GenCon 2011: at the booth
Christoph Boeckle:
Wow, great news for you and the indie potential!
Would you agree to give us some numbers? Like, what are a great year's sales like? How many copies of each game did you move, and what does it compare to internet sales and total sales history?
Also, what was that well-chosen phrasing? What does it look like to hook in one of those game-draft-in-my-backpack-guys and start discussing his design? I guess you hardly drop the whole Big Model on them in 10 minutes, right? Is it all about what the game is about and colour and reward and stuff? I'll probably be at a booth next April, where we expect to sell bezillions-in-Swiss-proportions games like this year, but I'd like to extend to those gals and guys in another manner too.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Christoph,
In book terms, I sold 20 copies of Sorcerer core book by Sunday morning, which I'd underestimated the demand for; 5-10 each of the Sorcerer supplements; about 10 Spione, about 5 Mutual Decision, about 5 Elfs, and about 15 S/Lay w/Me.
In money terms, I brought home almost exactly $1000 in sales. In terms of raw printing cost and the low shipping costs, that was a huge profit compared to ordinary on-line and store sales. But in terms of booth and hotel costs, it definitely did not even meet them, not by a long shot. The booth cost me $1400, the various furniture cost me about $160 this year, and the hotel cost me about $500.
The real benefits lie in regarding con expenses as flat-out expense at the yearly level, without seeking to meet them with sales, and seeking instead to treat the book sales as a matter of printing and shipping just like any other. And that is only sensible if one thinks of the con expenses as buying intangibles: outreach to people who've never heard of the titles before, and maintaining and strengthening good will among people who have. The hope is for the company to achieve a stronger position than it had before going to the con, in terms of yearly sales.
A simple example would be someone who bought one book, then finding how much they like it, goes on-line and orders a bunch more some time in the next few months. And beyond that, the possibility that their friends will buy my books too. A more complex example would be something like my interactions with Posthuman Studios - it so happens that I bought their new English-language version of DeGenesis, which I probably wouldn't have done if they'd not helped me with the shelves. (I was previously intrigued by the game, but not must-have about it.) But it so happens that I really like DeGenesis and am now organizing a pretty serious long-term game, with hopes of posting lots of actual-play as soon as possible. My actual play posts have been known to help people's sales, sometimes. So their help for me generated what I hope will be positive publicity for them. I can't say whether any of my actions during the con will have similar possible reciprocal effects, but I've seen that happen a lot in the past and can at least hope.
Let me know if that makes any sense. I'll get to your second set of questions later.
Best, Ron
Ron Edwards:
Part 2
Here's what I did.
1. The white board
This is a typical cheap dry-erase board I put up at conventions with various points or notes on it, like "non-Sorcerer titles arrive tomorrow" or whatever. Like last year at GenCon, I included a call for people to talk about their games in design. This year, it read:
What about your game?
(star) Design effectively
(star) Publish independently
www.indie-rpgs.com
People asked about this several times a day. Some asked directly, others stopped in their tracks and stared it, and then responded to my inquiry about what interested them. That's in addition to the several people per day who arrived either through others' recommendations, or being dragged by a friend who knew me.
The discussion
My how-to-publish discussion stands on four equally-important legs with one connecting topic. They can be addressed in almost any order based on the information or questions the person seems most concerned with at the beginning of the conversation.
1. The game topic. This consists of two crucial questions, based on a stated "X" for what the game is supposed to be about. Let's say someone says "pirates." The two questions become, (i) why a pirates game, and (ii) why a new pirates game? I.e., what's fun about pirate-play anyway, and given that, why not use an existing game to do it?
If a person is openly baffled by these questions, then I clarify that to them, the answers are obvious, but they aren't to anyone else; and that the answers aren't supposed to convince me of anything, but rather simply to open the person's mind/intentions about the game to the light. If a person's opening conversation actually includes the answers to this question, then I articulate them anyway and congratulate the person on being ahead.
In either case, once the answers are apparent, then I tell the person that everything in the game needs to reinforce these two concepts, and that anything which distracts from them or worse, contradicts them needs to get jettisoned.
2. The source of fun. This is GNS with the serial numbers filed off. The tricky thing here is to keep the discussion focused on social payback and not on techniques, although the latter are fine as examples of how the game facilitates the fun.
I found that everyone I talked to was instantly able to identify which of the agendas was just right for their vision of playing the game. I also found that they were a bit relieved that the discussion was not about defending the merits of 2d10 vs. 3d6, or endlessly debating "balance," or stuff like that.
3. Defining economic success for this person. This most often yields the sensible answer of "making a bit more money than I put in," but sometimes two other problematic answers show up.
(i) "I don't care about the money, I just want to see it published," in which case I ask if it's literally OK if they lose money; usually it's not and they adopt the "make a bit more than I spent" after all. Or they realize that they'd prefer to make it cheaply and offer it for free.
(ii) "I'd like to support my lifestyle, to pay for an apartment and a car," i.e., the person wants to make a living via game design and publishing. This usually leads to a discussion of the financial history of TSR and White Wolf.
4. Production and presentation, including distribution/fulfillment. This is clearly a complex topic and I focus strictly on the basics: physical qualities of the item in one or more forms, the primary means for people to encounter, how it gets to them, and how the money is handled and possibly divided up.
I found that every person was deeply affected by the brutal detail regarding taxes: in the U.S., inventory that you have not sold is treated as an asset. Therefore if you print 5000 copies and sell 500 in your first year, you will be taxed the following year according to your "holdings" of 4500 copies at retail value. The historical solution has been to mulch those 4500 copies immediately. I provide real-life examples of people doing this and ask the person if that's what they really want to do.
(i) I was pleased to find that most people are now comfortable with website sales in addition to store sales, and with PDF and book products being offered simultaneously.
(ii) I was stunned to discover that someone, whose name I did not find out, is still promulgating from a bully pulpit of a GenCon seminar all manner of grotesque stupdity concerning copyright and trademarks: to register-trademark every detail and to patent the system, to keep people from stealing your idea. If I find out who that person is, I plan to attend his next seminar and basically call him out from the audience.
The connecting concept among these four points concerns establishing a positive internet presence early in the process, i.e., don't follow the intuitive-but-mistaken model of designing in private, printing in private, and only then going public with marketing the already-printed product. The concept includes issues of social decency, establishing respect for one's ideas, successfully communicating #1-4 above, and being open to interested playtesters as well as giving them social credit on-line.
I hope that helps!
Best, Ron
ejh:
Wow. I assumed you got stuck with that booth through some unfortunate situation; I didn't realize you'd selected it specifically and then had all the benefits of the booth kind of implode on you. Congrats on making things work with it anyway. Just about every time I was there there was somebody who'd seen the whiteboard ready to talk about their baby, and I could tell you were jazzed about it.
I think a lot of people get hung up on the theory that's been articulated at the forge, and forget that that's all just there to help people design their own shit (and that it all comes from people designing their own shit). It sounds like there was a certain amount of new creative birth, or at least the stirrings of life, that took place in the void left by the comparative dearth of people from the existing indie games community.
Hope they show up here and bring their ideas with them. :)
Thanks for the rocking Sorcerer game, btw!
Christoph Boeckle:
Perfect, Ron, thanks a million!
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