Street Dates and Release Dates

[d20books]

RANT,

I've noticed that I get a ton of pre-orders for products that have street dates. My customers can plan their finances and can plan their campaigns around books getting into their hands at a particular time.

I understand that there are always complications with publishing. Deadlines slip, problems at the printer, etc.

Once they arrive from the printer, however, as a merchant, I really need to know that the books are coming and what the street date is so I can do pre-orders and get the customers lined up. Even a week or two is excellent lead time and allows me to give a semi-solid date to the customer when they should have the books.

No matter how good a book is, if it just shows up unexpectedly, the sales for it are going to suck. People need to rearrange the finances, wait a bit longer to buy, and generally decide that if they've been without it for this long, maybe they don't need it.

The other problem I have is publishers with mailing list newsletters that don't use them. All of this information could be tossed out to the customers/fans and merchants so that much of this pre-release preparation can be done.

 

[d20books]

No publisher responses?

I'm surprised I haven't gotten a single response to this rant.

I figured publishers would want to figure out how to sell their books better.

I constantly watch the following publishers and wish they did better.

Atlas Games. While it is annoying that they put out their Pre-Orders on Warehouse 23, it is even more annoying that the rest of us shops are left in the dark about when we'll get product, especially when it is a week or two after Warehouse 23 has shipped their books. They supposedly have a mailing list too that I've signed up for and NEVER received anything on.

Fantasy Flight Games. I understand the slipping of release dates due to publishing issues... but when they go out the door to distributors, you have to specifically weed through their rants to get any information. I would like them to take better advantage of their mailing list to cover their D20 products and not just their GoT game.

Necromancer Games. Stuff is always a surprise when they release. No way I can do a pre-order with their products.

Goodman Games. Same.

Honestly, the only company that does any decent release/street dates is WotC. While you may think that my good pre-order sales is because they are WotC DnD, I get MANY MORE inquiries about all the other D20 products because customers want them and want to know when they'll be out.

I can only tell them, "sometime in September".

 

[JohnNephew]

Atlas Games. While it is annoying that they put out their Pre-Orders on Warehouse 23, it is even more annoying that the rest of us shops are left in the dark about when we'll get product, especially when it is a week or two after Warehouse 23 has shipped their books. They supposedly have a mailing list too that I've signed up for and NEVER received anything on.

We now have W23 start accepting pre-orders when a book goes to the printer. When we'll actually get the book back is hard for us to tell in advance -- it may be as little as 3 weeks for a softcover, or as long as 7-9 weeks for a hardcover. Orders filled by Warehouse 23 get sent by their warehouse staff, which means we have to send those books to them first (and they're a fairly long shipping time from us, way down in Texas). Then there's the shipping time from W23 to consumers on top of that. The result is that no one in the US should be able to get an order from W23 faster than from their local store, provided that store had a pre-order placed with their distributor and that distributor had their order placed with us in time.

If you're curious, here is what is at the printer right now:

AG3223 Crime and Punishment (Penumbra/D20)
AG0267 Sanctuary of Ice (Ars Magica)
AG3702 Ancestral Vault (Nyambe/D20)
AG1240 Dungeoneer 2nd Edition (card game)

The first I expect to see is AG3223 -- possibly on September 23rd, according to the printer's rough estimate. However, they have warned us that their production schedule is overloaded, and projects are running late. So let's call it September 23 +/- one or two weeks. (So all I can tell you is "sometime in late September or early October.")

The most up-to-date information typically appears in our blog: http://atlasgames.blogspot.com/ One of us generally posts a note there when we send a book to press; I try to post updates when I get them from the printers, with estimated arrival dates, and we also post when we ship a new title to distributors (which should mean it will be available to retail stores around the USA in 2-7 days, depending on variables beyond our control, including whether or not we got the distributor's purchase order in a timely manner).

About the retailer mailing list: Unfortunately, it's offline for us right now. My retailer database in my address book got lost in the transition to a new machine a month or two ago (something I had to do because the old one was having some hardware failures that were getting worse...it was only booting up successfully about 1 tries out of 3). I have all the individual addresses, but I lost the folders that sorted them. So I'm going to have to manually cull the address book, see if I can remember who is a retailer, and then see if they still want to be getting "spam" from me. This is going to be a non-trivial effort, so it has just taken the back seat behind various other crises around here. The fact that it hasn't been done, however, is entirely my fault.

Something to remember about a company like WotC (which, as you point out, is the ONLY company that solidly predicts their release dates) is that they print well in advance of the street date. Those 3.5 books were probably all printed a month or more before they were supposed to go on sale. They have the cash flow and investment capital to be able to afford to do that -- most smaller companies do not. Our printing bill (and usually the art and writing bills) comes due 30 days after the books ship to us from the printer. Thus, whenever we receive our new releases, we need to try and ship them out and invoice them to our customers ASAP, so we'll get the payments back in from our customers that will allow us to pay our own bills on time.

Small companies that don't have credit terms with their printers are even in tougher shape, since they may have to pay 50% when they submit a job and the balance before the printer will ship it to them, or even 100% when the job is submitted. (Imagine in your own business as a retailer if you were shipped new releases, told to pay the bill COD, but then told that you could not sell any of the books for 3-6 weeks!)

 

[d20books]

We now have W23 start accepting pre-orders when a book goes to the printer. When we'll actually get the book back is hard for us to tell in advance -- it may be as little as 3 weeks for a softcover, or as long as 7-9 weeks for a hardcover. Orders filled by Warehouse 23 get sent by their warehouse staff, which means we have to send those books to them first (and they're a fairly long shipping time from us, way down in Texas). Then there's the shipping time from W23 to consumers on top of that. The result is that no one in the US should be able to get an order from W23 faster than from their local store, provided that store had a pre-order placed with their distributor and that distributor had their order placed with us in time.

If you're curious, here is what is at the printer right now:

AG3223 Crime and Punishment (Penumbra/D20)
AG0267 Sanctuary of Ice (Ars Magica)
AG3702 Ancestral Vault (Nyambe/D20)
AG1240 Dungeoneer 2nd Edition (card game)

I'm in the same town as Alliance-Games Southwest, Steve Jackson Games, and Warehouse 23

I'm anxiously waiting for Crime and Punishment and would really appreciate an email when it ships out to distributors so I have two or three days leadtime to gather up the excitement for the new product so I can sell a bunch of it

It helps me to sell your books.

 

[Mystic Eye]

I'm in the same town as Alliance-Games Southwest, Steve Jackson Games, and Warehouse 23

I'm anxiously waiting for Crime and Punishment and would really appreciate an email when it ships out to distributors so I have two or three days leadtime to gather up the excitement for the new product so I can sell a bunch of it

It helps me to sell your books.

Hey Jeff, I had no idea you were in Austin! Mystic Eye Games is based out of Austin and we have a warehouse in town with a couple of other key publishers. Actually it is in Pflugerville.

We should chat some time.

As to your question, We always try to make an announcement of street dates. It is a little tough to always predict the printer and shippers but we get as close as we can. We are planning a retail specific news letter feature at our site if we ever get the sight wrapped up. It is a constant work in progress.