Bad news from RPGNow

[Michael Hopcroft]

It appears the entry level to the RPG market has closed for good.

http://www.rpgnow.com/NewRates.pdf

http://www.rpgnow.com/ProductsSTD.pdf

If these rules hadc been in effect when i got started I would never have been able to beginw tih RPGNow. As it is, how many of us are going to have our products booted from the system?

This could be the end of indie publishing as we know it.

[Jonathan Walton]

This could be the end of indie publishing as we know it.

You're overexaggerating a bit here, Mike.  Plenty of indie publishers here do just fine without having their products listed on RPGnow.  There's the Forge Bookshelf and company websites and plenty of other places to sell stuff.  Even if the situation at RPGnow is as dire as you say (which I doubt), there's plenty of other options out there.

[Jack Aidley]

You'll have to write some decent cover type, include a page count and do a decent thumbnail - all of which you should be doing anyway. And you'll have to pay a bit more, which means you'll have to charge more.

Not really seeing how this amounts to a collapse of indie publishing (although it will mean that Great Ork Gods will not be sold through RPGNow).

[Vaxalon]

I think it will mean the end of crap indie publishing on RPGnow.  I doubt it will be the end of crap indie publishing, or the end of indie publishing on RPGnow.

[Valamir]

Wow...Michael...dial down the melodrama buddy.

Thanks for the link...from the perspective of this indie publisher I 100% agree with every step James is taking on RPGNow.  Many of those could have been implemented to good effect a year ago.

I mean really.  Raising rates 5%.  on a $4.00 product that's what...20 cents.  So raise your price by a $1.00 an you'll come out ahead.

And the elimination of lower quality product...well, I always hate having to rely on someone elses opinion of lower quality, but I will say I've purchased alot of stuff from RPGNow that turned out to be utter drek.  Can't say how successful this review policy will turn out to be, but anything that raises the bar on PDF publishing is a good thing.

Personally, I'm hoping that the increased profit margins from RPGNow will be used to ramp up RPGMall's presence and exposure...which IMHO is where the best of the PDF products from RPGNow should be migrating to anyway.

[Jack Aidley]

I mean really.  Raising rates 5%.  on a $4.00 product that's what...20 cents.  So raise your price by a $1.00 an you'll come out ahead.

I think the $40 setup fee for new publishers is a more significant cost than the 5% increase.

[Valamir]

Thanks for reminding me.  I meant to mention that one and forgot.

I think the $40 set up fee is a fantastic idea.  I'm guessing it will do more to keep the drek down than any amount of review policy.

If a game publisher doesn't expect to generate enough revenue to cover a $40 fee than IMO they've got no business charging for the product in the first place and should just give it away...if you aren't planning on making well over $40 in revenue on it, charging is just wasting everyone's time.

I personally would like to see a per product fee of $20 or so as a tool to reduce the brain dump 57 PDFs worth of crap and clog up the New Releases page.

My conclusion is that no legitimate indie publisher who crafts quality product, and has built or will build a reputation for quality has anything to fear from these fees.  

Again.  Anything that raises the bar on PDF publishing is a good thing.

[daMoose_Neo]

Hmmm...interesting...
And here I am looking to produce a PDF title for notta, and with the artist working with me I could! Would have been nice, ah well~

$40 out of pocket isn't all that bad though~ Actually, what am I saying, its almost nothing! Yea, if you have a decent title, $40 might be one months sales, and it being PDF you don't have the investment of stock and, as long as you have a couple sales here or there, the system will keep it active~
Review is spiffy too! Quite nice I think, actually makes me a little more interested in doing business with them~ All in all, the 30% cut is *still* better than a regular distributor.

[Jack Aidley]

From my point of view: I'm going to be selling Great Ork Gods from my website when it's finished. I had intended to sell it on RPGNow as well, but now there is a setup fee I will no longer do so. Not because I doubt the sales will cover the fee, but because I don't know whether RPGNow will generate additional sales sufficent to offset the costs.

As to stopping drek; I doubt it will do much of that. Most drek seems to be 'churned out' by small publishers who will thereby distribute the setup cost over many .pdfs. It also seems to me that much of this drek is distributed by folks without much though to the business side, so I doubt the cost would put them off there either. (And, of course, the current drek-peddlers will not face paying the setup cost anyway).

Those I think it will put off are those with alternate sales channels, those with a single niche product to offer and those who have simply written up their homemade system. It'll probably also impact the number of very short pdfs sold at "less than a pint of beer" type prices.

