ORX, Sales Numbers, and Retail
guildofblades:
>>Well, sure, I expect there are examples of that. But, aside from the expected spikes (initial release, Cons, etc) my direct sales have in no way declined relative to my retailer sales. In fact, as IPR ramped up their retailer presence this year, my retailer sales spiked so much that I'm running out of stock about 6 months earlier than expected.<<
I have fairly interesting evidence that suggests that mail order sales and retailer sales not only don't canibalize each other much at all, they feed upon each other to help drive sales upwards.
Since we cut out distributors we've been able to track exactly where our products were going. Both to mail order customers and to retailers. We've tracked the zip codes of orders and order volume and found where one is strong the other usual is as well. And that makes sense. If I sell some copies of a game by mail order to people in a specific area then there are people in that area possibly playing our games. Those people have to play with someone so they are playing with "other" gamers in the area, some of which decide they would like to have those games for themselves or other games that we sell. Some of those consumers simply prefer to buy from their local retailer. Inversely, the folks buying from us at the retail stores also have to play with people and some of those folks will go on to buy from us via mail order. So retailer sales seem to increase our mail order volume and mail order volumes seem to increase our retailer sales. That, of course, can only work where the product is equally available through both venues.
Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Retail Group - http://www.guildofblades.com/retailgroup.php
Guild of Blades Publishing Group - http://www.guildofblades.com
1483 Online - http://www.1483online.com
Valamir:
Good point Graham...use 3) safe test bed alternative to pdfs.
Ron Edwards:
Hello,
I've looked over this thread carefully from its starting post, and I think that Raven's main question has not been met. I'll try to fill in the gap. This is not to say other posts haven't been worthwhile, and the whole topic certainly can stand a good airing.
The issue, as I see it, is how to get books into retail on a modest budget, without entering into enormous print runs.
That's an important question, because although it's true that by printing many books at once, per- book print cost drops, it's also true that books you cannot move are a pure loss, no matter how cheap they were to make. This is the failure-hole that many, many companies fell into about fifteen years ago. Lured by the blandishments of printers or other publishers to print 10,000 copies "for cheap!", they did so, and were stuck with 9,500 books after their first push into the stores. That's not savings. That's not cleverness. That's not strategy. It's failure.
Today, given the internet and a variety of other things like POD, that outcome is less likely. But the basic concept is still there: one should not print more copies of a game than one can reasonably expect to sell in a given time-cycle (for most people, that cycle is one tax year, but circumstances differ). For retail sales, one needs to think especially clearly in those terms, because if you cannot move those books out of the warehouse or your basement, they are unsold inventory, which is considered an asset for tax purposes, also known as Oh Shit I Pay More Taxes.
Sorcerer and Universalis operate at this level: hundreds of books sold per year, with single print runs running into the thousands or at least thousand-plus. Not all games do. If I am reading Raven's posts right, he is not asking "Gee, how do I get to be such a big boy too?" He is asking quite rightly, given that his game is not selling at that level, but that it does seem to have a nice draw for orders in retail, how to get some books printed that will make him some money.
One valid answer that's shown up on this thread is "Lulu serves you well for internet single-customer sales, but is not cost-effective for print runs, short or not." The people who've posted this in various forms may think they have answered Raven well, but in my judgment as moderator, it needs to be stated here again outside of other advisory context. I agree with that answer but it's not the entire one; it only concerns what not to do.
The answers that concern higher print runs for purposes of lower cost-per-book are, I think, not useful for Raven's needs at all. He is not talking about large print runs. He's talking about short runs: 100 or 200 or so. And this is very reasonable because that's what he's comfortable expecting to sell.
The complete answer as I see it is about choosing the right POD company. As I've written about extensively previously, the term POD is not necessarily literal. These days it merely refers to fully digital technology for printing, and includes print runs of physical books as well as literal "print on demand" (i.e. print only when a customer orders). This is how I print all of my books except for the Sorcerer ones.
Costs for such printing are not bad at all; a print run of 100 books the size of Orx may run as low as $3 per book at a company like Publishers Graphics, considering any number of up-and-down details of a given time of year. Raven, I think some of your points need to be assessed in terms of real costs with real companies, with Lulu out of the picture entirely. At a few places in the thread your posts have a "there's no way, I'm screwed, it's impossible" quality, and the facts are otherwise. And not because I'm saying "print 2000 books, it's cheap!" I realize that this is not what you are looking for. It's because a lot of companies simply offer a better deal. There are a number of threads in this forum about the best tactics to use when finding the costs and choosing a printer.
