Alternatives to selling your material.

[Seth M. Drebitko]

     Good day all I have been slowly finishing up work on my game and setting Reflections, and have been thinking of how I want to publish my game.

I have a couple ideas going but the one that keeps really hitting me is give it away free, which is some what contradictory to the idea which is make money. One thing some one said to me was you should totally grab a google adsence account so I thought ok cool I will take a look and to be honest it seems ok but not enough. What I really want to do is provide my books on-line and make money by advertising on my web site in exchange for providing the material free. As an alternative people would be able to go to a lulu store and purchase the book to avoid the ads but I am assuming every one will at least skim the free books at least to see if its worth the money.

What I need is opinions and feed back on this idea, as well as if any one is able to a list of some of the best advertising companies to sign up either on-line. Sorry if the post is a little scattered but my power is going on and off in my house and I don't know how much longer the battery on my computer will last, so if you need clarification on anything just ask.

[Eero Tuovinen]

Well, I have an opinion feedback. I've only been doing this publish/retail stuff a little while, but my every experience has been towards emphasizing the importance of the sales event in leading to actual play. This seems bizarre, but it seems to me that people will only really be interested and invested in playing a game if they've bought it with their own money. Free stuff tends to get forgotten on their hard drive, and that's that. Furthermore, a free game has less of an impact on the social culture of players, it seems to me. Free games get less internet posting, for instance, and people don't show free games around to their friends.

As a case study I recommend Runequest: Slayers. An absolutely lovely game with many unique ideas and a very creative trend, in both system and setting. Riding the Runequest trademark, no less. Could have been a trend-setter if published in time. One would think that it's really popular and all, being freely available. But no, to the contrary; few have heard of it, even less have played it. And this for several hundreds of pages of color-illustrated material. I have difficulty imagining that the game would have fared worse as any kind of commercial product.

So if you have the quality to charge money, I suggest considering it. Not because you'd gain a lot, but because you'll be taken more seriously by the customers if you do. Free is associated with things of no consequence, I'm sorry to say.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Eero's viewpoint has merit, and it is also supported by my success with my original PDF sales. I was either the first person or among the very first, to offer a PDF role-playing game for sale. I can testify based on customer comments and enthusiasm about paying that it did add value-perceived.

However, this viewpoint assumes that the publisher is also looking for maximum penetration of the audience, and although at first glance this seems like a given, it's not. The viewpoint also overlooks the possibility that this step (free availability) may be part of a graded series of options, including commerce in the future for instance.

A few counter-examples exist as well. The most dramatic is The Pool, a game published merely by throwing two or three pages' worth of text up at a Geocities site. Another is Soap, in its initial form, published similarly. Both of these had such a dramatic impact on dialogues about role-playing and upon subsequent design that the term "revolutionary" is appropriate.

Here's what The Pool and Soap had going for them that RuneQuest Slayers, for example, did not. They had the Forge, specifically my play of both games and detailed actual-play posting about the experiences. As a community, I and others here now know that it doesn't take much actual-play posting to promote a good game. One solid thread does the job (and it can't be faked, apparently, either).

So if you have a good game, and you make it available, and if you play it and post here about it ... then the chances that someone else will do the same are considerably different than they are/were for RuneQuest Slayers and a host of similarly "uploaded and hope" games.

And again, one of the nice things about this is that posting the game for free is not an end-step choice. If you do it, that doesn't mean you have blown the chance to do it commercially later.

Best, Ron

[Thunder_God]

Look at Clinton's stuff, he sells it but it's also available(mostly) as Creative Commons material.
You can ask him how much he sells, if he believes offering it for free sells more or less than he could otherwise, how people get to know of the free game, etc.

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Ok here we go my conection is much better now and I can actuay explain what I have in mind in full detail.

-The entire premise of my sales will be to help raise money for my sick grandma (eventualy she will pass on and it will be to make myself money).

-All material will be provided for free with ads woven in and the option to donate.

-I will also sell ad free pdfs, as well as hardcopy versions of the books including merchandise.

-The entire thing that should keep people coming back is that through forums and such they willl be able to actualy effect the setting by adding to the evergrowing universe.

-Through a solid steady fan base which I hope to continue growing I wish to also make money from the ads.

The actual big question I need answered other than opinions, is what are the best money making ad deals.

Regards, Seth

[Seth M. Drebitko]

Ok so a bit of an up-date on the progress of my en devours.

I have recently partnered up with some computer savvy individuals who like the concepts behind my setting Reflections and want to make a 2d massive multi player game based on it.

I also found a great ad service www.adbright.com.

With that little bit out of the way the current structure of my publishing model is as follows.

-Website banner ads will draw in some money depends on how heavy the traffic is to the site.

-All pdf books will every 30 pages display a full page ad from advertisers who submit ads.
     -Advertisers will bid at an auction to have their ads placed in the books and after the ads are placed will each year be charged a small fee of $1 for each ad they have running through the company.
    -The Pdfs will be free to download and share you will also be able to purchase hard copy versions at only a 10% mark up from lulu's price.

-The massive multi player game will be run from another company who has offered to contract me in for 25% profit share and all I have to do is provide them the materials that I was writing anyway!

-Merchandise will be provided from caffe press store at a 10% mark up just like the books.

-I am also strongly considering creating a bi-monthly e-zine called Indie Exposure or something along those lines featuring ads only to indie companies every 15 pages.

-A final source of income will come from fans of the setting who are willing to donate to the good cause of keeping things running, by paying $1 a month less than 4 cents a day to have all of my materials e-mailed directly to them so they don't have to keep visiting the site to see if anything new is up.

As far as I know its a fairly unique blend of a couple common publishing models. The greatest and only flaw in my opinion is that this model strongly depends on a large base of dedicated fans to keep it up and running but at the same time has the great benefit of multiple streams of continuous income.

Thats the basicsat the moment any and all opinions and suggestions would be awsome.

Regards, Seth