Advertising without a budget?

[jeremycoatney]

     I'm fairly certain this falls under the catagory of a publishing question, but not entirely, so if it doesn't,please bare with me here.
     I have my own RPG system whihc I built from scratch, I even have 1 completed and copyrighted book which is about 210 pages long and contains all sorts of interesting content for generic high fantasy role playing. What I don't have is the money to advertise it to the public at large, or even print out any copies until someone pays for them. For this reason I have zero advertising and I haven't been able to copyright the other 4 books I have completed so that I can post them online for anyone who looks.
     Now I don't want to do this as a living, because I don't think the likelyhood of hitting it big enough for that is very high, but I do want people to play my game, or at least know that it exists, so that they can either enjoy it the way it is or send me E-mails to tell me how much editing it can still use and how much they thought it stank. I'll take any kind of feedback.
     Anyhow, to this end I want to advertise my product, but I, as stated above, have no money to spend on advertising. Does anyone know of a good way to get the word around about my product so people will take a look at my site, or one of the other places people can find it?
     I have a perfect pitch for people who want to look at it without paying for it. It's available for free download off of my website in PDF format. There are two versions, the lightly illustrated one, and the unillustrated one which you can download, the thing is I have no way of telling the world at large that this is the case at the present time.
     Any ideas?

[Nathan P.]

Hi Jeremy,

You know that anything you write, in the US and most countries, is automatically copyrighted under your name, yes? Registering the copyright isn't a bad idea, but the way I see it, any legal challenge that I would need a registered copyright to fight in court would cost me so much money I would have to settle anyway. Maybe I'm just pessimistic - but the point is that you don't need to pay to register to have copyright protection on your product. A copyright notice with your name and the date you wrote it should be just fine.

Now, as for advertising - posting on forums (like the Forge and RPG.net) to related threads, with your website link in your .sig, is as free as free gets. The key is to post with actual content or responses to the thread. People can smell a shill a mile away. Try emailing the webmasters of other sites and asking for a link exchange. If they do banners or buttons, make one so you have exchange those, if need be. Do searches for related webrings and join them. Write press releases for news about your products and submit them to Gamingreport.com and other gaming news sites.

Also, have you considered setting up a lulu.com account and selling a version of your game through there? There's no set-up cost, and because they only print a book when you sell it, there's no capital sink up front. The product goes up on your lulu storefront, which is searchable, and you can tag it with related tags (game, fantasy, etc) so that people looking for that genre can find it. You can also just set up your PDFs there, you don't need to offer printed books if you don't want too.

Finally, posting Actual Play reports of your own play is always a good idea - as long as its actual, solid AP that hilights the good bits of your game (shills dont sell). AP on RPG.net tends to be more "story hour," while posts here are usually only useful if you're raising a question or trying to deal with a problem.

Anyway, I hope some of that helps.

[jeremycoatney]

Hi Nathan,
     I was under the impression that things that you write down are only technically copyrighted from the point of completion(in the USA), but that you couldn't take anyone to court for using them if it wasn't actually formally copyrighted... Still I suppose I'm not too worried about that. If someone wants to use the system to generate a game of their own or something like that I can't say I'd really mind, I'd just like people to ask me about it first that's all.
     I do have a lulu account actually, although I'm waiting to see the quality of their print jobs of the bound books before I make any choice about finalizing those products. I know I don't have to have physical books, but people seem to like them more than digital ones, myself included, so I want to give them what they prefer. For the record, the CD distribution of my book that you can buy through my website is a little better because I couldn't manage to get my CD image to upload to lulu correctly, but I can print onto CDs myself in house and get a nice image on them that way. Also, the prices on my actual site are slightly less than those on lulu, because lulu costs more to produce the items.
     For the record, I also don't charge shipping on my site. Although this means I ship things by standard mail, with no special options for shipping.
     You are right about putting my website inside of my posts here as being as free as it gets, but the overall dispersal of that information is fairly limited from what I understand. Which is to say only some of the people who read my posts would actually look at my website, or fool with the conents of it. Still you make a good point I must say.
     I will definitly look into some link exchanges between my websit and others, I can't believe I managed to overlook that idea, seems escpecially silly when I actually have one on my website already! Oh well, good to have someone point out the obvious when I look right past it blindly searching for other options.
     Thanks for the input, I will setup my lulu store front ASAP and see if that helps any. And I will look into some link exchanges as well.

