How do I market to other countries?

[Cergorach]

I would say that it's probably only feasible for the largest non-english speaking markets.

I remember years ago there was a danish translation of the D&D Basic Set (the red one) and the D&D Expert Set (the blue one). A friend of mine got a few copies, since he was teaching rpg to 10-12 year olds, who weren't good at english, so I read it. Even though it was done by a danish licensee, it was hilarious, the whole tone of it was ruined by some very odd sounding translations. Not that the translations were really incorrect, it just sounded wrong. All in all, I think that danish translations aren't worth it, most people who want to play, would prefer english versions. On a personal note, I would like a danish traslation of the PHB though, for a couple of my players.

Hehehe... I thought that only the dutch translation of the red box sounded wrong[/]. It still was kind of cute, i think it still pulled in a couple of new roleplayers, just not enough to justify the costs.

We currently distribute our English Language products overseas. Nations like the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia are ideal markets as the natives can read our stuff with no issue. Other nations still buy a significant amount of our stuff, but likely less than a translation would sell.

Could you please add the Netherlands (or the entire benelux for that matter) to that list, generally the target audience for rpg products reads english as his/her second language. Also i think that english products still sell often better than translations, particulary around here. I found the Paradgim products on the list of my local distributer, that's good, i wish i was able to locally order products from more small companies (such as Privateer or Green Ronin), but i won't hold my breath for it (i still haven't received the FFG products i ordered from my distributor)...

 

[hong]

I've been to Denmark. Y'all speak better English than I do... so you're probably right. (and are some of the nicest people I've ever met, for that matter, I'm looking forward to visiting again someday...)

I've met a couple of Danes here at the ANU. They both spoke better English than many Australians! Terrible sense of humour, though; innuendo went right over their heads....

 

[Turjan]

Well, I'm from Germany, and this must be one of the largest non-English speaking markets. However, I don't think German translations of d20 products make much sense, or at least it's a very risky path to go. So what are the conditions?

1) Even D&D doesn't sell that well in Germany, because the main player on the local RPG market provides his own local RPG named DSA. The company that translates the original D&D stuff has just managed to get out the PHB so far, and they don't even know whether they will provide us with a lot more during the next years, because everybody who is interested in D&D stuff doesn't want to wait 2 or more years, and therefore buys the English version instead. This cuts down the market for translated products to a fairly small number of people.

2) There's one small company which has started with translations of Atlas, Green Ronin, and Mongoose stuff so far. I think it's some kind of experiment . I don't know what the translation costs, but the page count is usually blown up by one third, which means extra costs for printing. I'm not overly optimistic on this one.

And, really, don't even try to use babelfish! The results don't have the slightest meaning at all . It's a common game over here to give those translations to someone else and let him guess on the topic .

So my suggestion: Don't even try to get out any German language products at the moment. At least wait until Amigo will finally manage to get out the DMG and the MM.