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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dana_Jorgensen" data-source="post: 1297916" data-attributes="member: 12962">Indeed, the release rates have become disturbingly high on RPGnow in recent months. When I released the first volume of Big Bang last April, it remained on the front page for 17 days. And now, between changes to the front page and the increasing release rate, we're lucky things get a thumbnail for 3-5 days before they become part of that ugly blue table offscreen down the page. Another part of the problem is the "chunk of a book" design trend that seems to plague the new products. There's a lot of stuff on the list that more appropriately belongs as part of a much larger product, rather than being just the latest of a long line of bits and pieces (Legion's Critical Hits, Ronin Arts' Forbidden Arcana and VShane.com's fonts are a few things up right now that stick out in this category. Sorry guys, most of that stuff is quite good, but it belongs in a product of much larger scope). Most disturbingly, this "chunk o' book" concept is one that seems to be on the verge of being pushed by publishers in other genres as well, which could result in it becoming even more commonplace on RPGnow.There's only one way that will improve and it's an improvement that won't help everyone. Only thing I can think of is displaying the "new items" only for the category or two the visitor shops in the most. For everything aside from D20 fantasy, that would result in drastically increased "front page" time for everyone. The only other option would be for RPGNow to divide up into multiple stores; a shop for RPG pdfs, another for wargame and paper modelling pdfs, and maybe a third for D20 stuff. This would definitely make things easier on the consumer.Another problem with sales of late has been the numerous problems RPGnow has had in recent months with outside interference. With the latest attack early in December, the attack literally destroyed sales for me, dropping $100/day sales to nothing for more than 2 weeks after the problems were fixed. Only in the last 10 days of the month did sales recover. Hopefully, there will be some extra vigilance suring the next big holiday season.However, As others have said, if you have a niche, PDF sales aren't nearly as front-end driven as print products. These days, sales are definitely becoming more review based. Good reviews definitely help sell. Controversial reviews help to sell even more. Bad reviews, well, I don't think they help, but they aren't likely going to hurt unless they're all bad reviews.To that end, one thing I'd like to start sometime by this spring is a PDF review site that draws in reviews. People submit reviews, good or bad, and publishers donate products. At the end of every month, the reviews are at least algorythmically scored for value (eliminates the "Thiz B00k pwns wit itz c00lzniss!" factor from the site) and reviewers are randomly selected to receive randomly distributed freebies. This lets people say what they want about a product and still gives them even odds to receive some sort of freebie item for their effort. I've tested the idea sporadically and it does seem to work. After all, everyone is looking to get legit stuff for free, so we may as well take advantage of the fact that nothing is truly free. And since many of us in the industry freely trade our books to begin with, I think it would be an interesting idea to set up a private technical peer review area on such a site as well.ermmm... forgive any odd grammar I missed in editing.  English is no longer my first language once 2 AM rolls around...</blockquote>

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