Payment of Writers

[Thorin Stoutfoot]

Book of the Righteous has been used as an example in this thread, as if it is an example of a book that is "too expensive" to succeed, but despite the folks who have admitted that it's a book beyond their means here, it remains one of the most successful products Green Ronin has produced in the history of our company.

Nicole, I don't think anybody is claiming that BoTR is unsuccessful. The debate is over whether a lower price point (or an even higher price point) would make it even more successful, and to be true, I'm not sure anybody knows the answer, or where the market is really going.

I'm positive that the various experiments that different publishers are doing will eventually guide the industry in an appropriate direction. Though without hard numbers (and publishers are understandably reluctant to share those), I'm not sure it that will help new publishers not make the same mistakes, or more commonly underprice their product to the point that the entire industry quickly "races to the bottom".

 

[BryonD]

I realize, looking over my original message, that I wasn't being terribly clear. Sorry about that. Hope this makes my point of view a little easier to penetrate.

Thanks,

Erik

Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

I still think you are over-stating your case, but I don't disagree with your basic premise.

 

[AaronLoeb]

In general, it seems like a lot of the arguments on this thread are boiling down to "people like these books enough to pay more for them in return for higher quality," responded to with "I don't and therefore they won't." Both arguments are missing, in my usually inaccurate opinion, the subtle nuance of pricing as marketing mechanism...

Clearly, expensive books are for a smaller share of the market than dirt-cheap books. To use my own book as an example, no, neither GR nor I imagined that every gamer in North America and Europe would want a copy. Yes, we knew that the size and price of it would deter some people. But you make a decision -- you make the best book you possibly can for your target consumer and hope people outside the core consumer will become interested by word of mouth, marketing and reviews. Then you work like heck to reach that core consumer with your message: this product is for you!

Because this is a book about religion in d20 games, it is obviously not a "mass market" book. It is not something every single person in the market might want, therefore it should not be assigned a "mass market" price point of $6 - $7 (maybe in RPGs, mass market pp is more like 15). You give people within the niche of core consumers the best product you can at a reasonable and fair price. In this case, the core consumer has been wanting a book with a comprehensive pantheon and corresponding churches for years; comprehensiveness takes a lot of words (300,000, as it turns out). We would not have satisfied the core by producing a 64-page book at $15. While that size and price of book might have made the book more palatable to people who never wanted the book in the first place, without a core you can't sell a book in the first place. And for the core, $40 is a reasonable and fair price for 300,000 words of useful material and lots of lovely black and white art. It is not a cheap price, of course, but it is not a scandal nor is it an outrage.

Obviously people who look at a book and say "I won't pick that up because it's $5 more than a black and white book should be based on established market practice, but I'd buy it if it were color. It's a matter of principle!" are not the core target audience for the product -- or any product. Target consumers don't make decisions about things they really want based on arcane production value comparisons. This is not me being a wisea$$. I'm serious. Marketing and sales professionals tell me this all the time, and I never believe them but they back it up with numbers: the core consumer on an entertainment product makes decisions about the product driven by desire first and foremost. You don't market to the core with lower price. (Note, for example: Blizzard already charges more for its games than nearly anyone else, and for the core they offer even more expensive collectors editions, which they sell out of. These products are as much as $30 more than other computer games on the market. Do their core consumers complain? No, because Blizzard makes highly, highly desirable products). Lowering prices is how you reach the secondary market, and you sure don't want to do that out the gate unless you have to. WotC learned this the hard way -- they priced the PH for a secondary market at release, didn't need to, and unnecessarily lost millions of dollars in potential revenue. Of course, you can also slash prices for predatory marketing purposes to put your competition out of business so you can raise your prices to be higher than they were in the first place when the competition is gone. This unsavory practice leads to international trade wars and name calling, but all's fair in love and capitalism, eh wot?

Now, there are members of the target consumer group who look at a book and say "I really, really want it but just can't afford it." Every one of those instances is regrettable -- but what can you do about it? There will always be people who say that (and mean it, deeply, truly, honestly. I'm not trying to belittle anyone) when you get into non-mass market pricing. You just try to keep the price at a level that there are as few of those people as possible.

