Using Foreign Printers

[MarktheAnimator]

Hello,
I may use Thai Watana Panich Press, which is located in Thailand, to print my game book.  

They have given me a unit price of US$ 2.0824 for 5000 copies, 256 pages B/W with a color hardbound cover.  For a full color book, the price is US$ 4.3961 per copy.

If the rule for determining your basic cover price is to mulitply the printing cost by x8, then I could sell the book for as low as $16.65!!  I will be able to charge as little as $35.20 for a full color book!!

I will probably price it at $19.95 per book.  This will give me a little breathing room on the price.  

Shipping is by airmail (3-4 days) or by boat (30-40 days).  If I have it delivered by ship, then I will simply have to arrange a regular publishing schedule, and I can still use airmail to cover the times when I need to get the books fast.

I'm still researching the tariff / customs / taxes thing.

ok...., so what do you guys think?

Any advice is appreciated. :)

[Eero Tuovinen]

Printing foreign: it's a good idea, simply put. Will only work for staff-intensive printing projects, as the other kind tends to be cheaper in the west. That includes most small print runs.

However, I'm more interested in that printing size of yours. 5000 copies!?! Are you sure? Are we talking about Fantasy Imperium or some other project?

[Erick Wujcik]

Hello,
I may use Thai Watana Panich Press, which is located in Thailand, to print my game book.  

They have given me a unit price of US$ 2.0824 for 5000 copies, 256 pages B/W with a color hardbound cover.  For a full color book, the price is US$ 4.3961 per copy.

If the rule for determining your basic cover price is to mulitply the printing cost by x8, then I could sell the book for as low as $16.65!!  I will be able to charge as little as $35.20 for a full color book!!

I will probably price it at $19.95 per book.  This will give me a little breathing room on the price.  

Shipping is by airmail (3-4 days) or by boat (30-40 days).  If I have it delivered by ship, then I will simply have to arrange a regular publishing schedule, and I can still use airmail to cover the times when I need to get the books fast.

I'm still researching the tariff / customs / taxes thing.

ok...., so what do you guys think?

Any advice is appreciated. :)

1. I suspect that your per-copy price is not including shipping. Especially the airmail cost (and a 30-40 day estimate for boat shipping is optimistic). Also, you'll have to pay some kind of inport tax or duty (the U.S. government will definitely be charging for anything that costs over ten grand).

2. When you have that kind of quantity, be sure to check with the big printers in the U.S. Personally, I'd get an estimate from McNaughton & Gunn, but you should check with others.

Erick

[daMoose_Neo]

Lemme chip in on a "Cavet Emptor" on the shipping.
I used a foreign printer for my first run of Twilight, and while cheap, was murder getting through to me.
First, boat shipping SUCKS. The 30 days is optimistic and cannot be planned around. My cards actually became available a MONTH after they should have (by my calculations based on one of those estimates).
Thats also a date for landfall, not neccesarily reciept. If you're inland (as I am), the product has to be routed through to another port nearby and to a warehouser there.
Also, most of those companies don't seem to know much about the taxes/tarrifs on incoming merch to the states. Lots of fun stuff. A Broker is needed (most of the aforementioned warehousers provide one for a fee), as well as some additional information. Customs fees will also vary depending on the quantity and value of the order. My totals came up to around another $550 for $3200 or so worth of merchandice.
After it *has* cleared, realize that these people also ship regular freight; they wanted another $500 to ship the product from Detroit Michigan 4/5 hours north to Ludington Michigan. I ended up putting gas in my parents Explorer and running down to get them: $60 vs. $500, which is the better deal?
Find out your nearest port, find out who deals with imports, and start asking questions from there.

[MarktheAnimator]

However, I'm more interested in that printing size of yours. 5000 copies!?! Are you sure? Are we talking about Fantasy Imperium or some other project?

Actually, I will be printing two books, "Fantasy Imperium - Core Book," and "Fantasy Imperium - Storyteller's Guide."  I plan on an initial print run of either 5,000 or 10,000 copies of each title.  I can get rid of these easily enough at the San Diego Comic Convention alone (this year its July 14-17).  87,000 people per day was I think how many went there last year.

I am still working on my marketing plan however, so everything could change.  Currently I plan on selling each book for $19.95 retail, but it will also depend on how much I will end up paying for import taxes/tarriffs, etc.

I may actually sell it for a higher price, but after looking at the printing costs in asia, I'm getting optimistic.  I may build in a few extra dollars into the price as a cushion for unexpected expenses.  I hope to sell the book for less than D&D.

