How much money do I lose (or make) by not going in retail stores…

When I sell PDFs at RPGNow.com they take 35%.  When I sell at Paizo.com they take 25%. When I sell to retail stores using Studio 2 Publishing they take 18% (I think) after I sell the product to retailer stores who get a 50% discount off the cover price of the product.  Even when I sell direct to customer through Lulu.com, they get roughly 25%. What does tall this mean? I have a lot of people who have their “hand in my pocket” when I sell something.  Worst off that means I am missing out on that money. While like any capitalist business person I don’t want to share my money with ANYONE, I do understand that I need to do that some times.  So let’s do a quick price breakdown:

If a product cost $10, When I sell it I get…

• Paizo: $7.50
• Direct to customer (Lulu):  $7.50
• RPGNow: $6.50
• Studio 2 Publishing: $5.00 (from retailer); $4.10 (minus their cut) 

On pure math, Paizo and Lulu are the winners, but here is something you don’t know: I sell roughly 10 times at RPGNow then I do at Paizo and Lulu.

 But with that said (and using Fred Hick’s retail sale numbers and a “guesstimate”) I can see that I might be able to sell 60 units a quarter of an individual RPG product to retail locations. So let say this $10 product you are selling, will cost you $2.50 to product it you will see a profit of $1.60 per each product, for a total per book per quarter of $96 ($32 a month).  Now that is nothing to write home about, BUT you multiply that by 17 products (currently the amount of books I currently have available in Print-On-Demand format selling direct to customers) that becomes $544.  Nothing AMAZING, but it is enough to hire some freelance writers and put them to work making more products.  If you use the $544 you could get a freelancer to write at a rate of 1 to 3 cents a word meaning 18K to 51K words or 36 to 102 pages of work. 

So with all this said, what is the best way and place to sell your products?  As How to Make Webcomics says: All of them of course!  Talk to you later…