"Once more unto the breach, dear friends..."

Long have I heard the muses whisper of this place, and long have I listened to the bards tell tales of the magic that abounds within. Thus, I have at long last endeavored to find the passage and make my way here.

Hope I don't spill too much stout on the carpet and get tossed out.

Those who know me (and I do see some familiar faces around the place) know that I've been plugging away at this business in some fashion or another since 1988. I now have what I believe is a fairly special viewpoint from which to observe and share what I've learned. I am both full-time employed in our industry (as the Events Coordinator and Clubs & Organizations Coordinator for GAMA/Origins) as well as working still as a game designer and writer (see signature below). In my own efforts to bring Shaintar: Immortal Legends to market, I've had a chance to see how business can be done effectively at the ground level for a small publisher.

Really, for any publisher.

I've taken this education and applied it to an initiative I've launched in my role as an employee of GAMA, and I'd like to share it here to give you all a heads-up on it, as well as get your impressions.

What follows this post is the "one page" that was constructed for review by publishers, distributors, POD printers, PDF sales sites, and retailers. It is meant to point at a possible way to do business that will not only allow smaller publishers to have books in stores again, but also alleviate the sense that retailers feel they are being unnecessarily cut out of the market.

I've been looking forward to coming into this community and participating, but I figured I should come armed with something worthwhile to talk about. I do hope you agree this is a worthy topic.

[center]RPGs, PDFs, POD – Putting Games Back Into Stores[/center]

The RPG industry has been in a steady decline, with virtually every publisher facing great difficulties in bringing products to market. Many have chosen to forego printing books altogether, instead relying on electronic versions (PDFs) to sell either directly from their sites or through such online stores as RPGNow, DriveThruRPG, Paizo, e23, and others. Some of those same publishers, alongside others not going the PDF route, have turned to the latest iterations of POD (Print On Demand) to produce highly limited runs of their books, mainly for sale from their sites or at conventions.

These evolving technologies and practices offer an extraordinary opportunity for publishers, distributors, and retailers to all regain some ground in the market. Books can be printed and sold through the available channels, just as before. Distributors and retailers can get a piece of a market that has been held apart from them up to now. Consumers can get real printed versions of the game books they want, which is their main concern with PDF transactions currently.

The gist of the process is to incorporate the availability of PDF content and the advanced capacities of POD operations into an adapted three-tier business-to-business chain that functions much like the one currently in place.

PUBLISHER --> PDF-TO-POD DISTRIBUTION SOURCE --> RETAILER --> CONSUMER

The PDF-to-POD Distribution Source can be expressed in one of three general models:

1) The POD as Distributor Model, whereby the Print On Demand shop handles both the printing and distribution of product to the retailers.

2) The POD + Distributor Model, whereby either a POD house marries up with a Distributor, or the Distributor starts up a POD operation in-house.

3) The PDF Seller as Distributor Model, whereby an Internet PDF seller, using whatever POD options they have, handles the distribution of product to the retailers. Alternately, such an operation can work with Distributors, acting more as a fulfillment house.

GAMA is working to help coordinate efforts to maximize efficient communication, exchange of ideas and needs, and cooperative efforts towards mutual revenue goals for all tiers. This can be accomplished through facilitated meetings and dialogues and other educational efforts.

Sean Patrick Fannon
Events Coordinator, GAMA
614-255-4500
[email]events@gama.org[/email]

Hi Sean,

Welcome!

I'm not quite an "industry veteran," but I do have a fairly popular game printed on a traditional press that is carried in distro. That said, my gut reaction reading your one-page is "pdfs are not responsible for the decline in rpg sales." I'm not even certain there has been a shrinkage in the rpg market, but if there has been, I suspect that it's been caused in part by the three-tiered model rather than in spite of it.

Burning Wheel is in Alliance distro and for reasons I cannot fathom, I have been relegated to the fabled, "Alliance reports your game is out of stock" status. Retailers who know about BW and who regularly order it have trouble getting it through distribution. These retailers then lose sales as the customers look for other venues to purchase the product. THAT, to me, seems more of a problem than pdf/pod production methods. In fact, POD/pdf production and distribution seems more of a reaction to the failure of the three tiered model than anything else.

-Luke

Hi, Sean.

From my own, limited research, I would have to sell some four times as many books to retailers as I sell myself. If a distributor could make that happen, awesome: sales lead to sales, so that would eventually make the game more popular. But I have some rather profound doubts along those lines. My first game is a very weird one, like so many here, and I'm competing for shelf space with more mainstream products.

Even my next game, Shock:, is unlikely to be able to compete on a shelf with (unnecessarily) thicker books. And I still have to sell four times as many. I have deep doubts that a distributor would see it worth the effort to promote it above something that's a more obvious sell.

Man, I hope I'm wrong, though. I'd love to have my game in stores if it was really selling. I'd love to see a way to support my FLGS, have my books in places I hadn't thought of, reach people I otherwise wouldn't.

So I'm all ears. My skepticism is purely defensive and not necessarily reasoned.

Hello,

I have done some serious investigation of the three-tier system and its operation, or mis-operation.

Bluntly, it is a broken model. The notion that customer demand drives store demand, then store demand drives distributor orders, is simply inaccurate.

The communication among retailers and distributors is best described as Brownian motion of hearsay, to the point where repeated insubstantialities become agreed-upon as substantial, annually.

