GenCon 2004

[Lxndr]

Donations are always a good thing.  Any money you can get from people who are willing to give, is less money to bleed ANYONE dry.  But they shouldn't be counted on.  Forge T-Shirts are a pretty nifty idea - any sort of income that can be added to the booth is positive, and T-Shirts are a good way to do that.  Short-term, booth-related, collectible... people are going to pick up the "I was at the Forge Booth 2004" shirt, I think.

I also think the percentage idea seems fair at first glance.  The more you sell, the more you make, the more the booth did good for you.  Keep it small, of course, maybe 1% or 2% of gross on top of whatever the initial buy-in is?

That wooden shelf thing was excellent - without it, it would have been harder for me to decide what I wanted.  And it looked like there was barely enough room for games on it this year - next year, yes, maybe two of those shelves, or some other setup.

On the other hand, all the cafe tables were welcoming, AND gave a lot of room wherein demos could be run.  Three thousand dollars split even ten ways, plus badges and a hotel room, is a whole lot of hurt and pain.  And then if you go bigger...

You guys had an "Endcap" this year, which matches both Ron's price quote and my own memory (2400).  The next largest booth is 4750.  Assuming random "this rounds to the nearest whole number" inflation, that's probably $5K next year, plus another $1K for furniture.  That's a lot to be split up several different ways, even without badges and the like.  But a bigger booth is a good thing!

Thinking really big: there's a lot of small creator-owned companies, much more than even post on the Forge.  If we could somehow encourage more of them to join in for a forge demo/booth/sale/convention thing... heck, for each place that DOESN'T get their own standard ten-by-ten booth so they can sell at "The Forge Booth," they could save money AND the size could possibly be bumped up.

But now I'm pipe-dreaming.  It's unlikely that we'll see the "Forge 15 booth island EXTRAVAGANZA" next year.  And I'm not sure if we'd want to, either.  So let's go back to a more reasonable size increase, and just double the size.  $6K (or whatever) plus badges plus hotels.

Obviously, hotel rooms should be split by whoever stays in them, without prejudice.  It's honestly the only fair way to do such things.  And each person should, at the very least, pay for their own badge, so that can be discounted.  Any book-shipping also seems to be the providence of individual publishers... (Ron, how much would you estimate shipping the books you had was?  I'd be interested to see, if only to plan)

So the only part whose financial load needs to be considered is the $6K itself.  T-Shirts plus Donations plus, maybe 2% of gross (okay, I sold ten fifteen-dollar books, that means I owe an additional $30 towards the booth).  Or would it be "more fair" to, do some bizarre number crunching, and say something like:

"Okay, we've got to pay $6000 for booth and furniture.  Money from t-shirts and donations made up about eleven hundred, leaving $4900 to split among the various parties.  Let's add up all the money we made here for games over the past four days, and then split the remaining cost proportionally.  Looks like, in total, all the publishers in here made five thousand in game sales, combined.  Individual X made $300 selling twenty copies of his $15 product.  $300 divided by $5000 is 0.06.  6% of 4900 is $294, so that's how much Individual X owes.  Now for individual Y, big seller, you made almost two thousand..."

Okay, I'm stopping myself before I ramble any farther.  I need to finish waking up.

On a different note, how many different indie companies were represented at this year's con, in the Forge booth itself?  Here's the ones I can remember (names are "those related to the company" rather than "those I necessarily know were there myself"):

* Memento Mori (Jared)
* Adept Press (Ron)
* Driftwood Publishing (Jake)
* Ramshead (Mike, Ralph)
* Burning Wheel (Luke) - btw, is there a "DBA" here, is the "company" also Burning Wheel, or is it just Luke?
* Chimera Creative (Matt)
* Errant Knight (Matt)
* Misguided Games (not sure who that is on here - they're the Children fo the Sun people)
* Lumpley Games (lumpley)
* R. Talsorian (not sure if they even are on here)

For the sake of completeness, I also saw at least one D20 product.  Plus there's probably others I'm forgetting.

[Jeffrey Miller]

What I'm sayin', guys, is that two years of altruism is enough. The Forge booth is a great thing, and I plan to organize it again for next year. But I'm going to have to put the sly Adept tactics-hat on and figure out a better way to do it, financially.

