Malcolm (eyebeams), as a freelancer for White Wolf (he can correct me if that's an incorrect way to refer to him in this context), made and interesting comment on another thread...

Vampire's sales never really declined past what's expected for the general annual shrinking of the industry, but it became more and more difficult to write revelant Vampire material. This is not just a metaplot problem. It also had to do with the setting. I once sent a proposal for Mage book that had to do with a secondary element of the setting. It was refused because it was too obscure. When I mentioned a similar book for Vampire the developer noted that Vampire was at the stage where it *had* to mine that secondary material. When a game's come to that, it's time to pull the tirgger, or else you end up with bloodline books and similar cruft.

xiombarg wrote: To me, this is a shining example of what's wrong with the "supplement treadmill" that the distribution system imposes on the market. The need to produce monthly supplements is so high that one can "mine out" a popular game and be forced to "pull the trigger" on it. Contrast this to games sold mainly through direct sales, which rarely have this problem, even if they are reasonably popular...

Hello,

I think the issue of "must take care of employees" is a red herring. No one has a responsibility to carry employees; they are fireable.

The real issue, in my view, is a matter of who is the customer.

If the distributor + retailer network is the customer, then the publisher is in the unpleasant position of "proving" his or her worth to the customer by putting out new product. That's because retailers generally are very poor at assessing what games actually sell to customers in their stores, and must rely on gut, rumor, and the appearance of new product in order to decide what to order next time.

If, on the other hand, the person who is enjoying reading and playing the game is the customer, then the publisher views the distributor + retailer network.

Chris, you wrote,

Yeah, I still have bruises from when the distributor enforcers came to my office and imposed their way of thinking into my head!

Chris,

First, disclosure: I AM one of those goons selling PDF and (sorta) Print on Demand products. I have made a very meager profit. I also have a full-time, salaried job, benefits, mortgage, yadda yadda. So, no overhead for my "company," and I view it mainly as a hobby. But, I'm not losing money on said hobby, either.

Second, my response: My "hobby" status aside, I do work for a large media company. The business is advertising driven, primarily, though we do have direct sales and other large revenue generators. But, overall, we can see two themes in my day job: production of content and marketing. Every day -- especially lately -- I hear about "revenue." I'm a content guy, but I'm becoming a marketing guy every day, whether I like it or not. That's because I'm charged with figuring out ways to increase revenue. (I sure as heck would not want to entrust my company's viability on the content creators. We'd go broke overnight, we poor bastards.)

You're right to bring revenue up. It's what makes the company able to pay me, and all my co-workers. I suspect you're also right to say that companies can make the "supplement treadmill" work.

However, I view this as the exception to the rule. This assumes that content creation is, by and large, the way companies should make money. Create stuff 'til the wheels come off. Revenue or bust!

Now, I know who you are, and I know you're a pretty savvy guy. I therefore assume that you do NOT think that simply churning out product is the real way to generate revenue. It is merely one way. And, it's probably a very time-intensive, largely inefficient way.

Another CRUCIAL way to make money is marketing. Understanding your audience. Finding and reaching new audiences. You could do all of this, creating NEW revenue, with a handful of tidy, well-done game books and supplements. It appears as though too few companies make this happen. No one's using marketing to create any substantial portion of their revenue. No one's really doint anything at all except pushing books out the door and reaching the same, aging demographic of geeks.

It may not be the companys' fault. Maybe the market is too finite and small. I just don't that for certain either way.

However, I'm not seeing sophiticated marketing -- on par with serious publishers or media / content companies -- at any level, even WotC (who generally does the best job). What I am seeing is most (certainly not all) companies guided largely by content producers (i.e. writers, designers, geeks, etc.) who do what they know -- make stuff! Great fun for them and other geeks. And yet, they aren't making REVENUE grow by any reasonable business standard. It's a shame, and I argue a huge reason why our hobby/industry remains so tiny and troubled.

P.S. You said comparing hobby publishers to Vampire is pointless. I agree, pretty much. However, comparing Vampire to, oh, say, Random House is not exactly pointless. Too often, our industry is looking around and seeing themselves as big fish ... in a mud puddle. Where's the pond? Where's the ocean?

