Epic Meepo
Hero
I’ve decided to start the year 2026 with a look back at the self-publishing work I completed in 2025. I spent much of my spare time over the past year working on a single RPG supplement, which I self-published on a shoestring budget with little in the way of marketing or promotion towards the end of the year.
Specifically, I published the Forgotten Realms Travel Guide: Faerûn, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara, a 700-page campaign setting supplement that expands upon existing Forgotten Realms material. (You can visit this other thread for a more detailed product description.)
The travel guide is my longest published work to date. Previously, I self-published twenty or so short supplements providing new character options for the first edition of the Pathfinder RPG. (Those titles were published years ago on drivethrurpg.com. None are currently available.)
The travel guide I finished in 2025 was a different project in many ways. Most importantly, the travel guide required extensive research and development over the course of multiple years. In contrast, I was able to release my previous titles at a consistent rate of one per month for almost two years.
According to conventional wisdom, all things being equal, a series of twenty short RPG products will sell better than a single large RPG product. Knowing this, creating my 700-page travel guide was a bit of a risk. Would it have been better to just publish another twenty small PDFs?
Of my twenty shorter titles, most ended up approaching or surpassing the copper bestseller mark on drivethrurpg.com. Some fell a bit short. Three were silver bestsellers instead. Had each title in the series hit the average number of sales, all would have been copper bestsellers, if just barely.
In comparison, after just under two months of sales, the travel guide I published at the end of 2025 has sold a few units short of the copper bestseller mark. If a handful of sales trickle in over time, the travel guide should hit that benchmark. So it’s selling about as well as any of my previous, shorter titles.
Overall, I spent less time and effort creating the twenty short titles than I did creating the 700-page travel guide, and the combined price of the twenty shorter titles was slightly higher than the price of the longer title. This supports the conventional wisdom that shorter titles are more profitable.
On the other hand, I spent less time and effort marketing the travel guide. (I had no marketing campaign, no social media presence, and no product reviews in place at the time of release.) I’m also convinced the travel guide is a better product overall, and I learned a fair amount while working on it.
I’ll expand upon that last point in a future post, as this post is running longer than expected.
Specifically, I published the Forgotten Realms Travel Guide: Faerûn, Kara-Tur, and Zakhara, a 700-page campaign setting supplement that expands upon existing Forgotten Realms material. (You can visit this other thread for a more detailed product description.)
The travel guide is my longest published work to date. Previously, I self-published twenty or so short supplements providing new character options for the first edition of the Pathfinder RPG. (Those titles were published years ago on drivethrurpg.com. None are currently available.)
The travel guide I finished in 2025 was a different project in many ways. Most importantly, the travel guide required extensive research and development over the course of multiple years. In contrast, I was able to release my previous titles at a consistent rate of one per month for almost two years.
According to conventional wisdom, all things being equal, a series of twenty short RPG products will sell better than a single large RPG product. Knowing this, creating my 700-page travel guide was a bit of a risk. Would it have been better to just publish another twenty small PDFs?
Of my twenty shorter titles, most ended up approaching or surpassing the copper bestseller mark on drivethrurpg.com. Some fell a bit short. Three were silver bestsellers instead. Had each title in the series hit the average number of sales, all would have been copper bestsellers, if just barely.
In comparison, after just under two months of sales, the travel guide I published at the end of 2025 has sold a few units short of the copper bestseller mark. If a handful of sales trickle in over time, the travel guide should hit that benchmark. So it’s selling about as well as any of my previous, shorter titles.
Overall, I spent less time and effort creating the twenty short titles than I did creating the 700-page travel guide, and the combined price of the twenty shorter titles was slightly higher than the price of the longer title. This supports the conventional wisdom that shorter titles are more profitable.
On the other hand, I spent less time and effort marketing the travel guide. (I had no marketing campaign, no social media presence, and no product reviews in place at the time of release.) I’m also convinced the travel guide is a better product overall, and I learned a fair amount while working on it.
I’ll expand upon that last point in a future post, as this post is running longer than expected.
