E-publishing

[F. Scott Banks]

I figured I would ask those who had come and gone before me, what steps would I take in setting up PDF downloads for paypal payments?  I'm growing my studio slowly and, now that I've got everything ready, AI'd like to know how one distributes it in this fashion.

Next will likely be getting printers and sculptors to get miniatures manufactured, but for now, I'm starting slow with PDFs.

[andrew_kenrick]

We use online marketplaces such as RPGNow and Drivethru which has the advantage of having a ready made audience, as well as handling all the boring stuff like hosting files and taking payments. They've recently become a lot less useful than they once were, however, as they have merged. There are other marketplaces available too, such as Paizo or e23.

Anything else you'd like to know?

[iago]

You can also sell electronic files through Lulu (they take a 20% cut), but they don't have the market focusing benefit of a place like RPGNow (which, I *think* might take a larger cut, but I'm not familiar enough with their operation to be sure).

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

It might be good to consider the concept all the way up from the bottom, to find all the options.

The most straightforward way to sell something on-line is to make it available for download on your website, subject to a fee. No other company, process, marketing entity, or whatever needs to be involved. The method of payment can be totally private, perhaps even at the level of a bank wire or a mailed money order. This method is probably a bit too labor-intensive for today's internet environment.

The most common modifications of that model include widely-utilized services for the handling of downloads and money transactions. Paypal is the most obvious and convenient way to handle the funding, for many people. As for downloads and orders, there are many "small" ways to systemize the functions from your website, including the Forge's own Bookshelf, run by Clinton Nixon, or simply asking a friend who's computer-savvy to set up some security, or to join up with fellow publishers here at the Forge for a shared website function of some kind. Many publishers who've been active at the Forge have found this to be effective and profitable, and some have chosen not to upgrade to a more organized or middleman-oriented approach at all.

The next "step" up brings in fairly self-interested middlemen, who offer inclusion in a "marketplace" with many other publishers and many customers who arrive daily to browse, or who might see your game while on the way to check out another one. Fred and Brennan have posted about this level. The trade-off between this benefit and the financial cut they require is definitely a matter of some concern; you should not participate in anything of this sort unless you are sure it's to your benefit. I'm trying to state all this neutrally, so take this next bit as a self-admitted biased perception: I think Lulu offers the best trade-off at present.

There's an alternate form of this step as well, which works if you publish a book form of your game in addition to the PDF. It is to utilize either Key 20 or Indie Press Revolution (or both, as some publishers do) to handle sales of the physical book, and to offer a PDF version for sale (or in some cases for free) at one's website. This tactic, or variations of it, seems to work really well.

Well, that's my summary, more or less off the top of my head, and I gratefully encourage anyone to fill in gaps that I left behind, or examples of each option that I've forgotten. Let's remember, though, that this topic is about electronic products, and so we can leave the distributor system and retailers of physical books for some other thread.

Best, Ron

[andrew_kenrick]

You can also sell electronic files through Lulu (they take a 20% cut), but they don't have the market focusing benefit of a place like RPGNow (which, I *think* might take a larger cut, but I'm not familiar enough with their operation to be sure).

RPGNow takes a 30% cut if you're an exclusive vendor with them, 35% if you're non-exclusive. Don't know about the other sites.

I have only talked about RPGNow as that's the only pdf outlet I have experimented with - Ron provides a far more comprehensive overview.

So how does the Forge bookshelf work? I don't know anything about that!

[Ron Edwards]

The Forge RPG Bookshelf is a download engine. A person can sign on, and then see the names of the available PDFs from a variety of publishers. By paying a given publisher using a link, he or she can then be authorized to download them (the names turn into links).

Authorization is manual - the publisher has to receive the notification email, then sign onto the Bookshelf and authorize that person (using the email address), at which point the person can go back on and download the product. The site is definitely Beta-level, very plain with plain text and no images or frills.

The limitations include the following: (1) there's no guarantee that a given publisher will be responsible and authorize you in a timely fashion, especially after a few years (when it was built, no one really thought in terms of monitoring it for years and years); and (2) there's no easy way to change one's email registration or anything similar - you can sign on with a different email but then rely on the understanding of publishers to re-authorize you without charge. You can see a recent thread in Site Discussion from someone who's wrestling with that.

I use the Bookshelf to handle sales of Trollbabe and of Demon Cops. Its benefits are great - for example, if I revise the PDF, then the people who've paid for it already now automatically have access to it. I also receive records of all downloads and can investigate multiple downloads from the customer. I also have a record of all orders, names, and emails. And finally, although this is a personal-taste thing, I actually prefer the non-automatic authorization.

It just so happened that in the last half hour, I received an order for Trollbabe, authorized it, and saw it downloaded. It worked perfectly just now, and in my experience it has never exhibited any logistic problems.

Best, Ron

[Nathan]

The number of options have increased to offer PDF downloads from your site.

YourGamesNow.com is a "mall site" type option, run in a sort of quasi-co-op format. They are new. I'm still checking them out.

I noticed a site that integrates with Paypal that might be interesting - www.payloadz.com - which has a free membership level for automated PDF/file downloads. If you go over a certain amount though, you will have to pay a monthly fee.

I have never used the Forge Bookshelf for sales, but I have purchased at least one game that used it. It is a great system, and I think it is an example of the many, many options out there, especially if you are creative and can do some basic web programming.

