There's A New Online Gaming Store In Town

Billing itself as the home of open gaming, particularly D&D 5th Edition OGL products, a new online store has just opened up. It has been planned by a consortium of top OGL-supporting companies, including Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Green Ronin, Rite Publishing, Super Genius Games, Expeditious Retreat Games, Hero Games, and more. Already it stocks 5E products from these companies, both in electronic and print form. The store is called Tabletop Library. They have announced themselves with a press release which you can see below.

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The new store's main competition is, of course, the monolithic OBS (DriveThruRPG, RPGNow, and now DMs Guild, etc.) and, to a lesser extent, Paizo.com, Warehouse 23 (over at Steve Jackson Games) and smaller outfits like d20pfsrd.com's web store. There have been other stores in the past - YourGamesNow closed a couple of years ago (a casino now appears to have the domain) and the EN World GameStore was bought by OBS about 10 years ago. It's a tough market. In terms of sales, I'd estimate that 95% of my own (EN Publishing's) direct PDF sales are at DTRPG, and about 5% at Paizo (not counting Patreon, Kickstarter, and so on, which are an entirely different story). I have tried products on YGN and d20pfsrd's store, but never sold a single item on either of them, which speaks to how tough a nut to crack that segment of the industry is.

The fees at the new store are pretty low. For PDFs, it only takes 25% of a seller's revenues, which is 5%-10% lower than the competition (and 25% lower than DMsG which takes 50%).

PRESS RELEASE

Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Green Ronin, Rite Publishing, Super Genius Games, Expeditious Retreat Games, Hero Games, Rogue Comet, Metallic Dice Games, Pacesetter Games and Simulations, Eldritch Enterprises; Far Future Enterprises and TableTopLibrary.com

March 10, 2016

Kobold Press, Frog God Games, Troll Lord Games, Green Ronin, Hero Games, Rogue Comet; Pacesetter Games and Simulations, Eldritch Enterprises; Far Future Enterprises and TableTopLibrary.com are jointly announcing that, effective immediately, our companies will all be offering our Fifth Edition products through a new RPG download store called TableTopLibrary, as a one-stop shop for OGL Fifth Edition products. TableTopLibrary, website https://tabletoplibrary.com/ is a newly-formed online store for RPG books and pdfs designed to offer both electronic versions and hard copy versions of books produced by your favorite publishers. TabletopLibrary will also offer a full slate of products and resources for other role-playing games, including Pathfinder and OSR-games. All of us will continue our own websites and stores, but TableTopLibrary offers a place to draw all these products together in one place for convenience.

At this time, by coming together as a consortium, we can offer the high-quality products we pride ourselves on; provide a one-stop shopping spot with outstanding customer service; and allow a better experience for publishers, and more importantly, for customers . Centralized electronic book fulfillment, kickstarter fulfillment, and single-location warehousing will improve our delivery speed, accuracy, and customer service in the RPG download market.

Our reasons for setting up a consortium at this time include (1) each partner retains ownership and editorial control over the individual campaign worlds and other “intellectual property” that our fans have known and loved for years; (2) our desire to offer physically higher-quality printing, paper quality, and binding than print on demand outlets offer; and (3) the desire to continue drawing upon and increasing the vast resources of Open Game Content as opposed to other alternatives.

TableTopLibrary is committed to offering a deep and broad-based marketplace of Fifth Edition products, superior to any other online store, as well as many other game system products. We are joined in a partnership of many large publishers in this project, and expect many more to join us as time goes on. TableTopLibrary will be issuing its own press release soon, describing the advantages and the procedures involved in joining.

You can continue buying products directly from each of us, as always. But if you want to browse the whole library of Fifth Edition and other products produced under the Open Game License over the years, we’re letting you know that there’s a new online game store in town.

Check out TableTopLibrary at TableTopLibrary.com - The Leading Source for RPGs and watch us grow! We think you’ll be impressed.

 

[GMSkarka]

Well, as a publisher at d20pfsrd.com, I'm a bit surprised that this was rolled out without letting us know about it in advance, given that d20pfsrd.com is run by 1/3 of the partners of this new site (John Reyst). I double-checked my spam folder to make sure -- and I didn't receive any heads-up that this was underway. What that says as to potential communication with publisher partners for this new venture, I leave to the reader.

