RPGNow is the largest PDF site on the market; roughly 80-85% of my income comes from them. The remaining 15-20% comes from the other sites like Paizo, e23, and Lulu. I think this precent is MORE THAN unevenly lop-sided. Putting that much "trust" in one company is a bad thing for business. The reason being that if something goes wrong at RPGNow, then there goes my income. And this is the same thing that many other RPG companies have done. With the introduction of the Paizo Publishing, LLC Pathfinder® Roleplaying Game Compatibility License, this gives publisher a reason to get additional sales from the Paizo website, which in turn increase your cash flow and speads out the percentage.
With the Paizo Publishing, LLC Pathfinder® Roleplaying Game Compatibility License, I believe there is a potential money generating opportunity is equal to to what Green Ronin's M&M Superlink (before they had to release a 2nd version of Mutants & Masterminds because Osseum ran off with all the money, over $100K, from the first print run and they had to pay the bill quickly or go under. Bet you didn't know about that, did you?) was. If Paizo Publishing, LLC Pathfinder® Roleplaying Game Compatibility License does just half as well as the M&M Superlink license did for me (I sold 189 copies of Power Corrupts in 3 days, not like now where most does sell 100 copies in a lifetime of the product) it could be a nice source of income for me (In addition to the money I am already making from it). Personally I am looking to change my percentage to 35% RPGNow / 35% Paizo / 30% other various sites, with an increase of cashflow of 50%. It is going to be like 2004 alo over again (My sales in 2004 jumped over 400% from the previous year, in 2003 sales were only up 350% from the previous year). So it looks like time will tell in August. Talk to you later...
The thing about RPGNow for the buyer is that it's a shopping mall... one-stop shop for everything PDF that I'm looking for. And if it's not on RPGNow, I'm far less likely to find it.
ReplyDeleteSo, I have very little incentive to go to Paizo or e23... especially if RPGNow has the biggest selection and I don't want (or know about) any of the products exclusive to those other vendors.
So how will you, a publisher, change where your customers want to buy your product? How does Charmin get more of their customers to buy toilet paper at Target instead of Wal-Mart?
It's not your product that makes RPGNow attractive, it's RPGNow's vast catalog.
Now here's the thing. If all of your products are available at all three of these vendors, and RPGNow drops off the net forever, I just shift to buying from another vendor. No significant lost sales for you there. Obviously, there's a risk that RPGNow will stop sending you money before they stop selling your product... but I find that a less likely than what happens to a brick-and-mortar distributor, with warehouse space and bills to pay for physical product.
I'll agree, a more even distribution would be safer, but you're going to have a tough go of influencing *where* your customer chooses to shop, unless you manipulate your prices to reward shopping somewhere other than RPGNow. I can't predict the consequences of such a strategy... won't make OBS happy if you intentionally drive customers to other vendors *because* OBS is the more successful.
Consider... pushing customers to other vendors could contribute to creating the kind of business failure at OBS that you are attempting to guard your business against.
And... is this the best place to spend your energy? Would you gain a better position by focusing more on improving the business/product/customer relationship than by trying to spread out where your customers buy your product?
The only thing is with your comment that you may have overlooked, that I am specifically in this blog to focus on Paizo and Pathfinder.
ReplyDeletePaizo has already built in a group of people/fans looking to purchase Pathfinder material at Paizo's online store. So if I sell products that fan of Paizo would purchased and they are already on the Paizo site purchasing, in this particular situation, RPGNow is basically not relevent. While I might ge "some sales" on RPGNow, I think Paizo's online store will give me more committed fans. so amoung the hundreds of publisher, my Patherfinder product may be lost.
I think of it like the iPhone and AT&T. No matter how badly I want an iPhone, if I can only get it through AT&T then I have to join them to get it. Even if I hate AT&T.
Ah, right... focusing on the Pathfinder market will naturally build more sales at Paizo's outlet for you. And if I were in the 3.x business, Pathfinder is certainly where I'd be focusing.
ReplyDeleteMy concern is whether or not the audience for Pathfinder is really going to support third-party product, or whether they're primarily Paizo fans.
ReplyDeleteAdamant is most likely going to kill our 4E support, because a) the sales weren't really stellar -- Savage Worlds products do better, and b) WOTC killing their PDF program killed our add-on sales. I'd love to move our fantasy support over to Pathfinder, but I'm honestly not convinced that it will be viable.
Paizo to me, seems they want to work with 3PP to help support their line. I think they could grow into a future powerful player in the RPG industry.
ReplyDeleteWell I launched our pathfinder patronage project, I have ordered the preview rules, I am 35% of the way to our threshold goal in 5 days.
ReplyDeleteI went against the common wisdom and brought on Clinton J. Boomer who has work on pathfinder products and was part of their Rpg superstar final 4, along with the DnD PSAs.
I have been very satisfied with the response from patrons, the energy the author brings to the project, I have also seen a very high response level from those who are existing patrons and those who are signing on for the very first time.
I am LPJr, I am very excited and would like to see a rise in sales from a new source (and one that does not take less of the pie too.)