PDF Games? Aren't those like that Internet-thingee?

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi.

Over in the Actual Play review of GenCon SoCal, there are reports (still!) of piss fights over what constitutes a "real" company vs. a "vanity" set up.

If you pubish books, you're real, I supposed. Or pay rent on office space you don't need.

Let me get his straight.  Amazon.com isn't a real bookseller because I can't go vist their "store"?

I bring this up because somehow getting the GenCon panels set up properly -- even having a panel about this issue -- seems like a vital entry point to increasing non-traditional publishing sales.  Something like, "Everything You've Been Told about Publishing is a Lie!"  You know -- something bold and right on the table.

There is baggage about publishing -- though god knows you don't have to be a prophet to know its time to get over it.  To have this addressed clearly to the consumers at GenCon in a way that reaches non-indie consumers seems like it would be a great thing all around.

I have no specifics.  I don't even have any stake in the matter.  I'm simply stunned, amazed and kind of pissed off.

Christopher

[ethan_greer]

Well don't get pissed about it. Just because someone hands you a shit sandwich doesn't mean you have to gobble it down. :)

To have this addressed clearly to the consumers at GenCon in a way that reaches non-indie consumers seems like it would be a great thing all around.

Why, exactly? I'm not trying to be obtuse, but the misperceptions of a few of the hide-bound industry types just doesn't seem like an issue to me.

[TonyLB]

I'm with Ethan.  It's a non-issue.

Some people self-identify as "real publishers" in a way that implies that they have done something above and beyond putting out a book.  If they're vested in that then of course they're going to want to pick a fight about it with anyone who thinks that their treasured status is an illusion.

I just don't see what the benefit is for an Indie Publisher, or Indie Publishing in general, to encouraging a discussion framed in those terms.  It's bait... you can rise to it, or not, but you can't turn it into a real discussion around real issues.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Ah, you miss my point.  Sorry I wasn't clear.

I don't care about the industry hide-bound types.  Let them die the death they deserve.

I'm talking about getting word out to the hidebound consumer.  Who share many of the predjudices of the hide-bound industry types.  

I'm talking about getting money from more people.

Now, there may not be anything to do about this.  But I do know (if RPG.net is any indication), the RPG consumer feels a strange connection to their publishers, even if they're not in publshing themselves.  They feel themselves a part of the process.  

I'm suggesting -- well, nothing really.  But I'm saying, it'd be really cool to open up the idea of what "publishing" is, so that when people at GenCon are walking the dealer floor and their freind passes, say the Forge Booth, and sees games for sale that he heard about a talk about Publishing (not about Indie games, not about starting your own company, but Publishing), they might say, "Hey, those guys are making money at their games.  That guy over there with the hardcovers.  He probably isn't.  Come on. I want to check those guys out."

That's all.

Clinton himself said that speaking on this issue was the high-point of the con for him.

If I made it sound I was looking for a brawl, I'm sorry. Not what I meant.  What I meant was, the ideas still needs some growing. It's clear this process is already underway. It just seems like it'd be sweet to find the ways to push it along.

That's all.

Christopher

[Matt Wilson]

I think to be a real game company you have to risk your life to save Gepetto.

Seriously, though, I think that the view you're describing is primarily held by certain people who have put a little too much at stake to create and sell games, and who are resentful of people who can do the same thing and still afford rent and food every month.

The general gaming public? I think they buy stuff based on quality and don't really concern themselves with whether the company is "real." The product is, and that's what matters. Certainly I haven't seen anyone say, "I'd buy The Shadow of Yesterday if only Anvilwerks were real."

Is there something you've personally experienced, Chris? Because I have yet to see it, myself.

[jdagna]

I'm not terribly surprised that arguments like this happen, but I think it stems from a much older issue than the Internet or even RPGs.  People want to feel pride in "their" brands and products.  I had a friend in high school who would rather die of dehydration than drink Pepsi.  Back when Vampire was really picking up steam, I overhead an argument in a game store that amounted to "Why my game company can beat up your game company."  (The irony being that WW survived and TSR didn't).

So, if you're a huge fan of a mid-tier publisher, the only thing your game company can beat up is one of those "fake" indie publishers.

Of course, looking at the practical side, a large company can provide things an indie company can't.  Some people really do like hardbacks and color pictures and they're an audience that isn't particularly vocal on the Internet (in my experience).  None of us can realistically offer up the next Nobilis or Buffy RPG (which, interestingly, were both put out by mid-sized publishers).

Still, I wouldn't pay much attention to it.  There are some people who still swear that AD&D 1 defines the pinnacle of the RPG industry.  You just can't please everyone.

[Tav_Behemoth]

I'll have to check out the thread you mentioned, Christopher (want to make it easy for me with a link?), but I used the vanity/"real" distinction in one of the panels I was on, and instantly regretted it (a common experience of being in front of an audience, I found!).