But just because GR published my very large book does not mean (as our gentleman retailer implied) that they are pricing themselves outside of reality. Like any reasonable publisher, they have an assortment of products. The character sheets and pocket grimoires are clearly mass market products and are priced accordingly. Book of the Righteous is for interested DMs and Players (and yes, it is quite useful for players -- most of the crunch is prestige classes, a character class, feats and spells) who, like me and many other busy people like me, want to game but don't want to spend weeks designing every facet of a world, but also don't (necessarily) want to buy into all the assumptions of an existing campaign setting. No, it's not an enormous market, but it is a market and it's a market that is not served by other god books. If you think you can't sell it, I guess you shouldn't try, but I found it to be a pretty easy sell at Gen Con.

Now, obviously, I believe in my book a lot. It was years of effort and I care about it. I'm not a professional RPG freelancer like a lot of people piping up, so I can afford to be atached to one product. But I don't think my attachment is blinding me on this issue. As a consumer, my experiences consistently back up these assumptions about pricing. For example, I really wanted Oathbound based on the preview. I flipped through it at the store and saw some things that, were I unconvinced, might have cause me to put the book down. But my desire for the book was firmly enough established through Bastion's excellent marketing that it didn't matter. I bought the book anyway, at full FLGS price ($43 with tax), and I do not regret it at all. Honestly, price didn't even enter into my mind when making the purchase. Nor does it when I buy a computer game or a book or a movie ticket unless it's outrageous or unless I don't already desire the product (at which point, I am a secondary, not a core consumer, or I'm a core consumer who has not been reached due to poor marketing).

Point is this, and is simple: relying on price as your primary or even secondary marketing mechanism is a bad business mistake and will lose you money unless you have a sub-standard (often called "bargain") product, in which case, price it as low as you can (this comes from my years in bargain book publishing, where price was our #1 marketing mechanism). This is an established business principle and is proven time and again in books, movies and, particularly, video games. It will prove itself to be true in RPGs also, as it did with the PH. Or at least that's the opinion of this particular chattering monkey.

Oop oop, ack ack,

Aaron

 

[AaronLoeb]

but they still weren't exactly competitive with non game industry jobs). I no longer work in the game industry, but my impression was that to make it rich as a game programmer, you needed to in a small design house where you got a cut of the royalties, and then if the game made it big it was like having a record go platinum --- you could live off the royalties as long as the game sold.

Both of these statements are so incredible accurate that they've wrapped all the way around the globe of accuracy and become accurate squared! (No, I don't know what that means either).

In 1998, dot com jobs were paying buckets of money more than game jobs, particularly out here in the West (some times three times more). But we saw where those dot com jobs got people. Those aside, a skilled DBA or contractor can still make 6 figures without breakign a sweat, and very few game engineers do. On top of that very, very few of the people making games get righ except for the lucky few who hit the lottery and have points on Grand Theft Auto III. So, you're totally right here -- if you want to make a LOT of money and that's career priority number 1, games aren't the first choice.

However, I only posted about this because you listed salaries of $20,000-$25,000, which out here is well below poverty level. I just wanted to make it clear that you can actually feed a family on the salary of a game engineer these days, and no one I know of is paying engineers $20,000 anymore.

AJL

 

[Greg at FFG]

Originally posted by Erik Mona


I don't think it's unreasonable that a hard-working freelancer ought to be able to pay a modest rent and car payment. Most publishers don't have to struggle so hard. Most artists don't, either. I _know_ most printers don't. It's scapegoating and unfair to pay the writer so poorly.

I don't think this is true. In fact, I think artists are probably the most underpaid, and I think that's why there's more turnover among RPG artists even than writers and designers. The average rate for a half-page B&W RPG illustration is $50. Out of that, the artist has to buy paper/canvas, pencils, inks, or whatever other supplies his work requires. A writer getting paid three cents per word needs to turn out a little less than 1700 words to earn that $50. Most writers, in my experience, will be able to hit that mark a lot more quickly than the artist will be able to complete his illustration. In any case, I think there's no point quibbling about it: Both the talented writer and the artist are woefully underpaid.

Okay, even if the artist is as underpaid as the writer, the publisher isn't struggling like that, you say. Well, let's say this is a 176-page hardcover Legends & Lairs book that retails for $25. The publisher sells to distributors at a 60% discount, so he's getting $10 per book in revenues. He's printing 5,000 copies, and by finding the best print rates and paying his writers and artists next to nothing, he's able to produce the books for about $4 each. Sweet, a 60% profit margin! If he sells all 5,000 books, he's made a gross profit of $6 per book, or $30,000.