Publishers make money mainly by convincing retailers to deep-order, and they do so by manipulating the process described above.

Decisions which optimize the stability and profits of the distributor are not those which suit the market as defined by customer usage. Since those distributor-decisions essentially put the retailer in a position of no choice, the customer demand is literally strangled at the store. Store customer "culture" is largely defined by agreement with the retailer, which requires denying any actual acknowledgment of what makes play fun or not fun.

The chief victims are the retailers, the smaller publishers, and the customers, who respectively go out of business, go out of business, and abandon the hobby, in droves for all three. The chief beneficiaries are the distributor and the larger publishers (usually subsidized through outside funding!) who practice scorched-earth publishing, launching "new again!" lines on a regular cycle. It is, effectively, a large-scale confidence game marked by generation after generation of throwaway coffee-table books.

The model followed by the more successful publishers who participate at the Forge is much, much more effective and basically closer to the economic bone. The beneficiaries are the creator/publishers, the customers, and those few retailers who discover to their shock that they can sell copies of, say, My Life with Master indefinitely, if not in handfuls. The latter are, bluntly, the most superficial and least necessary portion of the model (although I love'em for their efforts).

The three-tier is irrelevant, and frankly, dead on its feet. The internet and the few wised-up retailers are sufficient for the success of creator/publishers and people who love to play the games. To secure convenience for the retailers' ordering, fulfillment houses such as Indie Press Revolution and Key 20, who are not distributors, are sufficient.

Best,
Ron

I just want to thank everyone who has piped in so far. I certainly appreciate the comments I am reading, and I fully understand where they are coming from. I guess what I am getting at is that, through a combination of POD technology and teaching the retailers that these products exist and are worth adding to their stock (or at least offering to order them) is just extra sales for all concerned.

Two of the key components I intend to shop to the retail portion of the equation are:

1) Customers of the PDF market want physical books and print products and would be happy to buy them if they were available through a retailer.

2) Customers would be happier not paying up to 25% over the cover price of the book in shipping charges.

Now then, even those who generally feel that the Three Tier system is broken could benefit from the ability to sell into the retail chains, right?

For what it's worth... RPGNow is doing exactly that. We will be releasing 5 or so books each month starting in Febuary 2006. They will all be POD based on solicitation orders and stored at distributors on consignment as to KEEP THEM IN STOCK at all times.

http://www.RPGNow.com/retailstore.php

I'll try to let you all know how it goes. We'll be at GTS if anyone cares to stop by and check them out.

James
P.S. We pick from the best/proven products on RPGNow and use them.

2) Customers would be happier not paying up to 25% over the cover price of the book in shipping charges.

You know, I've spoken to our local flgs dude, and this is what he said:

• "You guys aren't professional because the production values aren't high enough."
- This is true enough for a lot of our pieces, Under the Bed, included. It sure doesn't have to be, though. It takes editing, it takes design, it takes printing, in addition to the normal stuff.

• "Your volume has to be higher so you can afford to leave the "hobbyist" market and not have to charge so much."
- The output of this is true enough for him. He has to be able to charge a normal amount for his games and I don't want to give up that much of my cut for a couple of sales. Dunno how to work this one out.

• You aren't with a distributor, so I have to keep track of everyone's wife who drops off five copies at a time. I don't want to keep track of that.
- Fair enough! Let's sort that out, assuming we get the above one worked out. I bet we could figure out some sort of indie distro system like RPGNow is doing.

glyphmonkey wrote:
- Fair enough! Let's sort that out, assuming we get the above one worked out. I bet we could figure out some sort of indie distro system like RPGNow is doing.

Ron wrote:
Publishers make money mainly by convincing retailers to deep-order, and they do so by manipulating the process described above.

The chief victims are the retailers, the smaller publishers, and the customers, who respectively go out of business, go out of business, and abandon the hobby, in droves for all three.

It is, effectively, a large-scale confidence game marked by generation after generation of throwaway coffee-table books.

glyphmonkey wrote:
You know, I've spoken to our local flgs dude, and this is what he said:

• "Your volume has to be higher so you can afford to leave the "hobbyist" market and not have to charge so much."
- The output of this is true enough for him. He has to be able to charge a normal amount for his games and I don't want to give up that much of my cut for a couple of sales. Dunno how to work this one out.

The retailer afraid of a high price is missing the point.  If the product sells with a reasonable velocity, a high price is not bad.  The key question is, as always, how fast will this product sell?  Accurately predict that one, and you have the knowledge to win the game.

This discussion is going exactly in the directions I hoped it would.

First off, I want to thank James from RPGNow for piping in; I am personally grateful to him for participating in our efforts. He's right - he was already headed in this direction, which just goes to show that the time has come to start exploring these options.

Please bear in mind that there is a string of elements that should be in play to make this really work. The only way it's worth it for a publisher to invest energy in this direction is if they are already investing the "sweat equity" into producing a print-worthy PDF. Once that's done, the many POD options that exist more than facilitate the next step for them.

There are a few ways this "system" can work, to include relationships involving combinations of POD printers, PDF sales sites, fulfillment houses, distributors, and the publishers themselves. We will be talking about this at great length at GTS (GAMA Trade Show), but I am hopeful that such processes will be well underway for at least some folks so that we can look at how it is working already.

