Why I think all publishers should releases teasers.

[philreed]

Teasers

Are teasers, with material right from the product, exactly what people want? I think it's better if demo material for a product is completely new information not found in the product in question.

It would certainly be a lot less work for me if all of my "teasers" were sample pages. I've only done this with 2 PDFs now and I just feel better about myself releasing new material as "teaser."

 

[Eosin the Red]

I could go for 2-3 pages of GOOD stuff but see Badaxe games Leyline PDF. It sold me. 5 pages.

All of the stuff that has gotten me (and my money) has been 5-6 pages so.......

 

[rpghost]

Re: Teasers

Are teasers, with material right from the product, exactly what people want? I think it's better if demo material for a product is completely new information not found in the product in question.

I think customers just want to see that you're presenting the product well (good layout, a bit of art) as well as a sample of writing skill/ability. This can almost always be done by just releasing a couple pages directly out of the book. That doesn't hurt the publisher much, yet is a good way to build buzz and confidence in the product.

A demo should exist for EVERY product. We support that at RPGNow.com with a simple DEMO button. I would hope everyone uses it.

Remember, people can't browse your book like they do on a book shelf. When's the last time you bought a book without at least filpping through it first? It definatly makes the customer more comfirtable shelling out their money - and isn't that what it's all about?

James

 

[trancejeremy]

I don't think it would reduce piracy - I don't think people pirate RPG books because they want a preview, they just want something for nothing (for whatever reason).

Still, previews are good, but I also like table of contents. Usually they tell you a lot about the book, although in some cases, they can be a bit misleading.

For instance, Chaosium released the table of contents for Dragon Lords of Melnibone, which listed an entry for "Mass Combat". However, in reality, that section in the book just said to go buy a miniatures wargame at a gaming store, it didn't have rules on mass combat.

About a month ago, OWC posted about a 50 page preview of their upcoming Mercenaries book. That convinced me to buy it, though I'm not sure exactly when it's coming out.

 

[HellHound]

I've whipped up a teaser for our product "Everyone Else" that should be up on RPGnow shortly.

I'm also getting both a teaser for Crimson Contracts together as well as a multi-page web-hancement for it.

 

[Strutinan]

I released a teaser of the Psionics Companion, everything through Chapter 1, and it was the best marketting decision I could have made! It was also the WORST management decision I could have made.

The teaser kept disappointed customers to a minimum, while giving "maybe" customers a chance to go "wow" and zip over to RPGNow.com to buy the full thing. In that light: VERY good decision.

Unfortunately the teaser aslo hogs up so much of my bandwidth at Geocities that my website goes down on a fierly regular basis now. It wasn't so noticible before, when I was just getting started. Now that I've done 10 times the traffic in the past month than I did in the previous TWO YEARS, the site is going down every other day. In that light: INCREDIBLY bad decision.

The lesson everybody take from this? Release teasers, it is a wonderful way to promote customer friendliness, just make sure that your site can handle the resulting upswing in traffic!

 

[HellHound]

No kidding.

I first released our award winning free product through my own website on March 31st (late at night). We have a 20 gig traffic limit per month. We had already hit 9 gigs of transfers by the afternoon of April 1st (by that time we had it up on RPGnow, and took it off our site).

 

[annadobritt]

For those of us who have to buy rpg products online, without being able to glance through the product, being able to download a teaser of the product is wonderful.

 

[rpghost]

I first released our award winning free product through my own website on March 31st (late at night). We have a 20 gig traffic limit per month. We had already hit 9 gigs of transfers by the afternoon of April 1st (by that time we had it up on RPGnow, and took it off our site).

Just another reason to use RPGNow Our 800 GIG limit!

If you are a vendor with RPGNow, we allow some of your free product to be distributed there.

James

 

[HellHound]

Yeppers.

You won't be hearing me badmouthing RPGnow. I've gotten nothing but STELLAR service from James and company to date.