Important change of policy from RPGNow

[Jim Butler]

All in all, I see this as a pretty minor issue. They're not demanding exclusivity, only not providing a link back to the manufacturer from their website. I can live with it.

Exclusivity is almost always a bad thing, though, and I don't want to be held hostage by any company that wants to be the only one selling my products. It makes me far too susceptible to policy changes, alterations of the business climate that they might not foresee, etc. Even a benevolent dictator is still a dictator.

Bastion Press will continue to sell products both at our website (through SWREG now and soon our online store) as well as RPGNet (as long as their policies permit it).

 

[MEG Hal]

All in all, I see this as a pretty minor issue. They're not demanding exclusivity, only not providing a link back to the manufacturer from their website. I can live with it.

Exclusivity is almost always a bad thing, though, and I don't want to be held hostage by any company that wants to be the only one selling my products. It makes me far too susceptible to policy changes, alterations of the business climate that they might not foresee, etc. Even a benevolent dictator is still a dictator.

I totally agree with Jim and we will also continue to use RPGNow.

 

[jkantor]

It won't affect me - at least not anytime soon - but it seems to be a policy that has no real benefits for anyone and is an annoyance for customers. Or don't they count anymore?

 

[Cergorach]

There is nothing more annoying than online stores that sell products online and make it a policy to not add a link to the producer of those products. I will try to vote with the use of my wallet...

 

[HellHound]

I'm definitely sticking with RPGnow, they have been incredibly supportive of the PDF d20 market and a lot of us (electronic d20 publishers) know that a chunk of our sales would never have happened if we had been only selling through our own site (especially for me right now, with my site being down due to server problems). In addition, RPGnow has been spending money on high-profile advertising in Dragon and Dungeon magazines.

I've been in dialogue with RPGnow since the inception of the d20 products part of Ambient Inc. and they are not refusign to cross-link based on exclusivity, just based on whether or no the page they link to has an alternate means of buying the product.

My recommendation would be to make a new set of pages for products being sold by RPGnow that do not include links to your own shopping cart, the white-wolf catalog, or whatever other virtual storefronts you are selling through. Maybe ask RPGnow first if that would be all it takes to keep your link at the bottom of your product - but effectively it allows you to have your own shopping cart without "stealing" sales from RPGnow.

I know I will still be using RPGnow as my primary point of sale for the foreseeable future, although I am also listing my material in other virtual store-fronts, I'm just not linking to them from the product pages on our web-site.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

RPGNow's policy is pretty much the same as Ebay's... they don't want the customer/bidder to get around paying their commission on a sale... which is a real pain for sellers, who would prefer to get as many non-Ebay sales as possible. Ebay won't even let you sell catalogs unless they are out of date "collector's items."

Understandably, RPGNow/Ebay spend lots of money hyping their sites which leads to more customers being exposed to your products, but this is still a painful concept for sellers to swallow. Sellers do not want a middleman to have exclusivity as that cuts into their potential sales/profits/sources of revenue... The middleman wants to become "indispensable" to the seller by providing the bulk of its sales (while taking a healthy--and sometimes questionable--cut off the top for itself) by limiting additional sources of revenue. Exclusivity is a dandy way for them to do this, though it hardly wins any friends. But business isn't about friends---it's about profit!

 

[tensen]

There is nothing more annoying than online stores that sell products online and make it a policy to not add a link to the producer of those products. I will try to vote with the use of my wallet...

For the publishers that only use rpgnow... that method would be a punishment to them as well.

 

[The Sigil]

An excellent point...

For the publishers that only use rpgnow... that method would be a punishment to them as well.

This is an excellent point. The "big guns" in the d20 industry can of course sell their own products from their own website, but some of the smaller publishers (myself included) cannot afford to create a shopping cart system on their own site; RPGNow is a godsend to them. This effectively means that to boycott RPGNow is also to boycott any publisher without the means of selling their product on their own site.

I would suggest that if you are upset with RPGNow's policy, you vote with your wallet inasmuch as you always look for a link to the producer's site. If it's there, you can assume that the producer is using RPGNow.com only, hence I would encourage you to buy from RPGNow.com. If it isn't there, use your favorite search engine to find their site (some publishers don't have a site) and if you can find it, buy from their site.

IOW, if you wish to punish RPGNow.com for their policy, do it by looking for alternative ways to order the products they offer, but do not shut the door on smaller publishers just because they use RPGNow.com - in many cases, RPGNow.com is their venue of choice for sales (and only sales venue).

--The Sigil

 

[DPG Darrin]

I agree with The Sigil that it is unfair to punish the smaller publishers that can only use RPGNow as a vendor because you don't like one of RPGNow's policies. Even though I was a little hot under the collar about this, after some thought I decided that I probably will purchase through them if a publisher that they carry exclusively has something I want to buy.

I strongly feel that if you don't like the policy, you should email them and let them know how you feel and, more importantly, why you feel that way.

 

[Cergorach]

For the publishers that only use rpgnow... that method would be a punishment to them as well.

I think punishment is the wrong word to use here, it's a reminder that i do not like to buy from said store, and that if they want to sell products to me they should start looking at other ways to get product out to me. And everyone with half a brain will find those 'other ways' out there on the web, it would take a little effort, but the reward would be enourmous (not soley dependant on someone else for your sales).

This is an excellent point. The "big guns" in the d20 industry can of course sell their own products from their own website, but some of the smaller publishers (myself included) cannot afford to create a shopping cart system on their own site; RPGNow is a godsend to them. This effectively means that to boycott RPGNow is also to boycott any publisher without the means of selling their product on their own site.

Erm... Sorry to be so blunt, but this is BS! What exactly do you mean by afford? I'm setting up my own webshop at the moment (only physical products for the moment), it's costing me €105 a year for 300MB of space and another €11 a year for running a MySql database on it. The shop is PHPshop with some hacks and plugins, it's free and you could use a service such as PayPal to handle the payments. I have to admit that it would take a bit of time for those with absolutely no computer skills, but then again you could probably pay someone to do that for you (if you don't want to invest the time to become a bit more computer savvy). This is about investing a bit in the future...

I think that if small time publishers do not want to invest in their own future, then why should i? I certainly do NOT have the responsibility to buy from smalltime publisher, and even less from RPGNow!.

What i find disturbing is that why did RPGNow! not start a dialogue with the publishers to resolve the problems they have think they have. RPGNow! is nothing less than a provider, without the publishers they are nothing, how is it that they can set policy?

With the current possibilities on the web there could have been other possibilities. One of the best (IMHO) would have been to suggest to publishers to create a system that would not allow users that where revered to the page by RPGNow! (used the link on the site) to buy from other vendors (it would not show these possibilities). With the current technology on the web this could be achieved without to much trouble.

Just more and more questions, why, why, why!