I hasten to point out that I am not seeing this as a miracle cure for what ails us. I see it as a means to open up additional revenue streams while both assuaging accusations in the retail sector about being "cut out" of sales opportunities and making it possible for customers to go into an FLGS and get the print version of a product previously only available as a PDF.

One possibility I see is this: Once the distributors are more fully vested in the process of adding POD products, as needed, to the list of products they can ship as requested from retailers, all of the publishers will be on a more even playing field.

At that point, it goes back to the old standards of competition - create a quality product, and spend the time and money needed to promote and sell that product. It won't matter if you've printed 10,000 and they are sitting in a warehouse, or if you have a file stored on a machine at RapidPOD or on RPGNow. The customers will demand what they want (from what they know about), and the retailers will be able to order them just as easily.

That's the ideal, anyway.

Hello,

The discussion is going where you wanted, Sean, because you are not understanding what is being said. Based on what you've replied to me, I don't think you grasp anything I'm saying. "Deep order," for instance, means lots of books, and it can refer to a line rather than a single title. If you think retailers are not pressured to deep-order lines, then you must not be paying attention. They are using comics-based (periodicals) strategy, and it's killing them.

Similarly, PDF can be part of a given publisher's strategy, but it does not "replace" books. That's a red herring.

Finally, do not try to use the kind of childish, flip statements that routinely score points on the WHEEZ-L. This is a different sort of place. "Distributors cannot affect customers because they do not meet them" is a moronic statement, inadmissible in the most basic economics class. When you type something like that, you make it more likely that any of your other points will be dismissed.

Perhaps it would help if we examined what industry means. The conceit among the participants in the three-tier system is that existence of stores is the "industry." When stores stumble or their staff is confused about what to order, people cry out that the "industry" is in trouble. However, as I see it, stores or fulfilment houses or distributors are middle-men, who can exist successfully only when the publisher-customer relationship is real and sustainable. To me, an industry exists when that relationship permits middlemen and other auxiliary professionals (artists, etc) to make money as well.

In other words, all these years, it's been a mere "industry" as publishers and customers stumble about in confusion, and a few middlemen became skilled at nipping a few profits out from whatever happened to be "failing slower" at the time. A very few publishers manage to persist only through outside subsidy and scorched-earth (con-man) tactics. That situation persists today, and as I said, it's so dead that it stinks, despite the constant mutual reassurance among its participants. GAMA persists as a vehicle to suppot that mutual-reassurance process.

The current model followed by Adept Press, Burning Wheel, and others is different in every respect, because it is an industry - people buy our games and play them, then encourage others to do the same. Profits are sufficient to fund future projects and also to pay artists, etc, up-front and without constant fear of cheating (unlike the "industry").

Now, it is certainly a cottage industry, which as I see it represents exactly what the product is, at present, in our society. As with most cottage industries, customer satisfaction has to be the first priority, or the publisher fails. To date, apparently, customers get their books without whining or bitching about shipping costs. Those costs can also be cut by sharing them among publishers (here is where IPR and Key 20 help, again), or as I've done in the past, taking a certain percent of them upon myself because my copy-print cost was low, keeping margins nice and high. We also provide support and interaction beyond the imaginings of other companies. These are the same tactics used by many small businesses, and they work.

Best,
Ron

Ron wrote:
Hello,

The discussion is going where you wanted, Sean, because you are not understanding what is being said. Based on what you've replied to me, I don't think you grasp anything I'm saying. "Deep order," for instance, means lots of books, and it can refer to a line rather than a single title. If you think retailers are not pressured to deep-order lines, then you must not be paying attention. They are using comics-based (periodicals) strategy, and it's killing them.

Finally, do not try to use the kind of childish, flip statements that routinely score points on the WHEEZ-L. This is a different sort of place. "Distributors cannot affect customers because they do not meet them" is a moronic statement, inadmissible in the most basic economics class. When you type something like that, you make it more likely that any of your other points will be dismissed.

Ron wrote:

The discussion is going where you wanted, Sean, because you are not understanding what is being said. Based on what you've replied to me, I don't think you grasp anything I'm saying.

"Deep order," for instance, means lots of books, and it can refer to a line rather than a single title. If you think retailers are not pressured to deep-order lines, then you must not be paying attention. They are using comics-based (periodicals) strategy, and it's killing them.

Similarly, PDF can be part of a given publisher's strategy, but it does not "replace" books. That's a red herring.

Finally, do not try to use the kind of childish, flip statements that routinely score points on the WHEEZ-L. This is a different sort of place. "Distributors cannot affect customers because they do not meet them" is a moronic statement, inadmissible in the most basic economics class. When you type something like that, you make it more likely that any of your other points will be dismissed.

... as I see it, stores or fulfilment houses or distributors are middle-men, who can exist successfully only when the publisher-customer relationship is real and sustainable. To me, an industry exists when that relationship permits middlemen and other auxiliary professionals (artists, etc) to make money as well.

In other words, all these years, it's been a mere "industry" as publishers and customers stumble about in confusion... GAMA persists as a vehicle to suppot that mutual-reassurance process.

The current model followed by Adept Press, Burning Wheel, and others is different in every respect, because it is an industry - people buy our games and play them, then encourage others to do the same. Profits are sufficient to fund future projects and also to pay artists, etc, up-front and without constant fear of cheating (unlike the "industry").