We've got a year to figure it out - there has to be a way to do it without the burden falling squarely on your shoulders.  I wonder if GenCon as a company would work with us on pricing at all?  Probably not, of course, but it's one of those "can't hurt to ask" things.. right?

What if we could get a corner instead of an endcap?  Part of the expense of the booth was the endcap, iirc, and with a corner booth and then one (or two.. or three.. !) booths along a row, we would still have the "open edge" effect.

Furniture was a big expense... yowza, they do charge you through the nose.  It would've been cheaper for us to rent a car in Chicago, hit Ikea for some cheap tables and stools, and then either the slightly shady practice of returning 'em used, or find a furniture store in Indy to recoup some of the loss.

A percentage system is certainly interesting.  How do the people who were selling feel about that?

Charge more than cost for the badges for those of us not selling products?  I gladly would've ponied up an extra $30-40 for not having to stand in that 4 hour line ^_^ (Ron, that's an actual offer for right now, too)

Oh, and the main reason I didn't post all sorts of post-GenCon stuff this week is that I got pretty sick upon arriving home, and real-life has been demanding too.

Me too, and I'm still not up to snuff (other than snuffling)

-sneezy j-

[ethan_greer]

Thanks Ron and others for all the info.  So there will be a Forge booth at GenCon '04.  Cool.  I will be there selling unless something real-lifey gets in the way of that (and it would have to be pretty significant, BTW).  As for the logistics and financial business of figuring out how to make it happen, I'll leave that to others since I have the business/financial planning acumen of a small cube of cheese.

Carry on.  :)

[Troy_Costisick]

Greetings!

Too bad we couldn't have altered the Twilight Press booth and The Forge booth to create a super booth this year.  I think it would have helped everyone involved.  But, that's water under the bridge.  For GenCon 2004 you can count on Twilight Press being a sponser, and we always pay for things like this up front.  We did about 500 dollars in sales which means we lost a fair ammount too.  If I'm going to lose money, I'd prefer it be with my fellow indie game designers.

It was great to meet folks from the Forge and I look forward to being a part of it next year.  If there is anyway I can contribute to making it a success, let me know.

Peace,

-Troy

[Michael S. Miller]

Here's the ones I can remember (names are "those related to the company" rather than "those I necessarily know were there myself"):

[Lxndr then lists a number of companies/products, but does not[/] list FVLMINATA.] Geez, you run a game for a guy, refrain from throwing him to the lions, and this is the thanks you get??  8^)

Anyway, although I cannot speak for Thyrsus Games, both my wife and I intend to have indie games ready by next year and would be willing to pay an increased "buy-in" fee.

[Lxndr]

Okay, you SHOULD have thrown me to the lions...

I knew my poor, frazzled brain was forgetting someone.  I just didn't know what it was forgetting, which made the knowledge OF forgetfulness pretty danged useless, if you know what I mean.

(Btw, if by some sheer luck I manage to follow through on my "I wanna be an indie game designer" life-thread well enough that I have something for next year, I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable share for a GenCon Indy booth and sponsoring a GenCon Socal Forge booth...)

[Luke]

Hi there,

Here's the costs, approximately, for the booth this year:

$2400 for the booth itself
$850+ for the furniture.
$700+ for the extra badges
$1600 for the two hotel rooms
plus a bunch more for shipping books to and from the con

Thanks for the hard numbers in an open forum, Ron.
Now we can do a little tinkering! What follows is all estimation. Feel free to correct me where I diverge from reality.

So, overall booth costs were $3300 this year (booth and furniture rounded up)

There were 11 games being sold at the booth (by my count), subtracting the sponsors' games, that makes 9 games @ $100 entry fee each.

That offsets the booth costs back down to $2400 (thus we only paid for Ron and Jake's furniture).

That makes Ron and Jake each shouldering $1200 in booth cost expenses alone.

According to Ralph's spreadsheet Ron made $1820 in sales.
Jake made $1610.

Looks like they came out ahead, right?

Well, we all know that the actually profit from sales is actually half the retail cost-- due to printing, distribution and other headaches and costs. So half those numbers to be fair:
$910 for Ron
and $805 for Jake.

