Have the third-party d20 publishers failed?

[Stone Angel]

OK back to the point. I do not think that 3rd party publishers have failed. Do I think that they have succeeded no. At least not off of adventures like they thought or we did.

Now that that is out of the way. I do think that good adventures are worth the money and a good one can make a profit. I know that both RttToEE and CotSQ turned a profit. But I am disinclined to huge adventures, ones that are meant to be a campaign or the backbone of one. Yet these are the ones that sell. I am a work horse, but I love modules and adventures. I still have adventures from 2E that I have not even read. I have a ton of 3e stuff too that I have not cracked. Do I use them as is. Like most DM's no. Sometimes I might take one idea or encounter from them.

Anyway I am done with my rant. My point was that I would like to see not more. But better shorter modules. Not another book about Paladins and Fighters.


The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[broghammerj]

Originally Posted by broghammerj
5. Lastly, there is the prinicple of economics. If a make product X. I want $1000 to make product X. It will cost me $5000 dollars in production including printing, paying rent, distribution, advertising, etc. I sell enough product to recoup $6000, then that made the product worthwhile.

To bring in $6,000 off of a $10 adventure sold through distribution a publisher would need to sell at least 1,500 adventures (and this assumes the publisher is selling direct to the distributor). This is at a time when many publishers are having a hard time selling 1,000 copies of any product.

I use those numbers in a completely arbitrary value to make an example. I wasn't expecting a specific breakdown. There seems to be a mentality of for every $1 I spend in "creative investment" in RPG product I will get $0.10 returned from an adventure and $0.25 returned off a sourcebook (again completely arbitrary values). My point is if that $0.10 return off an adventure is enough to pay the writer for their time, pay the rent of your business, and cover printing costs then the product should be a success. Not a failure because it didn't return as much as a sourcebook. I think this idea of investing capital into sourcebooks is eventually doomed to failure. This reminds me of tech stock investments of the 90s. Eventually the market will fold.

The sourcebook market is going to collapse. There is too much material out there. I think that people with a reasonable plan could break even in adventure writing, especially if you keep costs down.

 

[philreed]

Originally Posted by broghammerjI use those numbers in a completely arbitrary value to make an example. I wasn't expecting a specific breakdown. There seems to be a mentality of for every $1 I spend in "creative investment" in RPG product I will get $0.10 returned from an adventure and $0.25 returned off a sourcebook (again completely arbitrary values).

It wouldn't matter if that $10 product were an adventure or a splatbook. To make $6,000 on a $10 product you must sell at least 1,500 copies. Are there any print publishers willing to share numbers on their most recent release? I'm willing to bet the average is going to fall between 750 and 1,000 copies -- not anywhere near 1,500.

The sourcebook market is going to collapse. There is too much material out there. I think that people with a reasonable plan could break even in adventure writing, especially if you keep costs down.

I agree that the market will collapse. But not the sourcebook market. THE MARKET. All of it.

If you want publishers to produce adventures vote with your dollars. Run a poll here on the boards to select an adventure and then have 1,000 people BUY that adventure. I'm willing to bet that if a publisher gets 1,000 orders for an adventure -- especially if they're all direct sales -- he'll get cranking on another adventure.

That's the only way you're going to get more adventures.

 

[Arcane Runes Press]

You see, the original Question of this thread: has 3rd party companies failed? According to WotC, yes you did. WotC is providing adventures now, because they realize that their best hopes aren't fulfilled by you. All of you live and die by the Supreme Findings of the Almighty WotC Marketing Department. The WotC Marketing Department is God to the d20 Industry.

Adventures are an important part of the d20 Industry as a whole. WotC hoped that you all would ignore it's Market Research and write the adventures any way. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

Yeah, Wizards hoped companies would "ignore it's market research", but not because of any altruistic hope 3rd party publishers would support the soul of the industry. They hoped 3rd party guys would publish modules so they wouldn't have to - freeing up resources to concentrate on the real money train: big sourcebooks.

It was a business decision for WotC - just like choosing to publish the higher profit sourcebooks was a business decision for 3rd party companies.

Listen, if you want to run a profitable business making a lot of money, you can start:
* A travel agency (tourism generates around $50 billion a year).
* A telecommunications firm ($500 billion a year for telecommunications).
* A law firm (As Tort lawyers, you can take companies to suit and get 3/4ths of the money you win).
* A bank (You can set up savings accounts and make usurious loans charging Compound Interest).
* A major Motion Picture studio (Hollywood, Tokywood, Hong Kongwood, and Ballywood produces hundreds of films per year).

This argument never fails to impress me with its silliness. The desire to make money and the desire to be creative are not mutually exclusive - and since I try and put the same amount of creativity into every book I write, be it an adventure or a sourcebook of some sort, and since I get the same satisfaction from writing sourcebooks as a I do from writing adventures, I see no good reason at all to settle for 1,000 dollars when I can earn 2,000.