Now, it is certainly a cottage industry, which as I see it represents exactly what the product is, at present, in our society. As with most cottage industries, customer satisfaction has to be the first priority, or the publisher fails.

To date, apparently, customers get their books without whining or bitching about shipping costs.

Those costs can also be cut by sharing them among publishers (here is where IPR and Key 20 help, again), or as I've done in the past, taking a certain percent of them upon myself because my copy-print cost was low, keeping margins nice and high. We also provide support and interaction beyond the imaginings of other companies. These are the same tactics used by many small businesses, and they work.

Best,
Ron

Well, I fucked up. I thought Sean was Lloyd and Lloyd was Sean in that series of posts.

So!

Sean, it does look as though we're on the same track, or at least using similar terms for the same stuff. Let's see if we agree or disagree on the next point. My call is that the existing "industry" doesn't need saving or not-saving, and that the success we're talking about can either take or leave that "industry's" existence. For instance, my books that move through the three-tier are basically advertisement which makes me a bit of money rather than costing me. If every game store in the U.S. vanished tomorrow, my own business success wouldn't be altered very much.

That said, I do want to promote the success of stores who use a working model of their own which also provides success for me. A few of them exist using a variety of approaches. Some of them have an "indie shelf," for instance, and take pains to re-order titles that sell rather than treating small-press titles like a random slush-pile order. Another example would be the overseas "stores" such as Eero Tuovinen's in Finland, which is more like an order-cooperative promotion center than what we call a store in the U.S. In the U.S. cases, it's pretty clear that whatever RPGs they carry, they aren't going to be the primary item of sale anyway.

So I'm not an enemy of stores per se, but when it comes to (say) Alliance and the stores who rely on it, I'm rather a dismissive, uninterested minor participant.

Regarding GAMA, I do understand that in the last year there's been a real, concerted effort to turn things around. However, although I respect the motives, I see it as perhaps based more on clubbish nostalgia than on any business-oriented need. There's not a whole lot there to "save." If the folks involved would like to contribute to publishing and sales success in the hobby, then good luck to them if they want to do it through restoring order/sense among stores and distributors. They'll probably have to start from the ground up.

Lloyd, it seems like a straightforward situation. Either a given set of titles works for you, or it doesn't. The last thing I'd ever request (or worse, feel entitled to) is for a retailer to order my titles when they don't reliably sell at the store. Again, Adept Press doesn't need store presence or sales in order to prosper.

Now - this is the rough part. For most retailers, their perceived cycle of "making money" (ordering + selling) operates on a fast time scale. A lot faster than anyone actually learns and plays the games. So advertising and subcultural buzz, like we see on RPG.net just prior to a game's release, is what makes "sales" to these retailers. Often that's generated by the retailer himself, acting as kind of sales-mentor to the customers. Again, a lot like comics.

Retailers who monitor longer-term sales often give me interesting, different feedback - "Hey," they say. "That Sorcerer keeps selling. It never sells a lot, but it never stops either." I don't guarantee this effect, and I suspect it only happens in certain demographic areas like college neighborhoods. But I get this feedback consistently. So do Luke Crane and Paul Czege, among others.

Am I claiming that our games will "save stores?" No. All I'm claiming is that in some stores, they will consistently repay re-ordering, apparently indefinitely, not on a one-spike or occasional-customer basis. That's all I can offer the stores, and I don't see any special need for that to change.

Best,
Ron

Sean wrote: I hasten to point out that I am not seeing this as a miracle cure for what ails us. I see it as a means to open up additional revenue streams while both assuaging accusations in the retail sector about being "cut out" of sales opportunities and making it possible for customers to go into an FLGS and get the print version of a product previously only available as a PDF.

One possibility I see is this: Once the distributors are more fully vested in the process of adding POD products, as needed, to the list of products they can ship as requested from retailers, all of the publishers will be on a more even playing field.

At that point, it goes back to the old standards of competition - create a quality product, and spend the time and money needed to promote and sell that product. It won't matter if you've printed 10,000 and they are sitting in a warehouse, or if you have a file stored on a machine at RapidPOD or on RPGNow. The customers will demand what they want (from what they know about), and the retailers will be able to order them just as easily.

Sean wrote: I hasten to point out that I am not seeing this as a miracle cure for what ails us. I see it as a means to open up additional revenue streams while both assuaging accusations in the retail sector about being "cut out" of sales opportunities ...

Hey Sean, just wanted to note that I'm happy you took the time to initiate this discussion.  I'm sure your experience will provide some valuable insight.  I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said something to the effect of it being more important to have friends willing to passionately discuss issues most people don't care about than it is to have those people agree with you.  So I look forward to some fresh perspectives to our discussions.

In your one pager you opened with a comment that struck me:

The RPG industry has been in a steady decline, with virtually every publisher facing great difficulties in bringing products to market.

glyphmonkey wrote:
Our FLGSs have been under the impression that they're doing us a favor by stocking our games. They don't feel like they're being cut out. In fact, they have no idea what's going on at all. They don't realize that there's something happening that they're not looking at.

It's simple, Clinton: the three-tier can get a lot of books in peoples' hands. If it can get enough out there to make me the same profit, it's more books out there for the same effort on my part. That means more fans, and fans breed fans.

If they can't sell that many, they're doing promotion that I get paid for, or at least don't pay for myself.

