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What's a Freelance RPG Writer Worth?
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<blockquote data-quote="CardinalXimenes" data-source="post: 7659519" data-attributes="member: 58259"><p>Do some zero-overhead products, collect the profit on them, and roll it over into your next project. I do not recommend Kickstarters to anybody unless they have a complete grip on their project workflow and a couple prior projects published already. I do not recommend royalty-sharing to anybody, either, because that doesn't necessarily guarantee that the freelancers are going to get paid an amount which is minimally adequate to them. I think a publisher really does need to have cash in hand before they hire freelancers, and they get that cash in hand with low-overhead startup projects.</p><p></p><p>Don't worry about not having a big back catalog yet. In conventional publishing, your book has maybe a month on the shelf before it gets tossed. With modern POD, your back catalog is immortal, and will always get about the same amount of retail exposure regardless of how long it's been out. So long as you don't stop producing, every new product you make slowly stacks up- and since you're making all of it, you can be sure that it all fits together gracefully. If you want to make significant money at this, you're going to have to commit to at least two or three years of steady, unflagging output before you have a catalog worth mentioning, but once you have it, the effects add up with each new release.</p><p></p><p>The sad truth is that you won't have any profits worth sharing for at least a year of ferocious effort. Unless and until you can show potential freelancers how each of your new products of type X averages $5K sales over the first 12 months, they've got no reason to take a flyer on collaborating for royalty shares. After you work cheap, roll the money into the business, and develop a brand that customers recognize and want, then it's something to consider- but even then, I am very much more in favor of plain old-fashioned fee for service.</p><p></p><p>As for Wrath of the Frost Queen, it looks like a very creditable first effort, but where's your POD version? You need a paper option up there- there's a non-trivial number of buyers who don't want PDF, and you can get better margins on paper products. If I were you, I'd drop the PDF to $8.99 to get it comfortably below the $10 mental break point many buyers have and then do a $14.99 POD with bundled free PDF. A lot of buyers get twitchy about spending more than $9.99 on non-full-game PDFs, and $9 is something of a sweet spot for pricing in terms of volume and per-item profit.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CardinalXimenes, post: 7659519, member: 58259"] Do some zero-overhead products, collect the profit on them, and roll it over into your next project. I do not recommend Kickstarters to anybody unless they have a complete grip on their project workflow and a couple prior projects published already. I do not recommend royalty-sharing to anybody, either, because that doesn't necessarily guarantee that the freelancers are going to get paid an amount which is minimally adequate to them. I think a publisher really does need to have cash in hand before they hire freelancers, and they get that cash in hand with low-overhead startup projects. Don't worry about not having a big back catalog yet. In conventional publishing, your book has maybe a month on the shelf before it gets tossed. With modern POD, your back catalog is immortal, and will always get about the same amount of retail exposure regardless of how long it's been out. So long as you don't stop producing, every new product you make slowly stacks up- and since you're making all of it, you can be sure that it all fits together gracefully. If you want to make significant money at this, you're going to have to commit to at least two or three years of steady, unflagging output before you have a catalog worth mentioning, but once you have it, the effects add up with each new release. The sad truth is that you won't have any profits worth sharing for at least a year of ferocious effort. Unless and until you can show potential freelancers how each of your new products of type X averages $5K sales over the first 12 months, they've got no reason to take a flyer on collaborating for royalty shares. After you work cheap, roll the money into the business, and develop a brand that customers recognize and want, then it's something to consider- but even then, I am very much more in favor of plain old-fashioned fee for service. As for Wrath of the Frost Queen, it looks like a very creditable first effort, but where's your POD version? You need a paper option up there- there's a non-trivial number of buyers who don't want PDF, and you can get better margins on paper products. If I were you, I'd drop the PDF to $8.99 to get it comfortably below the $10 mental break point many buyers have and then do a $14.99 POD with bundled free PDF. A lot of buyers get twitchy about spending more than $9.99 on non-full-game PDFs, and $9 is something of a sweet spot for pricing in terms of volume and per-item profit. [/QUOTE]
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