RPGMall opening soon!

[rpghost]

We are pleased to announce the soon to open to the public RPGMall.com site. This new site specializes in Indie/Small Press printed works and merchandising.  Our goal is to increase the awareness of products not normally found in the standard distribution channels, but to also give publishers venue to sell direct to customers.  http://www.rpgmall.com

The site will concentrate on POD work, offering a POD service as well as sales, but any printed products are welcome--not just PODs printed through us.  The purpose of the site is act as a direct side-channel to directly reach gamers and retailers, for publishers of smaller niche products who find current distribution not adequate to their needs.  Think of it as a print version of RPGNow, with the added option of wholesale.

As such, RPGNow.com will discontinue selling POD products. These products have been moved to the RPGMall site. The products will be cross linked between the sites and RPGMall does have the ability to send a PDF along with the sale of a book.

This new site will be promoted heavily to retail stores in addition to gamers and have convention presence.  In fact we have hired staff to do just that. We will be providing gaming stores with special accounts so that they can purchase your products at wholesale for their shelves. The publishers will be able to set your own retail and wholesale prices and will have access to a comprehensive administration and reporting system.

The site will also be offering merchandise sales (shirts, bumper stickers, backpacks, mugs, etc), and, perhaps of interest to some publishers regardless of their distribution. RPGMall will also have an option to sell overstocks and damaged/distressed merchandise at liquidation and therefore we're entertaining offers to purchase.

More information and contracts can be found here:
http://www.rpgmall.com/info.php
http://www.rpgmall.com/sales.php

Click around the site for more info and feel free to contact custserv@rpgmall.com

[Matt Snyder]

First off, let me say that I think this is a great idea, and I hope it works well. I have a couple questions, though:

How do you define Indie? Which is to say, how do you define whom can participate on the site? I presume you don't define the term, and just let anyone participate, correct? The theory being that "non-Indie" publishers won't be wasting their time and/or investment on this site.

What I'm getting at is this: Suppose, say, Atlas decides to take advantage of this POD opportunity to offer, I dunno, Ars Magica books. Or, maybe WotC actually bothers to offer POD versions of old D&D stuff. How will the site react to that? Argualbly, their presence could be detrimental to the sales of smaller-press products if for no other reasont than they have so much "new product" that it pushes visibility of small press product off the home page, thereby losing eyeballs for that smaller press.

Of course, this can happen anyway ... or not. I'm just asking what the policy is.

Also, what are the "minimum requirements" of a POD book? My own game Dust Devils is fairly short in terms of page count, so I'd like to know what would be required to have "enough" to go to print. Are 64 pp and 128 pp books the only sizes available?

Finally, what is your policy on publishers offering direct sales from their own websites? I assume this will be handled just like RPGnow, yes?

Thanks!
Matt

[rpghost]

We don't define the Indie/Small press label... mainly cause everyone is invited if they want to. Some larger publishers are sure to jump on to some merchandising if nothing else. Some have even considered just using us for direct sales.

The point is though, that the majority of the publishers on this site will be Indie/Small press and thus you'll get a lot more exposure then if we tossed you in with the 10,000 products on RPGShop.com

As for POD we have a minium order size of 10 units, but I don't think there is any minium page count. I mean, you'd want to do sattle stitch not perfect bound if your book is real small. Might also want to consider heavier paper stock too.

As for direct sales from your own website. You're welcome to do so but we won't link to your main site then. Just like RPGNow does. We have to invest a lot of money promoting this site and that is to generate sales we can be a part of.

For the next week or so, our main goal is to just get new products listed. After that we'll start public announcements. Even a great give-away specail that should drive a lot of sales early on.

James

[Valamir]

Hey James I'm really liking this idea.  I'm gonna throw a bunch of questions at you that I didn't see answers to from the above links.  Hopefully it won't be too overwhelming.

Just took a look at your contract, seems pretty straight forward and open.  
Regarding item 3.
Net Sales is defined as Gross Sales Net of Sales Tax.  What about shipping and handling.  Do you provide that as part of your 40% or is that an additional charge to the publisher?
Regarding Sales Tax, do I understand then that you pay the sales tax to the repective state and if so what documentation to that effect do you provide?


Regarding item 12.
Am I reading correctly that MDC has no liability for stolen items?
I notice that MDC commits to taking reasonable measure to ensure that theft does not occur from the server (surprisingly there is no similiar language regarding warehouse theft), who decides what is reasonable in that regard?
Does MDC have liability to cover the losses if reasonable measures were not taken?  I didn't see any mediation/arbitration language, so does this mean that the courts are the only recourse if a publisher believes MDC was negligent in this area?
Just to be clear if an MDC employee, or Joe-off-the-street walks off with a publisher's inventory...who's out the cost.  If the inventory was POD through you, will you replace the inventory with another POD run free or discounted.
Also, I didn't see any language about fire or flood damage.  Are the inventories insured?  Again, who is out the cost for losses.  Is the publisher footing 100% of the risk.

