How do you promote?

[jrients]

Howdy folks!  I'm a newbie here at the Forge, so please try to go easy on me. [cower, cower]  The Resource Library at the Forge has led me to a lot of great games available as free electronic something-or-others.  I'd like to ask some questions of all the swell folks who put these gems together:

Do you promote your game beyond posting it to the web?  If so, how?

Do you demo your games at your friendly local game store?

Do you demo them at cons?  How far afield do you go to demo your game?

Do you carry paper copies to hand out to anyone who shows the least bit of interest?  Do you proselytize on the street?

Do you send out press releases to sites like RPG.net? (I only mention RPG.net by name, because its about the only other game portal-thingy I regularly visit.)

Do you participate in a banner exchange of some sort?

Do you email review copies to reviewers at other sites?

Do you let non-gamers know about the game (e.g. tell Hiking.Com about your nifty new game Hiker: the Rambling)?

Are there any other good avenues of promotion that I am missing?

I don't have a game (yet?) so at this point my interest is idle curiousity.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Uh, poll-ish format I guess? I'll just answer the ones that don't have "no" as the answer

Do you demo them at cons? How far afield do you go to demo your game?
I do, but not as demo, per se. More like, check out this game I wrote...and oh, by the way there are lots more on my site and these other sites.

Do you email review copies to reviewers at other sites?
I do if they ask. But usually I'll only send reviews to someone who has done reviews of my games in the past (like "MetalMan" from RPG.net).

Do you let non-gamers know about the game (e.g. tell Hiking.Com about your nifty new game Hiker: the Rambling)?
Matt Gwinn had some success with this method (I believe) on wrestling sites. I have sent links to Schism to various Cronenberg fan/info sites and I believe one of them has me as a link (although the guy is at a loss as to what I do).

- J

[Ron Edwards]

Hi J,

Here are some previous Forge threads from the Publishing forum that might be useful to you.

The joys of publicizing your game
Help getting your game out there
Web promotion
Getting out the reviews
Promoting indie RPGs
Guerilla publishing
Web publishing model

Also, and I know this is kind of a tall order, I recommend browsing every damn thread in the Publishing forum. A lot of those discussions include promotional advice and details that aren't apparent from the thread titles. It's a lot of reading, but there's a lot of experience to draw on, with some variety of opinion included, as well as good links to other places.

Best,
Ron