Not sure who "Bill and Matt" are -- the other two partners listed in John's post upthread. There's generally not a lot of information on the new site upon which to base a decision as to whether to sign up or not. The "About Us" link takes you to a page with a pitch for joining, but no actual information "About Us." Again, not a great sign, if you're looking to compete with the market leader.

Lastly, the comments about "quality of traditional POD" makes me wonder if anybody has actually looked at the POD offerings from DriveThru in the past 2 years or so. The premium color options, and the heavier-weight paper for black-and-white are literally not discernible from short-run offset printing.

So... I'm going to wait and see on this one.

 

[jreyst]

[MENTION=763]GMSkarka[/MENTION]: We had to keep everything quiet for various reasons. Bill is Bill Webb, of Frog God Games/Necromancer Games., and Matt is Matt Finch, also of Frog God Games/Necromancer Games.

I'll let Matt/Bill respond regarding the paper options but if you've seen any of the higher end Frog God Games products, products with 1000+ pages, leather-bound covers, metal covers, I doubt you're going to be able to do that POD

 

[Mythmere1]

Lastly, the comments about "quality of traditional POD" makes me wonder if anybody has actually looked at the POD offerings from DriveThru in the past 2 years or so.

Definitely we have. I'm not a paper person, but in terms of binding, Frog God binds our books with a very expensive smythe-sewn binding, pretty much what libraries use. We print through a company that does yearbooks for schools so the books are as durable as they can be. That's not an option through POD. Other publishers had concerns about paper, but like I said, the arcane details of paper choices aren't my area. I can't speak to details on that.

"Bill" is Bill Webb of Frog God Games and Necromancer Games
"Matt" is me. I'm also one of the principals of Frog God Games.

 

[ad_hoc]

To be fair, it took OBS 16 years to build up the features it currently has. Any new venture is going to be playing catch-up. I'm hopeful that lots of useful features will be coming along.

With luck, they'll also think of some kind of new unique feature. I can't think what that might be, though.

And for me, the #1 feature that I look for far above all others is quality of content.

The actual material is what is most important.

Giving a better cut to content producers will likely translate to better content.

I don't have the time or interest to purchase stuff in the bargain bin.

 

[mellored]

Giving a better cut to content producers will likely translate to better content.

I don't see how. More money applies equally to high and low quality stuff.
Same with exclusivity, which is still money.


What is really needed is a good review system. If you can beat OBS's mediocre system in that, then you can actually win on pdfs. Or force them to up their own game. Either way would be good for consumers.
If you can't, then your just going to dilute the pdf space, which would be bad for consumers.

Though, they can still benefit from a higher quality print-on-demand service.


Hmm... here's a question. Do you do apps?

As in, buy a board game and get the companion app.

 

[JeffB]

Matt/Bill.

Might want to make note in product descriptions of the FGG individual adventures if they are also included in the Quests of Doom books.

 

[Mythmere1]

Matt/Bill.

Might want to make note in product descriptions of the FGG individual adventures if they are also included in the Quests of Doom books.

Thanks! On my way to do that.
EDIT: Done.

 

[Mythmere1]

Incidentally, new products have been going up all day as new publishers join and existing publishers continue to add products.

 

[MNblockhead]

I checked out the Tabletop Library site and liked how easy it is to find 5e material. I was looking for something to introduce my young kids to DnD and see a "Family Friendly" tag. Only one item, but that's expected—the store is new. Also, the description looked interesting and I had never heard of Playground Adventures. But there is no preview. So I went to DrivethruRPG and searched for it, got to see a preview, see that the product sells at a lower price, and see links to other Playground Adventures content, including some bundles that have the product I'm considering.

Previews are so important for on-line book (whether PDF or print) selling. I may have bought the adventure for more money on impulse, but instead was driven to you competitor.

I'm sure this site will improve and I'm looking forward to it, because finding good 5e content in DTRG just seems like more of chore than having a more-focused site like TL. Also, more competition should be a good thing. Best of luck! Looking forward to shopping your site once previews are available.

 

[Mythmere1]

Adding previews is the highest priority right now -- the way it's set up, the "preview" shows the entire pdf ... not ideal. That function should be up and running soon.