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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dana_Jorgensen" data-source="post: 1174893" data-attributes="member: 12962">First, I'll point out my flagship product line, Big Bang: The Mostly Illustrated RPG Guide to Modern Weapons, so you'll have some clue what I'm talking about.For quite some time, I have been a big fan of the modern, technothriller, and near future/cyberpunk genres and over the years, I have collected a vast number of game books related to firearms. I was never happy with them and I finally decided about a year ago to start writing a gun book the way I want it to be.Like everyone else, I believe in the quality over quantity philosophy. However, I don't particularly consider whoring up a book with a pretty layout to necessarily be a sign of quality. I consider content to be the quality. After all, all of those pretty borders in your pretty books really don't have any effect on what you picture in your mind as you play your game.So I have gone for quality. The gun books in my RPG collection rely on a paragraph or two to provide you information. I put time in my research and end up generating a page of historical and technical information about every weapon. Quite a few ended up with pages detailing them. I also gather real world data and provide that as well. Things like weight, length, magazine capacities, accuracy ratings, muzzle velocity, manufacturer, nations using or making the weapon, etc. Does this equate to quality? The multitude of 4 & 5 star reviews and lack of lower rated reviews seems to indicate so, which I'm sure, is much to the chagrin of Chris Pramus, since a book he'd probably consider to have "dodgy design, terrible editing, mediocre art, and no graphic design to speak of" gets such rave reviews. Anyway, it sounds great for a D20 book, right? Perfect for any GM who has to deal with a gun nut rules lawyer, right? Well, it isn't a D20 book. It's a multi-system book, supporting several known game systems, including D20. So while D20 sales may be slumping, I also get to nibble on other pieces of the pie. And I am constantly looking for new ways to nibble on other parts of the pie as well. Of course, I'm not the first person to think of this, since there are a number of dual-system D20 books out there. However, I am the first to take the idea to the extent of supporting 4 game systems.Last important thing I've done is continued support. Go down the list of publishers who have done gun books and count all of the ones who did more than one gun book (not counting revised editions) and you can count them all on one hand, and you'll have three fingers left. Virtually every last one has done one book and put the subject behind them. SJG is one of the exceptions, having done two gun books (High Tech & Modern Firepower). My company is the other exception, with five products in the series, and I have no intention of stopping.This all adds up to a series of products that in a few short months has gained a nearly cultish following. I announce a new volume, and within a few hours, there's a large burst of sales. So there are my secrets: pick a niche people are unhappy about or have demanded more for, provide quality content, continued support, and there's more than one royalty-free game system out there for me to put to good use.</blockquote>

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