The biggest delay I have is getting the art done.  I'm still waiting for over 800 illustrations.  I think my artists are a bit swamped. :)

The price they quoted does not include the shipping.  Hmm.... custom fees and import brokers?  I'll have to look into it a bit more before I make a final decision.  


thx for the great advice guys. :)

[Valamir]

I can get rid of these easily enough at the San Diego Comic Convention alone

Are you serious?

If you can move 5000-10,000 copies of a newly published game from a non-big-name designer...you will be the single greatest game salesman of all time.

Are you really that good?  Or are you just WAY WAY misinformed and absurdly overly optimistic.  Where do you get the idea that you could POSSIBLY sell that many copies at a single convention?


Printing 5000 copies seems incredibly...silly, to me.

The most likely chain of events are

1) you get a ton of boxes that you'll need to store somewhere.  I had 8 cases of books for a small 750 run.  You'll probably have a couple of hundred of boxes for both books.  That AIN'T fitting in a closet.  You'd better have somewhere cool and DRY to store them or else factor in several years of off site storage fees.

2) You sell a couple of HUNDRED copies at your above con...IF you're lucky and IF you are a fantastically dynamic salesman.  If you came to GenCon with that game I'd bet you'd sell 30-50...100 at the outside.

3) You find a fulfillment house like Key20 and over the course of the next YEAR they manage to put MAYBE 400-500 copies into distribution for you.  Thats ONLY if your game has good production qualities and sells enough from the retailers for the distributors to bother reordering.  There's a good chance they instead buy far less and if they don't move quickly they never buy more.

4) Meanwhile your capital is tied up in unsold inventory.  You CANNOT write off your printing costs until the books actually SELL.  You CANNOT depreciate your printing costs.  And, unless you've got WAY more disposable income than most of us on this list, you won't be publishing anything else for quite some time until you can recover at least a part of your investment.

5) After about 3-5 years of sitting on a couple of hundred of cases of unsold books (maybe longer if you're a glutton for punishment) you MAYBE sold another couple of hundred at cons and maybe a few hundred more in distribution.  Lets say you've sold 1000-2000 copies of both books after three years (which would actually be pretty good...those are NOT shitty numbers by any means.  Those are actually pretty optimistic Burning Wheel, Universalis, My Life with Master type numbers (all of which are pretty damn profitable titles).

That means you've managed to write off only 20-40% of your total printing cost, or $4000-8000 of your $20,000 investment.  There is one way and one way ONLY for you to write the rest of your books off.  When you decide to do this will depend on when you finally realize you ain't moving the remaining 3-4000 copies any time soon.  Eventually you will have to DESTROY your remaining inventory.  Only then will you be able to recover a portion of your cost through tax write off.


There are literally DOZENS of game designers with DOZENS of games who've already gone the route you're thinking of going.  Some of them are still vainly clinging to the hope that one day somehow their life time labor of love will really take off and the orders will start rolling in.  The rest have already heard the music and mulched their remaining inventory...some of those folks went deep into debt to finance their idea and are now saddled with the payments.

This doesn't sound like a good idea to me at all.


BETTER idea, IMO.  Print 500 copies POD.  Sell those.  Use the profits to print another 500 copies.  Sell those.  And so on.  That way you won't be looking back in 3-5 years thinking about the 20 grand you lost.

If you print 500 copies and sell out at your con, and then print another 500 and move those through Key20 right away and Jason's begging you for another 500 because he's got orders out the yin yang waiting to be filled...well, then come back and report and I'll happily eat crow.  But otherwise...I think you'd be much better off scaling your expectations to something much more realistic than 5-10,000 copies.

[Valamir]

dupe post

[daMoose_Neo]

BTW, just realized: you're talking mid-July? No way in the world it'd be ready for this year, unless you paid through the nose for the air shipping, and even then its cutting it close.
Took roughly 30 days alone to print my cards- more than a book would take, as the coating on my cards needed a little time to 'cure', but 5 to 10,000 books? I did only 2000 decks, and it still took that long.

And heed Ralph's words well, for he knows of what he speaks. I have a closet full of Final Twilight as of now, a year later. Key20 got an order for nearly 200 units this month, but thats not really anything compared to what I have on hand.

[Blankshield]

BTW, just realized: you're talking mid-July? No way in the world it'd be ready for this year, unless you paid through the nose for the air shipping, and even then its cutting it close.

Absolutely.  I'm doing a print run in the US, of 200 units, for August, and I'm really sweating the wire by not having it out the door a month ago.

James

[MarktheAnimator]

hmmm.... food for thought.  
I'll take your advice to heart and will proceed very carefully.  

thx for the great advice guys.

:)

btw, I'm not going to the SD Comic Con this yr with the game.  I'm gonna be there next yr.  But if you guys want to check it out this yr, its July 14-17.  Let me know if you any of you guys want to attend, since I live in SD and we can hang out. :)