[Thunder_God]

Don't worry about information dispersal too much. From those who go to your site most will close it after less than ten seconds without clicking further.
You go to GenCon and are lucky by recent threads I read to sell 30-50 copies.

Even if you don't talk about your game in your posts, if you make actual contributions people will click on links in your profile. Be a good poster, it's that simple.

Run demo games at conventions, that's free. Run demo games at local stores. Provide help for those who run demos elsewhere.

And keep at it.

[jeremycoatney]

     It's free to run demo games at some conventions? I thought they charged you to do things like that if you're doing it officially. It would be nice to find out I was wrong though, maybe it just depends on who's running the convention.
     Do you have any specific conventions in mind? Other than the already mentioned GenCon of course.

[Thunder_God]

I dunno, but run a session, a full session to "demo" your game. That's probably the best way to interest people.

The conventions I know are of little help to you since I am an Israeli. Any local convention can do.

[jeremycoatney]

     Ah, yes I suppose that would make it a little hard to make suggestions for the USA :)
     I will definitely do that. Thanks for the suggestion.

[dindenver]

Hi!
  Well, in the US, your work is considered to have a copyright at the moment of conception.
  Also, the link to download your PDF on your site is broken, both versions and the character sheet as well. And it is not clear at all that the Order button on your site for the pdfs is to order a CD,
  The cost to print on lulu.com is a little high, but considering that they don't want any money up front, I think its a bargain. Their print quality is very good btw, I ordered my boook on lulu.com as a test. It was 278 pages, softback perfect binding and it was great! The coating on the cover is very high quality, the colors came out great, the print quality is good and the quality of the paper they use is very good as well.
  Use the search feature on the Forge to find POD printers that you can use to pay up front and get a batch (10 or 100 or whatever you can aford) of books that you can sell in person or on your site.
  Also, approaching game reviewers for a review is fruitful, IF they have a large enough readership. even if they give you a bad review your sales will increase.
  Starting a blog CAN help if you can post often and there is a clear link (both via content and linking) between the two sites.
  Finally, setting up a community for your game will help, you can post actual play examples, answer peoples questions and get a chance to get to know you and what it is you are actually trying to do with your game.
  Good luck man!

[jeremycoatney]

What? The Links are broken?! Thanks for letting me know, I will get on fixing that right now! I've been having a few glitches since I recently switched web servers, and it's very good to know when something is wrong so I can fix it.
      I will definitely look into the other POD services to see what I can do about current cost constraints of my projects getting to the street.
      Certainly I will look into starting a community for my game, it would definitely be a good way to address issue and help people get acquainted with the game.

[Ben Lehman]

Jeremy --

It should not cost any money (other than food and drink for a weekend) to run demos of your game at a small convention.  A lot of small convention organizers are happy to have designers running their own games.  I'd suggest bringing a stock of books (10 or so) to sell, as well.

Where are you in the US?  Maybe some of us can point you at local resources.

[jeremycoatney]

-Hi Ben,
     I live in Oregon, in washington county, not too far from Portland. I'd love any convention suggestions you could offer, I'd really like to make a convention appearance and see first hand what people's impressions are. Even if it turns out to be a brutal crowd or something.

[Bryan Hansel]

I was under the impression that things that you write down are only technically copyrighted from the point of completion(in the USA), but that you couldn't take anyone to court for using them if it wasn't actually formally copyrighted...

I just went through a whole deal about this with someone using something of mine without permission and I had to ask him multiple times to remove it from his site. What I learned was that you can indeed sue the person and be awarded money, but you are limited in the amount of money unless you register your copyright within so many days of first publication.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey, relatively new posters at the Forge: we've discussed copyright to a very refined extent here, especially using valid and useful links instead of making up answers or speculating about them. So try "advanced search," the button higher up on the page, and check out terms like "copyright" or "trademark," specifying this forum. It'll help you guys a lot and will also keep this conversation from getting sidetracked.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not moderating this thread at this point. I'm saying, use the Forge for its archival value, and bring those points (with links to the old threads) into this thread to make it as powerful as possible.

Best, Ron

[Ben Lehman]

Jeremy --

My best advice right now is use FindPlay (which is down right now but when it comes up) to play with local gamers, and post reports about your play to the Actual Play forum here or the one on RPGnet.  Actual Play is free and proven advertising method, provided your game is good (fun to play).  And, if you run into trouble, it will be a chance to make your game better.

yrs--
--Ben

[jeremycoatney]

-Hi Ben
     I will definitely check that out when it's up and running again. Thanks for the advice.
-Jeremy