The Joys of Publicizing Your Game

[Cynthia Celeste Miller]

Alrighty, it looks like Cartoon Action Hour is almost out of the final playtest phase.....and it's time for me to begin publicizing it.  Now, since last time I posted about CAH, we've decided to go hard-copy as well as PDF.

That said, I have a couple questions;

1) How much does it generally cost to buy decent advertising in print magazines (Dragon, InQuest, etc.)?  I looked on their websites & found nothing about pricing.

2) Aside from banner exchanges (which we're going to do), what methods do you recommend for getting your name out there?


Thanks for your time.  =0)

[Ron Edwards]

Sput!

I advise extreme caution regarding both of the methods you mention.

Promoting an RPG is a very difficult task and to be successful it requires a lot of lateral thinking. The first issue depends on your venue of sales.

If you're "going to book" in the classic store-sales mode, then promoting to that distribution network becomes the priority. Print ads serve one, single, only purpose - to advertise to distributors and retailers that you are solvent. By all accounts they do not have any impact on the buying public. Even worse, if you don't have name-recognition with said distributors and retailers already, those ads will be ignored!

Store/book sales offer a conundrum: to be ordered, people want assurance that you are a strong seller, and you won't be sold anywhere unless you're ordered first. Gah! Even worse, they are often internet-phobic and perceive good internet-sales history as a threat, rather than as an indicator of future success.

If you're going to be selling PDFs or selling the book on-line, then you need to consider promoting to the role-playing on-line community in some distinctive way. Unfortunately, banner-link ads are of dubious utility, and all input I've received from RPG-publishing-type people indicates that they do very badly. If you go with one, I suggest somewhere like RPG.net where people are already interested in the material.

Much more effective is a strong presence on internet forums (hello! waves) and getting the game's name on the various indexes, especially those which contain or even favor underground/small-press games. Unfortunately, one of the best things for Sorcerer was multiple links across dozens of sites, but times seemed to have changed a bit - and surfing from link page to link page isn't as common as it used to be. So now, it would be more important to get yourself reachable by Google via many keywords.

I strongly suggest contacting Liz Fulda of the http://www.sphinxgroup.com">Sphinx Group and getting a solid hour of advice from her. Not only will that be the best hour you spend in this side of the biz, but you can see whether she or someone she recommends can be hired as an agent, even on a temporary basis.

I've got more to say about all this (hoo, lots more) but that's a start, anyway.

Best,
Ron

[Paul Czege]

Hey Cynthia,

How much does it generally cost to buy decent advertising in print magazines (Dragon, InQuest, etc.)?

Ad rates get pretty complicated. You get discounts on the base rate if you run the same ad in more than one magazine by the same publisher, and/or in successive issues of the same publication. Here's what I could dig up for you for the two magazines you mentioned:

The SRDS Consumer Magazine Advertising Source directory lists the following ad rates for Dragon:

A full-page, four-color, one time ad in Dragon is $2835. A half-page is $1785. Black and white is 25% less than the four-color rate. SRDS also lists rates for 2-color ads, two-page spreads, one-third and two-thirds of a page ads, and for ads on the cover, etc. I could get you that stuff if you want. The information is current to 2001.

There was no listing in SRDS for InQuest.

The Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media lists the following ad rate for InQuest:

A full-page, black & white, one time ad in InQuest is $1800.

I looked on their websites & found nothing about pricing.

I think most magazines will send you a "media kit" that lists ad rates and circulation and stuff if you call them.

Paul