I think your points are particularly salient, Matt.

I had an argument with GMS back on the Gaming Outpost when he talked about how gamers "sucked", because the gaming market tended to favor things with a fantasy element over more "pure" content, i.e. Shadowrun vs. Cyberpunk 2020.

My response to this was: Stop writing for the old market, then. Build yourself a new one. Just because the current demographic doesn't like certain things, that doesn't mean that those people "suck", it means you need to get off your butt and try to appeal to a new market.

So, as you say, the other way to make money outside the treadmill is marketing. White Wolf's marketing department (for example) is well-known in our industry, but, as you imply, it's mainly good at selling product to it's current fan-base, tho it has expanded into other connected fan-bases with stuff like Exalted and the d20 stuff -- but even then, we're largely talking game geeks, not new gamers.

Building for a new market is, of course, hard, when we're used to the creative thing. But as the current niche is increasingly "mined out", the bigger game companies may have no other choice.

The question is: Where to start? This is why it's so hard. I mean, when I was shopping around a "intro to RPGs" text for Unsung, some people complained that I was showing it to gamers and not non-gamers. But I wasn't sure where to go to find receptive non-gamers. I don't want to go spamming other fora...

Ron Edwards wrote: Hello,

I think the issue of "must take care of employees" is a red herring. No one has a responsibility to carry employees; they are fireable.

Hello,

That would be the so-called "industry" Red Herring #2.

I consider the size-based distinction you're making to be irrelevant, Greg. My points about this can be found in these threads:
Game design: hobby or career?
Successful RPG line

As I see it, a business is a business if it has any expectation of making money, and continuing to do so - regardless of how many people are involved. A hobby is by definition a hobby when it is a money/time sink (or rather, if the payoff is measured in "fun").

My company, Adept Press, has one owner and member: myself. It is a profitable corporation. I consider it to be a successful business, in that it drains no money from me nor does it require outside funding of any kind. It is not a hobby (unlike my role-playing activities) and it is not my career (primary source of income). That doesn't fit into your framework of reference at all.

Mixing up these categories, and then pointing to bizarre variables like market-share or number of employees as some kind of metric of success, is characteristic for people who like to consider RPG publishing to be an "industry" (this term would provoke gales of laughter from anyone engaged in an actual industry).

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Hello,

That would be the so-called "industry" Red Herring #2.

As I see it, a business is a business if it has any expectation of making money, and continuing to do so - regardless of how many people are involved. A hobby is by definition a hobby when it is a money/time sink (or rather, if the payoff is measured in "fun").

My company, Adept Press, has one owner and member: myself. It is a profitable corporation. I consider it to be a successful business, in that it drains no money from me nor does it require outside funding of any kind. It is not a hobby (unlike my role-playing activities) and it is not my career (primary source of income). That doesn't fit into your framework of reference at all.

(this term would provoke gales of laughter from anyone engaged in an actual industry).

Hi Greg,

Looks like we're agreeing. The next step would be to discuss whether (a) White Wolf has succeeded in its business model, and (b) it did so specifically by following the supplement-publishing strategy.

Most folks I know would blindly call out "Yes" to (a). I am skeptical. I'd be very interested to know, for instance, how much start-up funding the company began with, and whether that has ever been matched and paid off. I'd also be very interested to know whether outside investors are currently involved, and what their actual ROI is. Since none of this information is probably going to be made public any time soon, I'll just remain skeptical.

Most folks I know would also cry out "Yes" to (b). And here I'll be very blunt: I consider White Wolf to have survived as a company, long-term, on the strength of one thing - release of new games. Its original plan to publish four games and then back each one up with astounding numbers of supplements was a financial disaster (and a solid parallel with what happened to The Chaosium at the same time).

Best,
Ron

On this we can agree, though I might apply it to print publishing in general, which is really a ghetto for the vast majority of producers. Still, it's possible to run an RPG company as a sustainable, profitable small business ($500,000 to $5,000,000 in revenues). Like the pizzeria or laundromat owner, though, you'll probably need the occasional employee.