What I meant to say was "We were originally going to publish our work by submitting it to a pre-existing publisher, but after it was accepted by them we decided we'd do a better job of it ourselves, so having looked at both sides I can offer some experience regarding whichever you're interested in." To express the latter part of this as "we're not a vanity press" was essentially a slip of the tongue.

[ethan_greer]

Ah. Okay Christopher, I see what you're getting at now.

And I can only say that I'd attend such a seminar given the opportunity. I don't know if your average consumer gamer would, though.

Oh, and Tav, that thread is over here.

[clehrich]

Over in the Actual Play review of GenCon SoCal, there are reports (still!) of piss fights over what constitutes a "real" company vs. a "vanity" set up.

If you pubish books, you're real, I supposed. Or pay rent on office space you don't need.

Let me get his straight.  Amazon.com isn't a real bookseller because I can't go vist their "store"?

I'm confused.  Was the issue book sellers or book publishers?  Because while I think it would be hard to argue that Amazon isn't a seller, I don't know of them doing a lot of publishing.

I'm always a little confused by this sort of discussion.  The publishing models I'm familiar with, from regular book publishers, basically work on an issue of margin.  On the one hand, they have to pay royalties, fees, and whatnot to authors, artists, and the like.  On the other hand, they have to pay their bills.  So they make a lot of guesses about sales, and then add up the total costs on a particular book and tack on a small amount (a few dollars a copy), and that's the total price of the book as they sell it.  Then the retailer probably adds a markup so he can pay his bills and a little profit, and in the end you have a total cost to the purchaser.

The difference between a vanity press and a "legitimate" press is simply that the vanity press asks the author to pay a large chunk of the fees in question, because the vanity press doesn't assume that the book will sell any copies at all; any that do are gravy for him.  So the author pays to have his book printed, instead of being paid for it.

A very small press has little overhead so there's less cost involved in getting from the MS to the book on the shelf.  On the other hand, there's no money (or little) for advertising and other stuff like that, and probably the bindings and whatnot will be of lower quality.  The book is thus less expensive, but physically less nice and in terms of marketing less obviously available for purchase.

A really big press (say, Random House) deals with so many books that most of the basic overhead is done in effect by bulk rates, so that brings down the cost of producing a single book; for example, they probably own their own actual presses, i.e. the machines for printing and binding, or they lease them on essentially exclusive contract, so they get a discount there for an enormous initial investment.  On the other hand, this means that in order to recoup the investment, you have to sell at least 10,000 or so copies, because there's no difference in cost between 10,000 and 500.  So you don't take up a book that you don't think will sell 10,000, and you gamble on books by figuring that with work and advertising you can sell a lot more than that.

Why the pissing match?  I mean, Random House does its thing really well, overall, but they can't sell every kind of book.  A very small press does its thing well, but they can't sell very widely.  A vanity press pats the wannabe author on the head and gets him to pay for the privilege of seeing his name in print.  What difference does it make?  I mean, Random House isn't a "better" press than Brill (who published my book, for example): their books are cheaper and sell more widely, but they can't take up abstruse academic monographs because they don't sell well.

Sure, it's not a great business model, but nobody's making a fortune here.  It's not like Random House is shutting people out of the business or anything.  So what's the fighting about?

I'm sorry, but I'm just totally confused.

[Tav_Behemoth]

The argument is about the commercial viability of a work. Let's start with literary publishing, since that's where these terms come from.

If the manuscript of a novel is accepted by a commercial publisher who wants to invest in its publication, that publisher is making a bet that readers are going to be willing to pay to read it.

A category of "vanity" publishers exist to serve people who have a manuscript that no one but themselves are willing to pay to have printed. These authors presumably think that there will be readers who will pay for the book, but no one else has been willing to bet on this proposition. The "vanity" label suggests that what these authors are really investing in is the pleasure of having their name on the spine of a book. This is a fine and noble pleasure, to be sure!

Self-publishing resembles vanity publishing in that the same person is writing the book (wearing their author hat) and paying to produce it (wearing their publisher hat). But the successful business model of vanity publishing is to make money from the authors who pay to have their books published; this is obviously not a successful model for self-publishers.

A straw version of the argument on the panels would go more or less like this:
- a game/book that doesn't cater to the needs and prejudices of the retail-distribution system cannot possibly reach an audience of paying customers and thus become profitable
- thus, the only reason for anyone to produce such a product would be to flatter the vanity of the author

Happily, this argument is based on flawed premises!