If they sell very few, they're cannibalizing my sales.

glyphmonkey wrote:
It's simple, Clinton: the three-tier can get a lot of books in peoples' hands. If it can get enough out there to make me the same profit, it's more books out there for the same effort on my part. That means more fans, and fans breed fans.

If they can't sell that many, they're doing promotion that I get paid for, or at least don't pay for myself.

If they sell very few, they're cannibalizing my sales.

I'm not sure what you're missing Clinton.

If I make $10 selling direct and $4 selling through distribution, but I sell 3x as much through distribution, then being in distribution is a good thing because $12 > $10.  Heck if sell even 1 game through distribution that I wouldn't have sold direct that's $4 more I have than I wouldn't.

I've got no problem with distribution.  I've got no problem with retailers.  I love retailers.  I love anybody who buys my books.

Where I'm coming from is simply that:  The Health of the Distribution Chain is not an effective (or even relevant) proxy for The Health of the RPG Industry.

Sean's one pager would have been accurate if he'd said "Sales of RPGs through traditional distribution channels have been in steady decline".  That's a true statement.  Its also one I don't really care all that much about because distribution channels come and go based on supply and demand and at no time ever in history has there been more viable alternives to that traditional distribution channel than there is today.  Because of those alternatives "bad for traditional distribution" does not equal "Bad for the industry".  It just means "bad for those whose business models are dependent on traditional distribution".  Which ain't any of us.

But just because we aren't dependent on traditional distribution doesn't mean we can't profit from it.  I get phat checks from Key20 on sales they've put into distribution for me.  They cleaned through my inventory fully 2 years before I expected to need another print run.  Where's the down side to that?  More games sold ---> more word of mouth ---> greater base to generate future sales ---> more money in my pocket.  Sounds like a good thing to me.

Distributors are great.  Retailers are great.  Anything is great that moves my books and pays me money (the last being an important, and too often uncertain element).  But none of us would be out of business without them...which is the big difference between us and most of Sean's GAMA audience. 

I'm in no way beholden to the distribution chain, but honestly Clinton I don't comprehend your automatic hostility towards them.  And for the record, I think displaying that hostility on the forum is probably a bad example for a moderator to set.

Clinton wrote:
Are you arguing with yourself? I could have swore you said the retailers are missing out before.

I ask you to seriously look at the model and tell me if you can say that either of these things are true:

(a) Retailers and the three-tier model have been responsible for the widespread success of any RPG product in the last 5 years.
(b) Your target audience primarily finds out about/buys games at the local game store.

I know for a fact (b) is untrue, and I am not aware of any example of (a).

Hi,

I'm still not seeing very the value in this is for me as a consumer.  The one page indicates that the distributors take up the role of POD production, which either means distributors have to invest in the capacity to do so, or else outsource it to a POD printer.  In which case, we've just added another step in time and money before the product reaches me as a customer.

And, assuming we're talking the value of shelf space as advertisement- retailers would still have to order a few copies for something they wouldn't know if it would sell or not, or how well- which gimps POD's strength of not having to stock product for which there is no sure demand.  And again, money & time taken out of the process.  So it doesn't seem like the retailers gain in any serious way either.

Anyone?

Chris

Hi, Sean. Nice to see you here.

Sean wrote:
Aaron Acevedo, the guy who runs Talisman Studios, gave me a real wake-up call when he pointed me at this rather amazing web article. Frankly, it has dramatically altered my entire viewpoint on the gaming industry. Granted, it's oriented towards the computer game market, but I believe the modeling applies even more appropriately to our product and our fan base.

Isn't this the same bunch of hot air that blows through every year.  It is like Christmas.  Once a year someone rolls through thinking they
have some sort of solution that can salvage the current model of business.  The problem is that the solutions are never really solutions cause they can't see what the actual problems are, which is clinging to old ideas on putting new party hats on them.

Oh and I love the comment about using single distributors because otherwise ordering would take 50 hours a week.  That is such crap.  My family owned a polish bakery/deli/grocery store/restaurant in Chicago for the better part of 25 year.  Do you think we used a single distributor?  No.  We used many for many different products.  Partly to diversify cause not every distributor has what you need and partly to get the best price.  Anyone that makes that bullshit argument is a lazy fucker and deserves to go out of business because of it.

The fact of the matter is we are a diverse market, which is good, and in order to grow this diversity needs to be encouraged.  If anything
the retailer is to blame for the decline because most have absolutely no idea how to run a profitable family run/personal business.  A good
retailer changes to match the needs of his market, he doesn't sit back and lament the loss of the good ole days.  Same goes for publishers and distributors.

Keith

Hello,

Despite our differences in style and hot-buttons, I am seeing a crucial consensus among Ralph, Luke, Clinton, Keith, me, and others. It is:

Given POD printing and internet ordering, as well as useful fulfilment houses, there is no reason for further centralization of any step of the current model.

Which means tossing POD into the hands of a single distributor is no "solution" - because there's no current problem, at least not for us, nor for anyone who wants to do what we do.

We've already seen what happens when a middleman tries to "be" the printer too. He simply turns around and farms the work to an existing POD guy, the very same one who could have done it directly, and collects a markup fee! That's what Aldo Ghiozzi did with Impressions, using Express Media. At least those books got printed at all; Ken Whitman is the latest example and his services could have been better managed by chimpanzees. Clinton opened a book printed through them to show it to a customer, and it fell apart in his hands.