Raven, let me know - have I aimed this post toward your needs?
I have one other question for you. At one point, you refer to some kind of "push toward retail" in the independent publishing community. I have no idea what you are talking about with that. The vast majority of sales and marketing for independent games remains at the direct-sales level, at most through companies like IPR which work on commission. Can you clarify what you mean by that?
It's an important point because your whole topic begins with the observation that your book has an apparent opportunity to do well for you in retail if you can keep printing costs down. Looking over the thread as a whole, you seem to be demanding a justification for utilizing the retail channel yet also having already provided such a justification yourself. So it's confusing.
Best, Ron
Eero Tuovinen:
A practical thought, by the way: if one is short of cash and therefore limited in publishing options, one might partner up with somebody with excess capital and balance the operation that way. If one is worried of losing control of the property or getting trapped by debt, perhaps the loan might be arranged from a friend or interested hobbyist (cultural micro-patronage, kinda) with very few strings attached apart from paying back when and if the project collects profits. Alternatively, collect pre-orders, ransom, patronage or something of the sort, which all amount to the same thing.
The above is probably obvious, but I do think that it's somewhat disgenuine to represent lack of capital as a total, absolute and all-encompassing phenomenon that controls your every decision. Not wanting to take monetary risks is fine, but that's a choice that reflects on available options, and it's your choice. Complaining that a culture as whole (indie rpg culture, in this case) is swinging away from that choice... well, perhaps we should discuss the ethics of financial risk and debt, if that's getting your goat. Or if lack of capital is your only problem here, where's your investor sheet? Regardless, I don't really feel that ability to invest $200 in printed stock really distances me from the average indie publisher - rather likely it's the opposite, not being able to put that money into a project you've already spent hundreds of hours designing seems to me to necessarily be the minority position. At least we usually don't have folks asking about raising capital on the Publishing forum here, which we might if capital was a common bottleneck.
(In case there's somebody out there for whom capital is a bottleneck, let's discuss that at some point. After Gencon, preferably.)
jag:
I'm wary of my response contributing to thread-drift, so if this is tangential to Raven's point, i apologize.
Quote from: Eero Tuovinen on July 20, 2008, 05:24:42 PM
A practical thought, by the way: if one is short of cash and therefore limited in publishing options, one might partner up with somebody with excess capital and balance the operation that way. If one is worried of losing control of the property or getting trapped by debt, perhaps the loan might be arranged from a friend or interested hobbyist (cultural micro-patronage, kinda) with very few strings attached apart from paying back when and if the project collects profits. Alternatively, collect pre-orders, ransom, patronage or something of the sort, which all amount to the same thing.
I would be extremely surprised if the above model was generally applicable. As an independent publisher, you can either borrow money as an individual, or borrow money as a business, or get start-up investment. Each of these has serious problems with the stated setup.
First, borrowing money as an individual doesn't avoid any of the problems -- you are committing more money than you have. If you are absolutely sure you will sell all your books, that's fine. But you can't be, so it leaves you in the precarious position of being in significant debt. Which doesn't seem to be what Raven wants.
Second, you could borrow money as a business. This insulates you from the financial risk (assuming you have the right class of business), but puts your company at financial risk. And you need to find a bank or friend who will give a loan to a small, untested business in a sector with a high rate of failure and a vanishing small chance of massive financial success. This is scary for the lender, and honestly scary for the business owner as well.
Third, you could find start-up investment, selling part of your company for some seed capital. But honestly, most people that do that invest in companies that, although their success rate is about 10%, have a decent chance of a massive financial upside -- on the order of a return-on-investment of 1000% or more. Indie RPGs just don't have that possibility. You won't in general find any stranger that will do this. Plus, the paperwork, due-diligence, etc required for this means that most people won't consider it for less than $50k to $100k, which is too much for an Indie RPG.
So all of these options fall back on the idea that you have a friend who:
1. can spare $2k-$10k
2. doesn't mind investing in a high-risk, low-reward opportunity
3. is comfortable with a complete loss of investment, and
4. is cool enough that failure won't sour the friendship.
I think this is an unusual set of circumstances, and likely not applicable to Raven.
James
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