Hey Ron,

As for (a), of course I don't know what their initial capitalization was or what ROI their investors have enjoyed (or suffered, as the case may be). In addition to the obvious factors (annual revenues, etc.), this depends on how the business was managed: Was the goal to maximize growth or investor dividends? Or something else?

Having said that, I feel pretty confident that WW has been very profitable over the last 15 years. What was done with those profits, I have no idea.

Our sad little secret is that gross margins in this "industry" are actually very good: 60%+ ought to be sustainable by any publisher that has designs on being a "business" by my definition. The secret is sad because most RPG companies can't sell enough books for the nice margins to make a damn bit of difference in the not-so-grand scheme of things. 60% of bupkis is still bupkis. WW does not fall into this category, however.

As for (b), I think it's taken both core books and smaller, monthly supplements to keep WW running mostly smoothly most of the time over the last 15 years.

That said, it's instructive that WW has moved away from the traditional supplement model with its newer games (Exalted, with its multiple core books model, for example). No one who's paying attention *likes* the supplement treadmill: Yippee, we get to publish a series of products whose sales are guaranteed to consistently decline over the life of the product line! Most every well-managed company publishing RPGs (including WotC and WW) is looking for more efficient ways to get the consistent, reliable cash flow that the supplement treadmill generates.

However, unless you can constantly open new markets, this requires some kind of repurchase model: You have to sell more stuff to the same people, over and over again. Computer game publishers do this by constantly developing (or acquiring) and selling new games. Roleplayers have this nasty habit, however, of playing the same damned game for years, so that model hasn't worked as well for RPG companies. IMO, the "business" of RPGs would have been much, much better off if the notion of "campaigns" had been left to the wargamers (some of whom play the same damned game *session* for years!). If we played RPGs like we play computer games, producers would sell a lot more games a lot more profitably.

Hey Ralph,

See my comments on gross margins in the previous post. The range of revenues I listed was just a way of categorizing "small business" for the practical purposes of the RPG "industry" (damn I'm using a lot of quotes). You're right, but as I note, gross margins on RPG products are actually very good. It's a little bitty market niche, though, so volume is a typically a real problem.

Ron Edwards wrote: I think the issue of "must take care of employees" is a red herring. No one has a responsibility to carry employees; they are fireable.

The real issue, in my view, is a matter of who is the customer.

I know you wrote this humorously, but it also demonstrates the self-blinding distraction I see all the time among people in the so-called "industry."

Effectively, the distributors have (at certain points) exerted exactly this kind of control over publishers, for example, when they pushed for and received full voting membership status in GAMA.

Matt Snyder wrote:
First, disclosure: I AM one of those goons selling PDF and (sorta) Print on Demand products.

You're right to bring revenue up. It's what makes the company able to pay me, and all my co-workers. I suspect you're also right to say that companies can make the "supplement treadmill" work.

Now, I know who you are, and I know you're a pretty savvy guy. I therefore assume that you do NOT think that simply churning out product is the real way to generate revenue. It is merely one way. And, it's probably a very time-intensive, largely inefficient way.

Another CRUCIAL way to make money is marketing. Understanding your audience. Finding and reaching new audiences. You could do all of this, creating NEW revenue, with a handful of tidy, well-done game books and supplements. It appears as though too few companies make this happen. No one's using marketing to create any substantial portion of their revenue. No one's really doint anything at all except pushing books out the door and reaching the same, aging demographic of geeks.

However, I'm not seeing sophiticated marketing -- on par with serious publishers or media / content companies -- at any level, even WotC (who generally does the best job).

FFG Greg wrote: Hey Ralph,

See my comments on gross margins in the previous post. The range of revenues I listed was just a way of categorizing "small business" for the practical purposes of the RPG "industry" (damn I'm using a lot of quotes). You're right, but as I note, gross margins on RPG products are actually very good. It's a little bitty market niche, though, so volume is a typically a real problem.