The "solution" is nothing but a barrel of unnecessary and disastrous problems, the more so because no actual problem exists. Printing has never been easier, nor capable of such great-looking product for so little money. What I see in your "solution," Sean, is that distributors are desperate to make themselves relevant in some way, now that they've effectively become obsolete. So, they have a problem. Not us.

Best,
Ron

Wow.

I've been flamed before, but this was pretty impressive. I can honestly say I've never been so thoroughly roasted by the hosts of a forum, especially in the face of my intense effort to be friendly, open, and civil.

Clinton, I will say that your efforts here are noteworthy. My entrance here was an act of respect.

On my own part.

I am not really here as a "GAMA Officer." I was simply sharing something I am working on at GAMA with a group of people that I felt could give me some useful feedback.

And that has happened, to be sure. I am grateful for the insights and the ideas that I had not considered. I am also grateful for the perspectives that indicate other innovations of business that are at work.

I really enjoyed reading Valamir's definitions of success. Personally, I am right there with you, man. However, in that I have an admittedly altruistic desire to help my colleagues in any way that is available to me, I am forced to look at how everyone can make some more money.

Clinton. I honestly do not understand where your hostility and ugliness is coming from. I'd like very much to know what I have done, personally, to draw such a torrent from you.

I am not afraid of anything you've accomplished here. Quite the opposite. I think there's a lot of good stuff happening here, and I am proud that so many excellent writers, designers, and creators have found effective ways to stay in business and even have a healthy success in their efforts.

It was out of respect for your collective accomplishments that I sought you out as a brain trust to vet these ideas. I didn't come here as a sign of fear, or with any desire to change a thing any of you are doing. If what evolves out of these ideas gives some of you a chance to sell some more books, or to see more of your works in print, then I will have had some small measure of success on your behalf.

Mostly, I came here because I heard it was a cool place to hang out with talented people and share ideas.

Sadly, Clinton, you chose to damage my first experience here. For no good reason that I can see, either, unless you somehow felt it advanced an agenda that I frankly was not directly in opposition to in the first place.

(Ron, you were kind enough to recognize the situation and offer a reasoned response to it. That I appreciate, even if we remain apart in ideas).

Now then.

If anyone is interested in the larger document, which does say considerably more on the subject, I would be happy to share it with you. I am currently on holiday until next Tuesday, so it will be that long before I can send it to you.

Please feel free to e-mail me at [email]events@gama.org[/email], and I will send it right out.

I just want to leave off with this last impression.

I am a game designer and writer. I create games and I would like to sell my games and share them with people.

I am also an employee of GAMA who wants to find ways to serve the whole games industry. That includes all of you. If nothing I can bring to the table is of any service to you, so be it.

But that's why I came here.

Sincerely,

Sean

>>Burning Wheel is in Alliance distro and for reasons I cannot fathom, I have been relegated to the fabled, "Alliance reports your game is out of stock" status. Retailers who know about BW and who regularly order it have trouble getting it through distribution. These retailers then lose sales as the customers look for other venues to purchase the product. THAT, to me, seems more of a problem than pdf/pod production methods. In fact, POD/pdf production and distribution seems more of a reaction to the failure of the three tiered model than anything else.<<

Hi Luke,

I agree. Many manufacturers sought the use of POD technologies, the growth of the PDF market, and more direct to consumer avenues expressly because treatment of their products through the traditional 3 tier system was failing them. Note, however, that in many cases, the products were not failing that system. The market simply got overcrowded and cash strapped distributors working on thin margins reacted by concentrating on their largest vendors only and everything else as an afterthought.

Now, several years later, with no major TCG pulling in money like a Pokemon or Yu-gio, the explosion of D&D 2e sales over and the following D20 feeding frenxy over, the distributors ad retailers that practically shunned the rest of the market have all noticed that with sales of the leading brands in decline, and now at smaller profit margins than before (due to WOTC, Wiz Kids and other reducing discounts through the tiers), the "industry" is running scared and looking for ways to make more money.

But in truth, large chunks of the disenfranchised industry have moved on. Through neccessity, they have found other ways to conduct business that simply do not rely on the 3 tier system anymore. The Guild of Blades is one such company. Back in 1998,1999 I would have said that 95-97% of our revenues came from distribution sources. Today we don't sell to a single distributor and we are seling a great deal more total product and making better profit margins in the process.

Our last experience with Alliance was that they would restock our product line once every 8 weeks. But when they ordered they would order enough only to fill back orders and none to actually stock their shelves. And few retailers were willing to back order. So the vast majority of our marketing effort was going wasted as retailers and consumers simply could NOT get our products through that system. All of the distributors ran some variation of that business practice with our products.

Meanwhile, droves of dissatisfied customers turned to the Internet to find our products because they eventually learned that was the only way to actually get them. And this was happening with many, many manufacturers, not just us. Now today retailers and distributors have pulled their heads out of the sand and are wondering why so much of the market now circumvents them and seeks to order direct, either through Internet discounters (for whom many of the most established have a long history or ordering direct with the source to maintain product availability) or direct with the manufacturers.