In other fields, there isn't necessarily the same prejudice about author-funded publishing. In science, it's always OK to pay a journal to run your article (and to pay more if you want color prints, for example); what matters is whether the journal is peer-reviewed, or if they'll take any article that comes along.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

A straw version of the argument on the panels would go more or less like this:
- a game/book that doesn't cater to the needs and prejudices of the retail-distribution system cannot possibly reach an audience of paying customers and thus become profitable
- thus, the only reason for anyone to produce such a product would be to flatter the vanity of the author

Happily, this argument is based on flawed premises!

Yes, yes, and more yes. (I can't believe you used "vanity" so much, Chris. You should know better.)

I'm re-writing my essay on "How to Publish Your Role-Playing Game (Cheap)" and I'm including a section on finances this time. As I say there, and would say to any new RPG author:

The RPG market is such a weird and fickle place that counting on your book to sell in order to make money is a bad idea. The traditional model is to borrow several thousand dollars in order to print several thousand copies of a book. If these copies sell, you will repay the loan - in other words, you're assuming they will sell and all will be alright.

I can't think of a worse way to run your finances. "Vanity publishing" is an epithet used to denigrate a new model for publishing RPG books: you never put up more money than you have, and your profit comes directly from each book sold. Why is it so commonly used? I'd love to see hard data on this, but my current assumption is that we're attacked because we're actually making more money than 75% of traditional RPG publishing (the market minus D&D and White Wolf, basically) and that is very threatening.

[daMoose_Neo]

Actually, WotC and WW may be raking in the profit from their huge distribution channels and what not, but I wonder what their actual costs are...on a percentage per product, I'm of the belief that indie presses make even more than them~

Case in Point (because CCGs are what I know prices on), my expenses on printing Final Twilight come to $.05 per card (including everything: packaging, artwork, rules, die inserts etc). According to Wizards own statements, it costs them $.10 per card (a figure that HAS to account for some overhead)! On a 15 card booster pack, thats $1.50 with an MSRP of around $3.00, though more commonly sold for $4.00. Decks contain 60-75 cards, $6.00 to $7.50 in cost then, and sell for $10, though $12 right now isn't uncommon.
Yu-gi-oh has to be making a killing however. Their cards are just *slightly* smaller, but that makes them SO much cheaper to produce. Even assuming it DID cost $.10 per card, their boosters contain 9 cards and retail for $4.00. Thats a $.70 per pack profit on selling to distributors, and they sell ALOT.

And this is looking at the BOTTOM of the price ranges. I work for WalMart (WEE!) and get to check out all sorts of stuff on our cost for products. I may have to look at what it costs us for WotC D&D or WW books...

[jdagna]

Neo, I think what you're missing is scale.  WalMart, for example, sells at a lower profit margin than just about any retailer.  They make more money than many countries, however.  And it's important to remember that they make that much money because they have slim margins.  Even if WotC were only making $.10 per booster pack, you're looking at tens of thousands of dollars.

In the end, it's usually a difference in price or quality.  In the non-RPG vanity book market, studies show that prices average 30%-50% higher... what sells for $7 as a trade paperback go for $10 from a vanity publisher (and $12 tends to go to $15).

The PDF market changes the dynamics a little because the difference in production cost (writing, art, layout and printing) doesn't change with quantity sold and the higher products costs are affordable even for the smallest publishers.

[daMoose_Neo]

No, I got the scale in mind just fine, right at the start there about their massive distribution channels. Pennies add up, and when they can sell millions of packs, thats still millions of dollars.
What I'm looking at is cost per, just as a pondery, a little thing. Twilight cost me per deck what it must cost Wizards per pack, and the quality of the product is right up there with them. That makes me chuckle every once in a while, to know that little ol me is producing on par (re: quality) with WotC, at a price better than theirs.
I don't see many RPG products going around $10, but its not uncommon to see PDF's going for $5 with their printed counterpart in the $15-20 range, some of which even dock off if you've ordered the PDF before. Yea, THEIR books (the big guns that is) are full color every page, glossy, and loaded with illustrations. Guardians of Order has a $60 price tag on their BeSM d20 book...for not a lot of anything, just really nice looking book. Where as you can get a very nice small-press book (or even PDF) for a fraction still of what it costs to get into the big guns. (D&D really needs about $60, around $20 for each core, no? Or is it more?)

As to WalMart, I know these things all too well. I wish I didn't know as much as I do, lol!

[Bankuei]

Hi guys,

Perhaps its a bit late, but to follow with Chris K's question about how to get across to the hidebound consumers- my suggestion would be to print up some of those classic "demo rules" pamphlets that folks use for the big printed games.  Granted, higher quality = more credibility in the eyes of those who judge books by covers, but even a simple one on halfway decent paper stock still does the job.  The same model is used by many websites in other fields.  Throw some neat artwork on it, and you'll get a lot more hits.

Though it basically adds up to printed advertising, the price and effort is a lot lower and it also serves as a bridge between pdf and printed.  Plus you can hand them out at cons.

Chris