Yeah, at that scale many companies won't even take the order; and the per unit cost will be much higher. That said it's still generally lower than premium PoD, which has a scale of economy of 1.
I Wore Every Hat in My Second Crowdfunding Campaign – Here’s What I Learned
- Thread starter Melina.Vortex
- Start date
Upper_Krust
Legend
I'm baking hot in my shorts and vest here in sunny Belfast where it is currently 21 degrees and rising. I suspect Germany is a 'tad' warmer.
But we travelled to the UKGE from here. Yes, it was rather an investment, but I am glad we went.
Just to give you an example of how things can turn out:
A friend convinced me to become active on Reddit (which I did not use before.)
=> I posed (amongst others) about our having a stand at the UKGE
=> another RPG and VTT creator (Hedron) saw the post and dropped by at the stand. We got into talking and he liked our first book that we sold.
=> they supported our campaign as retailers and we decided to put our products on their VTTT
=> now we are talking about a more permanent collaboration that will help us be more present on the US market without having to travel to cons there.
So: this was absolutely worth it!
That is awesome. So the networking paid off.
I'll look into getting VTT support for my next book. Just had too much on my plate first time around.
Upper_Krust
Legend
I priced it and I just didn't see myself selling 500 physical copies in the Kickstarter. So Drivethru was the best option - the fact that they do not take a percentage of the Kickstarter was the biggest incentive though.
Melina.Vortex
Explorer
It was iNCREDIBLY warm last week. More than 40 degrees here. ARGH!!!I'm baking hot in my shorts and vest here in sunny Belfast where it is currently 21 degrees and rising. I suspect Germany is a 'tad' warmer.
That is awesome. So the networking paid off.
I'll look into getting VTT support for my next book. Just had too much on my plate first time around.
So: now I have to review the last adventure modules before everything goes to our editor in Devon.
Will look here again later!
Really great insights and I agree with a lot of it.
For me, the big shift in the complexity of our projects was switching from print on demand to offset printing. POD prices went up, quality went down, and the amount of books we were shipping was high enough to switch to offset printing but it was a huge and dangerous learning curve. Luckily it worked out and now our little company (my wife and I) have a whole workflow for writing, producing, publishing, printing, and distributing books worldwide. It's still a pain in the ass, no doubt, but I'm really happy with the quality of the books. But for us, we have a sort of lower benchmark where it's not worth the effort. That's about 2,000 backers or so before it's profitable.
Marketing is a big focus for us now and that's a shifting environment. Like Morrus said, we have had luck with Backerkit's marketing activities which pay for themselves and I think get a greater reach than what you pay for but Facebooks whole ad platform continues to suck and with another company in the middle, profitability is low.
For us, the biggest marketing value came from:
Like you, we now manage pretty much everything on our own from the writing and production of the book to managing the Kickstarter. I'm very lucky that I can partner with Scott Fitzgerald Gray who manages editing, layout, and art direction so that's a huge benefit.
Since the roughly 30% drop in the industry post COVID and with such a huge amount of fantastic products and full RPG systems out there, it's harder to identify a new product that's going to draw in enough energy to make it profitable. I guess that's just reality these days.
I'm adding a list of the sources and how much they brought in for our last project, the City of Arches.
I try to compile all my best advice here:
For me, the big shift in the complexity of our projects was switching from print on demand to offset printing. POD prices went up, quality went down, and the amount of books we were shipping was high enough to switch to offset printing but it was a huge and dangerous learning curve. Luckily it worked out and now our little company (my wife and I) have a whole workflow for writing, producing, publishing, printing, and distributing books worldwide. It's still a pain in the ass, no doubt, but I'm really happy with the quality of the books. But for us, we have a sort of lower benchmark where it's not worth the effort. That's about 2,000 backers or so before it's profitable.
Marketing is a big focus for us now and that's a shifting environment. Like Morrus said, we have had luck with Backerkit's marketing activities which pay for themselves and I think get a greater reach than what you pay for but Facebooks whole ad platform continues to suck and with another company in the middle, profitability is low.
For us, the biggest marketing value came from:
- YouTube (I have a pretty strong channel with good conversions)
- Patreon (I have a strong patreon site with people who also respond very positively to new big projects)
- Newsletter (I wish I had started this 15 years ago but I'm happy where it's at now and Kickstarter helps it grow)
- Podcast (it's not nothing but not nearly as popular or as conversiony as YouTube)
- Blog (blogging isn't dead! But yeah, its no youtube).
- All other social media (Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon) is hardly measurable. It used to be that Twitter was a great place to market but not now, that's for sure.
Like you, we now manage pretty much everything on our own from the writing and production of the book to managing the Kickstarter. I'm very lucky that I can partner with Scott Fitzgerald Gray who manages editing, layout, and art direction so that's a huge benefit.
Since the roughly 30% drop in the industry post COVID and with such a huge amount of fantastic products and full RPG systems out there, it's harder to identify a new product that's going to draw in enough energy to make it profitable. I guess that's just reality these days.
I'm adding a list of the sources and how much they brought in for our last project, the City of Arches.
I try to compile all my best advice here:
Upper_Krust
Legend
Two quick questions Mike (if you have the time).
1. Are you saying 2000 backers is your threshold for the Offset Printing route and by extension the use of Backerkit? I'm anticipating my Epic Tier Kickstarter next month God Rules: Player's Guide will sell less than 500 physical books, I assumed I was better off going with the PoD route until such time as my audience expands.
2. Since you have had previous Kickstarter's use PoD (DrivethruRPG I assume) how did you decide what to charge for the difference between the PDF only Tier and the Physical Copy tier? I want to charge the same amount for both (since backers still have to pay extra for Printing and Shipping) but it seems the psychology is opposed to these things being the same price.
1. Are you saying 2000 backers is your threshold for the Offset Printing route and by extension the use of Backerkit? I'm anticipating my Epic Tier Kickstarter next month God Rules: Player's Guide will sell less than 500 physical books, I assumed I was better off going with the PoD route until such time as my audience expands.
2. Since you have had previous Kickstarter's use PoD (DrivethruRPG I assume) how did you decide what to charge for the difference between the PDF only Tier and the Physical Copy tier? I want to charge the same amount for both (since backers still have to pay extra for Printing and Shipping) but it seems the psychology is opposed to these things being the same price.
If that’s what you want to do, just sell the one tier and say that all backers get a free coupon to print at cost. They can use it or not as they wish. But the coupon is free with your PDF.
Your own circumstances are almost certainly different than mine. When I look at the cost of making a book around like 160 pages with full color art, professional editing and layout, and all the other things to just produce the book itself and then pay for the offset print run and all its associated costs, for me I'd want to know I could get about 2,000 backers to manage that.
It's highly dependent on the size of the product and the costs associated with that product (art, editing, layout, cover design and art, and all the rest).
Like @Melina.Vortex, we took no payment for our own work on the project figuring the money we make on the remainder of the funds and for selling the book later accounted for that (also, we just love making books for the sake of making books). City of Arches had almost twice the backers we needed to break even so that worked out for us. But I think its harder and harder to find products that can resonate like that.
Still, I'm busy poking away at my next one!
Similar Threads