These days well sell direct to the consumer and direct to retail accounts. The retail accounts that stock us primarily sell a large selection if not full line, of our products. Because we provide them incentives to do so, and to be blunt, we simply don't do business with those retailers that won't. As a result, our average retailer order is now as large as the average distribution order used to be. We have retail accounts we can suggest to customers with a reasonable certainty the store will have the product and a sale can actually be concluded. Where we do not have retailers, we can also tell the customer that and encourage a direct order. Our current business structure and method of selling is just so amazingly superior than our past experiences through the 3 tier system, I can not fathom a reason why we would want to return to that model.

The 3 tier system is a dying beast. Its utilility value has shruken to the point where it is only really useful for the largest of manufacturers. Everyone else is looking for alternatives, if they haven't already found them. These days it is not enough for a distributor to come knocking on our door to tell use they want to sell our products. I think that is true for many Forge members. They have to make a case with us, to present us with solid and valid business reasons why us selling to them would actually be benficial to our businesses. My wager is none can make that case and will not be able to until they do something dramtic to change the way they do business.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofblades.com

Sean --

I don't know how to say this, but... you aren't being flamed.  There's disagreement, here, yes.  What you're presenting, frankly, makes little-to-no-sense to us either as RPG Players or RPG Publishers (most of us are both) and we're telling, repeatedly, why it doesn't make sense to us.  We are telling you that bluntly and in no uncertain terms, which is pretty much a sign of respect.

I think that the key of the disagreement is, essentially, here

Sean P. Fannon wrote:
However, in that I have an admittedly altruistic desire to help my colleagues in any way that is available to me, I am forced to look at how everyone can make some more money.

High five both to Ryan and to Ben.

Moderator point: this thread so far contains only one single flame by Forge standards - Sean, it was you, addressing me as "sir," which is a synonym for "you fucking asshole." I spot you that one based on my own error when reading the posts and your minimal experience here. Nothing else in this thread constitutes a flame, and my standards for that are the only ones which matter.

One clarifying detail regarding your points, Ben, and this is a significant detail that I'm pretty fixated on. IPR is not a distributor, and neither is Key 20. A distributor, by definition, buys the game from the publisher and then sells it, as their product, to the retailer. Neither IPR nor Key 20 do that; they are instead the equivalent of the little kid you give a quarter to every time he takes the handful of your mail and runs it to the mailbox down the block. They are not fellow or co-existing merchants, they are emphatically service providers who have no conflict of interest with us regarding what and how much they sell.

Best,
Ron

Ben wrote:
I don't know how to say this, but... you aren't being flamed.  There's disagreement, here, yes.  What you're presenting, frankly, makes little-to-no-sense to us either as RPG Players or RPG Publishers (most of us are both) and we're telling, repeatedly, why it doesn't make sense to us.  We are telling you that bluntly and in no uncertain terms, which is pretty much a sign of respect.

Other than that sense of duty, you haven't really explained why your proposed system is any better than, say, Lulu

Does that make sense to you?

Hi Sean,

If I might ask again, what benefit there is for the consumer in having distributors deal in PDF/PODs?

Chris

Sean --

Very brief question.

Are you familiar with <a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu?  If you aren't, you should definitely familiarize yourself with their publisher/author services (they have a very simple tour that will give you the rundown).

I don't really have any desire to read your longer document unless you can convince me, in this thread or another, that your proposal has something to offer me that Lulu doesn't.  Right now, I haven't seen anything that suggests that.

yrs--
--Ben

P.S.  Note that I choose not to use Lulu.  I'm not saying that it is the ideal.  I'm saying that it is a basic bar that any such service must meet in order to hold my interest.

Hi Patrick,

I'll take a look at your document. I am always curious when someone proposes a new business idea.

However...

If the idea is to steer business that is solidly done through alternative venues right now, you will have to convince us why we should give up more margin in order to deal with distributors. And you will have to convince me that somehow Alliance, ACD and the others will somehow conduct their stocking and sales activity with our products better than they did before. Because "simply being IN" distribution is no great thing. If the distributors can not make the effort to service the items properly, the trying to seel gaming items through distribution is pursuing a dead end when it comes to business building. The idea behind building a business is to increase revenues and as the business gets larger, you have to continually build a stronger, more reliable and cost efficient distribution channel. This is true weather you are selling hobby games, or operating a business that sells things door to door. From my past experience in dealing with distributors, they did not stock or service products well enough to let a small company build that stable distribution channel.

So what is your proposal will be making them change how they service our titles?

Also, if this is some kind of program actually to be run through GAMA, I'll have nothing to do with it.

If the idea is to steer business that is solidly done through alternative venues right now, you will have to convince us why we should give up more margin in order to deal with distributors.

Word. I received a proposal a while back. "We'd like to handle printing and marketing of My Life with Master in europe." It was a nice, sincere proposal, along with some text about their percentage. But ultimately, it wasn't a plan for making me more money from the market. It was a plan for making money from me. Someone comes to me with a different proposal, "I'd like to print up two hundred nice copies of My Life with Master, for sale [as follows] and I'll pay you [this much money]," and it's more money per book than I'm making, then we're having a conversation. Instead I get, in essence, "we have no track record, and a dubious reputation, but you should hire us."

Sean, build it and if it really sells more books and carves out mindshare for indie games better than the Internet does, the publishers will come. We'll recognize a true value proposition when we see it. And it's not like we're at risk of going out of business or something.

