The competition has entered my turf!

[rpghost]

Some people say there is only so much money out there in the RPG market, and any money that one company receives is taken away from another -- especially in a niche genre like aniime.

I forget who originally coined this... I think it was Morrus at EN World and it made logical sense enough for me not to put up with it. Not to take it laying down. Not to let it be the case. So I've made efforts through ads, membership promotions, CD Demos, conventions, and other marketing to increase our the gross revenue of RPGNow. Which is after all the limiting factor in the eyes of the people making these statements.

Here are two growth charts for the last 12 months from RPGNow.





I plan to hand out 1000 demo CD's at GenCon. We're on a 10,000 circulation demo that Twin Rose did. Also, 90% of all the vendors I spoke to at Origins intend to do something with RPGNow.com in the near future.

James

[Michael Hopcroft]

I'd agree that's an excellent idea. FUDGE is already free on the net, so you can create a HeartQuest Lite handout that points to FUDGE for more detail, whetting appetites and providing more detail in a freebie than one normally can.

HeartQuest Lite has been on RPGnow.com for three weeks and been the subject of almost 100 downloads. That has not, however, led to people coming to me in droves to pick up copies of the ful games, although at one point I had someone asking me on a tri-Stat mailing list why I wasn't usign BESM.

I don't know whether HQLite is a success or a failure yet. All depnends on whether it serves as effective advertising. So far, since I haven;t seen any sort of upswing in sales, I'm inclined towards the latter. I have a feeling my entire business has been smothered by GOO's entry into the e-book market. Ever since they signed on I've gotten barely a nibble from customers. I made just enoough that I'll get a check next month.

I hope things pick up in August....

[rpghost]

You have to also keep in mind that you probably sold to most of our customers that are interested already. So GOO sending NEW anime customers are way can only help.

Also, too many publishers just rely un us (RPGNow) to promote for them and get them sales... it doesn't always work that way, esp for older products. You need to hit up the USENET news groups, other anime forums, etc etc... get people hyped about your product THEN tell them to go to us to buy.

In a nut shell, a publisher still has to advertise even if they are in a mall full of shoppers.

James

[Hardpoint]

The freebie PDF route is how I plan to introduce players to Realms of Wonder. I will be making a PDF of a lite version of the rules along with several adventures that use those rules for play. Characters will be pregenerated (I'm saving character gen for the full version of the rules) and simplified for play using my JumpStart Edition of the game. This model for getting people interested stems right from the video game industry in the form of Free Demos.

Hey, the freebie version of TROS got me interested in its play style. Gamers are creatures of habit, one of those habits being collection. However, some are also cheap, as typically only the older gamers can afford to buy games willy nilly. But older gamers tend to have less time to play, life getting in the way and all. So in either case, FREE is attractive, as both type of gamers, those with little money and those with little time, can get a taste of your game without a huge expenditure of time and money. Once you've got them hooked, they will buy your game.