vital, though I suspect that those who are lucky enough to have grown up in an area with one may see things differently.

I'm sure they do, and I don't doubt that stores played a part in establishing gamers, particularly before the growth of the internet and before the edition war phenomenon. That's why I described them as anachronistic. I have plenty of nostalgic memories myself of things that are now gone or disappearing. Change is hard. I get the role that locally owned businesses have had in the past, I just don't see that role doing anything other than shrinking in the future. And despite the intrinsic appeal of small businesses as compared to big bad corporations, I can understand why producers of rpg products would do the things that the original rant is about.

 

[Fiddleback]

Probably not. It took d20pfsrd.com bugging me quite a bit before I signed up with them -- and even then on condition I didn't have to sit there and upload all the inventory myself!

Simply signing up with a new PDF retailer is a barrier, because it's *so* much work preparing files and uploading them to various places. I'd imagine that any new retailer who was attempting to break into the marketplace would have to - given that they won't have a track record of sales - do that for the publishers if they're gonna get any volume of stock at all.

I guess I'm a little confused here, in my head a PDF is a PDF is a PDF. Once you've got one made it doesn't have to be done again for each knew service...does it? Isn't it just a matter of hosting the file on each service's server or pointing them all to one storage location? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding.

 

[Morrus]

I'm sure they do, and I don't doubt that stores played a part in establishing gamers, particularly before the growth of the internet and before the edition war phenomenon. That's why I described them as anachronistic. I have plenty of nostalgic memories myself of things that are now gone or disappearing. Change is hard. I get the role that locally owned businesses have had in the past, I just don't see that role doing anything other than shrinking in the future. And despite the intrinsic appeal of small businesses as compared to big bad corporations, I can understand why producers of rpg products would do the things that the original rant is about.

Ah, for me it's not a before/after internet thing. For me, they were never there -- I don't have those memories, nostalgic or no. That's what I meant when I said that I grew up with RPGs without such stores, and there was no such thing as the internet when I was a kid! So, for me, it was no store OR internet, and yet I managed just fine.

 

[Morrus]

I guess I'm a little confused here, in my head a PDF is a PDF is a PDF. Once you've got one made it doesn't have to be done again for each knew service...does it? Isn't it just a matter of hosting the file on each service's server or pointing them all to one storage location? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding.

Places that offer PoD all want the stuff formatted differently, and both cover and interior files are handled separately. Plus the mere uploading and data entry being repeated over various sites adds up to a lot of time. At the moment I have to upload to EN World, RPGNow, Paizo, CreateSpace/Amazon, and now d20pfsrd.com; two PDF versions of each product (4E and Pathfinder) plus whatever PoD files each requires. Doing all that usually means I'm staying up all night.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Ah, for me it's not a before/after internet thing. For me, they were never there -- I don't have those memories, nostalgic or no. That's what I meant when I said that I grew up with RPGs without such stores, and there was no such thing as the internet when I was a kid! So, for me, it was no store OR internet, and yet I managed just fine.

You and me both. I'm just speculating as to what the statistics would tell us about the larger gaming population if we had them.

 

[Fiddleback]

Places that offer PoD all want the stuff formatted differently, and both cover and interior files are handled separately. Plus the mere uploading and data entry being repeated over various sites adds up to a lot of time. At the moment I have to upload to EN World, RPGNow, Paizo, CreateSpace/Amazon, and now d20pfsrd.com; two PDF versions of each product (4E and Pathfinder) plus whatever PoD files each requires. Doing all that usually means I'm staying up all night.

Ahh, and here's me thinking that the whole point of PDF was that each copy of the document would be identical and therefore entirely Portable between various systems, computers, etc. They've certainly found a lovely way to complicate things.

 

[3catcircus]

I'm just turning this thought over in my head mostly, but bear with me:

Suppose there was a viable business model that allowed a local game store to not only offer the usual mix of games on the shelf, but also to provide print on demand services linked through to RPGNow or DriveThru. Like, I dunno, maybe a higher quality printing service or set up better than you could get just with your home printer. I know you can take PDFs to copy shops and print them out there, but what if that sort of thing was part of your local FLGS (smaller scale, admittedly). Would people be willing to pay, say, $10 or so for that?

Essentially you would go to your FLGS, log on to RPGNow or your favorite publisher at a sort of kiosk set up, buy your PDF as normal, but then print it out while still in the shop. Your FLGS could keep track of new offerings and etc. Do some simple binding perhaps, that kind of thing.

I know it sounds pointless, but I can't help thinking that there has to be a better way to get the FLGS to integrate with the print on demand side of things and at least make an attempt at turning it to their advantage in some way. How would you do it?

The problem with that approach is that the FLGS would have to actually function as a store like other businesses do rather than the "gamers hang out here, I stock stuff I like regardless of whether or not it'll sell, and maybe get some sales" model.

My nearest FLGS is more a "game and comic" store than a "game store" - sure they've got Pathfinder Society and D&D events, but their bread-and-butter are card games and Warhmammer games. In fact, their RPG section consists of a single 4-high book case which is half-empty. Stuff I might want to buy - like Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms? Not in stock, but they have plenty of old 4e crap sitting there taking up the majority of the space. Maybe 1.5 feet wide of Pathfinder stuff, some old C&C stuff, some DC and Marvel, and Warhammer RPG stuff. The stuff sitting prominently displayed in that space? The Pathfinder and D&D comics.

No way in hell would they manage to pull off being a POD place if they can't manage to stock anything even halfway interesting in print already because of the "it'll eat into my profits" mentality due to competition - how likely would they allow RPGs like Call of Cthulhu, Aces & Eights, Savage Worlds, etc to be POD if they saw people doing POD and decided to just stock hard-copies of them instead?