Paul

If I am not mistaken, the purpose of this thread is to discuss Sean's concepts for PDF>POD on-site manufacturing that somehow involves the distributors and retailers.

Can I make a humble request that everyone stop sharing anecdotes, apologizing and clarifying until Sean answers Chris' question on this page (which is essentially mine from a few pages back)?

Also, Sean, can you better summarize the fabled "larger document." You've got "the public's" interest, though we disagree with the one-sheet. Please expand on your point so we can make a more reasoned judgement.

And can everyone (including Clinton and Ron) make an effort to be nicer to each other? I'm asking as a friend and peer. Personal intent be damned, this got ugly fast. I should hope that the Forge would welcome diverse view points in all forms (even if ineptly expressed -- isn't there a thread about charitable reading?), especially from idealistic members of the hobby outside our group and from experienced retailers. I'm certain that we can all make our own value judgements based on the reasoned discourse.

So, I await Sean's expanded response next week.

-Luke

Paul wrote: Sean, build it and if it really sells more books and carves out mindshare for indie games better than the Internet does, the publishers will come. We'll recognize a true value proposition when we see it. And it's not like we're at risk of going out of business or something.

Hello, everyone.

First off, Happy Thanksgiving (or whatever you might choose to celebrate these days).

Secondly, I am much obliged, as I've said before, to those who either retain an openness to the discussion or at least choose to share their objections in a format that is respectful and instructive. Even those who chose to be otherwise have valid points, all of which go into my further thinking on this matter.

I will say that GAMA is very involved in this, but only inasmuch as we have venues and the capacity to facilitate larger discussions amongst many folks at many levels at once. There is not, as I see it, any administrative or functional role that GAMA can play outside of sharing ideas and collating possible system approaches to share. In that some take exception to working with GAMA, this should not be an obstruction to considering the ideas put forth.

As well, I very much agree with those who say "Build it. If it works, we'll be there." That makes perfect sense. This was never really meant to "sell" you, but only to solicit your viewpoints on how it might work or fail to work. In that, I've been successful (if somewhat bruised in the process).

At the end of the day, I honestly believe that the customers most of you have and are selling at the margins you currently enjoy will remain your direct customers. I'm fairly confident that the potential brick-and-mortar customers most of you might reach will be additional sales, for the most part. Lesser margins, certainly, but very simply added revenue.

Finally - as of last night, I was fairly convinced that I was going to walk away from here. Those who e-mailed me for the larger document would get it, and have my gratitude and continued attention. I was going to wash my hands of a place where the hosts choose to treat their guests with such acrimonious disrespect.

A friend very generously pointed out that the rest of you deserved better than that.

So long as I am able (and that may not be long, since it seems likely I will find myself banned for the improper use of the word "sir," or perhaps "hello," in the near future), I will honor those of you who have requested continued dialogue on this matter.

Or anything else that I can have meaningful input on, really.

When I return next week, I will go ahead and post, in parts, the larger document for your review and commentary.

By your collective leave, however, I am going to spend the rest of my holiday enjoying the snow, my friends and family, and getting some serious writing done on Shaintar: Immortal Legends. I am certain that James Mathe, Aaron Acevedo, and perhaps a few fans might appreciate seeing it done.

Cheers and best wishes.

To all of you.

FWIW, no one has ever been banned from The Forge.

Understand, Sean, that there have been some very poor relationships with distributors stemming from the small size of our various endeavors here. Many of us have had nothing but the shitty end of the stick when it comes to any of the major distros, and the hostility is toward them. Any hostility toward you is simply out of frustration toward a system that's done little but burn people around here.

No one, Ron and Luke included, isn't interested in effective and economic methods of distribution. That's the reason they know so much about the system and its failings.

Happy Thanksgiving!

There is still no answer to Luke's and Chris' question, as reinforced by Paul.

Bear that in mind.

Do notice as well the following:

- the provocation of Clinton over several posts, including the attempt to split him and me (Ron is good, Clinton is bad)

- the high horse on the high road, playing the virtuous visitor among the barbarians, especially leavened with compliments and digs

- the "punishment" - I was going to give you this, but now you don't deserve it and have to ask

- and right on cue, the now you're gonna ban me line

Sean, we're waiting for the answer to that question. In the interest of clarity and in recognition of Sean's absence for a few days, this thread is closed, so no one post to it again. Further discussions, including that answer if it's forthcoming, should be begun in new threads.

Best,
Ron

Oh and I love the comment about using single distributors because otherwise ordering would take 50 hours a week.  That is such crap. 

Really?  How long did you own a game store?

Anyone that makes that bullshit argument is a lazy fucker and deserves to go out of business because of it.

Based on the credentials you've presented, you have no idea what you're talking about.  Even dealing with just 4-6 distributors instead of the 400 vendors I carried in my store took 6-10 hours/week. 

And by the way, I didn't go out of business.  I sold my store for a substantial profit--enough to provide a living for up to about 2 years while I write full time, after I paid off all store and personal debt.  ALL of it, even down to the credit cards.  I went from moderate debt (around $70,000) to substantial surplus in 5 years through my game store ownership.

Lloyd,

When I say a thread is closed, it's closed. No one posts to that thread again, at all.

It ends here. Ryan has taken up your discussion in a new thread, which is the appropriate thing to do.

Best,
Ron