Pathfinder 1E Should LPJ Design increase their writers pay rate to 4 cents a word on a Pathfinder p

[lmpjr007]

Well I will put it out there bluntly, LPJ Design pays 1 cent a word or you split a percentage of sales. Both of these are very profitable as a company but at the same time I release it does limit me with the writers that I can approach. The reason I think I get a lot of people who do like working for me is I offer a A LOT of freedom when it comes to the work itself and general I think people just LIKE working for me. I hire lots of first time writers, who after working for me start their own companies or become well known freelancers. LPJ Design is a great place to start in the RPG industry as a writer.

With this rate increase, I am looking to expand the amount of writers I use and start looking at those bigger names. It is a better long term strategy for LPJ Design.

 

[Wicht]

I would suggest offering 2 cents a word for your new writers, with the promise of 3 or 4 cents a word if they pan out over the course of several products.

 

[nedjer]

You'll be glad to hear I'm not going to launch off again. Simply intrigued to know if the same applies to artwork, i.e. exclusive rights usually go to the RPG publisher and it's pretty much an hourly rate?

I guess there's a kind of gap there already between someone working on a videogame on a salary and 'expensive' art which may be sold and resold on various levels. This would make more obvious sense, (for me), given the likely limits to the demand for owlbear and scantily-clad Drow priestess art.

 

[gamerprinter]

You have to be a little mentally deficient to want to be a publisher. Trust me on this one. LOL!!!

When I participate in Cartographers' Guild mapping challenges, the goal is to create a map for a theme in a given amount of time. Most participants struggle to just have a map ready. There is no bonus votes for extra material, yet because I am so fast at mapping quality work, I always have plenty of time, so I've created mini-adventures, hand-outs, map objects and other material for map challenges, just because my creativity forces me to do it.

This tendency of mine suggests to me, that I want to do more than make maps. I want to do it all (or most of it), hire on what I do less well (writing) and come up with my own products. Its the creationist in me to want to do that, not as some means to gain wealth - that is not expected at all.

I'm an artist, of course I'm mentally deficient!

Regarding my publications, one more thought I forgot to mention. Not only am the cartographer for Kaidan, I am also the art director (more or less), an illustrator, the concept creator, most of the fluff development, some of the crunch design, and am the layout artist - which are all tasks either done by the publisher or paid for by the publisher. By wearing all those hats, I can save that much more money in the development of my projects, and have a better budget for art and writing than other publishers. Once I gain enough experience producing entire pubilcations, I will dip into the insane world of publication myself.

GP

 

[nedjer]

So there's me shouting it for the writers and then I go and take a look at freelancer to see how this works and what do I find?

From 5 to a, much more respectable, 10c/word for a Dante article for EN Publishing. And I look at the bids for this pretty reasonable rate for the task and what do I see? One bid with a three sentence 'resume' and 4 bids that are presumably meant to be a laugh in terms of the freelancer setting out what they can actually do with this huge topic. It's a portfolio world, and 4 of those bids are asking for 3c/ word.

Morrus 1 - Nedjer 0

 

[RSKennan]

Tell that to the writers then. "You want to get paid for this? What about your art?"

Though I've been paid for my writing, I've never written for pay.

 

[Cergorach]

Let me be blunt, I've never considered LPJ Design products exactly high quality/value material. But I did like some of the artwork, especially NeoExodus and what I've seen from Pirates of the Bronze skies. But I've always thought that it was the business plan of LPJ Design to create a lot of relatively cheap stuff with relatively little regard to quality. 'Quality' is of course in the eye of the beholder, but i doubt that LPJ Design produced a string of hits, they might have some dedicated fans.

Upping pay out of the blue has absolutely no benefit, you do it to retain talent or to attract talent, your not in business to provide for freelancers. But the genie is already out of the bottle, so good luck putting it back again ;-) You might want to experiment with clearly marked 'premium' products, written by some big names and see how sales do and hold up over time. Good old products still sell on dtrpg/rpgnow.

Also keep in mind that it's quite difficult to get out of the dollar store product category without some serious marketing.

On the other hand, the first War of the Burning Sky adventure for 3.5E wasn't exactly 'high production' value either. The 4E version already looks a lot better and I have very little to complain about by the 4E version of adventure #10 (might benefit from some better art and some of the maps don't look all that great). It clearly developed into something you might want to read, I'm used to Paizo adventures, maybe I'm spoiled... ;-)

My apologies if this came across as overly critical of your works.

 

[nedjer]

LPJ - is the print store link image on your front page meant to be unlinked?

 

[lmpjr007]

LPJ - is the print store link image on your front page meant to be unlinked?

Yes, we are STILL having issue about WHICH store (Lulu or RPGNow) we are supporting to sell POD books. Sounds silly but he issue of selling PDFs with POD books is really what is at the center of the POD service we would like to use.

 

[nedjer]

Yes, we are STILL having issue about WHICH store (Lulu or RPGNow) we are supporting to sell POD books. Sounds silly but he issue of selling PDFs with POD books is really what is at the center of the POD service we would like to use.

Like trying to sell the two together but that isn't supported?