NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MGibster" data-source="post: 9426933" data-attributes="member: 4534">I think being good at something merits some praise, don't you?  I'm not going to argue Williams was the next Lee Iacocca, but she did a good job getting TSR back on track when she took the helm in 1985.  Unlike Gygax or the Blumes, Williams was an actual businessperson and understood how to run a business.   One of the biggest problems was factoring.  TSR would take pre-orders at the beginning of the year and based on those numbers would procure funding from investors.  The advantage of this is that TSR got a bunch of money at the beginning of the year but it came with two big disadvantages.  The first is the factoring ended up costing nearly 20% of the revenue for the year.  i.e.  For every dollar TSR made on the sale of those products, .20 cents went straight to the investors.  The next biggest problem is that TSR could not response to market forces.  No matter hell or high water, they had to ship product.  Dragon Dice was actually a moderate success, but because of factoring, they had to produce and ship units knowing full well they weren't going to sell.  I don't know if factoring and the deal with Random House began under her tenure, but you're right, even if they didn't, she could have worked to make other arrangements.  I don't have an axe to grind here.  I'm not particularly interested in castigated Gygax or the Blumes or putting Williams on a pedestal.  I am more interested in figuring out what happened and letting the information speak for itself.  Although it does appear Williams' reputation has gotten a little better these last few years while Gygax's has gotten worse.</blockquote>

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