Dust Devils got translated

For those of you who've been wondering what I've been up to lately, here's the scoop: with gracious cooperation from Matt (who's apparently on a trip somewhere right now), Arkenstone Press (that's me and my brothers) has translated Dust Devils into Finnish. The name of the game is Piruja miehiksi ("Those who are like devils compared to men despite being men", roughly), and it features new art, as well as some additional material. The link in my sig takes you to our (Finnish) site, if you want to check out the cover designed by my smaller brother. The book comes out at Ropecon in a couple of weeks, but I've put out notification about it today to the Finnish boards.

The most notable thing about the translation project this time was that, thanks to our solid showing with MLwM (and my skilled application writing, let's not forget that), the Finnish Literature Information Centre chose to support us with a small grant (350�) directed at reimbursing my elder brother, the translator. I fully expect him to share the loot with the rest of us. The grant program is for small-press, specialized literature translations, which rpgs pretty much are. This is the first grant for tabletop rpgs I've ever heard of, so I'm interested if anybody can point to similar occurrences elsewhere.

About project finances: right now it seems that we'll get by with significantly less expences than last year with MLwM, mostly due to more experience with all kinds of publishing stuff. I won't be uncorking the champagne before getting the books from the printer, though. As of this writing our printer costs seem to be lower (better timing), art costs almost negligible (my brother the artist has gotten that good) and the licence is a little cheaper (I love you dearly, Paul, but in retrospect we did pay you a little too much). With the grant money I feel pretty confident that we'll be making a profit at some point.

The distribution plan is pretty much the same we had with MLwM, meaning combined web/convention presence, and some sales to retailers. I personally expect the game to sell roughly hundred copies during it's first year. We couldn't secure a sales spot at Ropecon (the biggest and baddest Finnish convention) to sell it, though, so that'll cut into the sales somehow. Going by the numbers for MLwM last year, the lost sales might be anything from 10% to 40% of total sales. (Ropecon is the sales season compared to the winter months.) Personally I expect many folks to order the book after the convention anyway, so the losses shouldn't be too bad.

Well, that's that. Questions are welcome, either here or in PM. I'm sure Matt'll be here at some point to abuse the translation. We'll mail him a couple of copies after Ropecon, so he should be able to show the work at Gencon for interested parties.