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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jim Butler" data-source="post: 1174901" data-attributes="member: 1461">The problem is even worse then that. In some cases, publishers barely break even on a product release (and a new publisher loses money). Doing 2 (or 5) products that barely break even isn't much help, especially considering the amount of work involved in producing an RPG. And with product life cycles hovering around 30-45 days, by the time you finish one work it's time for you to release another book just to break even. Or lets say you release 5 books in a month and one of them tanks... ouch!I disagree. Anyone with a credit card, a manuscript, and some basic typesetting skills can enter the game. The barrier to entry is *extremely* low in publishing. Granted, some self-published work is utter crap, but that doesn't prevent anyone from paying for a print run and selling it into the channel. While the distributors might require you to work through a fulfillment house in order to accept your book (just so they have leverage with those houses for returns), no one wants to turn away free money. Fulfillment houses and distributors don't pay for the costs of design, print run, illustration, editing, typography, and other expenses--they just take the money offered to them. And if they get to turn around and send back what they don't sell (and they should), then the new publisher is the only one left holding the bag. It costs them virtually nothing to sell a product.I believe that the only way that equilibrium will be reached is through changes at the distribution and retailer levels. Retailers must say "no" to new upstart companies that haven't shown them something truly remarkable, and distributors need to say the same thing. Until someone raises the bar, I believe that we'll see the same rush of new companies releasing wave after wave of products that keep the market rocking. And what about the damage that's already been done? A number of retailers have lamented to me about the mistakes they made earlier in the d20 boom. Those mistakes are still sitting on their shelves (and probably will be for a while). I suspect that many distributors are also suffering from some excess stock situations from companies that are no longer around. "The beatings will continue until the industry improves. Painful, but probably true.</blockquote>

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