I have been reading a lot of forums of late of people talking about how Evil Hat’s Brick & Mortar PDF Guarantee and Rogue Games Brick & Mortar PDF Guarantee is a great idea. Retailers love it. The first thought that came to my mind was, “Of course they love it! You are providing a free service to their customers that they can’t and in most cases don’t want to do.” Retail stores don’t want their customers to go digital with PDFs. That scares most of them to death. The mantra I hear the most from retailers is, “If they buy PDfs, then they won’t by from my store.” Well if you give them a reason to buy may be they will buy from you. For all you retailers that don’t understand what I mean and know what to do, let me direct you to Tates Comics in Lauderhill, FL winner of the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailing award. They might give you some ideas how to do you business better. Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea of offering the PDF for free if you buy the hard copy is a good idea. I just think you don’t need to do that on a retailer level. You could do the same thing by using Lulu.com to do you printing, placing a code on the table of content page, keep a bigger percentage of each sale (by not having to split the money with the distributor and/or retailer) and gaining even more fan loyalty. If the product is good, people will hear about it.
But back to the digital arena, As a PDF publisher, follower of Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Robert Kiyosaki. I think a PDF company needs to service their customers directly and not through a third part source like a retailer. They are your customers; you should provide them the best service yourself. To me, Evil Hat and Rogue Games look at the PDFs as an afterthought, something they can toss to the fans as a “nice gesture” as a RPG publisher. They think their “big money” is with the retailers. I, of course, don’t think it is the case. PDF publishing has proven itself not just to be viable but an actual way to build your successful business from the grass roots level. You need to build your customer base. Malhavoc Press proved that. Open Design proved that. Paizo proved that. Green Ronin even proved that. Stop looking for retailers to do your work, and sell yourself to your customers. Talk to you later…
Trust me: No one is laboring under the misaprehension that there's big money in retail. Fred's gone out of his way to keep the EHP numbers transparent over at deadlyfredly.com and it's impossible not to notice that we see much less money per unit from a book in distribution than we do a direct sale (or even an indirect sale through someplace like IPR).
ReplyDelete(That said, it sounds like you're thinking the PDF guarantee is _only_ for people who buy through retailers. I maybe misunderstand, but that would be crazy, from our perspective)
I'm afraid that, at least for EHP, you're looking at it upside down. We're _already_ successful with direct sales and connecting directly with our fans. It is from this position that we've reached out to retailers, not because we see it as some kind of treasure trove, but because we value the good brick and mortar stores a LOT, and we're willing to step up to partner with them because we like the outcome.
The business math on it? Enh. We got some number of sales we wouldn't have gotten, certainly, but enough to offset the cut in profits? No real way to tell. And that would be a potential cause for stress if that was our priority.
You're absolutely right that retailers need to change with the times, and you're similarly right that companies benefit from doing things themselves. But that doesn't mean that we need to position ourselves in opposition to the retailers to succeed.
-Rob D.
Um, you totally misunderstand what we do at Rogue Games. The guarantee is not retailer only. Anyone can take part. If you bought one of our books via Amazon.com, all you need to do is show proof of purchase and you get the PDF for free. I deal with all, store owners, gamers, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, Rogue Games is a publisher. We put no limit on the medium. We release original eBooks and print books.
If you think PDFs are an after thought for us, nothing I will write will convince your otherwise.
I don't think it's a bad idea, I think it's a different goal.
ReplyDeleteThe goal isn't sales, obviously, but rather instilling goodwill among retailers.
It's my opinion that retailers are going the way of the dodo, and direct-to-consumer is the way to go, but the reality is that for right now, retailers are still a factor and I can see the logic of keeping them happy as they slide into irrelevance. :)
-Gareth
There is another point no one here is talking about. Your helping to turn your retial customer into a potential direct customer or digital customer as these sales end up on your dirvethrurpg mailing list,
ReplyDelete"If its good they will hear about it"
Bull; Is Obsidian Twilight good? Is Neo-Exodus? well none of my players have ever heard about it. Why? because they dont' buy digital books, they go to the Flgs and buy it or they go to conventions and see it.
Its a good idea so long as you you have not reached a market saturation point, which I don't thing either company has. And even then its good will, which can get you better placement in a companies store.
Also i will point out LPJr design is not a huge direct sales company, you use One Book Shelf (you keep 65%), Paizo (you keep 75%) and Lulu.com (you keep 75% minus production cost), With retail you charge more and keep (44%). Those are your distributers.
@Steve: The email mailing list is the one of the BIG advantages I have found with RPGNow and DriveThruRPG. That kind of direct marketing is hard to beat. That is something I can not do with a retail store sale normally.
ReplyDelete