Of course, that's just gross profit. Now he has to pay his editor, developer, and layout guy. Fortunately, this is a mid-size publishing company, so one guy does all those jobs. He has to pay his graphic designer and his sales guy. He has to pay for warehousing and shipping, and he has to pay the employees who warehouse and ship the products. He should have to pay for advertising, but he quickly realizes there's no freaking way he has any money left over for advertising. And, at the end of the month, he goes to work on that gross profit again, paying for rent, utilities, phones, computers, and all the other expenses required to keep his business operating. You're definitely going to have a tough time convincing him that he "should" be paying his writers, artists, or anyone else more. "Pay them more out of what?" he's likely to ask.

All of this is just to take issue with the charge of unfairness and scapegoating. No one's getting over, here. There simply isn't a lot of money to be made in RPGs, so everyone who's involved in producing them is underpaid relative to what they could earn in other industries.


If you and several people at your company (FFG) make a wage doing this, and if you sell thousands of copies of books that bring profit to that company, and if there are several other companies out there doing the same thing, why the cutesy quotation marks around the word industry?


No one here -- even you -- is suggesting that no one's getting paid. Writers, artists, editors, publishers, investors -- hopefully everyone is getting *something* for their effort. I could be making more money doing something else. I know that. I also love my job, knew the score when I got into it, and would feel like I was spitting on my good fortune by sitting around and moaning about how underpaid I am.

I put the cutesy quotation marks around the word industry because most of the folks involved in it aren't principally motivated by the cold, hard economic facts that govern it. If they were, they'd be doing something else. If economic considerations drove this industry, there likely wouldn't be one. This isn't unique to RPGs -- it's true of most niche hobbies. That's not a slam -- the baggage that comes with it can be both good and bad. On the good side, we have a hobby community, and producers and fans can sit around having discussions like this. On the bad side, there ain't much money in it.

 

[BryonD]

Erik Said:
"I was referring, as Wulf suggested, to "fan" designers, as opposed to folks with lots of design experience. Make no mistake, EVERYONE is a "fan" designer at the beginning of their game design careers. Not everyone is good at it. If there are no experienced freelancers to work on a given project, that project will be written by less experienced authors."

I'd like to expand on my problem with this view. You are only presenting part of the equation. There is a train of thought within this thread that some full time designers feel that their labor has more value than the rewards they receive for it.

But the other side of the equation here is, a lot of people do what you do for free, as a form of recreation. This is not a minor issue. This is a significant regulator on the income potential. If I could make as much money doing game design as I do in my engineering job, don't you think I would switch in a heartbeat? And I am quite certain, there are a LOT of other people who would also do the same. Instant market glut and you are back to square one.

I understand that garbage men make decent money. I would imagine that the majority of people reading this are qualified to be a garbage man. But we don't want to. So more money must be offered to get people to do it.

The same logic applies in reverse to game design. People want to do it. The value goes down. And I do not mean to an "OK, I'll accept a lower pay" level, but to an "OK, I'll live with what the market will bear or find another job, gee, I'm glad I get to have such a cool job" level.

Don't get the wrong idea, I am totally for free markets. Charge whatever you want, more power to you. Just don't complain about the market realities when you are choosing to have a much cooler job than me.

You can state that you would get more money if fans would not write crap. But you can not change it. It is part of the market.

 

[Cergorach]

I'm not bitter that not everyone can afford to buy everything my company produces. I hope others can refrain from being bitter that I'm determined to produce those things in the best manner I can.

I am not bitter, just trying to point out how things work in my dot on the world map (Amsterdam, The Netherlands). The Dutch are renowned for their 'cheapness', of course not everyone is like that, but the majority are. As Aaron Loeb pointed out, this product is primarily aimed at a 'core audience', that's something rather 'new' in the D20 world, most products seem to target a core but also a secendary audience. Due to it's pricing it will not reach a secondary market.

Don't get me wrong GR products will grace my shelfs for a long time to come, quality is very high (both in writing as in visuals and touchables), and i wish everything was such a high quality. But quality doesn't make a product successful, as we all know, people will not always do the best thing for themselves (such as buying high quality instead of sucky products). They are enticed by the promise of big and better (cheaper?) products in huge quantities.