I am currently experimenting with using the open source Drupal package plus the free ecommerce package, which includes options for selling downloadable files.

[Paul Czege]

The way homegrown internet pornographers provide for file downloads (or so I'm told) is with a structure of password protected folders on their website, each folder containing a different product. They take a PayPal payment, and then create a login ID and password for the folder containing the customer's purchase, which they email to the customer. Some Web hosting providers have admin consoles that make the ID and password creation quite painless, and even provide for configurable password expiration. So the pornographer can sell products with a "you must download within ## hours of purchase" stipulations.

Paul

[Trevis Martin]

My webhosting service Dreamhost recently started up a service called files forever where they charge a one time fee of $2.50 for you to store a file on their service.  The file gets a unique url, and then you can sell it from there.  The service is set up to process payment for you as well. 

Just letting you know such a thing exists.  Honestly it would be just as easy to do what paul mentioned above but there are more manual steps involved.

Trevis

[Jake Richmond]

You should definetly sell you product on your own site. Even if you have it available other places. RPGNOW has gone to great lenghts to try to convince publishers that there is no need to sell product on the publishers site if it is available at RPGNOW. They tell you that all of you efforts should be directed towards pushing customers to RPGNOW to buy your product. This is laughable.

If you have a site then selling your product is dirt simple. You can start by just listing payment info. For example:

Purchase Panty Explosion! (PDF $10. We accept check, money order, cash or paypal)
send payment to Jake Richmond
8659 SE Foster Road
Portland OR 97226-4744
USA
Or pay by Paypal at:
jakestupidmachine@hotmail.com

Thats all you really need to do. If you want to take it a step further you can use a shopping cart program. there are several you can find for free, and they're cake to install. I use o/s commerace. I've used others in the past. Using a cart store makes it easy to organize product and track both customers and orders. You can connect your cart to payment gateways like paypal for free, or set them up so customers can place an order then send payment by mail. I have both options. You can see my store here: http://www.atarashigames.com/store/. It is absolutly nothing special, but it works well for me.

You can set the store to send your customers an email with a link to their PDF for download after they purchase. Most people do that. I had a little problem back when I started with the site accepting money but not sending the link. How I have it set up now is that I get an email whenever someone places an order on my store (I get 3 emails actually. One from my store, one from the customer and one from Paypal). Once I check the email and verify payment I send the customer a link to the PDF file. I also attatch the file to the email. I usually take the opprotunity to thank the customer for their order and to maybe ask them some questions.

Getting back to what I was saying before though. You should definetly sell on your own site. Even if you also sell at RPGNOW or elsewhere. You want to be directing people to your site constantly. Directing them to RPGNOW, even if it gets you a sale, is far less preferable then getting a sale on your own site. PDF sales are pure profit.. Theres no good reason to give up 35% by directing customers to RPGNOW when you can direect them to  your own site and  keep 100% of that money.

So why use RPGNOW and other sites at all? Exposure and trust. There are plenty of people who will never hear of your game otherwise who might stumble on it at RPGNOW. There are also people who would just rather buy through a retailer they trust then your site. You should also spread your pdf around as much as possible. The Panty Explosion PDF is currently available on RPGNOW, Drivethru, e23, Key20, Lulu, Arima and a few other sites. The more the better.

Currently PDF sales from my own site account for about 60% of my total PDF sales. The sites listed above cover the other 40%. And it's not like Panty Explosion does poorly on those other sites either. But when someone asks where they can but my game I always tell the first that it is available at my site.                                                 



Jake

[Nathan]

Echoing the awesome words of Jake there...

Potential customers are more likely to buy if the process is easy. So, if someone goes to your product page and decides to buy your game, the easier you make it, the more likely they will buy. If they have to click on a link, which then takes them to another page (RPGNow), where then they have to fill out information, sign up, and buy the product -- you might lose them. So accepting Paypal actually makes it a little easier to buy, it's one less step.

And with that said, I need to resetup Paypal links on some of my site today.

[F. Scott Banks]

Thanks guys...god I love the Forge.  So far, I've only got one product that converts to PDF/Printed Book format, so I'll try setting it up on my own website first, and using RPGNow and, of course, the bookshelf here.

[Mcrow]

I will be going with four options.

#1-Your Games Now, if they'll have me, if not I'll look elsewhere. (rpgnow, bookshelf ect..)
#2- I will sell the PDF through www.payloadz.com (and lulu)
#3- POD, print books through Lulu.
#-4- Print books through my own site just using a paypal button

Another thing I was looking @ is a yahoo store. If cost $40/month though, so in the begining it looks to spendy. It does however allow you to sell print and pdf much like RPGnow does.

[Adam SBG]

We just started using Paylaodz and it's worked out really well for us. It's easy to set up, and it also integrates with our current PayPal cart setup, so now people can come to our site and buy the printed version of Zombie Rally and the PDF version of MetalKrushers and only have to make one transaction. Before, if people wanted both they'd have to buy the printed version of Zombie Rally on our site and then the PDF version of MetalKrushers over at RPGnow or e23.

Plus, if you aren't super popular yet (like us) and only make less than $100 in online digital sales on their service per month, it's free! And they're a PayPal Featured Provider, so they don't seem fly by night. I highly recommend them.