What do you have planned as far as promotion to retailers that you mention?
Aside from advertising the venue of RPGMall itself, will you be promoting specific product to them?
Also with regards to your convention presence...obviously you can't take inventory from every product you offer (at least not after the products expand tremendously).  What is you policy regarding which publishers get represented by your booth at conventions?
Is there a minimum level of sales that you expect before you drop a product to open up warehouse space?
How much text / image space do you plan on allowing for product description?

Finally, with regards to your policy on direct sales, I understand completely the desire to not link to a website where direct sales are offered.  Would you be willing to link to a mirror site which does not offer direct sales (so you aren't losing browsers from RPGMall to a direct sale button) if there is also a seperate site (not linked to from RPGMall) that does offer sales direct.
Also, do you have a policy regarding pricing between RPGMall and a direct site (meaning a publisher charging a higher price on RPGMall and a lower price direct).

Thanks in advance.  I'm pretty excited about this possibility.

[rpghost]

> What about shipping and handling.

You pay it. You get your product to us. You take it away when done. I'll add that to the contact. Customers get charged shipping at checkout obviously.


> Regarding Sales Tax,

We only pay tax required by us which is Wisconsin sales. Customers are responsible for taxes in thier own states until the Interenet safe harbor laws go away.

> MDC has no liability for stolen items

Correct. We are a small company and only 2 or 3 emplyees so it won't be a problem. The warehouse is insured in case of something... but you never know. We have a good reputation in the industry, so don't worry we're not out to screw you.

I'll update the contract to include warehouse as well as server. It was an oversite as I was working from a modified RPGNow contract.

> mediation/arbitration language

No there isn't any... not that I'm totally against it... the GPA might be one answer.

> if an MDC employee walks off with a publisher's inventory

Yeah, that would fall under reasonable prevention though. It's not reasonable to assume we can't keep track of our employee theift. So we'd be responsible for that.

>  fire or flood damage. Are the inventories insured?

Good point, I'll add that. Yes we have a business policy covering the warehouse inventory. If it helps, we share the same warehouse with RPGShop.com which we own all the inventory so we want to cover it.

>  planned as far as promotion to retailers that you mention?

We have a staff person who is going to be doing just that. We have a lot of connections and the power of the RPGHost network. We also plan to attend some conventions.

> will you be promoting specific product to them?

No. We're not an agent of yours. But I suppose something could be worked out if you desire that. In such a case we'd be playing more of the role of a fulfillment house for you then. eg. More %

> policy regarding which publishers get represented by your booth at conventions?

At the moment that's not a problem. So we don't have a policy. Eventually we'll have to do something here and it might give some special favor to people who help out a the booth, but overall we try to be fair.

> Is there a minimum level of sales

Again, currently not going to be an issue. The future will dictate the policy. But I'd assume if you haven't sold something for a year and we're tight on space, you might get a call.

>How much text / image space do you plan on allowing for product description?

Currently that's unlimited, though images other then the thumbnail and files other then an attached ZIP/PDF for the sale, are stored on your own servers. This is all in the admin interface and you can easily change your own product info.

> Would you be willing to link to a mirror site which does not offer direct sales

Provided there is no place they can buy except us, yes. That's fine.

> do you have a policy regarding pricing between RPGMall and a direct site

Pricing (both retail and wholesale and your own site) is completly up to you.


James
http://www.rpgmall.com

[Valamir]

This sounds pretty good James.  Doing a back of envelope calculation of my costs, I'd have to do roughly 18-27 copies a month through RPGMall to make the same as 10-15 copies a month direct, but I've been looking for a way to expand to a broader venue, so this may just be the ticket.  If not the absolute best possible way of doing it, its at least a very good way that requires very little additional effort from me, which given my day schedule is a Good Thing.

I'll look it over in some more detail hopefully this weekend.  When do you plan on being open for business?

One last question.  Do you require an ISBN or barcode?

[rpghost]

We're technically open now, but I don't plan to make any public annoucements till we get some more indie products online. Maybe next weekend.

No, we don't require ISBNs.

James

[Michael Hopcroft]

Will we be uploading our POD files to a different server than before? Will it be a different server from the PDf files that we will be selling on RPGNow?

And obviously the next question -- how much notice do you want before we try to upload files to you for sale or printing under the new arrangement?

[rpghost]

They are actaully on different servers. But the new RPGMall software allows you to upload a product attachement (PDF or ZIP) up to 8mb in size as well as the thumbnail, all right from the interface.

But for larger files like the ones needed to make POD you still upload to the old RPGNow server just to keep things simple.

We're ready to rumble, no need to wait on me for anything!

James

[rpghost]

RPGMall plays four major roles in the sales channel:

1) Fulfillment service.
2) Exposure to a broader market of potential customers.
3) A central place to send retailers to order from.
4) POD & Merchandising services linked directly to fulfillment.

As an independent you are probably making your sales only to the people you have personal or Internet contact with. That share of the pie is extremely small. Chances are we are selling to a mostly different customer base and retailers then you are. Not to mention the fact that customers tend to buy more then one item when shopping at our malls. An average order is 3-5 products from 2 or more vendors at RPGShop.com for example.

