State of the indie publisher
Marshall Burns:
What I've published and how:
The Rustbelt in print only, and a small assortment of micro-games in PDF only.
Distribution:
My distribution has mostly been direct sales through the Unstore and my own site (in roughly equal measure). Eero also sells the Rustbelt through his Arkenstone webstore, and a few Rustbelt ashcans were sold on my behalf by Paul Czege at GenCon 20-somethingorother.
Reaching people and making sales:
I don't know! A lot of my sales are from direct interaction with people, but a major chunk are to European folks that I've never interacted with or seen on the net at all! I have no idea how I've managed to reach them, but they're the largest fraction of my sales.
My biggest mistake:
Without a doubt, not knuckling down and finishing the Rustbelt a year faster than I did (which would have been trivial to do; I just didn't focus). Instead I dallied and, as a powerful instrument for post-apoc Story Now play, Rustbelt was completely overshadowed in the communities I'm active in by the contemporary release of Apocalypse World, to the point that one guy who told me that I rank in his top-five favorite designers wasn't even aware of the release until last week, two years after the release! This is my own damn fault, and not Vincent's at all, I should add.
Communities:
The Forge got me started, and I've since been mostly active design-wise on G+. To namecheck specific people, David Berg, George Cotronis, Wilmer Dahl, Paul Czege, David Hallett, Joshua Walchester, and Ron have all been particularly instrumental in my development (even if they haven't noticed it).
My next steps:
I have two major projects I'm working on (Hex Rangers and Madlands). I've been trying to network on G+, trying to be more present and active, and trying to meet and interact with new people. Particularly with Madlands, I've been pursuing cross-pollination with OSR/DiYD&D folks, because less incest is the best cest.
guildofblades:
Hi Mark,
I'm a bit more of a lurker here most times as opposed to a regular poster, but here goes.
>> * What have you published? How?<<
First, I am one of two principle partners in GOB Publishing, so I should say "we have" published instead of "I". We've published Grunt Fantasy Miniature Battles, The Dark Realms RPG, W.H.A.T.? RPG, Heroes Forever RPG, a couple dozen board games in our Empires of History line, Overlords Fantasy Battlescape Board Game (a Titan variant), the Worlds of Heroes and Tyrants board game (a talisman variant), Dice Armies, Mythic Chess and a handful of other oddities. We've also had the 1483 Online multi player online game in beta testing, well, for far far too long now. lol.
>> * How have you distributed it?<<
In the early days we distributed through our own website and conventions. Spent about half a decade trying to work with most of the industry's distributors. And the last half decade focusing sales through our own website, our own retail store, to a small handful of retailers and a limited number of titles through PDF resellers.
>> * What has helped you reach the most people? Make the most sales?<<
I was reaching the most people when marketing and distributing games through the industry's distribution system. Conventions made for a great way to have face to face time with our more hardcore fans. These days the Internet has done a fair job of replacing both, but has its own limits with regards to reach.
>> * What's the biggest mistake you've made in design & publishing? Or disaster you've experienced?<<
Lol. So, so many. Rushing products through production, lack of proper editing, listening to what people and retailers told me they wanted instead of using our data to figure out what they "really" wanted. Continuing to do business using unstable foundations to build upon, thinking I could force a better result than the system was able to give me.
>> * Who have been your communities of design? Who is right now? How do you work with them?<<
Hmm. I am not sure I have ever really "joined" a community of design. Though I always keep my ears open to what the trends in design are, I do not necessarily embrace any of them. I would say my initial community of design was my early circle of friends way back in high school and college. My customer base as been my sounding board from which I have learned to make better games since then.
As for industry communities, I pop in here at the Forge, read RPG.net, the Board Game Design Forum (bgdf.com), Story Games and a few others, plus spent a bunch of years involved with the Game Publishers' Association. There are a couple private industry boards I still frequent as well, more to do with retail than publishing though.
>> * What are your next steps?<<
Well, about 4 years ago I started GOB Retail, trying to develop a somewhat new model for a game retail store. GOB Retail also began print on demand operations. So the store has been coming along nicely and within the next year or so we'll likely start looking to expand into a 2nd, 3d, 4th location, etc. We d our share of POD book printing right now, but what we had tried to do was large print on demand for card games. Which went ok at first, but we quickly found a lack of viable manufacturing equipment to be able to ramp up production to be efficient and keep up with market demand. The last couple years I have been building a die cutting machine prototype to accomplish that and we've been coding a dynamic website to handle project building and order management (and pre press stuffs).
As for publishing, we are preparing to roll out a new version of our 1483 Online game this year. The last few years we had dramatically slowed down new product releases so we could focus on the online game and the new retail/pod ventures. But this year we are overhauling our website and consumer/retailer marketing systems and preparing for a big push of new releases and trying to expand our distribution back into more retail stores. We are relaunching our Dark Realms role playing game on Free RPG Day this year, launching with the core rules and 7 supplements out the gate. Using our new POD set up to print everything. Though the "new" Dark Realms is actually a merger of two of our old game systems (Dark Realms and W.H.A.T.?), both taken out of print around 2002, into one better game line. Using the core game mechanics from our W.H.A.T.? system with the gems of the dark Realms toss in together with the Dark Realms name and story. Years ago we freely distributed 1.2 million copies of the old W.H.A.T.? game system in PDF format. Now it's time to see what impact that will have on the relaunch. I am excited because it has been a long time coming.
