RPGMall.com Indie/POD Sales?

[rpghost]

Hey Guys, not sure who to bounce this off of, but I just got the
domain "RPGMALL.COM" - mainly to keep competitors off of it. But I
was brianstorming for some uses for it... On that came up was what if
we created a store that was for direct shipping of products from
small/indie publishers alone with POD prodocts. Sort of like a
Wizard's Attic I guess... Maybe it pays 50%-60% of retail to the
publishers instead of the standard channels giving you 40-45%.

It might piss some people off in the standard. Then again, maybe people
don't care about the flood of indie/d20 small publishers out there?

Or maybe a POD only mall? Something that focuses more on giving exposure to the little guy?

Thoughts? Suggestions?

James
http://www.rpgshop.com
http://www.rpgnow.com

[Valamir]

I'd definitely be interested in the possibility of moving some product through a channel like that.  

I'm assuming your talking about holding an inventory and handling the fulfillment, or just as a more exposed order taker?

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

I was thinking that a lot of Forge people needed something like this that had nothing to do with stores at all - just servicing direct-order alone.

The whole 40/60/MSRP concept would have to be thrown out the window, though. The cut to the warehouser would be much smaller, as he's not acting as a distributor in any imaginable way.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

Two seperate concepts that I think would probably work VERY well together.

First, most indie publishers who sell direct handle they're own fulfillment.  I'd be willing to pay some amount (not 40-50% by any means) to someone who'd take the orders and fill them for me so I don't have to treck down to the post office twice a week.  Having several indie published works available in the same place would have some synergies to it as I think Clinton's Bookshelf has had for PDF games.

Second, however, I think there is room for an alternative way for retailers to get indie product on their shelves that doesn't involve the big distributors who have their own standards of profitable lines, nor working individually with each individual indie publisher.  A place where Joe Bob's Games and RC can go, check out the latest indie offerings and order a copy or two of half a dozen different games to add to his "indie shelf".  Something simple that passes on an appropriate retailer discount.

Both of these I think can be handled by the same basic website, with two seperate order portals...for direct orders and retailer orders.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Ralph,

That is a tremendously bad-ass idea. How I'd do it:

- POD is set up much like on RPGnow. The publisher pays and orders X number of books for his account, and is notified when the stack gets below Y.
- Direct-buyers can come to the site and buy the books, with the publisher getting (let's just make up numbers for an example) 70% of the cover price and RPGmall.com getting 30%.
- Retailers can get a retailer account on RPGmall.com, and pay 60% of the cover price, as they normally would. In this case, RPGmall still gets 30% and the publisher gets 30% (i.e. the actual profit is split 50/50) and the publisher gets more promotion by the game being in stores. (Plus, retailer sales should be a bit higher than direct sales, hopefully.)

I chose the numbers above solely because they let RPGmall take the same cut for every book, retailers pay what they expect, and the publisher doesn't get completely screwed on retailer sales.

[Valamir]

Don't full distributor normally get to pay 40% of the cover, then sell to the retailer for 60% of the cover...leaving them with 20%?  If so then a fulfillment house should get notably less than than 20% not more...or do I have my numbers wrong.

Also, there'd need to be non POD arrangements for publishers who choose to print elsewhere and just have RPGmall handle some inventory.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

Ralph,

There's lots of bugs to be worked out to be sure - like the non-POD thing, which could probably be handled merely by letting people ship their books to RPGmall.com - but one thing to point out is that if the creator gets more money than normal through retailer sales (which I see as the big strength of a site like this - retailers don't have another good way currently to get indie games) and the distributor also gets more money than normal, then everybody wins.

I ran a fairly successful used-textbook store out of my dorm room in college this way. I noticed the bookstores were buying books for about 50% of cover and selling them for about 75%. I bought for 60% and sold for 70% - I got 10% of sales I wouldn't have gotten otherwise, the sellers got more money, and the buyers spent less.

[rpghost]

Well the concept of a POD / Indie only Mall would help get everyone exposure, I'm not sure if we'd be able to handle mutltiple tier pricing (thus acting as a distributor)...

After some more though, I think that we could go down on our percentage we charge based on wether you will work with us on consignment or wether you'd ship yourself. Direct shipping though can add up if someone orders 3 items and everyone has to ship it out- we wouldn't reimburse you for shipping.