Pramas wrote: The main trouble here is that most RPG companies are content to let D&D be the gateway product for all roleplayers. Well that, and marketing to new markets costs money most companies don't have. That said, you do see games from time to time that try to buck the trend. Our Blue Rose game is trying to bring readers of Romantic Fantasy fiction into roleplaying directly, for instance.


WotC spent a staggering sum of money marketing 3E, and they built on a very recognizable brand name, but even so they didn't break 1 million units of the Player's Handbook. The type of marketing you are talking about is simply beyond the means of most RPG companies.

Hey Ralph,

See my comments on gross margins in the previous post. The range of revenues I listed was just a way of categorizing "small business" for the practical purposes of the RPG "industry" (damn I'm using a lot of quotes). You're right, but as I note, gross margins on RPG products are actually very good. It's a little bitty market niche, though, so volume is a typically a real problem.

Hey Ralph,

See my comments on gross margins in the previous post. The range of revenues I listed was just a way of categorizing "small business" for the practical purposes of the RPG "industry" (damn I'm using a lot of quotes). You're right, but as I note, gross margins on RPG products are actually very good. It's a little bitty market niche, though, so volume is a typically a real problem.

Ralph-

If you're actually interested in doing some numbers on that (small VR companies), I can provide some come the close of the year~
My company, Neo Productions Unlimited, exists purely in VR. We have three core members from around the world (Myself in the States, Kyle in Canada and Mike in the Netherlands) as well as a pair junior members in Australia and Florida. With freelance and design work, we've worked with five individuals and two studios, as well as working out an arrangement with a small film studio for the production of some live commercials.
Neo's existed in some fashion or another for the past four years with this year being the biggest push from hobby to smallish-business. All of our contact up to this point has been online, though we may have a physical meeting at GenCon this summer (mostly out of "it would be cool if").
Our "flagship" title is the card game Final Twilight (See signiture), though we're also working on various pieces of software (Vortex, an RPGMaker style program for online RPGs and KABrowser for the Canadian school system).
This is the first year we've made an actual effort to do anything more than hobby work, so its going to be interesting come the close of the year.
As far as financing, we're looking at about $7,000 start-up (TCG's are NOT cheap) including artwork expenses, marketing, printing, and other incidental costs (mostly related to site maintance such as domains and hosting).

Good stuff Neo. Perhaps you'd like to start a thread here in publishing describing your virtual collaboration. Strengths, weaknesses...times you really wished you all could be physically together and how you worked around that. What sort of technology you used to facilitate the collaboration beyond email and phone calls (if any), that sort of thing. Would be pretty interesting IMO.

Also, how have you managed to do a CCG on a $7,000 budget? My understanding was that the card printing alone typically starts around $10,000. That would make for a good new thread as well.

I would note that there is one company that does very very well on the "supplement treadmill--" it has a few game lines which it produces mad amounts of supplements for, and seems to stay pretty solvent. That company is Palladium Books.

I'd love to see some comments as to how they pull this off, although I know that they are a rather secretive company and thus even less information is availible than one might expect.

What makes RIFTS different from Vampire, in a sales perspective?

yrs--
--Ben

Hello,

Chris (Pramas)*, your point about the actual status of distributors within GAMA isn't relevant to my point. As I see it, any inclusion of distributors in a "manufacturer's" business organization, on any basis except as potential customers, is letting the fox into the henhouse. Their actual number is irrelevant as well - the single vote and verbal input of a distributor is a powerful thing, especially in such a small and rumor-heavy community. The impact on the bookstores is historically observable, and I especially call attention to the changes in buy-back policies throughout the short history of the hobby.

Second, you referred to hubris. As I see it, any perception that my (or a typical Forge) outlook is all about "we're better, you suck" is a matter of projection. A game's quality is what it is, regardless of who wrote it or how it was produced - independently or not. I do think that independent publishing offers a better business model, and that the ideal of a career-fulfilling game company has gone bust hundreds of times. I also think that independent publishing (as defined here at the Forge) yields better games on the average. But neither of these points are anyone's concern but my own, and they certainly have nothing to with "you all suck." Again, any perception of such a thing is plain old low-self-esteem projection: "That guy must think I suck, how dare he."