Against the $1200 booth expense, that means they are booth shelling out an additional $3-400 that they did not recoup in sales.

Even if we say their "hidden costs" for the books are a third of the retail, then they are still just barely breaking even.

Let's look at my numbers.
I made $495 in sales at the booth. Half that for my "profit" and I made $250. Minus the badge and booth fees ($155) and I walked away with about $100 in profit. It's not a lot of money, but it's enough to make me happy. And it's a profit!

My point?
I think if the GenCon prices stay relatively the same, and we estimate 12 designers selling games at the booth in 2004, we could safely increase the buy-in by half to $150 and better offset the costs while allowing the little guy to actually do well for himself.

Figure 12 designers, two of whom are sponsors. So that's 10 buy-ins: $1500.
Booth costs are, say $3500. The buy-ins cut that cost by a third to $2000. That leaves $1000 in booth cost for each sponsor. If sales stay the same as this year, that allows a solid break even. If sales increase, then it's just more gravy. But still, it's not a lot of money.

If the buy-in is $175, that eats up half the booth cost, leaving $1750 to be split between sponsors-- $875 each. Not so bad considering the sales that the big guns pulled down.

If it's $200, then that eats two-thirds of the booth cost. Leaving $750 to be covered by each sponsor. Again, quite reasonable considering their profits this year. However, at this stage, the buy-in fee starts getting prohibitive for the smaller, poorer games that we love and support.

The Forge booth isn't going to make anyone a mint anytime soon, but it can allow us band together and accomplish what we couldn't individually.

Perhaps Ron could have sold a hundred copies if he was on his own, but I think Sorcerer and Ron earn substantial prestige by leading the wave at the Forge. Of course, prestige doesn't pay bills, but it can have long term benefits.

My point being, if Ron wishes to continue this wonderful trend, we should look at all shouldering enough of the cost so we all "break even solid" and no one is left footing the body of the bill. This means, in my opinion, that better selling games are going to have to ante up more than their obscure, poorer brethren.  But, on the other hand, as you can see from the numbers, the small fry have to contribute more to the whole in order for the booth to function.

rambling,
-Luke
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[Ron Edwards]

Hi Luke,

Your analysis is solid, especially since those secondary costs that cut the profits down are real - it's hard to list them without a careful itemization, but they include things like shipping from the warehouse, spotting another publisher some bucks in a pinch, and so on.

And just for historical & disclosure purposes, my share of the primary booth cost was disproportionately high, i.e., considerably more than half, and I paid for the furniture. Therefore my overall GenCon experience cost me somewhere between $500 and $1000 despite pretty decent sales. Given my book sales in general, I absorbed this cost without trouble (he says, having made a rush trip to the bank to slam a wad from Business Checking into Business Visa), but my company benefit from GenCon must be counted in the "intangibles" file.

I'm still a little dubious about the appropriate entry fee for the secondary publishers at the booth. (And I wouldn't mind a better word than "secondary" or "smaller" to describe them, but whatever.) It strikes me, based just on last year and this year, that people tend to do better sales at their game's debut. Whether this is due to novelty to the consumer or to a certain tendency to relax and help others rather than to plug one's own game, I don't know. Kayfabe, Charnel Gods, Universalis, and Dust Devils flew out of the booth last year; this year, it was My Life with Master, The Burning Wheel, and kill puppies.

So I'm thinking maybe the $150 should apply to the new folks and keep the $100 entry fee for everyone else. I'm not sure. The thinking cap is still humming. Remember: the primary goal is the success of the small-press guy. The costs of attending cannot be permitted to be reliably higher than the benefit ... and that means, by the way, that in figuring booth profit, we have to look at the average sales of the secondary publishers, not the high end alone.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

I would suggest throwing into the mix of possibilities to mull, a post con adjustment.  A system whereby after the con the the best sellers among the "secondary" games are asked to ante up a little more.  Basically a simplified way of dividing costs proportionally to sales.

Of course, if one wanted to get really radical, you just keep one big cash box, pay all the expenses from that and then divide the remainder among the participants proportionally on sales at the end.  Possibly extreme, but would simplify things, and make sure that if the booth makes money, everyone at the booth makes money.