So, I'm leaning toward a site that would warehouse (not buy) products for free for any indie publisher that wants to have their stuff listed. We'd then pay something like 70% of retail after the sales are made. But we couldn't offer an affiliate program for this site at such low margins.

James
P.S. Wizard's Attic is going to be no longer very soon. So all those people who used to get sales from them will loose them.

[Valamir]

But we couldn't offer an affiliate program for this site at such low margins.

for the uninitiated...affiliate program?

James
P.S. Wizard's Attic is going to be no longer very soon. So all those people who used to get sales from them will loose them.

??details??

[rpghost]

There's lots of bugs to be worked out to be sure - like the non-POD thing, which could probably be handled merely by letting people ship their books to RPGmall.com - but one thing to point out is that if the creator gets more money than normal through retailer sales (which I see as the big strength of a site like this - retailers don't have another good way currently to get indie games) and the distributor also gets more money than normal, then everybody wins.

Humm.... might takes some extra coding to handle 2 pricing teirs and in fact two payout rates... it could be done if there is a need which you people seem to think there is. I'm open to the idea.

Still, a lot of work, account, headaches for a rather low volume of sales in general. Which I suppose is why Alliance and others don't bother. So does it make sense for US to get into this business? Does it make sense to do it on a seperate domain?

James

[rpghost]

But we couldn't offer an affiliate program for this site at such low margins.

for the uninitiated...affiliate program?

We have affiliate programs with RPGShop that allow other websites to market for us and sell products through links to us. We then pay them a pecentage of the sale for reffering these orders/customers to us. In other words, a site like En World ( ENWorld.RPGShop.com ) is making money off all their users buying through us.

P.S. Wizard's Attic is going to be no longer very soon. So all those people who used to get sales from them will loose them.

??details??

I don't know all the nitty gritty, but they owe a lot of people a lot of money and they are getting out of the end consumer fullfillment business completly. There was a thread on RPG.NET about them dumping a lot of publishers and Impressions.net picking some of them up. But in short, they are going downhill fast. They also own mall.RPG.NET which hasn't paid it's PDF publishers in many many months.

[Clinton R. Nixon]

James,

The two pricing tiers - well, that's just an extra setting on an account to denote they're a retailer. Not much there.

As for whether it'll make money for you - I don't know. I seem to think it would: I know retailers that would love to have independent games in their store, and do carry independent comics, because they have services like this.

Alliance operates on a different scale than this would, to be sure, but if staying at a smaller scale and making a decent - if smaller than Alliance - profit is good by you, then it sounds like you've got the resources, code, and domain to do it with.

[Paul Czege]

That is a tremendously bad-ass idea.

I agree. It's a fantastic idea. Sales stats on the site, maybe even in graph form, could help retailers determine which products are consistent sellers and which are spike and decline sellers.

And the issue of game retailers being resistant to the POS inventory tracking systems goes away too, since the site would force retailers who don't track their inventory to acknowledge products that other retailers deem worthy of consistent re-order.

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Wizard's Attic's situation is probably best left to Eric to discuss here, if he wants. There's a lot of rampant speculation going on that borders and frankly often exceeds decency, and I'd like to keep that from happening here.

James, what Clinton, Ralph, and I are talking about is essentially a very small-press fulfilment service.

Here's one example. A guy has 100 copies each of Universalis, Dust Devils, Trollbabe, Donjon, and whatnot, stored in his vault (games chosen due to physical nature, not implying any of the publishers really wants it done this way). Orders are placed to the publishers' websites, and they notify the guy. He sends the book to the customer.

In my example, anyway, I'm imagining that the guy is not actually paid by the customer at all, in any way. He collects a flat fee from each publisher. Commissions probably wouldn't be appropriate as he does not promote the games.

There are lots of possible permutations or versions of the basic idea; again, the above is only one of them. What I'm not seeing in my example is any need for an extra website, though.

Can you explain any reason to be more sophisticated than this?

Best,
Ron

[Tundra]

P.S. Wizard's Attic is going to be no longer very soon. So all those people who used to get sales from them will loose them.

??details??

Attic fulfillment will be gone at the end of the month.  I hear they will keep the newly established Store, though.  While I can't give any specifics until Attic makes their own press release, it relates to the exponential increase in costs as demand increases, and reinforces to me that the only way to do business in that particular niche is to do what I've done: be very very picky. ;-)

ttfn - woody