Ben, if I'm suspicious of White Wolf's source of operating funds, then I'm doubly so for Palladium. I make no claims about either company, but I don't see any reason to assume, off the top, that their production costs are met from their sales-based profits.

Best,
Ron

* Too many Chris's! Oh well.

Ron Edwards wrote: Ben, if I'm suspicious of White Wolf's source of operating funds, then I'm doubly so for Palladium. I make no claims about either company, but I don't see any reason to assume, off the top, that their production costs are met from their sales-based profits.

xiombarg wrote:

Ron Edwards wrote: Ben, if I'm suspicious of White Wolf's source of operating funds, then I'm doubly so for Palladium. I make no claims about either company, but I don't see any reason to assume, off the top, that their production costs are met from their sales-based profits.

Especially when you consider that Palladium is, in essence, one man and his wife -- nearly all of Palladium's other "employees" are arguably freelancers. That isn't all that different from any other form of one-man outfit or family business.

Matt Wilson wrote: Is Palladium the sole source of income for this one man and his wife? I would think that if the writing is contracted out, there's not a lot for him to do.

In any case, he's gotten a massive amount of return on the same 40 or so pages of rules for the last 15-20 years.

Matt Wilson wrote: Is Palladium the sole source of income for this one man and his wife? I would think that if the writing is contracted out, there's not a lot for him to do.

Ron Edwards wrote:
Chris (Pramas)*, your point about the actual status of distributors within GAMA isn't relevant to my point.

As I see it, any inclusion of distributors in a "manufacturer's" business organization, on any basis except as potential customers, is letting the fox into the henhouse.

But neither of these points are anyone's concern but my own, and they certainly have nothing to with "you all suck." Again, any perception of such a thing is plain old low-self-esteem projection: "That guy must think I suck, how dare he."

Chris,

You've been sarcastic and patronizing on this thread. You are expected to cease instantly. I tell you this very seriously: the contemptuous smack-down behavior that's standard on industry websites and lists is absolutely not tolerated here.

1. "Falsehood?" You corrected my mistake, fairly. I accepted that then and do so now. This is an example of correct comportment on my part - accusing me of actually lying ("falsehood") is an example of poor comportment on yours.

2. The observed phenomenon I'm talking about (sudden drop in rate of publication of core books; boom in supplements) dates back, yes, to 15+ years ago. GAMA meant a lot more back then.

3. Regarding tones and intents, what you're doing is in fact projection. Furthermore, it's of no interest or use to take on the role of defender of others. No one has expressed contempt for you, yourself. Take care of yourself; leave "others" to do it for themselves if they want to.

You've participated here long enough to recognize that only one person's judgment reigns here, regarding comportment: mine. If you don't like it, there are ways to appeal, but otherwise, it might be time to decide whether you're contributing or gaining anything by posting here.

Best,
Ron

Pramas wrote: And surely I was imagining a self-congratulatory tone when Xiombarg said this:

Things are vastly different than from fifteen years ago too~
Forge = perfect example~
I'm not big in the "industry" background and maybe I'm stating the obvious, but there has to be some kind of corrilation here. If the Wholesalers got a seat on the GAMA board or whatever about fourteen years ago with the current by-laws (or even earlier?) and the trend has been going this way for about the past fifteen years, I don't think thats purely coincidence- The proverbial instant they sign on to GAMA the 'industry' adjusts itself to their way of doing things?
GAMA's probably lost a lot of its prestige due to that and the net here~ Indy developers can produce things at their pace, aren't bound to the mercy of the major publishers and their release schedules, indy developers can take the time to develop whatever supplements/adventures they may want to add to their core or they could just support the core, whatever they want~
Without the new blood, GAMA's stuck with the Wholesalers, retailers, clubs and conventions with mostly the older companies as developing members. Least thats how it looks to me from the outside~

*sorry if this is off topic*

how have you managed to do a CCG on a $7,000 budget?

FFG Greg wrote:

Ron Edwards wrote: ...distributors don't care if you publish supplements for your RPG. Like publishers, they would rather sell a lot of one thing than a little of lots of things. If you can design and market an RPG that produces consistent, evergreen sales without support products, the distributors will love you...