The point i was trying to make is that when people are confronted by two products that cover the same subject in the same detail (same book size), have comparable quality (writing, art, layout, paper, harcover, color vs. b&w, etc.), they will almost always go for the cheaper one first. The good part about marketing TBoR is that it's pretty unique on the market right now, the same cannot be said about a book of Fighters, naval combat, etc.

suck != high quality

'Human' Roleplayer 7/ Wargamer 3/ Boardgamer 1/Cardplayer 1/Retailer 3/Game Collector 13

 

[AaronLoeb]

As Aaron Loeb pointed out, this product is primarily aimed at a 'core audience', that's something rather 'new' in the D20 world, most products seem to target a core but also a secendary audience. Due to it's pricing it will not reach a secondary market.

I'm not meaning to be combatative, so please forgive me if I come across that way, but do you really believe that? WotC releases products intended for a core all the time -- for instance the FRCS. Clearly, they didn't think that every gamer in gamertown would want a copy, so they made it the best, most elaborate product they could for their core -- and priced it at $40. This was our strategy exactly: make the best product you possibly can for the people you know will want it, and hope others will buy in as well.

This happens in the d20 market all the time. Every Scarred Land or Kalamar-specific book (adventures, specific setting guides) is aimed at a core: the people who like and play in those settings. And they pick up secondary market buyers because of their quality. Mongoose clearly does not expect that Slaine will appeal to every gamer on earth, and so they made the best darn Slaine book they could for Slaine lovers, and priced it accordingly. People make products for core audiences in our industry and release them successfully on a monthly basis.

And while you feel that the pricing of BotR will keep it out of secondary markets, there is no evidence of this. In fact, all evidence is to the contrary, with it selling better than projected. That's because most consumers look at word of mouth, recommendations of friends and reviews over price unless the price is prohibitive for where the market is; there is no reason to believe that BotR's price is prohibitive for where the market is.

The point i was trying to make is that when people are confronted by two products that cover the same subject in the same detail (same book size), have comparable quality (writing, art, layout, paper, harcover, color vs. b&w, etc.), they will almost always go for the cheaper one first. The good part about marketing TBoR is that it's pretty unique on the market right now, the same cannot be said about a book of Fighters, naval combat, etc.

Obviously, there's a contradiction here. You feel that it is both covering the same subject in the same detail AND that it is unique on the market. I think the disappointment for me is that we've somehow failed to get our message out to you: that BotR is very, very different from the other god books on the market and that it fills a niche that all of them have left ignored. If you want a book on playing gods, ascending to godhead, or fighting gods, Deities and Demigods is a million times a better book for you. If you want a book about churches and mythology and cosmology that is not based on realworld myth and can be put into any campaign setting, no one supplies that like BotR. It sounds to me -- and again, I'm just saying it sounds to me, and I'm really not trying to be rude -- that you're making up your customers' minds for them: "Well, with a little bit of work you can do that with the material in Deities and Demigods, so why would you want BotR in the first place? These books are identical, but this one's cheaper, so buy the cheaper one." BotR provide exhaustive detail about churches that no one else provides. Detail that has been in development, some of it, for over a decade. I wish we had somehow gotten this message out to you, because I can't understand how you can look through its pages and think it's the same as the other god books, only less colorful and more expensive.

But maybe I'm a little too close to the subject and I've got a big old blind spot. Wouldn't be the first time!

Anyway, thanks for your time and for discussing this matter, Cerg. I'm sorry your customers won't have an opportunity to see my book. I wish you the best with your business.

Aaron

 

[Cergorach]

@AaronLoeb
How to put it?

RPGs are a relatively small market, D&D and D20 constitute a large portion of that market, with the D&D share being far larger than the D20 share although D20 has far more products to go around. Forgotten Realms is a brand name that has a big following, both within the RPG business as outside it (novels), and thus any book that's produced for it will have as a result a far larger following. Also FR is the 'core' setting for D&D (although officially it's supposed to be Greyhawk), this all makes FR products appeal to a far larger audience, you might want to say FR has a large core group. The same goes for Slaine and Judge Dread, brand names that have a large appeal outside the D20 branch, and thus have a large audience/core group. Products that use brand names have already something that 'normal' products lack, fame/infamy, thus not really comparable to products that do not have something like that. Kalamar also has a 'plus' because it carries the D&D brand name and thus also has an 'unfair' headstart because of it (i think it still has a far smaller audience/core group than for example FR). Scarred Lands is on the other hand a 'new' settings that had to gain a following, it did that through products that had a primarily other function (Creature Collection 1 & 2, Relics and Rituals, location books). I'm pretty sure that The Divine and the Defeated did worse than CC1&2 or R&R1&2, The Scarred Lands Campaign Setting even worse (if someone has the facts to the contrary, please do tell). Through 'cheap' 'crunch' books SSS got the ear of a far larger audience and as a result got trough to a lot more people with their SLCS than if they had not 'softened' up their audience.

