West End Games for Sale

[mcrow]

I'm a d6 fan, I own a lot of the SW stuff and Torg books. However, it's no wonder they went under when you dump around $45k in to printing books (that's about 5000 copies of each of the core books) in an RPG market that rarely allows a publisher not named WotC, SJG, or WW to sell more than 500 copies in a year. So, he managed to sell about 2500 of each in four years, but that leaves about $22k worth of dead stock in your wherehouse. Possible lost cash flow of about $70k.

Epic fail on the print runs.

 

[Morrus]

an RPG market that rarely allows a publisher not named WotC, SJG, or WW to sell more than 500 copies in a year.

Now, that's not true. Plenty of mid-tier companies sell ten times that; and a few sell considerably more.

 

[mcrow]

Now, that's not true. Plenty of mid-tier companies sell ten times that; and a few sell considerably more.

There are a handful of publishers besides the ones I listed that can sell that many books, but the point is they probably don't order 5000 book print runs. The probably order half or less of that at a time in most cases and reprint as needed.

WEG has never been the type of company that had any reason to think they'd sell 5000 books, at least not since the SW days.

My guess is that:

Green Ronin
Necromancer
Goodman
Troll Lord
Shadownrun
Chaosium

are a few more that can sell well over 500 copies of their books. Considering how many publishers there are it is (by percentile) still pretty rare to sell more than 500 copies in a year.

 

[Center-of-All]

Just off the top of my head, add Paizo, Palladium Games, and Fantasy Flight Games to that list. Probably Hero Games, too. (FFG are the ones in control of WHFRP and WH40KRP, right?)

 

[mcrow]

Just off the top of my head, add Paizo, Palladium Games, and Fantasy Flight Games to that list. Probably Hero Games, too. (FFG are the ones in control of WHFRP and WH40KRP, right?)

Yup those three as well + MWP. Yes, FFG has control of the 40k & WHFRP.

The point is there are probably over 200 rpg publishers and we have around 10 that can say that they consistantly sell more than 500 print copies in a single year.