 

[Vigilance]

I'd like to throw in a couple of points that I think people are missing.

1. To those that argue selling adventures immediately cuts your market to 20% because you're only selling to DMs.

I agree, that yes you're limiting your market by selling adventures. However, you're living in a fools paradise if you think players are buying all the source books too. If you sell an adventure setting...say Scarred Lands, it is more likely that multiple players will own the book if that is the game you're running. However, if you think the race/class sourcebooks are bought by multiple people, then my group must be atypical. How many people in the group need WOTC's Races of Stone? One, the guy who always plays dwarves. I'll just borrow his copy if I need two. Now expand that to all the companies making dwarf sourcebooks. It's ridiculous.

You think we don't know this?

However the simple fact is, and this is proven by market research that WOTC did, that GMs buy more of *everything*.

In other words, if I make a sourcebook, GMs are the most likely to buy it, but some players will buy it too.

If I make an adventure, GMs are likely to buy it, but players of course will not.

That means more potential customers for the sourcebook!

Are we just beating our heads against a wall here?

Chuck

 

[Vigilance]

Originally Posted by broghammerj
5. Lastly, there is the prinicple of economics. If a make product X. I want $1000 to make product X. It will cost me $5000 dollars in production including printing, paying rent, distribution, advertising, etc. I sell enough product to recoup $6000, then that made the product worthwhile.




I use those numbers in a completely arbitrary value to make an example. I wasn't expecting a specific breakdown.

Im glad you can afford to use those numbers in a completely arbitrary fashion lol.

In this business every product has to make money for the small companies to survive.

In my time at RPGO we've never lost money on a book, but if we did it would be very very bad.

I wish the market was such that companies could produce what they wanted and not worry if they lost money on the adventures side as an advertising expense.

You guys DO know that in TSR's glory days, when they were making the giant adventures and the Drow modules, that they LOST MONEY on those modules?

But they made enough on everything else they could chock it up to the cost of doing business.

Well now we can't.

Anyone who doesn't want to use numbers arbitrarily is invited to drop 10 grand of their own money to publish a 3 adventure series.

I made this challenge early in the thread and no one even responded to it.

I wonder why that is?

Maybe people are less inclined to lose THEIR money than MINE?

Chuck

 

[Vigilance]

Are there any print publishers willing to share numbers on their most recent release? I'm willing to bet the average is going to fall between 750 and 1,000 copies -- not anywhere near 1,500.

Blood and Space, Blood and Fists, Blood and Guts all had print runs of 1,000 and none have sold out. All have been in release over a year.

All the books made money btw, and the last two, a couple of our most popular titles are on the verge of selling out.

However, the modules we printed for darwin's world did not do nearly that well and many had to be destroyed.

Chuck

 

[philreed]

Blood and Space, Blood and Fists, Blood and Guts all had print runs of 1,000 and none have sold out. All have been in release over a year.

All the books made money btw, and the last two, a couple of our most popular titles are on the verge of selling out.

However, the modules we printed for darwin's world did not do nearly that well and many had to be destroyed.

Chuck

Thanks, man. I'm willing to bet there are a lot more publishers with similar numbers.

Money can be made by selling 500-1,000 copies of something -- with proper planning. Hell, my own vs. Monsters had a print run of 100 copies and it's bringing in a profit already -- I designed pricing and the box set around ensuring a quick return on my investment.

This is all another case of a few loud people making statements online. It's statements with money that drive publishers to NOT produce adventures. Those publishers making adventures are doing so because they can sell them -- if you want adventures, support those publishers so that they'll keep producing them.

Hmmm. You and your, obviously, doesn't really refer to any one, specific person. It's just me rambling again.

 

[philreed]

Im glad you can afford to use those numbers in a completely arbitrary fashion lol.

Yeah, I can't afford to use arbitrary numbers. I can't eat on arbitrary numbers. I can afford low-risk, small projects. My current project is a huge gamble -- I could have easily done 20 $1-$2 PDFs in the time it has taken to write this one. If this project doesn't sell awesome numbers I'm going back to what works.

 

[Vigilance]

Thanks, man. I'm willing to bet there are a lot more publishers with similar numbers.
This is all another case of a few loud people making statements online. It's statements with money that drive publishers to NOT produce adventures. Those publishers making adventures are doing so because they can sell them -- if you want adventures, support those publishers so that they'll keep producing them.

Well if someone wanted to get less than arbitrary Im sure there are many publishers who would take cash up front, in the nature of 10 grand, to produce the three-module series of their choice, and then split with them any profit made from the venture.

But most people are tight with THEIR money lol.

Chuck