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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gamerprinter" data-source="post: 4982334" data-attributes="member: 50895">Yeah, but no...Point taken, but not quite.The RPG market is dominated by and has always been and will always be a "vanity press" market.Looks at WotC's success, and say they've sold a million books, (don't know it that's true or not, at least for 4e), but their millions in sales compared to say the fiction novel market - WotC is vanity press compared to the general fiction market. But comparing RPGs to the fiction market is "apples and oranges."When I say the most successful, I'm talking a handful of companies.Being "successful" versus the "successful enough" to get a publication in print, still means a huge risk and doesn't guarantee success in its own right. Look at Paizo, although Pathfinder has exceeded their expectations. Before Gencon, Paizo was asking buyers to go to their FLGS's to order the book, because, at the time, they weren't sure the distribution companies were going to pickup their product into their inventories. You wouldn't call Paizo a vanity press type publisher, would you?While the larger publishers (the most successful ones) have the largest market share, they don't own the industry, there is plenty of room for smaller publishers to become a great success and never enter the print publication industry.Being small and only selling a few thousand copies of a given product is and has always been the RPG industry.If all I sold was a "few thousand copies" of my product, I consider myself a huge success. Besides, no publisher just comes out with one product, ongoing publications mean ongoing sales into perpetude (at least until the industry is dead.) Having a couple dozen products all making some level of sales means success.You can't compare RPG sales to Bantam or Tor Books, again "apples and oranges".Regarding B/W products, look at Mongoose Publishing, they are a pretty big concern, lots of products, yet beside full color hard and softback covers, all their interior work is B/W only. I've been commissioned for maps for Mongoose, I know, they only want B/W illustrations.The market though aging, and getting tougher, but that has as much to do with the current economy, and the growth of online games vs. P&P. What constituted a successful RPG company in the 80's and 90's is past, and will most likely never return. Comparitively the newspaper industry compared to twenty, fifty or a hundred years ago is not the same market and will never be again. Times are different, industries change - you really can't compare the industry now to ten or 20 years ago, the world is a different place.Honestly, I hope to always remain in the small RPG publisher arena. If I can continuously create various products and sell enough to keep moving forward, I would be a huge success, yet never compare to WotC, and never really want to be that big.To look at the RPG market as only those companies that can get books to FLGS shelves is wearing big blinders. The FLGS is not the end all be all marketplace for RPGs, and they will go away as dinosaurs long before the RPG industry is gone. PDF market (or other online format) is the future for RPGs.I don't see myself as proving the OP's point, nor yours obviously. I'm realistic the PDF market is becoming and will be the RPG industry. Print is a luxury and risk, that is tough for even the "big companies".Let's just agree to disagree, I guess.Edit: since I was writing this at the same time as Erik Mona was posting his response -- I agree with everything he just said.GPPS: the RPG Rennaissance is going on right now, and has only just begun.</blockquote>

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