Publishing Modules

[Brudewollen]

Sir Edgar, Orcus,

My understanding of "printing on demand" is that it allows you to keep little to no stock - the printer actually prints and ships your books for you directly to the distributor or stores. You may pay a bit of a premium overall for shipping because you are maybe getting it sent out in dribs and drabs whenever new orders come in, but in return you don't have a big risk up front.

This means you may lose some money on the back end because you are spending more on shipping, but it also means that you will spend less up front, thus less of a risk which is important for a small company because there is only a small initial print run (for promotional purposes), possibly no storage fees (unless you have room in your apartment ), etc.

Maybe THG Hal can enlighten us on printing on demand if he's ever explored this route or used this model?

 

[MEG Hal]

I don't understand this business, so please bear with me. Are you saying that you place the order (for say 3,000 copies) with the printer and then hope and wait it matches up with demand from retailers? So, do you pay for storage for copies yet to be sold or do you just rely on fixed sales to the distributors? Sorry, if I am not knowledgeable about all of this, but it is all very interesting.

Also, what do the four people who have interest in your company do? If it was 100% owned by one person, do you think that person could make a living going at it full-time or do you always need that extra help?

About this part:

THG Hal--
"As far as new releases only at your store, we agree backlist sales are slowing down which is why we are producing the 'right' amount to make this company financially sound, that is why a vanity press mentality may get people in trouble."

I didn't understand it. Do you mean a vanity press company would just order 10,000 copies just for the sake fo flooding the market? Or do you mean a one-shot wonder won't make it in this business?

Ok---what do 4 of us do? Different things and get compensated for it differently as well. Doug and I are the 2 majors and we have two partners who are more specialized but are helping in keeping us around.
Doug Herring-President: He does this full-time BTW, and he has other projects as well, smart guy .
Hal Greenberg-VP, and art director-I have a full time job.
Andrew Thompson- Lead designer and major writer for the Gothos, The Hunt: Rise of Evil line, has full time job.
Jim Govreau-Lead for the Bluffside line, has full time job.

As for could one of do it and be full time, Doug probably works 60+ hours a week, and I do about 40 hours so my answer would be no, but we do a lot more then what you would think.

Doug laid out 3 books for us in the past 45 days, I had 5+ books I needed to get art done for as well as an article for Gaming Frontiers, and one for ENWorld Mag plus other misc. stuff.


So while we love it it is a job for us and tough.

As far as printing books, we make more then we need but we do see what trends are like and adjust print runs for best all around success of a book. Our print run numbers are edging up on a lot of our lines due to retailers and customers becoming loyal and new customers buying our books and coming back for more(thanks BTW).

Will clarify the statements you asked about, as more d20 products come out we see a large front list (new) surge but our back list (old) slow down a lot, so we adjust print runs to meet current trends. It seems that a lot of retailers do not feel the urge to reorder older books due to so many newer books coming out, it is a shame because some books we have The Hunt campaign setting and Bluffside: City on the Edge have been ENNie nominated and are real good books, they do keep selling but we would love to see more back sales (who would not).

As for vanity press I meant you make a 10,000 print run and are new so you sell 2000, you have a lot of money tied to the other 8k and can not make another book, vanity press out of funds.

There are a lot of costs as Clark noted, art, writers, layout advertising, storage etc...and that is before you pay to print the books. This is a wonderful business just not one that will be the next dot.com money making scheme, but a smart company can keep growing and be a success in the RPG industry, and as I see it MEG will be one of them.


As a side note, as Clark, I am also new to this industry and make no comments stating otherwise. I have learned about this business but am far from being "a name" like some of the great people Clark mentioned. Everyday I am learning about new things and attempting to make the best product and keep people coming back for more MEG stuff.

Ok, once again enough from me, I will be quiet.

 

[MEG Hal]

Sir Edgar, Orcus,

My understanding of "printing on demand" is that it allows you to keep little to no stock - the printer actually prints and ships your books for you directly to the distributor or stores. You may pay a bit of a premium overall for shipping because you are maybe getting it sent out in dribs and drabs whenever new orders come in, but in return you don't have a big risk up front.

This means you may lose some money on the back end because you are spending more on shipping, but it also means that you will spend less up front, thus less of a risk which is important for a small company because there is only a small initial print run (for promotional purposes), possibly no storage fees (unless you have room in your apartment ), etc.

Maybe THG Hal can enlighten us on printing on demand if he's ever explored this route or used this model?

It is expensive and the amount you receive for a book after going through all of the distributor channels would make a POD book seem too costly to be successful (IMHO). If you can not afford a print run and you do pdfs I know RPGNow is offering that service to companies and therefore to customers. Also I have heard that the quality of the book is diminished unlike a professional printer doing a "true" print run. I think Gold Rush Games offers this service as well. Good luck and if you find anything about it post it, I am not knowledgeable about this area, sorry.

 

[Sir Edgar]

It's nice to know that two great companies like Necromancer Games and Mystic Eye Games can share insight into the business with fans. Dungeon Magazine is hard to beat and I really like many of the adventures in there. I think I have over 40 copies of the magazine myself. It's a great value for the money, but I think there is still room for the 48-page+ adventures in the market. People need big adventures, too!