This does not match my experience. Not at all.

Phage Press ran into lots of problems with distributors who wanted there to be a larger product line. Since Phage Press only published Amber Diceless and Shadow Knight it was considered 'too small.'

Now this wasn't the case back in the early 1990s. Back then there were a range of distributors who worked closely with retailers, and they would point out that Amber Diceless was a very consistent sales item. It never lingered on the shelves...

I can't say why exactly, but the big distributors (including Alliance and Diamond) had no patience for any small line. From my perspective it was because they focused exclusively on selling new -- if it wasn't a new release, there was no promotion.

Just my personal experience.

Erick

What follows is my opinion. I'm not an official spokesman for Palladium Books... but I've been a friend of the owner since before it was founded, and a freelance writer/designer from its very first RPG product (that would be "The Mechanoid Invasion").

Ben Lehman wrote: I would note that there is one company that does very very well on the "supplement treadmill--" it has a few game lines which it produces mad amounts of supplements for, and seems to stay pretty solvent. That company is Palladium Books.

Ben Lehman wrote: I'd love to see some comments as to how they pull this off, although I know that they are a rather secretive company and thus even less information is available than one might expect.

Matt Wilson wrote: ...{Kevin Siembieda/Palladium Books}'s gotten a massive amount of return on the same 40 or so pages of rules for the last 15-20 years.

Hmm...

So, it seems like (from anecdotal evidence) that the supplement treadmill can work, provided that you have a core product that is popular.

It would seem then that entering the market with a plan to produce a gazillion supplements is problematic. Instead, new publishers should first put out books tentatively and at as low a risk as possible until they get a bonified hit. Once that happens, it's much safer and more plausible to jump on the treadmill, producing supplements for their hit game.

Thoughts?

I'd like to say that I really, really appreciate Erick weighing in on this stuff, particularly in terms of Amber Diceless being "too small" for distributors. I think the focus on "new product" is very, very real, and it only intensified after the CCG craze.

ethan_greer wrote: So, it seems like (from anecdotal evidence) that the supplement treadmill can work, provided that you have a core product that is popular.

It would seem then that entering the market with a plan to produce a gazillion supplements is problematic. Instead, new publishers should first put out books tentatively and at as low a risk as possible until they get a bonified hit. Once that happens, it's much safer and more plausible to jump on the treadmill, producing supplements for their hit game.

(my own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness sold over 180,000 copies, just for the basic rulebook).

I think there's one dimension that's been overlooked in this discussion.

Many times, there is no division between an RPG company's creators and business people. They either have similar mind sets or they are the same people. This can cause a tremendous barrier to looking at a game line's sales and deciding that it's time to pull the plug. If a game is your creative pride and joy, it's awfully had to order its death (IOW, put it out of print or stop making new stuff for it.)

This problem is further exacerbated if a company can't come up with a new RPG line to take the old one's place. In that case, the company is stuck squeezing more releases from a dead line.

As for the thesis that the distributors are behind the treadmill, I think it isn't as clear cut as it might seem. A distributor likes to buy books that sell. A successful RPG line that spawns a steady stream of releases is a good thing to them. I think the demand for a full line draws on two things:

1. A distributor only has so much time and money to go around. A big line with lots of ads and support shows that you're serious about generating interest. Granted, it might all be a show, but the distributor is going to be much more eager to deal with a publisher that seems serious about making a success of it at an order of magnitude greater than what you're looking for.

2. The new thing sells, but perhaps only because the old thing doesn't. You might sell 2000 core books to the distributors, and the next month they want a supplement, not more core books, because no one wants to order the core book any more. The stores have sold enough and have a copy on the shelf, but a new book might sell to your newly minted customers.

Hello,

Clarification note: Erick, you were quoting & replying to FFG Greg, not to me. My outlook parallels yours, and I suggest that the time we're discussing (very late 80s) was the point at which the three-tier system shifted into an aggressive periodical-style approach toward publishing.

Best,
Ron

Whoa, lots of posts ...