I don't believe high barriers significantly reduce drek - I do believe they reduce innovation.

[John Uckele]

I have to agree with Valamir and Vaxxalon.

It seems like a good idea to require a decent cover, and decent product description. A $40 set-up fee isn't really something to balk at if your goal is to get your RPG out there (if you don't care about selling your RPG then why list it on RPGNow anyways?). 30% cut isn't too bad either, I could tolerate that.

I don't see the end to Indie publishing, I don't see the end to bad Indie publishing, I don't see the end of good Indie publishing. I see less casual "Wrote-this-game-up-yesterday" games on RPGNow though.

[Nathan]

This is an interesting change. I haven't had a product up on RPGNow for a while, though I am working on a few  to get up there at some point. However, I am also beginning to think of selling from my website too. I am going to have to find out how these new rules affect me.

Still, this may create the need for another DigitalRPG type website/organization. I know at one time, Brett (of PIGames) had the DigitalRPG group going -- I think it died out though. One of its goals was to provide a sort of "links" site where gamers could shop and find the myriad of independent/small press games that were out there. Has anyone else been doing this? Is this something people would be interested in?

The biggest benefit of RPGNow for me was just the extra traffic -- folks who were just browsing new releases, other rpgs, and so on then to find my product. I didn't usually get that from my own website.

A fairly decently supported links site might be able to generate some of that extra traffic -- but then again, it may not. Suggestions?

Thanks,
Nathan

[Andy Kitkowski]

I'm all for the changes at RPGNow.  If they are deemed too costly for the publisher, then another competitor may rear up and jump in. It's all good.

I'm not a publisher myself, but looking over the requirements (especially the tighter standards for product, and removing things that don't sell for 9+ months), the only thing that may affect me is the "Minimum order goes up to $6.45" thing. I'm not too clear on why this was chosen.  And again, it's only an order of fries higher in price than the 'ol $5.00 minimum order, but still a lot of the products that I've bought were $5.00, $5.50, $6.00 etc.  So if those prices stand (most likely they will go up a little, and that's cool), then my minimum order is effectively $11-12 to cover the $6.45.

This could be the end of indie publishing as we know it.

Dude, I almost sprayed my monitor with coffee from laughing. No offense, but no.

-Andy

[TheLe]

Personally, I see no problems with the $40.00 setup fee.

Howevever we RPGNow.com vendors/publishers have been in a debate about whether that setup fee should be applied to existing vendors. Most of us small vendors oppose it, but the bigger vendors WANT the fee to be applied to existing vendors.

They claim it will "weed out non-serious vendors", which I don't agree with. Although there is some truth in the statement, the fact is that it will hurt alot of serious small vendors.

Rpgnow.com has already stated that the setup fee will NOt apply to existing vendors, but those big publishers keep insisting that it should.

What a bunch of crap.

~Le, aka The Le Games

[greyorm]

You're overexaggerating a bit here, Mike.

You'll have to forgive Michael, he's a constant source of melodramatic doom and gloom around here. If the sky fell every time he predicted it would, we'd be minus a few atmospheres of pressure, so just ignore it.

In an attempt to provide an actual context for this thread, here's the question, given the information: what advice would you give a small publisher given this new (admitedly small) barrier to entry?

Here's my advice: If you really can't hack the $40 up-front fee, there's always the choice to sell direct from your own website until you've generated enough sales on your own to cover the cost.

If you don't plan on producing much in the way of products (and perhaps only one product) why worry about RPGNow at all?

"You don't need to", is one answer; "exposure" is another answer.

If you don't like the fee, what other options are there for small publishers to take ahold of right now? Rather than simply complaining, can you provide any?

I like the link list idea: a simple site of links to small/indie publisher sites is something anyone can set up. Who can set it up well, and what's the best way to set it up?

[greyorm]

Rpgnow.com has already stated that the setup fee will NOt apply to existing vendors, but those big publishers keep insisting that it should.

Just keep in mind that their stance isn't about "quality", it's about competition: in that they'd like to reduce it. That's called business (you'll have to forgive the greedy capitalist pigs). If it was really about quality, there would be no argument about the "necessity" of a fee to "weed out" inferior quality (which is something it can't do): quality sells itself, and quality becomes known. Any jerk with $40 to blow can still simply plunk it down and put up a load a crap on a whim.

So, the entry fee still isn't a barrier to quality. It also isn't a barrier to small publishers, as I noted above: what are the options if you don't want to pay that fee? What can you, small publisher person, specifically do for yourself?