TBotR on the other hand neither has a brand name nor a following, it has to sell on it's own merrits, but it also has a far smaller audience/core group because it doesn't have a brand name or a following. It already has a pretty small audience/core group, thus not that many people who'll buy it and because of a comparitively high price it will probably land in less people's hands than if it was priced more competitively.

Let me paint you another picture, the laptop market. I bought a laptop at $2500, a perfect machine very great value (compared to other brands it has way more bang for the buck, so to speak), but it certainly isn't a cheap laptop. Most consumers wouldn't consider buying one at that price, simply because they find the price to high, even though it's a magnificent machine compared to cheaper solutions. Cheaper solutions still sell, either because they are cheap or because they have brand names (such as dell, compaq, ibm, sony, etc.)

I still have only browsed through TBotR, but from what i see it's high quality (i intend to read it from cover to cover, but am still catching up on my Battletech novel reading), but does that really matter? Would you buy the same book at $100, i wouldn't, maybe some would. The point is that although you might increase the price of a product less people are going to buy it. I'm not saying that i know the formula of how price (and hundreds of other factors) compare to how much units are sold, i also do not think that anyone else knows on these forums (although some seem to suggest they know). All i know is that higher price than the markt leader will result in less people buying than when the price was equal to that of the market leader and more people will buy it if the product is priced below that of the market leader. I also know the higher the price, the higher the profit margin per book. The gamble is how do you balance that? GR chooses for a higher price compared to NG, as a result NG will have a deeper market penetration then GR (NG also has the added benefit that it uses WW channels for sales). I don't know which way is better, but what i do know is that the chances of a retailer selling 3 NG products is higher than selling 3 GR products. I'm not saying that's the most important thing in the world for me, but it is for a lot of other retailers...

I know exactly what niche TBotR fills, exactly what you described, a setting book that's hot plugable into any campaign setting that not already has it's own pantheon of gods (mostly homebrew settings). That's exactly what i realized in the piece you quoted me on, i realized that TBotR might not have been the most perfect example here. But that doesn't mean it's any less valid, there are other niches out there that are not filled by dozens of products, but that isn't the all clear sign to make such products more expensive than the 'norm'.

I certainly won't force feed my customers products. Knowing what a customer wants is a complicated process, very few come forward with "I want a God book that's goes very deep into it's individual gods and churches, customs, etc. It also needs to be BIG, is not for an established campaign setting, don't care wheter it's pretty, and don't care about the price.", these things have to be pulled from the customer. Generally i give my honest opnion and how said product would fit into their 'search parameters', it's cons and pros, etc. In the case of TBotR it's con is it's price, and depending on the people i talk to that's either important or it's not. Let me press this again, TBotR is NOT the same as Deities and Demigods, Faiths and Pantheons, or The Divine and the Defeated, maybe comparable to Gods (AEG), but i don't know for sure. This was pretty clear the first time i browsed through the book. The problem is that there are just less people looking for TBotR than for something like Deities and Demigods or Faiths and Pantheons. Also, the $40 line seems somehow magical, not many people are willing to touch it, it already was a problem with WotC books such as FRCS, WoT, and CoC, and these products where in full color. The problem i see is not that you don't have a good product (from what i see it's an excellent one), but that you have an 'expensive' product that only appealys to a rather small audience/core group.

Btw, i still have two TBotR in 'stock' so, them not seeing it is highly unlickely!

Now, please tell me if i'm wrong or that you have another opinion on the matter, but this is how i currently perceive things. This is not fact just an observation. And i think this discussion is highly enlightening ;-)

For i forget, i think that sales are extremely local, some locations on this planet sell high volumes of a certain product for reason X, but another location sells not a thing for a whole battery of other reasons.

Also, predicting the RPG market and in particular the D20 market is like trying to look through a huricane. One moment it apears the storm is over,only you realize your in the eye of the storm instead of outside it. To many factors influence the market at the moment (economy, war, computer progress, many publishers, etc.).

In fact, all evidence is to the contrary, with it selling better than projected.

I'm the cumpulsive curious type. How many sales where projected, and how many where actually sold? Is there a second printing comming?