RPGMall will give you greater exposure. Your product will not just get lost in the mix of hundred or thousands of other products. First of all we don't sell that many products and second of all there are a lot of features as a publisher you can use in our online sales software. The current system supports promotion of your product in several ways. First the top half of the front page is a rotating message of the day spotlight for a single product. Each publisher gets to add themselves to this list to promote 1 item at a time from our catalog. Second, there is a rotating button link in the upper right that can promote at random on every page of the site an additional item or your publisher's section on the site. Third, when customers are looking at one product, they'll see a list of things that other people who also liked that product have bought. Thus, similar interest items get some additional exposure.

We will be buying a few ads in print magazines geared toward customers as well as one for retailers. Top selling products may even be highlighted in our print ads. We'll also be promoting to the 10,000 active customers of RPGShop.com with a nice banner on that site. Our RPGHost Network which reaches 250,000 unique users a month is also constantly rotating banners for the store. Additionally we pay for click through on most major search engines (covering 75% of the Internet) - if you have a special keyword phrase you'd like us to promote, let us know.

RPGMall representatives will be at many conventions including the industry GAMA trade show. We also plan to have tables to promote and sell your products to the public and several of these conventions and you're invited to join us.

As an independent you might be having a hard time finding retailers willing to buy a random Indie game from you, an unknown. We are a more established company and will be working with many retailers. Retailers do not want to pay for multiple shipping charges and deal with multiple bills or have to contact multiple from all these individual publishers. Consolidation is the whole point of a distributor and we play that role for you. Worse, do you want to deal with collection of those bills or say "sorry we can't take credit cards"?

Our competitivly priced one-stop-shopping POD & merchandising service also makes it simple for you to get your next product on the shelves with a very low upfront cost point. Merchandising helps you look more professional and gives you a little added income on products that actually promote your books. When your stock runs low you'll receive a notice so you can print more for your just-in-time inventory!

I hope that helps you understand our site and goals a bit more. Please feel free to ask questions!

James

[Valamir]

Thanks for the reply James.

The current system supports promotion of your product in several ways. First the top half of the front page is a rotating message of the day spotlight for a single product. Each publisher gets to add themselves to this list to promote 1 item at a time from our catalog. Second, there is a rotating button link in the upper right that can promote at random on every page of the site an additional item or your publisher's section on the site. Third, when customers are looking at one product, they'll see a list of things that other people who also liked that product have bought. Thus, similar interest items get some additional exposure.

Could you clarify a little more how these are going to work?

For example currently the rotating top banner displays Active Exploits, Musical Mistresses, Whispers of Death, and the Iraqi Most Wanted card deck.  How were these names selected to be the rotating features?  How many rotating features will be in the queue at one time?  How are the games that are in the queue at any given time selected?  How frequently can a game be featured in the queue?  Also I clicked refresh about 2 dozen times and came up with multiple hits on each of the above, and then one lonely hit on on Blood and Space.  Was that just a statistical oddity or are there different tiers of frequency for the rotation?

I guess a similiar question would apply for the button.  

Are products eligible for the queues only for a limited time?  Would a 2 year old product whose sales have slown to a trickle be eligible for queue time to try and boost the results for it?  If so, any idea how that will be handled?  

If the rotating queues prove to be a solid boost to sales, everyone's going to want in them.  Is there a chance you'll begin charging for the privilege of being featured?

On a slightly different note, I notice that currently there are a bunch of different Lunch Money t-shirts each listed seperately by size a pic.  Not that Lunch Money t-shirts aren't cool and all (I might just have to pick one up to wear at GenCon) but when the site is up and running do you plan on listing multiple different examples of essentially the same product multiple times?  It uses up quite a bit of real estate on the page...are those just placeholders while the content is light, or is that how merchandise like that will be handled going forward?  

Personal oppinion but I'd hate to see anyone's labor of love indie game lost in a sea of 14 different styles of mouse pads or such.

[rpghost]

I can answer your questions rather quickly and simply (good cause my baby needs a change)...

Every publisher that works directly with us (has an account) can add 1 product at a time to the "queue" to be displayed. They are completly choosen at random. Same goes for the button in the upper right.

As for the T-shirts... any mutiples of any item are usually back-dated to not appear on the front page. I might have gotten sloppy in my rush to get a lot of product added. So, no you won't get flooded by merchandise.

James
P.S. Most of this is functionality on RPGNow that only the Gold Vendors participate in. I have basically made all publishers of RPGMall Gold Vendors by default.

[rpghost]

Oh, I also forgot to mention that we'll be running a special (soon) with RPGObjects and giving away a FREE Darwin's World rule book with EVERY order placed on the site!

So get your products listed soon!

James

[Valamir]

Every publisher that works directly with us (has an account) can add 1 product at a time to the "queue" to be displayed. They are completly choosen at random. Same goes for the button in the upper right.

So if you work with 20 publishers, there will be 20 items in the queue.  That's cool.  Should work fine until you sign on a ton of publishers anyway.

Thanks.

[Andrea Gualano]

Will RPGmall items be also listed on RPGshop?

Will a customer be able to order products from both RPGmall and RPGshop catalogs and receive them together?
I'm specially concerned about overseas shipping cost.