Struggling in the industry - one more try

[Del]

Well unless there is a brisk underground pdf trade involving Wetwar I can declare it unnoticed by the market. Good review, underpriced, professional web support - but no one cares. Videogames have taken too much of a piece of the boardgame pie for the market to be friendly to a relative newbie. Doesn't help that I'm banned here and there and everywhere. Sorry for having an opinion.

I got one more shot, the RPG in the same near future setting. I'm gonna finish it up in one week, and it I hope will compete.

Dark Soviet I think is my sword through the iron pike line.

Any other stories from the indie game bosses of the world? Cry on my shoulder.

 

[Jhamin]

I'm sorry things aren't going well for you. I wish you luck in the future.

Unfortunatly, in this big ol D20 market we all shop from it is less of a question of "Where can I get a PDF?" and more a question of "Who are you and why should I buy this PDF instead of one of the dozens of others from established, proven authors?"

So, sorry to be blunt, but who are you and why should I buy this PDF instead of one of the dozens of others from established, proven authors?"

 

[Del]

I'm just a run o the mill writer, with a few real life experiences behind me to support my writing's level of interesting content.

And actually things aren't going bad for me at all, as the game company is just one part of a much bigger operation.

But man, your reply does sum up the difficulty of the market for non d20 fantasy writers! No matter, I will do well in the future despite difficulties. Got some good karma comin to me after a hellish year.

 

[Del]

Here is the link to the first press release I made during op. It took a while to get back to it: http://www.gamingreport.com/article.php?sid=13271

Admin can repost this if it breaks the forum rules. I dont mean this as PR.

 

[Wayside]

The setting sounds like it's worth a read to me. Typos in the press release set off a bit of a warning flag though.

 

[Del]

Ah indeed. Chalk it up to Canadian english and my state of exhaustion when I originally wrote that, last summer.

 

[stevelabny]

Um, dude.

The first response you get asks the simple question any customer would. "Why would I buy you product as opposed to another one?" Your answer was "Your reply sums up the difficulty of the market."

Absolutely not. Thats the REALITY of any business. Nobody is just gonna give you money for a product because YOU think its well made.

The Dark Soviet ad is very poorly written and when a poster comments on it you want to chalk it up to "canadian english" (what?) and your "state of exhaustion"? That doesn't fly. If you want to try to make money, you have to be professional.

I also went and googled the Wetwar product.
First, I only found it being sold on a European site. Sounds like a problem.Most PDF-buyers use RPGNow.
Second, its a PDF board-game, which is going to attract less interest as most board-game buyers want a pretty board and pieces, not paper. RPGs were the perfect thing to use a PDF distribution system as they are just words and pictures, but a board game? no.
Third, the writing in the Wetwar blurb was even worse. There is no way anyone would buy a product from someone with so little a command of the language. One would assume that the rules will be impossible to understand.

You seem to want to lay the blame at the foot of the consumers, or the industry, or even videogames (what?) instead of where it belongs. With you.

 

[Conaill]

A blunt response by stevelabny, but one well worth paying attention to!

I found the language somewhat lacking as well. Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression! If you spent months slaving away on a product, it would behoove you to take a few extra days to make sure all your publicity materials are the absolute best they can be! And that includes running them by several people for editing or even just plain spellchecking.

Steve's other two points are well taken as well. I too noticed you were only offering WetWar for sale on some unknown site. So I went looking for it on RPGNow, and didn't find it there - why the heck not? The fact that it's a board game may indeed be a problem for a PDF book. The only way PDF would be an advantage here is if you have oodles of different tiles to play on. Give them 20 or more A4/Letter sized tiles, and suddenly PDF start to make a lot of sense.

One final comment is regarding the price of your product: 2 Euro for 26 pages of rules??! Rock-bottom prices like this often play against you. People assume that if it's cheap it must be low-quality. You probably wouldn't lose any customers by pricing it at 5 Euro - and you'd obviously be making 2.5 times as much money on it. Price it at 10 Euro and you might start losing some cheapskates - but you may actually be gaining some other customers because they'll get the impression it's a higher quality product! Pricing can be weird like that...

Lastly - if you really want to impress people with teh quality of your work, consider having a freebie for download. Maybe just a page of rules and a page of the boardgame artwork. Whet their appetite without giving the whole thing away. If what you have in there is really that good, don't be afraid to show it off!

 

[Wycen]

That post at Gaming Report got a response from Tavis Allison and Steve Creech, two people who I'd say any interest in your product is a good thing.

 

[Wayside]

Also Del, in response to your concern about pdf piracy, you should know that it really isn't even an issue unless you're moving product in Monte Cook numbers. Most of the pdf piracy market is oriented around print products from the bigger companies, not the smaller pdf stuff. Very little of the material at RPGNow, in fact, is floating around on p2p networks.