Mike (mearls), I wouldn't like to encourage a conspiratorial interpretation of the distributors' and others' roles in RPG history. "Behind it all" really isn't what I'm after.

I think everyone's actions in this history can be understood in terms of economic self-benefit, but that doesn't necessarily mean people thought about it in that way. It's very easy to see a distinct benefit to oneself as "only natural" or to phrase it to oneself or others in terms of mutual benefit, even when it isn't very.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Whoa, lots of posts ...

Mike (mearls), I wouldn't like to encourage a conspiratorial interpretation of the distributors' and others' roles in RPG history. "Behind it all" really isn't what I'm after.

Ron Edwards wrote:
I think everyone's actions in this history can be understood in terms of economic self-benefit, but that doesn't necessarily mean people thought about it in that way. It's very easy to see a distinct benefit to oneself as "only natural" or to phrase it to oneself or others in terms of mutual benefit, even when it isn't very.

Ron Edwards wrote: ...Erick, you were quoting & replying to FFG Greg, not to me. My outlook parallels yours...

Valamir wrote: That's an interesting number Erick (180,000 copes of the TMNT RPG). I'm curious as to the following

Valamir wrote: 1) what period of time does that represent, and do you have an idea of what the sales cycle was? i.e. does that represent a fairly consistant 18,000/yr for 10 years, or 100,000 the first year, and 8,800/yr after that?

Valamir wrote: 2)How many printruns / how large are the individual print runs for a book like this. I'm betting this doesn't represent a single 200,000 unit run, but are the runs typically 10-20,000 units or 4-5,000 units for comparable products.

Valamir wrote: 3) Can you provide clarification on "sold".

Valamir wrote: For games that have sales like this, do you have any feel for where in the spectrum they lie between # of copies that have entered the distribution channel vs. # of copies that actually wind up being sold to gamers.?

Erick Wujcik wrote:
The Palladium Books core system has remained relatively fixed over a couple of decades. Yet the products have sold in the hundreds of thousands (my own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness sold over 180,000 copies, just for the basic rulebook).

Hi Greg,

With respect, I think that TMNT in the mid-late 1980s, as with D&D in the late 70s and Vampire in the early 90s, is a poor example for discussing general trends and tactics.

All three represent a brief correspondence of role-playing material with a wave of "teen craze" purchasing. That's distinct from fan purchasing or anything else associated with SF or pop subculture - it literally means a ton of people who are buying the game as gear.

It doesn't last long (although it makes a huge impression on retailer re-ordering habits that does last), and I think it's best viewed as a lucky draw rather than a reliable tactic that can be generalized across publishing in general.

Best,
Ron

TMNT had some supplement support - certainly a significant number of supplements for a game whose heyday was in the late 80s and early 90s (even if it's a small amount of supplement support compared to later games). There were several adventures (Turtles go to Hollywood being the only one I remember), a number of expansions (Transdimensional TMNT, whatever the name of the Turtles in Space book was). And of course the entirety of the After the Bomb series (After the Bomb, Road Hogs, Mutants Down Under, Mutants in Avalon, Mutants of the Yucatan).

Combine that with the fact that TMNT wound up, a few years later, being "supplemented" by the sales of non-RPG TMNT product thanks to the popularity of the show (which, according to the official TMNT website, can be blamed in part on the RPG), and after that the combined popularity of the rest of the Palladium products (Rifts being the big one), TMNT managed to feed off everything else like a remora.

TMNT is definitely not typical, by dint of the TV show alone. But I think its supplement support was pretty significant for the time period in which is was made.

Erick Wujcik wrote:
This does not match my experience. Not at all.

Hiya,

Ryan, I'm in complete agreement in all particulars with your post.

