Well, I might as well ask for some advice.

[Great Mastiff Games]

Shhh....! He's to shy to talk about it in public .

Lol!!! I like that ... it made me smile, which is pretty valuable too!


Well, it doesn't really matter ... I just look on the thing as a mine for short stories and novels. Once I get some published, I'll pimp those somewhere ... maybe here, who knows? In fact, I sent a story out to scifi.com today ... more to follow.

 

[CSB046]

That's why I have a very clear idea of where I'm going with this idea...

Just wanted to say that you sold at least one more book through this thread. My copy of Acrohelion just shipped from Amazon. Looking forward to checking it out.

Best of luck in your future endeavors.

 

[Frostmarrow]

So, the industry is at an all time low? Who cares? You'll make it. You seem to have the motivation.

 

[Treebore]

Word of mouth is your best advertising. The trick is to get that word of mouth started. Even getting word around on ENworld and rpg.net is NOT going to get your stuff selling like hot cakes. The internet by no means reaches a large portion of the gaming population. I am still shocked by the number of gamers i run into who don't know what ENWorld or rpg.net is, or that WOTC even has a website. I would guess it is somewhere around 70% who didn't know and didn't care.

Your best bet as a publisher is to maybe print a few thousand 8 to 10 page booklets that tell about your setting and give some examples of what makes it unique, then see if you can get them distributed to game stores across the country asking them to give them out to customers, for free. I have no idea how much all of this would cost in comparison to what you did, I don't even have the slightest idea how much it would actually cost to do, at least a couple of thousand I am sure.

But these would generate word of mouth and sales. Question is would those sales pay for the flyers and publishing the book and the artists and yourself? Big risk and will require months of waiting to find out.

You may be better off working with a company helping create books for their games. Get name recognition in the gaming community. Start sending in proposals to various companies and see what they say. Show them your work, offer to let them look at a copy of your work.

Good luck.

 

[Great Mastiff Games]

Well, let's see. It would cost about $1000 to have 2000 booklets printed up. Then let's say that I shipped 5 each to 400 different stores. That would mean about $1.50 media mail per bundle, or $600 per shipment. But how many of those would be simply thrown out? Let's say that 20% were actually handed out, to be VERY optimistic. That would make 400 booklets handed out. Out of those, probably about 3% to 4% would generate sales, or in other words up to 16 books sold. Each of those 16 books would be ordered through the store, so I'd be getting $14.99 each for them; out of this would come $6.25 for printing, $1.50 for having the book shipped to me, $1 for the envelope, $3.85 at least shipping the book to the store. So I'd be getting around $2.39 each. That would mean that I sold $38.24 worth of books at an expense of $1,600. Net profit: $ -1,561.76. It's a nice thought, and I appreciate your trying to find a solution for me ... but nothing is going to turn the book into even a very small success, I'm afraid.

 

[Treebore]

Why are you aware of what booklets would do for you but you had no idea how ineffective advertising in Dragon is?

 

[Buzzardo]

For my part...

I am currently co-authoring a 350k+ word adventure path for Troll Lord Games. My partner and I have been writing and storyboarding it for over 3 years.... litterally in our spare time, as we have not quit our day-jobs ;^). It will hopefully be out early next year.

I am pretty optimistic that the Trolls, established publishers in the top tier of d20 publishers, will promote it properly and sell it as well as it can be sold.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, I expect to be paid about 80 cents an hour for all the time I put in.

In otherwords... We write for the love of the game. I am guessing there are a very elite few that make a great living as game designers. And most of those make most of their $ from novels which spring from the game design (Hickman, Greenwood, et. al..)

Just my nickle's worth.

 

[Great Mastiff Games]

Why are you aware of what booklets would do for you but you had no idea how ineffective advertising in Dragon is?

\

Well, for three reasons.

1. I've already had the experience with Dragon. Prior to that, I had not had experience with this market.

2. I had the same projections -- I imagined that out of 60,000 pairs of eyes passing over my ads, I might get 3% to 4% to fork out a few pennies. That's 1,800 to 2,400 sales. 1% would be 600 sales. That's quite a few more than 16 copies. However, logic doesn't work. I didn't think that, at a minimum, 180,000 viewings of my ads would result in 0 sales. Heck, I didn't think that 180,000 viewings of my ads would result in ZERO HITS on my website. Nobody was even curious. Quite the opposite of myself, since I go to every website listed in the magazine ... who would have thought I was the only one out of 60,000 gamers who was curious? I thought that I'd get several thousand hits, even if I only got a couple hundred sales.

3. I had to try SOMETHING.

Well, I love the game too, but unfortunately I can't afford to put time and money into something that doesn't pay even a pittance to the designer. I mean, I wasted 9 months on the book, 15 hours a day, 6 days a week, living on borrowed money. I could have been doing something more constructive during that time.

 

[afstanton]

Sounds like it's pretty clear what you've decided to do - you're going to give up on it. Sorry to hear it. I screwed up pretty badly, myself, a few years ago. Made a very similar mistake and still owe a chunk o' change on it.

Do yourself a big favor and don't be bitter about it. You tried, it didn't pan out, and you learned a hell of a lot about what to do and what not to do. Twelve grand is not a bad price to pay for that kind of an education. As far as time wasted...who's to say something else wouldn't have happened to put you that far in the hole? You don't know. Nobody does.

If you're going to give up on that project, dust yourself off and move on. When the market moves back up and you have a stable income, try again if you think you can stomach it. The next time around, start with the end goal of getting it into their hands. Use everything you've learned. If you can't stomach the possibility of this happening again, put it behind you, grin, and say "I'd hate myself if I hadn't at least tried." It's what *I* do.

 

[Great Mastiff Games]

Well, you guessed correctly that I am pretty bitter about it, even though I was trying not to let it leak out.

I did learn several very important things though .... first among which is DO NOT ADVERTISE. People don't buy from ads, and about 80% of that 12,000 smackers went to precisely that in one way or another. Advertisements are the surest way to ruin the business. If I hadn't advertised -- or more precisely, if I'd had the wit to read the signs when the banner and online ads failed to produce any sales -- then I'd still have about 8,000 bucks to play around with and could, for example, have 500 copies printed up and sent to game stores, for them to sell off, free. That way, the game stores could get a few dollars without having to pay for the book, and the word would be spread at a grass roots level, so to speak.

It should be noted that my parents have a small business which has been successful for 11 years now. They haven't spent a dime, literally, on advertising. And yet people whom they've never heard of call up and ask to buy stuff from them -- both stores and final consumers, as you might say.

If the market ever recovers -- and I have some spare money, another important consideration -- then I might give it a try again. But next time .... NO ads.