So, what do you do with the 3,000+ copies after the printer has them ready? Do you put them in storage or do you have a deal to send X number of copies to the distributor by the time they're ready? Why don't the distributors just tell you how many copies they want? Do they just get piece-meal orders from retailers and then let you know how many they'll need? If they don't give you an order in advance, wouldn't you have to store all of these copies somewhere and send 500 at a time or something like that to them? This must be complicated when you have several distributors? How many do you have on average? What about the copies that don't get sold? EBay, anyone?

Print on Demand (POD) is a great idea for small-time publishers, but for companies like NG and MEG it is too expensive an option, I think. I can see how it would work for a company just starting out in the business and waiting to get a distribution deal, however. I've heard that Gold Rush Games is offering to serve as a fulfillment house or something like that, by possibly doing this, but you'd have to ask them. From what I understand, they go a step beyond Wizard's Attic or Tundra Sales Organization by actually printing out the copies, but again I don't know for sure. A lot of people seem to have signed up with WA and TSO and I haven't heard any complaints.

By the way, do you still get orders on Bluffside? Although I haven't bought it yet, it looks like a very nice book! Repeat orders seem to be key, because by then you've already paid the writers, editors, artists, etc and I imagine the printer will give you a sweet deal on the only thing you'll really have to pay for: printing.

 

[MEG Hal]

Our books go from the printer to our distributor (Osseum) to retail distributors (Alliance, Diamond, Game Board etc...) to stores to you, so they do a bit of travelling before you see the book.

As for reorders, yes Bluffside is a strong book, and we have support material out for it and more coming so we expect that to be around for awhile. It ranges on how well each month because we do not see retail orders only refill orders from distributors. But yes selling back list titles definately helps cash coming in so we can afford to put out free pdfs and extras or do color inside covers for Raw Recruits etc...

So buying RPG books helps get you better stuff, more free downloads and keeps the gaming "circle of life" alive.
So buy more stuff!

 

[der_kluge]

I don't think Hal should post any more insights until Sir Edgar agrees to go out and have all his friends purchase copies of Bluffside.

 

[Troll Lord]

Interesting Discussion

I agree with much of what Clark and Hal have said. I would add that one should make the distinction between the book trade and game trade. The game trade (your local retail stores) is generally easy to get into and deal with, whereas the book trade (waldenbooks, etc) is more difficult to deal with. Game trade returns are negligible, book trade returns can be harsh. Many companies avoid the book trade for this very reason.

Of course module sales are affected by these two trades. Many bookstores are happy to pick up the Codex of Erde, its hardback and faces on the shelf nicely. But saddle stitched modules are not so easily displayed.

Its interesting to note that the gaming industry has undergone a rather sharp change only in the past few years. The addition of the fulfillment houses (Impressions, Wizards Attic and Osseum) has given small companies a better chance to enter the businesses by marketing their material to the distributors (there's well over 20 of these). Conversely they take a fee for their services and this cuts into the small presses profits.

I do TLGs distribution on all levels and its a love hate relationship. I love the work Impressions does for us, but I hate paying them.

Of course, its the fulfillment houses that got TLG her start. WA picked up our first mods and sold them and shipped them quickly, without which we would have had to work a great deal harder.

As for module sales. Troll Lord Games still puts them out. Our overhead is real small so we don't have to sell thousands of books to break even and make money. Blood Royal, a 48 page book by Casey Christorferson, should be hitting the stands in the next week or two and I expect will make us a tidy profit (at least it better or Casey is going down!! LOL).

Steve
General Manager
Troll Lord Games
www.trolllord.com

 

[Hard8Staff]

My 2 cents:

Modules are a hard sell. They always were and always will be. When we started in 1994, a distributor (now defunct) told me that and it's still true today.

One of the main reasons for the d20 license was so WOTC wouldn't have to lose money making modules...all us other suckers could do that for them.

From what I hear from distributors, d20 modules (sans D&D logo) sell in the 500-1250 range (I'm extrapolating by percentage based on what the 3 biggest distributors tell me).

When it's all said and done, if you want to make money, you better have a better business plan than merely selling d20 adventures.

If you really have your heart set on adventures, I think you'll do better submitting them to magazines for the 1-5 cents per word or giving them over to established manufacturers for publication.

David Kenzer

 

[Troll Lord]

Score one for Kenzer

David has a good point. If not for the hardback books and Companion books we wouldn't be able to pay our own salaries. Books like the Codex and World Builder are what keep the small press companies alive and thriving.

Steve
General Manager
Troll Lord Games

 

[Orcus]

Maybe because we are known for modules and have had a steady stream of them, we continue to do OK with them in most cases. Most likely, it is becuase Crucible of Freay was a huge hit in the book trade that helped establish us and keep modules on the shelves. But Steve and Dave are right. You better have a better business plan than just doing adventures, particularly just doing short ones. You need some diversity and a way to set yourself apart from Dungeon Magazine.

You should listen to Dave. I didnt list him in my list above (oversight, sorry Dave ), but he is one of the guys who has been doing this for a bit and knows way more than I will ever know.

His advice on being a new guy and submitting to Dungeon and getting published at their word rate is great advice. Most likely that will be more money and less headache than actually publishing your adventure yourself. I'm not saying this to "scare off competition." I'm the first one to say "give it a shot." But you really should have your expectations in line. I would hate to see people risking college savings or family savings or amassing credit card bills on the mistaken belief that they can publish their adventure and make lots of money.

...Hmmm, maybe I should consider changing my name to Monte Cook

Clark