New questions include:

How long the tactic you describe continues to be viable, in terms of years

Whether actual profits stay high enough as re-printing costs for the core book and especially-popular supplements kick in

(related to above) Whether there's an identifiable point in which one is better off re-printing the canon rather than adding new items

Whether a game with the kind of in-play popularity that makes this tactic possible would do better with primarily direct sales (not abandoning the store sales, just not relying on them as the #1 priority)

What sort of communication and reinforcement by the publisher would help retailers recognize that the game sells in this fashion (experience teaches me that many retailers don't track sales in a time-scale that can catch it)

Best,
Ron

Ryan,

I think the ideal configuration in today's market for an RPG focused publisher who wants to use the 3-Tier system is probably a company with one core book that has evergreen sales, coupled with 3-4 significant releases each year, spaced far enough apart to generate frontlist sales across a significant percentage of the year.

Very interesting.

What do you think of the viability of this alternative: a publisher with a core book with the potential of evergreen sales, and one or a few related supplements (i.e. Amber) who partners with the best indie designers to publish three or four various co-branded games a year (each one in small quantities)...covering costs but taking no profit for himself on these entirely stand-alone games. The advantage to the indie designer is exposure to the retail channel for a game that would otherwise not garner the attention of distributors (and a small profit, of course). Does the publisher's own core book and supplements benefit from this as in your ideal configuration?

Paul

Ron Edwards wrote:
Effectively, the distributors have (at certain points) exerted exactly this kind of control over publishers, for example, when they pushed for and received full voting membership status in GAMA. To claim that the subsequent, extreme reduction in the number of new core books over the next five years, and the explosive increase in supplements-per-line is a coincidence, would be very naive, as I see it.

Paul Czege wrote: Ryan,
What do you think of the viability of this alternative: a publisher with a core book with the potential of evergreen sales, and one or a few related supplements (i.e. Amber) who partners with the best indie designers to publish three or four various co-branded games a year (each one in small quantities)...covering costs but taking no profit for himself on these entirely stand-alone games.

ryand wrote: (Note that as the '80s ended, thousands of independent toy stores were driven out of business by consolidation in the form of TRU and KayBee (and then Wal*Mart and Target), and a whole venue of locations once popular sales channels for RPGs vanished due to no fault of the RPG publishers - in many cases taking sales volume with them that was never recovered elsewhere.

ryand wrote:
I do like ( and would probably buy ) the idea of a regularly published "anthology" of Indy RPGs, especially if such an anthology was headed by an editor with excellent credentials (take Johnathan Tweet for example). Such a product would be an interesting diversion from the normal purchasing routine, and would probably regularly produce a few ideas that got incorporated into larger games.

I'm back from Los Angeles, so I'll respond to a couple of points.

First, let me add to the comments about the change in the RPG industry from the early 1980s to the late 1990s:

1. For Palladium, in addition to the stores described above, quite a few sales came through comic book stores. It started when TMNT was a black and white comic with an infrequent schedule, and encouraged quite a few comic sellers to stock other products in the Palladium line.

2. From 1991 to 1998 virtually all the 'mid range' distributors went out of business. Greenfield Hobby, for example, had a salesforce that was excellent at helping stores with re-stock. Those 'mega' distributors who survived, specifically Alliance and Diamond, took on a model that emphasized 'new release catalogs' and de-emphasized keeping steady product in stock for the long-term.

ryand wrote: The distribution tier also has a problem with how to sell stuff (as opposed to take orders for) as a business model. Alliance, for example, regularly solicits for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of SKUs. They know they have a limited amount of time to talk to any given retailer, and cannot possibly "stock check" even the top 100 SKUs. So instead they focus on hot, high volume frontlist sales, and expect that a store moving the frontlist will de facto move enough backlist to motivate the store owner to do their own stock checking an restock analysis. Clearly, in many cases, for many unique products (like Amber) this system is a failure.

ryand wrote: For what it's worth, when I was operating RPG International in the early 90's we regularly moved 1 copy of Amber a month, and it was unusual in that it was the only book from a "small publisher" for which we had such repeat sales - unusual enough that I still remember being surprised by it nearly a decade later. What Amber managed to acheive was pretty amazing.

Lxndr wrote: TMNT is definitely not typical, by dint of the TV show alone. But I think its supplement support was pretty significant for the time period in which is was made.

mearls wrote: Was there some other pressure, aside from low sales, that made toy, book, and mass market game stores drop D&D and other RPGs?