Theft

[Darren Hill]

The problem I see with the ransom method is it directly eliminates one of the big strengths PDFs have over print products - their ability to keep selling, months and years after a print product would have vanished from a store's limited shelf space.
I haven't published anything, but I've read many reports of PDF publishers here, and the long-term publishers often say how surprising it is that their older products just keep selling, and its the long-term sales that are the real revenue. New customers are constantly finding their product, and snapping them up. So the ransom model removes that source of revenue.

Also, as a customer, I'm leery of the ransom model. Greg Stolze is a very well-known name, and so it would work for him, but even so, though I was interested in one the products he funded that way, I didn't stump up any cash. It was either going to cancelled, or made available later and legally free, so I just waited. If a product can make, say, $600 under the ransom model, it seems to me it should be able to make quite a bit more under a standard, fixed price model - although the ransom may be benefiting from smaller numbers of very dedicated fans paying a lot, and I've already admitted I'm not a publisher so I could easily be wrong.

The ransom model does have the advantage that you get the cash you need to make the product before you actually need it, which is good, but it seems like it's something that would only work for those authors who have a dedicated fanbase, or a very compelling concept for a game.

[greyorm]

The ransom model does have the advantage that you get the cash you need to make the product before you actually need it, which is good, but it seems like it's something that would only work for those authors who have a dedicated fanbase, or a very compelling concept for a game.

As a related tangent, and fodder for thought for Jake and anyone else, Wolfgang Baur runs Open Design, an on-going design project designed around the concept of patronage. This works similarly to the ransom model, with some notable differences. One obvious difference is that people are paying you to design what they have voted for (with their wallets), instead of paying you to release a work you've already created. Another large difference is that only patrons end up with a copy of the product.

I can see pros and cons to this, especially in the small press market, but there you guys have it.

[Jake Richmond]

The Patronage approach that Baur is taking is also very interesting, although for me I think it would fail. I'm only really interested in making games that I want to make. But it is an interesting approach.

I don't think the ransom method would work for everything. I think it could work very well for games that are primarily intended to be print products. I'm currently working on a game that I had only inteded to release in print, but I think I will try the ransom method and as a way to distribute the PDF.

[GregStolze]

Yeah, Ransom ain't perfect.  Incidentally, whenever I ransom something, it's always something I already have written -- I'm doubleplus paranoid about keeping commitments to people who've trusted me.  You could do "Pay me and THEN I'll write it" but I think people would get really impatient if it wasn't something short and quick. 

Ransom basically puts a floor on your earnings at the price of having that amount also be the ceiling.  It's not cool if you want to make a bazillion dollars with an evergreen product.  It is cool if you have something that would have been a good magazine article, back when there were RPG magazines.

As for the freeloader types who figure "Mm, I ain't paying 'cause I'll either get it free or never get it" -- they strike me as unlikely to pay the same amount for a pig in a poke, either.  The twist that Fundable.org adds to the system is that it works like an escrow account.  When you put in your donation for a Fundable project, it's held in abeyance until the whole amount is gathered, or until a time period passes and the money is all returned.  Thus, there's no risk: If you put your money in and the Ransom isn't met, you get all your money back.  You ONLY pay if the whole amount gets gathered.

-G.

[Jake Richmond]

Neat. I really like this idea. How many tiomes have you used it, and how many times have you actually met your goal?

[Lance D. Allen]

Greg: Wait, what? I thought the gathered amount went to some charity or other if the whole amount wasn't raised. Did I read it wrong, or just miss something?

[GregStolze]

You didn't read it wrong.  It's just that I no longer do it exactly the way described for MBM.  There's a website called fundable.org that works as I described in the previous post, and that's a nice way to remove risk from the donor side (though, as mentioned, it puts a deadline on things). 

So far, the Ransom method has worked for three games: Meatbot Massacre, ...in Spaaace! and Executive Decision (they're all available for download through www.gregstolze.com).  I've been doing a modified ransom for GM and Player articles, but with no deadline and no return policy it's run out of steam.  I also fooled around with doing it for chapters of a novel, but that was a flop too -- I suspect because people were unwilling to pay the Fundable $10 minimum for just a chapter.  So it's no sure thing.  But when REIGN comes out, I'm plannning to ransom supplemental material in lots of 10,000 words.  I figure people will be willing to pay ten bucks for that. Furthermore, I'm hoping that a large and growing body of free online support will drive sales of the book.  But we'll see.

-G.

[Ron Edwards]

Hey guys,

I think you can all see that the thread topic has been jacked.

It's not due to any one person or to any one post. For instance, the ransom method as a solution to theft was definitely on-topic, when it was introduced.

But now, clearly, this isn't about theft any more but just about the ransom stuff. Let's take that to a new thread. Greg, in particular, I'd appreciate it if you worked with me on this and posted a new topic to answer these more general questions, maybe starting with a summary of "where the money went" or something like that for each time you've used the method.

Best, Ron

[Jake Richmond]

Update

It's been an interesting few weeks. Since I originally noticed that people were sharing our PDF and originally expressed my concern about the problem a lot of things have happened. I made a real effort to contact every share site I could find that was distributing our PDF. In a polite letter I asked them to take the file down, and explained why I wanted them to do so. Some complied, some refused and a number never responded. If you do a google search you can still pretty easily find 5 sites that are illegally sharing the file. But several sites did remove the file and replaced it with a 36 page Demo file that I provided to them. The demo includes enough info to play the game, and is something I've been meaning to create for some time. It's currently available for free download on our site, Key20, RPGNow and a few other rpg sites. Additionally, I've uloaded the demo PDF to dozens of file sharing sites. For the last few weeks I've seeded a torrent containing the file as well, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

Sales have been interesting. After I started talking about this topic (here and on other sites) I recieved several emails apologizing for downloading the file illegally. I didn't expect that. Our sales have made a comeback as well, and we are now selling a number books per week (in a combination of paperback and PDF) that is more in line to what I had expected based on our sales from earlier this year. As I said  before, around the time our PDF began to show up on filesharing sites our sales ropped from 3 copies a day to about 1 a week. Over the last few weeks our sales have climbed back up, and while I'm sure that they'll never reach the level they were at before, are still completely satisfactory. I do believe that the freely distributed PDf was hurting our sales to at least some extent. Distributing the demo in its place, and making the sharers aware that the product was available for purchase has, I think,  helped generate more sales. Our PDF sales are up from last month on our own site and almost everywhere else we sell. Our hardcopy sales as well.

Of course just talking about a game is bound to draw attention to it, and I have been talking about this a lot. So its difficult for me to say with any certainty at all if the increase in sales is due to file sharers purchasing the PDF after they download it for free, or from increased awareness about the game due to the new demo PDF, the dozen or so discussions like this one on various forums and the incresed searchability of the game on engines like Google. Who knows? Maybe it was something else entirely.




Jake Richmond

[GregStolze]

Perhaps it just panty explodes when it's panty exploding time.

-G.