Ryan
GOB Retail / Publishing
guildofblades:
Lol,
My post shoud have been addressed to Emily. Sorry.
Ryan
GOB Retail / Publishing
Graham W:
What have you published? How?
Play Unsafe, A Taste For Murder, Stealing Cthulhu: books and PDFs.
Cthulhu Dark: free PDF.
The Dying of St Margarets, The Watchers In The Sky, The Dance In The Blood, The Rending Box, The Dead White World, The Apocalypse Machine: PDFs in partnership with Pelgrane Press. (They're still creator-owned, as in, by me.)
How have you distributed it?
For a short time, by Lulu, which worked fine but their cut is very high. Then by IPR.
Now, I post out all my books myself and authorise PDF downloads. It's difficult to keep up with all the orders. I'm looking at automating.
What has helped you reach the most people? Make the most sales?
Cross-pollination between indie gamers and Cthulhu gamers.
What's the biggest mistake you've made in design & publishing? Or disaster you've experienced?
Overpromising things. It's often easy to sign up for things in the future that, later, you just have no creative energy for. Deathly.
Who have been your communities of design? Who is right now? How do you work with them?
Informal clumps of people at UK conventions. Email contact with a few collaborators.
What are your next steps?
I'm studying Occupational Psychology and am most interested in self-publishing some stuff from that.
Andy Kitkowski:
Interesting topic.
I haven't published anything I designed to date, but have published one game (Maid), and will be publishing two more this year (Tenra Bansho, Ryuutama), and one next year (Mysterious Game X). Being a member of these communities was absolutely essential to my publishing directions and strategies.
>> What have you published? How?
Maid: The Role-Playing Game. Translated mostly by Ewen, localized mostly by me, layout by Ben, published/funded by me. Book, PDF. Mostly PoD.
>> How have you distributed it?
Initial run: Through my website only, then IPR shortly thereafter.
Now: Equally through the website and IPR.
>> What has helped you reach the most people? Make the most sales?
The game itself.
* The market is ripe for anime-themed games, found a lot of crossover traction in anime circles
* There are a lot of players who love slapstick/silly games (see Paranoia, etc)
* The game is stupid-simple to learn and run
* The value: An $8 (originally; now less) PDF with about 14 pages of rules but several hundred pages of content. Pretty illustrations, etc.
* Being responsive to people on the internet, listening to concerns, mitigating them, etc.
>> What's the biggest mistake you've made in design & publishing? Or disaster you've experienced?
Mistake: Aiming for a GenCon release. Even though it appeared we had all the time in the world (6 months after game was translated, before editing/layout), in truth we did not. It almost killed us and burned us out for good.
Disaster: Poor localization. I guess this is a thing specific to RPG translations and not ground-up design. In any case, Ewen did a great job of line-by-line translating of the game. I did a fine job of line-by-line editing of the lines translated by Ewen. We then shipped. We forgot to take one step back, a second step back, and go "let's read this whole section now; does it make sense? Does it convey what the author intended?" In about two huge examples, we misfired big time (mostly me: Did the editing, forgot to back up and reread it as if I was a new user). Luckily, people pointed it out, we corrected it, gave out free new PDFs, apologized, etc.
Screaming whiners got to scream and whine. Medetashi, medetashi.
But folks making noise because they had concerns with the product that they earnestly wanted to see fixed, saw those concerns addressed, the game fixed, and thus we were able to establish a great relationship with those folks.
>> Who have been your communities of design? Who is right now? How do you work with them?
Mostly friends. Online design in a public space I find to be largely masturbatory for myself (at the best, a way to publicly be held accountable for progress; at worst a series of "hey look at me!" posts).
Instead I rely on local friends (many of whom are designers or FANTASTIC critics, like Eric Provost, Lisa Provost and Matthew Gandy) (if I didn't have such friends living nearby, I admit that I might have used the internet more), and specific online friends if I needed specific help.
>> What are your next steps?
MOAR. Continuing to hobby-translate Japanese RPGs and publish them. Continuing to do light design on the side.
Maid was for me, at its heart, a way to test the waters and toughen my skin for publishing Tenra Bansho. In the 3+ years since Maid's release, the market changed again (no shit, right?). Kickstarter is the biggest new feature. If kickstarter existed in 2004, Tenra would have been published in 2007/8.
>> Best lesson learnt
Listen to critics.
Ignore fuckwads and drama queens.
Never plan a release date until the book is ready, priced, ready to print ("The Luke Crane Method").
Never release a PR until the game is in that state as well.
Never, ever aim to have a game "ready for GenCon". At best, you will fail. At worst, you will succeed and murder yourself and all your friends.
-Andy
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